The officer had refused her admittance despite a surgeon's recommendation that she be admitted. These scandals were not isolated incidences. The specter of the Victorian Poorhouse haunts both history and literature. Census returns for 1801 and 1851 show the population almost doubling during those years; between 1801 and 1911 it almost quadrupled, rising from about 9 million people to 36 million by 1911 (Long 2). The rendering to the left is an artists first hand impression of what a Victorian slum looked like. In January 1850, the Times mentions a pregnant woman who died on the steps of the Southampton poorhouse from exhaustion and starvation. Often parents were not allowed to speak to their children. Her life changes after the boy's death, and she dismisses the Minders so Sloppy will have a chance to get a job. The Commission had neglected to conduct a thorough investigation of the causes of poverty, especially in urban areas. Further complications arose over who qualified as the "deserving poor" and who did not, although the initial policy of separate facilities suggests an obvious delineation. Learning Objectives: To investigate the differences between the lives of Rich and Poor Victorians. Rich Victorians favoured villas ( not the same as Roman villas), whilst the emerging middle classes of Victorian England lived in superior terraces with gardens back and front and a … After conducting its investigation, the Poor Law Commission created several policies, including that of the workhouse system. The Victorian Era. Married women of good character were housed with the aged; loose women were housed separately. Various ideas have been put forward; larger families; more children surviving infancy; people living longer; immigration, especially large numbers of immigrants coming from Ireland fleeing the potato famine and the unemployment situation in their own country. Victorian Child Labor and the Conditions They Worked In, Victorian Houses and Where Victorians Lived, Victorian Dress and Victorian Style Clothing. The difference between upper class and lower class was vastly greater than it is today. As you can imagine this caused great curiosity among the poor about how the wealthy people lived. The ambiguous image of the poorhouse, or "The House" as it was frequently called (or the more ironic "The House of Industry"), reflects the ambiguous position of the poor, especially in the first half of the 19th century. The workhouse needed to be as unattractive as possible to give the poor an incentive to work and save. A comprehensive Victorian Children history guide with facts and information on how the Victorian times impacted children in work, play, education and home life. When Britain defeated the Dutch, French, and the Spanish in the American Revolutionary War (1775—1783), Britain managed to get possession of the East Coast of North America as well. They would be in buildings that were very close to or connected to another set of apartments. London had slums in other areas also. Once a week, inmates bathed and male inmates shaved -- all in the presence of workhouse staff. Visits from "outsiders" were closely monitored. On three alternating days of the week, men consumed twelve ounces of bread, a pint and a half of gruel, a pint and a half of soup, and two ounces of cheese. More enlightened Victorians, however, tried to alleviate conditions for the poor through education and moral guidance. During that time period the Victorians came up with this idea to keep the poor and other disable/mentally ill people off the streets. Medieval architecture and the great cathedrals of the Gothic age inspired all sorts of flourishes during the Victorian era. Well, by the Victorian era, things hadn’t changed much. Victorian Durham: the homes of the poor. This mingling of the classes actually helped to lessen the upper and lower class barriers as time went by. Word of the lesson: Comparison The main task is to create a spider diagram with findings from the sources about rich Victorians and then to compare this to what they have learned in all of the previous lessons about the poor during the Industrial Revolution. The servants life was not anything to dream about but the servants quarters were still better than the poor families homes. As early as 1795, the English implemented new remedies for poverty. Victorian era, the period between about 1820 and 1914, corresponding roughly to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901) and characterized by a class-based society, a growing number of people able to vote, a growing state and economy, and Britain’s status as the most powerful empire in the world. Despite the premise that no "outdoor" relief was to be granted, many rural unions subverted this rule. All Rights Reserved. With the advent of the Poor Law system, Victorian workhouses, designed to deal with the issue of pauperism, in fact became prison systems detaining the most vulnerable in society. Otherwise, the Victorian poor houses did not have running water, indoor bathrooms or toilets and water from the pumps would always be polluted. Charles Dickens’ second book, Oliver Twist (1838) contained the classic Victorian themes of grinding poverty, menacing characters, injustice and punishment. Hence, the standard of living varied considerably for inmates in workhouses, depending on the benevolence of the local board and officers. In this and other instances, the local board of guardians was often more humane than Poor Law legislation deemed necessary. They could never dream of living in a nice big Victorian house. Wealthy families lived in large Victorian houses three and sometimes four stories high with several rooms. East London had the most well-known slums of that time. Many unions resisted legislative regulations because they believed governmental policy interfered with local control. Victorian Housing (built between 1837 and 1901) Millions of houses were built in the Victorian era thanks to the industrial revolution and the consequent housing booms. The meager menu was divided into three meals daily. Victorian poor children worked in the cities factories, working around dangerous machinery. But in 1834, the