The Putrid Squalor of Victorian England

The Putrid Squalor of Victorian England

By Adolfo Apolloni

I can certainly be said, “Thank god I was not borne poor in Victorian England.” You might wonder why you wouldn’t want to have been borne in Victorian England. Well for one, the putrid smell of the tenements of the industrial cities would turn almost every one off; and if that wasn’t enough, the fact that everywhere you went, you were ankle deep in the feces of the poor retches that inhabited London and Manchester. Then there were the jobs, if you were lucky you might get to operate the machinery in the cotton mill, while others were forced to move he cotton threads on the machinery which would almost always eventually cut off your fingers. While no matter how terrible the jobs might seem, you wouldn’t want to be unemployed in London.

          As you look at a poor part of London you would be shocked. You would see small children, so thin that their ribs stuck right out of their chest. As you trudged around you would have to duck down to avoid the contents of chamber pots that were thrown out the window. Also, be sure to where your worst pare of knee high boots, as by the time you made it out, everything below your knees would be covered in feces. Disease was so rampant, half of the children below 5 died from disease and their were constant cholera outbreaks. The conditions were so putrid, it is no wonder that when outsider went into it, they were often shocked beyond belief, and sometimes became ill from the site of the region.

        The work for the poor was just as bad as the rest of their life. They certainly worked more than 12 hours a day, and don’t even think of days off, except for possibly Sunday. The children most certainly didn’t go to school; they worked in a factory with their parents. They were given the most meaningless yet dangerous jobs. They would pick cotton fluff from under the rapidly moving looms. The dangers were incredible; in fact many children were crushed to death. Even though the jobs were so terrible, it was unbearable to be unemployed. There was no such thing as unemployment benefits. Begging on the streets wouldn’t get you anything and you would be certainly kicked out of you tenement. The winters in England would be wet and freezing and you would probably die of hypothermia before the year was up. If you didn’t die of the cold, you and your family would die of hunger.

Then there was pollution, the sky over London and Manchester was dark with smog and smoke, the air in areas could be almost impossible to breath. At times the sun would be blocked out by the smokes, and no area was free of it, for at every corner there was a factory. The pollution of the rivers was just as bad and there was no clean drinking water. It is no wonder that the rich never wanted to be in Manchester.


     The culture that they lived in kept the poor, poor and the rich, rich, leaving almost unbreakable class boundaries. It also gave the rich all of the power, allowing them to exploit the poor at every turn. That culture lead to the negatives of Victorian England. Although Victorian England was full of squalor, there were still many positives of the era.

           The technological advancements of the era were massive. The Industrial revolution lead to the factory and mass production. This allowed people to have many more diverse things as you would do one thing and buy the other stuff as opposed to having to make everything. This advancement changed society forever. While we can see all of the negatives in the Victorian era, without it, the world wouldn’t be the same.

The train was also developed in this era. The steam engine allowed people to travel across England in a few hours as opposed to days by horse. This invention changed the world and was one of the key players in the mass urbanization of England. By the end of the century, train tracks crisscrossed the entire nation.
          The Industrial revolution also allowed England to dominate the world. It gave it an industrial capacity, unmatched by any other nation. With this money making powerhouse at work, it allowed England to finance its mass colonization of the world. The industrial revolution in England changed the world for ever, it allowed for the incredibly rich, and the incredibly poor, it allowed England to rule of the world, and lastly, gave England the ability to invent so many new things.

The YouTube videos below, will show you what Victorian England was like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MllrnSZxTkY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOqqCjvQTFo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEYdX5_U0Yg



I used the following sources for my research and this blog post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MllrnSZxTkY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOqqCjvQTFo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEYdX5_U0Yg

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/victorians/children/coal.jpg

http://leohorowitz.qwriting.org/files/2010/10/industrial-revolution.jpg

http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Britain/History/Victorian/SteamTrain.jpg

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/victorian_britain/introduction/v_dudley_street_seven_dials.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era

Here are some links to images of Victorian England

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/victorians/children/coal.jpg

http://leohorowitz.qwriting.org/files/2010/10/industrial-revolution.jpg

http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Britain/History/Victorian/SteamTrain.jpg

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/victorian_britain/introduction/v_dudley_street_seven_dials.jpg