I was complaining to my boss about the poor lighting conditions in my serviced office and he recommended I buy a desk lamp. So I picked up a lovely Victorian style lamp on auction and this got me thinking about the Victorians.
The Industrial Revolution began towards the end of the Victorian era. Life was altered greatly for many people, and the conditions in which they lived and worked changed a great deal. The revolution caused the middle class to expand rapidly in both numbers and importance.
Many people worked long hours for very little pay. Child labour was common in many factories. Various diseases were spread easily because of lack of proper sanitation. Many families lived in a one room home and slept in a single bed. More people died from filth and poor ventilation, than from any wars of that time.
However, these conditions did improve over time with new laws and regulations. Both national and local governments began to introduce such things as factory legislation, sanitary provisions, and welfare programs. Workers developed labour unions and political organizations to protect their interests and achieve a greater share of profits of industry. Socialists worked to raise pay and attempted to end child labour. All of these factors allowed living and working conditions to improve drastically.
Victorians worshiped success and money. The dream of businessmen was to join the aristocracy, but first they aspired to send their children to public schools, to acquire country houses and to marry into the landed gentry.
In 1850, the middle class was a fairly small group of professionals, factory owners, businessmen, merchants and bankers. There was a deep gulf between this group and the working classes. Mrs Isabella Beeton’s 1861 Book of Household Management declared, ‘you need lots of servants to prepare lavish meals, clean houses heated by filthy coal and generally work with few labour-saving devices.’
Life was slowly improving for working classes, who were popularly known as the ‘deserving poor’. But, the ‘lowest class’ comprised of about a quarter of the urban population. In York in 1901, for example, 27% of the people were in living below the poverty line, in squalid, even deadly slum conditions.
So the next time that I think about complaining about the poor light in my serviced office, I’ll just think of those poor Victorians.
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