government, eager to slash spending on the rising number of paupers, passed the Poor Law Amendment Act, declaring that poor relief would now only be offered in the workhouse. The poor Victorian Children lived in much smaller accommodations than the rich children did. Many public figures openly attacked the bill, and Dickens's comments in the postscript to Our Mutual Friend express the contempt many Victorians shared about the Poor Law. The very poorest families had to make do with even less - some houses were home to two, three or even four families. At the helm of the Victorian era, the number of rich people was small. The one principle virtually everyone agreed upon was the need for reform. She breaks up housekeeping and trudges from place to place, selling handiwork to stay alive. The houses would share toilets and water, which they could get from a pump or a well. The poor did not live in houses since property was next to impossible to acquire and the rich were the only ones who could afford to buy it. (The workhouse soon abandoned bone grinding, finding it caused disease). It was 1866, and 10-year-old Annie was a blind child living in abject poverty. Crowther, M.A. As the overcrowding and conditions of the slums worsened it was harder to ignore. Wealthy families lived in large Victorian houses three and sometimes four stories high with several rooms. The problem with this theory, of course, was that many of the poor deserved help and could not work even if jobs were available or make enough money to save anything. These were the houses that the wealthy children lived in. The prevailing literary image of the poorhouse as a place of gross inhumanity, enforced deprivation, and unspeakable insensitivity, like many stereotypes, has some basis in fact, but certainly not all Victorian poorhouses fit that description. At the time, much of the prosperous English populace viewed the poor as social and moral outcasts. The able-bodied poor received a disproportionate share of attention. If the board decided the applicant were sufficiently indigent, he or she was "offered" a place in the institution. These apartments could be found in the very “ran down” part of town. Some also had their hair closely cropped as well. A basement with a cellar for the storage of coal, required for open fires and to heat water. The conscientious sector of society such as journalist, ministers and moral reformers debated accurately that the slums were brought on by a rapid growth in population and the explosion of industrialism during that time. In another poorhouse, an official inspection revealed that as many as seven people shared a bed because of overcrowded conditions. At the start of the Victorian era, educating a child was still an expensive business and only for the wealthy. The ensuing policies reflected an almost-obsessive focus on morality while ignoring economic and social factors causing poverty. W. S. Pendleton House, 1855, Staten Island, New York. Workhouses had offered accommodation and employment to those too poor to support themselves since the 17th-century. Instead of each parish being responsible for its poor as in the past, the Commission formed unions comprised of several parishes, each union having a local board of guardians to implement the new regulations. Less money spent on food and coal meant more money in the administrative pocket. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. There was no plumbing or bathrooms much less flushing toilets. These were all live issues at the time Dickens was writing the novel, especially with the introduction of the1834 New Poor Law – an Act which, for many liberal Victorians, appeared to criminalise the poor. For some slumming was a peculiar form of tourism motivated by curiosity, excitement and thrill, others were motivated by moral, religious and altruistic reasons. Still other sources recommended washing the hair and scalp one or two times per week.Before shampoo was common, people just used soap, which often left the scalp and hair very dry. Many worked as chimney sweeps as they were small enough to fit up the chimneys. The recommended weekly menu for men had little variation. Some no bigger than one room. The harsh system of the workhouse became synonymous with the Victorian era, an institution which became known for its terrible conditions, forced child labour, long hours, malnutrition, beatings and neglect. Many of the elderly poor dreaded the poorhouse just as Betty did, doing their all to avoid admittance, because once admitted, they rarely left it except for burial in the pauper cemetery. Public grumbling soon arose, however, about poor families and unmarried women having children just to increase their income. Neither Whigs nor Tories wholeheartedly endorsed it, and every major urban newspaper denounced it. Most of the harsh measures suffered by inmates before 1850 had been remedied. If you look closely at some of the houses on the Baileys in Durham you can see the basements and attics. Victorian Houses Rich and Poor. Public outhouses were used by everyone that lived within the block. I touched upon this a little bit in my last blog post, when I wrote about his use of satire to criticize those poor laws, but I thought it would be interesting (for myself and my blog) to do a little more in-depth research of those laws. On Fridays, they were served twelve ounces of bread, a pint and a half of gruel, fourteen ounces of suet or rice pudding, and two ounces of cheese. The family was then separated, and in some cases the children and infirm were sent to other institutions, perhaps not even in the same locale. In fact, several houses would share a single water pump installed outside. Poor Homes Poor people in Victorian times lived in horrible cramped conditions in run-down houses, often with the whole family in one room. A Rare Look Inside Victorian Houses From The 1800s (13 Photos) Dusty Old Thing. Sloppy and two other orphans, the "Minders," operate a mangle (a machine for smoothing cloth) for her. In some unions, unmarried mothers were forced to wear yellow gowns, branding them immoral as surely as if a scarlet "A" had been on their foreheads. As I’ve stated before