THE VICTORIANS

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THE VICTORIANS
1837- 1901
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Queen Victoria
Victoria never fully recovered from Albert's
death in 1861 and she remained in mourning for
the rest of her life. Her subsequent withdrawal
from public life made her unpopular, but during
the late 1870s and 1880s she gradually returned
to public view and, with increasingly
pro-imperial sentiment, she was restored to
favour with the British public. After the Indian
Mutiny in 1857, the government of India was
transferred from the East India Company to the
Crown and in 1877, Victoria became Empress of
India. Her empire also included Canada,
Australia, India, New Zealand, and large parts of
Africa. During this period, Britain was largely
uninvolved in European affairs, apart from
involvement in the Crimean War (1853 - 1856).
Victoria was born in London on 24 May 1819, the
only child of Edward, Duke of Kent, and Victoria
Maria Louisa of Saxe-Coburg. She succeeded her
uncle, William IV, in 1837, at the age of 18, and
her reign dominated the rest of the century. In
1840 she married her first cousin, Prince Albert
of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. For the next 20 years they
lived in close harmony and had a family of nine
children, many of whom eventually married into
the European monarchy.
In 1887, Victoria's Golden Jubilee and, 10 years
later, her Diamond Jubilee were celebrated with
great enthusiasm. Having witnessed a revolution
in British government, huge industrial expansion
and the growth of a worldwide empire, Victoria
died on 22 January 1901 at Osborne House on the
Isle of Wight.
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School
The Victorians came up with the idea that all
children should go to school, and they checked to
make sure the schools were up to scratch too.
They were the first people to ask whether it was
right to allow children to work. They introduced
laws saying what you could and could not expect
children to do.
Rich ChildrenChildren from rich families were
taught at home by a governess until they were 10
years old. Once a boy turned ten, he went away to
Public schools like Eton or Harrow. There were
very few schools available for girls, however,
until near the end of the Victorian time. 
Wealthy girls were mostly educated at home.
Where did poor children go to school?Poor
children went to free charity schools or 'Dame'
schools (so called because they were run by
women) for young children. They also went to
Sunday Schools which were run by churches. There
they learnt bible stories and were taught to read
a little.
Why go to school?The Victorians soon realised
that it was important for people to be able to
read and write and education became more
important. The Church of England became active in
the field and erected 'National Schools' which
taught children reading, writing, arithmetic and
religion
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work
Children at work Children had an unhappy
childhood. They worked hard to satisfy the needs
of their parents because families were very poor
and they didn't have enough money, so children
worked. They underwent very difficult conditions
of employment. Days were long for them eight or
twelve hours a day, six days a week.
Small boys between the ages of 5 and 10 are
sought to clamber up chimneys to clean out
deposits of soot. Some of the chimneys are
extremely narrow, perhaps only 18 centimetres (7
inches) square, and you may be reluctant at first
to wriggle into them. However, plenty of
encouragement is provided by a lighted straw
held beneath your feet or by pins stuck into you.
You may suffer some cuts, grazes and bruises at
first, but months of suffering will toughen up
your skin to a leather-like quality. Sweeps have
other things to look forward to twisted spines
and kneecaps, deformed ankles, eye inflammations
and respiratory illnesses. The first known
industrial disease 'chimney sweep's cancer'
appears in the testicles from the constant
irritation of the soot on naked skin. Many sweeps
are maimed or killed after falling or being badly
burned, while others suffocate when they became
trapped in the curves of the chimneys. Although
you will officially be apprenticed as a chimney
sweep, there really is no work of any value to be
had at the end of your years of training
despite your poor diet, you will have grown too
large to be of any use.
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VICTORIAN GIRLS UNIFORM!
Victorian Girl's School UniformThis school
uniform is a replica of one worn in the 19th
century by a girl aged between 12-15. The uniform
is made up of a blouse, tunic dress and pinafore.
The white blouse has a round collar and fastens
down the front. The starched white pinafore goes
over the top of the blue tunic, and is buttoned
at the back. Back-buttoning pinafores were
common in the middle of the 19th century.
Sometimes boys wore pinafores too. Pinafores were
large and roomy to let the children move freely,
play and run about at break times. And children
did drill, which involved a series of stretches,
jumps and movements, in class.
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dunce hat
Dunce's Cap Punishment did not end with caning.
Students had to stand on a stool at the back of
the class, wearing an arm band with DUNCE written
on it. The teacher then took a tall, cone-shaped
hat decorated with a large D, and placed it on
the boys head. Today we know that some children
