Poverty in Victorian England
Victorian England has been dramatized into a blissful time of prosperity and great discovery, for the rich, but then there was the other half. Victorian England grew to fast said Patrick Rooke, it had no laws to cope with its increase in technology and so it fell back upon itself and the class gap widened. (39) Before the Victorian era there was an immense growth in factory production and disease. The later having a profound effect on medical discoveries. Laws could not keep up with new factories and after they became strong parts of the government there was nothing that politicians could do to stop them from making 3 year olds work ten-hour days. Sanitation was also a big problem in London, there was no personal hygiene, disease was the number one killer (Out of eight people seven of them would die of disease and the other one would die of natural causes including violence.) Crime was an outlet for many poverty-stricken families who taught their kids how to steal at a very young age and for a living the whole family went out every day and robbed people on the streets. The courts also needed some help catching up with society, if you stole a loaf of bread you were given the same punishment as a murderer, Death. Th
Instead of going to school many children went to work, often before they were six. It would have been hard to write about the rich because he had no background in being affluent. Poor, incoherent laws inhibited the poor because they're factory workers could treat them however they wanted and make them work for pennies. Finally reforms began to be made as the courts got more power from the nobles and made some changes involving children and working, schools, and voting, Dickens who was a major reformist, but only through his books, died as England was finally coming out of its 'dark age. (Rooke 43) Jobs that children were especially numerous in because of their size and agility were often the jobs that were most dangerous and life threatening. There were Irish in the halls, starvation in the attics, and clothes drying across the street. They worked along side their parents all day and many went on later in life to have back problems and lung failure from improper stature and breathing bad air in the factories. Nothing compares to how the poor had to live in Victorian England, their struggles that are so meaningless because we can't relate to the brutality of them, simple things such as getting medical attention, or getting pots and water to clean with. (Rooke 42) Children in Victorian England were often worse off than the animals that were almost nonexistent in London because of the lack of food the poor got. Through his work Dickens is criticizing the horrible conditions people had to live and work in, he is opening up the riches eyes to the way the poor have to live. The reforms weren't all good though, the Poor Law, which was passed in 1834, forced beggars to go to work in workhouses. Now you know how the other half lived. (Rooke 113) Workers usually worked until twelve p. To top of the conditions the poor had to work in there were their employers.
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