The Poor: Work & Housing

One prominent feature of Victorian society was the abundant poor.

When one looks at some of the occupations of the poor, one would think they were looking at a society that lives by scavenging. For instance, one of the most easily pictured jobs, is that of the chimney sweep.

Chimney sweeps would crawl up the twelve by fourteen inch chimneys, some as small as seven inches square, in order to clean out the annual average of 40 gallons of soot that was deposited there. These sweeps were small boys that were often 'encouraged' by older boys standing below holding lit straw to their feet or sticking them with pins.

Another job popular for young boys was to be a ratcatcher. They sometimes used arsenic to poison the rats, but as this could be expensive, more often they used a ferret to flush the rats out and a terrier to kill them.

This was a popular job because of the pay. The going rate for de-ratting a London house ranged from two shillings to one pound.

Another job that was popular with street children was that of messenger. It was quite common for a gentleman to ask a nearby street urchin to run an errand for him. These children were faster than most normal messengers, because of the fact that they could go to all areas of a city without being intimidated.

One good example of this is Sherlock Holmes' use of the "Baker Street Irregulars", a small band of street urchins, to run errands for him.

Yet another occupation, though not for children, was that of a dustman. Dustmen periodically come round to haul away household dust-ashes and refuse. Once away from the house, the dustman would sift through it for accidentally discarded valuables and other salable items.

One of the worst occupations a person could have was to be a mudlark. Mudlarks were mostly small children who waded into the Thames at low tide to scrounge for bits of coal, rope, bones and copper nails, hoping they would not cut their bare feet. They were lucky if they earned threepence a day.

Another favorite occupation of both boys and men was pickpocketing. As some may remember from Dickens Oliver Twist, most boys were apprenticed into the trade. This was a trade in which one excelled or found oneself in jail. Some pickpockets were not very good, but the majority of them were very good.

Most pickpockets worked in groups, sharing the proceeds (usually quite plentiful) so that if one did not do well one day, he would not have to go hungry.

The most common line of work for all in the lower classes was factory work. One of the good things that it provided were secure employment and housing.

Some of the bad things were long hours, overcrowding, and low wages. The urban wages were higher and less liable to seasonal fluctuations than agricultural wages, but workers were entirely dependent on wages for food and shelter. Having limited leisure time and little opportunity for other pursuits, workers tended to spend heavily on drink, setting nothing aside for periods of illness or unemployment.

This quickly reduced many to a destitution worse than they would have experienced in the countryside.

Housing

Housing for the poor was almost always overcrowded. There were reasons for this however, and good reasons at that. Any improvement in housing conditions meant increased rents, which workers could not afford.

Sanitary services would reduce families income from the sale of 'night soil' to farmers. More space per family would increase the distance between home and work, lengthening the already too long working day. Thus, the only way that working class housing could make a profit was by overcrowding.

Children working in the factories almost always had it the worst. At first, there were no rules applying to children and work. Then, in 1819, Sir Robert Peel passed an act that applied only to the cotton mills, prohibiting the employment of children under nine, and imposing a maximum working day of twelve hours for children between the ages of nine and sixteen.

The problem was, however, that the local authorities believed that a fourteen hour day was fine, declaring "Nothing is more favorable to morals than habits of early subordination, industry, and regulation". In 1844, as a result of the fact that workers frequently came home too exhausted to look after their children, an act which limited a child's workday to six and a half hours and the working week of women to sixty-five hours was passed. This made the population stronger, healthier, and wiser, only to, in consequence, make it poorer.

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