the differences between the rich and the poor classes were vast. In the late Victorian era London's East End became a popular destination for slumming, a new phenomenon which emerged in the 1880s on an unprecedented scale. Consequently, policies focused almost exclusively on eradicating the "shirkers" from the relief rolls, and the deserving poor, those least able to speak and act for themselves, faded to obscurity as surely as if they had slipped into the London fog. Critics charged the Commission with inflating the number of able-bodied poor to incense the public and garner support for the New Poor Law. The wealthy Victorian Children and their families lived a much more elegant and privileged life than the poor families lived. Many criticized the philosophy behind the law as well as the harshness of its measures. Poverty stricken families living during the Victorian Era likely lived in crowded, unkempt, slum houses, or were homeless, endured poor sanitary conditions and often were forced to subject their children to work in harsh conditions. Inmates broke rock, ground corn by hand, picked oakum (fibers of old ropes, used for caulking ship seams), and ground animal bones for fertilizer and manufacturing. Sewage ran down the street since there was no underground sewage pipes. With over 50 thousands photos uploaded by local and international professionals, there's inspiration for you only at senaterace2012.com Fears of rising numbers of paupers materialized as increased industrialization and the enclosure acts forced many people to seek relief. It is hard to adequately put into words how bad the conditions were for poor Victorian children. But a surprising aspect of society in the late 1800’s is that the wealthy upper class had their own curiosities about how the poor lower class lived. Sometimes more than one family would live in an apartment to split the costs. A subtle shift in public perception of the deserving poor also contributed to their obscurity. As the twentieth century approached, the poorhouse became a more humane place. Work, although it was not necessarily designed as punishment, was often grueling and sometimes even dangerous. The amenities found in Victorian homes differ, depending on whether you're closer to the beginning or the end of the era, and whether you were rich or poor. Last modified: April 3, 2012 128.114.113.73, UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, Ca 95064. While Victorians may not have agreed on institutionalizing the poor or on how to dispense relief equitably, most agreed that the New Poor Law of 1834 was poorly conceived and wretchedly implemented. The Victorian home design was primarily determined by the owner of the home. In some cases, unscrupulous officers who trimmed expenses siphoned the savings for themselves. They had more than one bathroom and even had flushing toilets. The new legislation was very unpopular. Hence, applying for relief was a tacit admission of defeat and moral degradation. The Workhouse System 1834-1929. The result was one institution to house all the indigent. Photograph of the interior of a Victorian drawing room, c1890. Our childhood home was built in 1812 in a small, rural town and came with so many interesting stories and peculiarities that it often felt as if it was its own character. This rule was later relaxed to allow married people at least 60 years of age to live together if they wished. They would actually put on their “common clothes” and go down to the slums for sight seeing trips. When readers first encounter Betty in the novel, she has her own little home and garden, models of cleanliness and industry. The basic characteristics of Victorian houses were- Bay Windows, iron railings, no garages, roofs made of slate, Flemish brick bonding could be seen, patterns in the brickwork made from colored bricks, etc. One example is found with the Bowlers, an adventurous family who volunteered to spend three months in a Victorian townhouse for a British television series, The 1900 House. A nanny was hired to fulfill the children’s needs and was in many cases responsible for raising the children. Inmates led a regimented life in the House, especially in the early years of the New Poor Law. These apartment buildings were not like the attractive apartments we have today. The different slums were given names such as Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green and Old Nichol. An ugly idea took root that perhaps all the poor were undeserving. Sash windows but with larger panes of glass, from the 1850s, than the characteristic 6 plus 6 smaller panes seen in Georgian and Regency architecture. Teachers' Notes Workers' Housing in the Victorian Era Upper Class Homes An Artist's Vision of a Victorian Home Story resources, links 6 & downloads 11 Workers' Housing in the Victorian Era There were great differences in living standards between rich and poor during in the Victorian period. The most prevalent problem was lack of uniform implementation. Other rules were likewise bent, and treatment of inmates varied from union to union and board to board. The more children they had the more bodies there were to go to work and earn money. The poor Victorian children lived in dwellings much different. For example, at the start of Queen Victoria’s’ reign, only the rich had running water and boilers, however, by the end of the Victorian era, they had become fairly common for all. “Slumming” became the name for this form of tourism. As time went by the national press caught hold of the story of the slums and the dismal life and existence of the people and brought widespread awareness and public sympathy to the problem. During the 19th century more people moved into the towns and cities to find work in factories. Abuses in the House were widespread and well-documented, although regulations were revised frequently throughout the nineteenth century. Diet was only one of many problems with the Poor Law regulations, however. By the end of the century there were thre… The wealthy Victorian Children and their families lived a much more elegant and privileged life than the poor families lived. 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