Working Conditions In Victorian England

Victorian Era

Have you ever wondered how the Victorian Era was like? The Victorian Era started with the reign of queen Victoria which began in 1837-1901 and wasn't a good period in history. The laws were very lenient, therefore causing the Victorian Era to have bad conditions like working struggles, making young children work, children not getting educated, rapid population growth, and dirty living conditions which brought lots of illnesses.

To begin with, One of the reasons the Victorian Era was unpleasant was because of the population. When Victoria came to throne the empire expanded, People were brought because of factories, therefore causing the population in England to grow from 11 million to 37 Million (swisher 11-12). This means the
population in England was growing rapidly. Birth rate started to rise and many people were dying, half of the population were children without parents (Mitchell 43). Meaning children did not live an average life. As a result, In 1830s factories began to fire people because of overproduction (Swisher 14). Which explains that there were to many people working that the factories couldn't handle everyone.

Secondly, leading into another reason, this Era was awful because of the working conditions.
The paying was bad, men got paid eleven shillings per week, women got paid from sixpence to a shilling per day, and children a shilling per week (Mitchell). Children started working as early as 3 or 4 years old (Mitchell 43-44). This lead to most kids not getting educated, only rich kids got the opportunity to learn (Grazia). This implies that because most children didn’t grow up with parents, they had to work for themselves without having as much knowledge as the rich boys & girls. Which gave rise to the factory act, this law only applied to orphans under the age of twelve, which meant that they would only be able to work the max of 12 hours and be provided with some education (mitchell 44). Indicating that children and adults in low/middle classes still had to work at a young age with no
education.

Lastly, the dreadful part of the victorian era was caused because of poverty and overcrowding.
Most families rented one room with no privacy, homeless lived in the streets or hallways, causing the streets and water to become dirty (Swisher 16). Stating that trash was never collected as well as having a lack of clean water. Since streets were dirty, it opened up to lots of illnesses. People were affected by Cholera, which was a disease that was created by drinking dirty water (Mitchell). There was more virus/diseases like Anthrax which lead to lesions on skin and made infections worse, this disease affected mostly animals (Celestino). Even though most animals had it, people worked with the animals which caused it to spread. Another disease was Typhus, this was spread from insects causing horrendous fevers and other symptoms like, rashes, headaches, and delirium (Celestino). In addition, people had Tuberculosis and whooping cough, this caused the lungs to turn black and gave lungs infections (Garzia). These diseases/viruses were extremely bad because doctors didn't have the right technology and medicine to help cure. Most of the time when people caught these illnesses they died because they couldn't afford medical help (Celestino). Even when people afford medical help doctors were ignorant of bacteria and germs, they would check patients than another without disinfecting there hands causing them to transfer diseases to others or multiple diseases to one person (Celestino).
This shows how population started to decrease in a horrible way.

In conclusion, the Victorian Era wasn't a good period of time, there was lots of horrible conditions like working circumstances, increasing population, and illness that caused death. In the end without the Victorian Era we wouldn't be as advance as we are today. This helped us by finding cures for illnesses and also gave knowledge to not letting young people work and get educated instead.

Works cited

Celestino, Natalie. “Diseases/health issues of the Victorian Era” Adobe system incorporated.

Grazia, Maria. “Learn online social issues on victorian britain children at work” January 1, 1970

Mitchell, Sally. Daily life in victorian England 1996 Westport, connecticut, London

Swisher, Clarice - editor. Victorian England 200 Greenhaven press, inc. San Diego