SOCIAL PROBLEMS

By the middle of the XIXth century, more British people lived in towns and cities than in the countryside, as many people went to towns and cities to find jobs. Cities were crowded, dirty and polluted, and the poor lived in small, squalid, dark houses. In the houses of the poor, there were no bathrooms or running water, and diseases such as cholera, typhus and tuberculosis were widespread.

The rich and the middle and upper classes went to live in the suburbs where the air was clean. Their homes were spacious and comfortable, with lovely gardens, hot water systems , toilets and gas lighting.

During the Victorian Age working conditions in the factories and coal mines were inhuman. Charles Dickens wrote about social injustice and poverty in his unforgettable novels which awakened the public conscience.

The Victorians improved life a little from the bad days of the early 1800s.The 1833 Factory Act cut the working day to only ten hours if you were under 18 years old –and only 48 hours a week if you were under 18 years old. Government reforms were slowly introduced and in the 1870 the Education Act made primary education compulsory for all children between the ages of five and ten. The problem was there were usually no schools for them to attend. However, the terrible problem of child labour remained. Workhouses had been introduced for the poor by the Poor Law Act of 1834. Conditions in the workhouses were terrible, families were separated, food was poor and the work hard and boring. To have to go to the workhouse was the nightmare of the poor. Many poor people emigrated to America to find a better life.

Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (1874) by Sir Luke Fildes.

Artists did not begin to show the reality of Victorian poverty until the 1870s. Before this, the members of the “lower” classes were only painted if they were considered “picturesque”. Fildes was one of the first artists to show social problems in his work. In this painting, the homeless of London are shown waiting for a bed in a shelter on a cold winter´s night. The men ,women and children are painted in realistic detail, and we can imagine how cold they must have felt.

VICTORIAN FACTORY WORK. True or False?

1. There was to be no breathing between the the hours of 9. a.m. and 5 p.m.

2. There was a fine for whistling or singing while you work.

3.Start work at 6 a.m. but no breakfast until 8 a.m.

4.There was a rule against losing fingers in the machinery.

5. There was a fine for talking with anyone outside your own line of work.

6. Anyone dying at work would be sacked on the spot.

7. The managers would alter the clocks so you´d be late for work. Then they´d fine you for your lateness.

8. No young children to be brought by parents into the factory.

9. “Mould runners”-child workers in the Midland potteries- worked for 12 hours in temperatures of 35-40ºC.

10. Boy labourers worked for chainsmiths and used huge hammers. This gave them powerful ,muscular bodies.