learn more slowly than others. Victorian teachers
believed that all children could learn at the
same speed, and if some fell behind then they
should be punished for not trying hard enough
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pictures
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Victorian clothes
"The clothes make the man" is a phrase that
could have been coined during the Victorian
period. Victorian clothes were very much a symbol
of who you were, what you did for a living, and
how much money was in your bank account. For Men
and Woman
Rich lady
Western Men's fashion hit a low point in terms of
dullness in 1850, but was increasingly enlivened
from 1850 to 1900 by the influences of sports
wear, dress reform and Wild Western fashions. 
Modern Sack Suit  jackets came into vogue, and
hundreds of small innovations and variations
appeared.  Torture yourself by finding images of
men's dress in this period and writing a brief
report on male dress.  Hint Escape the torture
and pass directly to "go" by searching for
"Vanity Fair" images in the links below, and on
on eBay, the FAMSF-Imagebase , and search
engines. Try to figure out what was the formal
dress of politicians, the showy dress of young
men, and the interesting details that could mark
an individual of style.  Put a digested report on
male style in this era into a post on the Message
Board by the weekend. Antique Prints Vanity Fair
Prints
Poor boy
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Important Dates in Victoria's Life (marked in
green)1.Victoria's coronation.2. Victoria married
Albert.3. Prince Albert died.4. Victoria became
Empress of India.5. Victoria's Golden Jubilee (50
years)6. Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (60 years)7.
Victoria died. Some Technological Industrial
Events (marked in blue)1. 1851 The Great
Exhibition was held at Crystal Palace.2. 1858
Brunel's Great Eastern was launched.3. 1860 The
first english horse-drawn trams appeared.4. 1869
The Suez Canal was opened.5. 1874 The Factory Act
introduced a maximum 10 hour working day and
raised the minimum age of child workers.6. 1876
School attendance was made compulsory.7. 1878
Electric street lighting began in London.8. 1879
Swan and Edison independently produced the light
bulb.9. 1887 The Coal Minesregulation act passed,
boys under 13 were not allowed underground.10.
1888 Dunlop developed the pneumatic tyre the
Kodak box camera appeared. Important People
(marked in yellow)1. 1852 Livingstone set off to
explore Zambesi.2. 1866 Dr. Barnardo opened his
home for waifs.3. 1871 Stanley found
Livingstone.4. 1876 Bell's telephone, Edison's
phonograph and Bissell's carpet sweeper were
invented.Important Wars Battles (marked in
red)1. 1854 Britain entered the Crimean War.   
The battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman the
siege of Sebastopol take place.2. 1856 The
Crimean War ended with the Treaty of Paris.3.
1857 The Indian Mutiny broke out.4. 1861 The
American Civil War began.
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THE WORKHOUSE
A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORKHOUSE The first
legislation for providing relief to the poor were
the Acts of 1572, 1597 1601. The 1601 POOR LAW
ACT gave responsibility to local parishes for
looking after very poor people, who were able to
claim assistance from the parish's householders.
Poor people were able to live at home when they
were getting parish relief. With the 1834 POOR
LAW AMENDMENT ACT people receiving help from the
parish had to live in a workhouse could no
longer live at home. In return for parish relief,
they would be made to work hard in the workhouse
which is how the term originated. The Act also
allowed parishes to club together into unions
responsible for building workhouses for running
them. In the next few years hundreds of
workhouses were built at a typical cost to the
union of 5,000. By 1926 there were 226,000
inmates around 600 workhouses with an average
population of about 400 inmates each. The 1929
LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT abolished workhouses their
responsibilities were given to county borough
county councils.   WHAT WAS IT LIKE IN THE
WORKHOUSE? Life was meant to be much tougher
inside the workhouse than outside, and the
buildings themselves were deliberately grim
intimidating - they were designed to look like
prisons. They were full of illness disease
brought about by over-crowding the starvation
diet. When you were admitted to the workhouse,
you were stripped, searched, washed had your
hair cropped. You were made to wear a
prison-style uniform. Women were at all times
kept separate from the men, including their
husbands. Children were kept separately from
adults - even from their own parents. A well
known story tells how a labourer gave notice to
leave the workhouse with his wife children -
only to be told "You cannot take your wife out.
We buried her three weeks ago". In one instance,
a girl aged 15 years died in the workhouse. Her
records showed that she was born in the workhouse
had never been outside the place. Aversion to
the "house" was extremely strong. At Cuckfield in
Sussex they had deep snow December 1836 all
outdoor work ceased. 149 desperate men applied
for parish relief. 118 of them were offered the
workhouse and 112 refused. Later another 60 men
applied 55 of them refused the "house". Of the
5 who were admitted, 3 left within hours of
discovering what life in the workhouse was like.
 
