Child Labour

When we talk about people being below the ‘Poverty Line’ in modern-day Britain, we are generally talking about people who struggle to live on State Benefits, or are unable to find regular work. We think of those who cannot afford to eat anything but the basic foods, and are unable to own any of the electronic devices we now consider ‘normal’ in our lives. Some of them are in crippling debt to high-interest loan companies, or worse still have cash debts to unscrupulous money lenders who exploit them by calling door-to-door.

But in the Victorian Era, when our Empire was flourishing and many people were becoming obscenely wealthy, genuine poverty existed alongside all the grandeur. No social services, few charitable organisations, and families living their lives on the streets, trying to get by on a daily basis.

Children chopping wood to sell as kindling.
They would have scavenged the wood from discarded boxes, or broken fencing.
The boy’s axe might well have been borrowed, as he was unlikely to be able to afford to buy one.

A young girl making a poor quality soup. She has no kitchen to prepare food in, so does it on the street.
It was unlikely she would get to eat much of it, as it was being prepared to sell to others.

Workhouses would take people in when they were destitute. In return for some work, and obeying strict rules, they would get bed and board.
This is the male dining room of Marylebone Workhouse in London, around 1880.
Families committing themselves to the workhouse were separated by gender.

An exhausted looking girl who has been collecting rags to sell.

This startling image is of a pregnant 11 year old girl.
By that age, she was already a well-known prostitute, and had a police record.
Child prostitution was very common in Victorian Britain, as was regular sexual abuse of very young children.

Homeless people might be offered a free bed for the night, in one of the shelters provided by charities.
Once again, the sexes were separated, and here we see men settling down into ‘Coffin Beds’.

People would do any job to get enough money to eat that day.
This is a ‘Night-Soil Man’ during the 1860s.
His job was to collect the human waste from houses which used chamber pots or communal ‘middens’ shared by all the residents.

At the same time in America, tenement living produced similar overcrowded and filthy conditions in major cities.
This is New York, around 1890.

This young Londoner is clutching a broken basket, his only possession.
He would use it to carry things around in that he was trying to sell.

In London, overcrowded slum living often preceded real poverty.
All these people lived in just two small 3-room houses.

I wonder what they would think of a modern-day situation where having no TV, no Internet access, or use of a mobile phone is on the list of what is considered to be poverty?

Following the Industrial Revolution almost a century earlier, the use of child labour reached it’s peak in the Victorian Era. Children as young as four worked up to 80 hours a week, in all kinds of dangerous and difficult jobs.
The photos (except one) were taken between 1860 and 1890.

Cotton Mills employed children at just 10% of the adult wage. Families were so large at the time, that they needed the income from all the children, as soon as they were old enough to work.

Young boys were especially valued down coal mines. They were small enough to crawl through the narowest tunnels, those where the adults were too big to enter.
The smallest boys without the strength to pull a cart or wield a pick were employed sorting coal at the surface. They received around 20% of an adult wage, for the same work.

This happened all around the world, not just in Britain. And the jobs were not just in heavy industry.
This girl is employed as a child-minder for the toddler. This was in America, around 1880.

Selling newspapers or matches on the streets was a common job for young children.
As you can see, this boy has no shoes.

Children who had to depend on living in a workhouse were sent out to do a day’s labour to compensate for bed and board.

With every house still using coal fires, slim boys were prized as chimney sweeps. They could actually climb inside the chimneys, to ensure a thorough clean.
This reality was a long way from ‘Mary Poppins’.
(The photo is a recent one, to show what it would have been like)

victorian style chimney sweep, a child chimney sweep,
hulton pic
05/09/2003

Sometimes, families worked together at home.
This mother and her children are folding boxes, probably to contain matches.
They received a pittance for every 100 boxes completed.