Child Labour In Victorian England Essay

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Child Labor in Victorian England In modern-day society, the youth are expected to earn good grades in school and do chores around the house. Sometimes, a teenager might try a part-time job at a nearby fast food joint, or something of that nature. It seems almost unimaginable for a child to work for over ten hours a day in terrible conditions with poor pay. In reality, child labor became commonplace in England during the Victorian Era, less than two centuries ago. Child labor in the 19th century was a matter that was caused by certain factors, but the jobs and conditions children had to endure were worthy of the social uproar and legislation passed to limit the massive number of the youth that were cruelly forced to work. Children did work before the Victorian Era, but what triggered the rapid growth of child labor was the Industrial Revolution. With industrialization, new factories and mines needed workers who could perform simple tasks (Griffin). Simple tasks were perfect for small children, and since demand for workers was high, large amounts of the youth were forced into jobs. Additionally, economic …show more content…

Examples of these sorts of books include The Cry of Children by Elizabeth Barrett and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. These books showed the unsafe conditions children worked in and helped spread awareness to the public of these issues (Griffin). Eventually, the government passed the Factory Act of 1833 and the Mining Act of 1842, which together prohibited the employment of children younger than nine and raised the starting age of colliery workers to ten. However, only by 1870 was a series of laws passed that required children to attend school, in essence abolishing child labor in Britain

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