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POOR FAMILES
Poor / Working Class Families For poorer
families their greatest fear was ending up in the
workhouse, where thousands of homeless and
penniless families were forced to live. If your
family was taken into the workhouse you would  be
split up dressed in uniform and have your hair
cut short. This could happen to a family if
father were taken ill and unable to work.    
Lots of children in poor families died of
diseases like scarlet fever, measles, polio and
TB which are curable today. These were spread by
foul drinking water, open drains and lack of
proper toilets. In overcrowded rooms if one
person caught a disease it spread quickly through
the rest
The specter of the Victorian Poorhouse haunts
both history and literature. The surviving image,
although not entirely accurate, is a grim
reminder that not everyone flourished during an
era whose very touchstones were progress and
prosperity. No single historically-accurate image
of the poorhouse remains, however, as each
poorhouse has its own history. Each facility
differed dramatically from others depending on
location and time period. 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. The fictional
image actually exemplifies the nineteenth-century
workhouse more than the poorhouse, and the two
terms became synonymous. The images merged
because the two entities themselves merged, and
the surviving image is that of the workhouse.
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. At the time, much
of the prosperous English populace viewed the
poor as social and moral outcasts. These popular
sentiments were supported by Malthusian
philosophy, which dictated that money spent on
the poor was money permanently removed from the
wage pool, and Pauline doctrine, which stressed
that the problem of poverty was omnipresent. More
enlightened Victorians, however, tried to
alleviate conditions for the poor through
education and moral guidance. The one principle
virtually everyone agreed upon was the need for
reform.
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Prince Albert
Albert, the younger son of the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was born at Schloss Rosenau in
1819. He was educated in Brussels and Bonn and in
1839 visited his cousin, Queen Victoria in
London. Victoria immediately fell in love with
Albert and although he initially had doubts about
the relationship, the couple were eventually
married in February 1840. During the next
eighteen years Queen Victoria gave birth to nine
children. Throughout their marriage Prince
Albert acted as Victoria's private secretary. His
German background, worried some of the government
ministers and Albert was therefore rarely
consulted about political issues. After the
death of her favourite politician, Lord Melbourne
in 1848, Albert's political influence over Queen
Victoria increased. Whereas Melbourne had advised
Victoria not to think about social problems,
Prince Albert invited Lord Ashley to Buckingham
Palace to talk about what he had discovered about
child labour in Britain. Albert took a keen
interest in the arts and sciences and planned and
managed the Great Exhibition in 1851. The profits
of this successful venture enabled the building
of the Royal Albert Hall and the museums in South
Kensington. In 1857 Albert was given the title
of Prince Consort. However, four years later he
died of typhoid fever. The Albert Memorial in
Kensington Gardens, designed by Sir George Scott,
was erected in his memory in 1871.
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Treadmill
With so much work in the building trade, you know
that this is the career for you. A vacancy has
arrived following the tragic collapse of the
crane at your local cathedral. Now a new one has
been made, taking all the design faults of the
original into account. To operate this latest
technological marvel, you'll be expected to walk
the treadmill to provide the power for lifting
blocks of stone weighing up to two tons.
Preference will be given to the blind they have
proved great treadmill walkers in the past due to
their lack of fear of heights.
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Quiz
1. Who did Queen Victoria love.

• Prince Albert
• Prince William
• Prince Harry

• 2. How long did Queen Victoria reign for.
• 78 years
• 63 years
• 50 years

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