Child Labor In The Victorian Era

Imagine working an 18-hour shift six days a week. To most adults today, that would be unbearable, but for many child laborers in Victorian England, such labor was the reality. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens portrays many cruelties imposed on children in the Victorian Era that reflected reality. Dickens’s portrayal of children in the Victorian Era was not at all dramatized and depicted what many child laborers faced in the Victorian Era. The creation of factories in Britain had many economic benefits, but the execution was poor. Although the reduction of prices and mass production was beneficial, the children who created the products were always at risk for abuse. Factory workers performed jobs that were previously done at home. Factories were loud and full of highly polluted air. Aside from the terrible working conditions, work was hard and factory owners used children because they were small, had nimble fingers, and they did not complain (“Victorian Britain: Children in Factories”). Since children worked long hours in factories six days a week, there was no time for school. This created more problems in addition to the dangers of labor. Without time for an education, children were often illiterate, preventing them from finding a …show more content…
whereas the average of those who didn’t work in factories was 93.61” (Simkin). This low weight resulted in starvation, which in some cases caused death. Other causes for death of children were reported in the industrial town of Leeds. Many children and adults lost their lives here. “Between 1813-1830, 53 children from the ages of 0-5 died in Leeds and 44 children from the ages of 0-5 died in Leeds between 1780-1782” (Simkin). This shows that the death of working children increased during the industrialization of