Children and crime: Many destitute children lived by stealing and they were seen as threats to society. Something had to be done about them to preserve law and order.
• The housing shortage: Workers wanted to live nearby their working places because it was time-saving. As a result of these demands and overcrowded conditions, the housing became scarce and expensive; therefore, so many people preferred slum-housing.
• Prostitution:Beginning in the late 1840s, major
Queen Victoria ( 1837-1901)
An age of transition Thanks to industry and trade, England became the wealthiest nation
“The sun never sets on England”
• Britain was unchallenged military power • Britain dominated Global trade and expanded as a colonial empire in India, Australia, Africa and Brazil
• Destitution: Many cases of death caused by starvation and destitution were reported. In 1850, an inquest was held on a 38 year old woman whose body was reported as being little more than a skeleton, and her child as a „skeleton infant‟. • Homeless children: There were children living with their families in these desperate situations but there were also numerous, homeless children living on the streets of London.
• Growth of the cities: Due to the industrialisation, people were flocking into cities to search for better lives. • The search for employment: Both unskilled and skilled people demanded work, so the wages were low. Life conditions were too hard. • Child Labour: Children had to work long hours and under difficult conditions to help the family budget.
Kellow Chesney made a description of slum-housing in his book “The Victorian Underworld” : „Hideous slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up a substantial part of the, metropolis … In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a single room,‟
Henry Mayhew argued that: „since crime was not caused by illiteracy, it cannot be cured education … the only certain effects being the emergence of a more skilful and sophisticated race of criminals‟
• Society‟s attitude towards the poor: This is
clearly demonstrated in a hymn published in 1848 Cecil Frances Alexander: “The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high and lowly, And order’d their estate”
• Factories were foun important and profitable. • Railways, canals and steamships provided Britain with the transportation between Britain and its colonies. • Urbanization, poverty and child labour emerged.