The White Slaves Of Britain;- The Childern Who Built Victorian Britain

[♥ Lily ♥]

Due to child labour amongst the working class, it was the children who built Victorian Britain during the Industrial Revolution.

Many children from poor backgrounds were used as chimney sweeps, factory workers, etc, and they would frequently suffer from health problems, malnutrition, injuries from accidents whilst operating machinery in factories, and premature deaths.

Many children didn't have an education and couldn't read or write, and children from the poorer class often looked tired, hungry, and sad in Victoria era photos as they didn't have much time to play or enjoy their childhoods after long hours of work in factories, or climbing inside of tall and dirty chimneys each day to clean out the dirt, dust, and soot, (which caused problems with the childrens eyes and breathing problems due to soot in their eyes and lungs.)

Britain had the highest child mortality rate in the world during the Victorian era.

[♥ Lily ♥]

Here's real and heartbreaking footage of a 3 year old child going to work on top of a roof to clean the soot out of a chimney.

His brave smile at 1:02 brought tears to my eyes.

[♥ Lily ♥]

Most of the children who lived and worked in workhouses were orphans (real life Oliver Twists.)

After children had signed a legally binding contract, they were obliged to live and work in the workhouses and cotton mills until they were aged 24, where they would work for long hours operating machinery from dawn to dusk.

Injuries would frequently occur late in the evenings, when the children were tired and would lose concentration and would accidentally cut their little fingers and hands on the sharp blades of factory machines.

Their diet mostly consisted of oatmeal and bread.

[♥ Lily ♥]

A lot of poverty-stricken people in Britain would do anything to avoid living in the dreaded workhouses all over Britain during the Victorian era. Many people would die inside the workhouses and their corpses were thrown out with the rubbish afterwards.

[♥ Lily ♥]

The notorious asylums in Britain during the Victorian era were places where people would be medically experimented upon, chained to walls, and lived in horrific conditions.

People who were suffering from depression, etc, were confined in asylums and kept away from society. Many disappeared inside the asylums and were never seen again.

Bethlem (which was dubbed as "Bedlam") was the most notorious asylum in Britain where a lot of tortures took place.

Its origins as a psychiatric hosptial can be traced back to 1247.

The famous history of Bethlem has inspired several horror books, films, and TV series, most notably Bedlam, a 1946 film with Boris Karloff.

Bethlem (which is now called Bethlem Royal Hospital,) is still open and operates to this day as a public psychiatric hospital, despite its horrific history, although there's a lot of modern reforms and changes in the care practices and treatment of patients:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital

https://www.historyhit.com/bedlam-th...famous-asylum/

[♥ Lily ♥]

Meanwhile Queen and Empress Victoria lived in luxury, as with most of the aristocratic class.

Queen Victoria (who was half German along with her husband,) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 until her death in 1901.

Her reign of 63 years and 216 days is known as the Victorian era.

It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a massive expansion of the British Empire, along with a lot of child labour and slavery.

In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.

[♥ Lily ♥]

An interesting article from the British Library that includes maps and photos of historic documents about this subject.

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-vict...s/child-labour

Industrialisation led to a dramatic increase in child labour. Professor Emma Griffin explores the dangerous, exhausting work undertaken by children in factories and mines, and the literary responses of writers including Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Child labour was not an invention of the Industrial Revolution. Poor children have always started work as soon as their parents could find employment for them. But in much of pre-industrial Britain, there simply was not very much work available for children. This changed with industrialisation. The new factories and mines were hungry for workers and required the execution of simple tasks that could easily be performed by children. The result was a surge in child labour – presenting a new kind of problem that Victorian society had to tackle.

Read and learn more: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-vict...s/child-labour

[Beowulf]

Nice Thread thanks for sharing!