Ingrid Lam
Mrs. Quick
Advanced English 10
17 April 2016
The year, is 1842, or thereabouts, at the height of the Victorian Era in England. Newsboys wave around papers, on which a newspaper headline spirals in black ink newsprint: CHILDREN ABUSED IN FACTORIES? Truthfully, by the 1800s, this increasing publicized news, however shameful and shocking, was not cataclysmic, nor a big reveal to many. The practice of child labour had become so commonplace that it was regarded as practically a social norm of the time. The Industrial Revolution of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought great prosperity to Britain, but it also facilitated and necessitated the usage of child labor. The conditions under which the numerous working children lived were …show more content…
Education and the religious aspects of the lives of these working children were sacrificed so that the children might support their families, leading to a drastically low quality of life for these children. The burdens that factories, new technology, mechanization, and industrialization brought to society were placed on children as young as five years old, many of whom would not see themselves reach the age of twenty-five. These “beasts of burden” (Venning) were abused by foremen, forced to perform work far beyond their physical capabilities, and paid the prices for disasters wrought by the still developing technology of that age. So great was their suffering, that it was this point in history that was most instrumental in the development of child protective laws as we know them today. It is no exaggeration to say that modern Britain was built off the broken backs of its destitute children. Child labor played a significant role in the developing of the economy of Victorian England, but as economic prosperity grew ever higher, child laborers were pushed away from innocence and childhood, ever lower into squalor, and it may be said that the forging of Britain as it is known today, relied on great misery, …show more content…
They were paid little, fed little, and worked to the bone, a recurring theme amongst the small laborers of the era. Perhaps the greatest and most direct source comes from the 1842 report on child labourers, which comments: “Let us hear some of these poor children tell their own sad story.” With information as comprehensive and blatant as works like these published, it can be concluded that it was not simple ignorance that led to the continued purporting of child labor, but simply greed. “Robert North, Yorkshire: ‘I went into the pit at seven years of age. When I drew by the girdle and chain, my skin was broken and the blood ran down … If we said anything, they would beat us.’” (Great Britain Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment and Condition of Children in Mines and Manufactories) One can find numerous examples of unhappy children under or around the age of ten, forced to work in abusive and terrible conditions. Many child laborers lost limbs to the machinery they operated, and some were even decapitated. Those who were maimed lost their jobs, and being maimed, were thus unable to secure another one. Unsurprisingly, many would die from lung cancer and other diseases, caused by the hazardous chemicals they constantly inhaled, before they reached the young age of 25. Hours for such jobs that these child laborers held were long - up to fourteen hours and
Mrs. Quick
Advanced English 10
17 April 2016
The year, is 1842, or thereabouts, at the height of the Victorian Era in England. Newsboys wave around papers, on which a newspaper headline spirals in black ink newsprint: CHILDREN ABUSED IN FACTORIES? Truthfully, by the 1800s, this increasing publicized news, however shameful and shocking, was not cataclysmic, nor a big reveal to many. The practice of child labour had become so commonplace that it was regarded as practically a social norm of the time. The Industrial Revolution of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought great prosperity to Britain, but it also facilitated and necessitated the usage of child labor. The conditions under which the numerous working children lived were …show more content…
Education and the religious aspects of the lives of these working children were sacrificed so that the children might support their families, leading to a drastically low quality of life for these children. The burdens that factories, new technology, mechanization, and industrialization brought to society were placed on children as young as five years old, many of whom would not see themselves reach the age of twenty-five. These “beasts of burden” (Venning) were abused by foremen, forced to perform work far beyond their physical capabilities, and paid the prices for disasters wrought by the still developing technology of that age. So great was their suffering, that it was this point in history that was most instrumental in the development of child protective laws as we know them today. It is no exaggeration to say that modern Britain was built off the broken backs of its destitute children. Child labor played a significant role in the developing of the economy of Victorian England, but as economic prosperity grew ever higher, child laborers were pushed away from innocence and childhood, ever lower into squalor, and it may be said that the forging of Britain as it is known today, relied on great misery, …show more content…
They were paid little, fed little, and worked to the bone, a recurring theme amongst the small laborers of the era. Perhaps the greatest and most direct source comes from the 1842 report on child labourers, which comments: “Let us hear some of these poor children tell their own sad story.” With information as comprehensive and blatant as works like these published, it can be concluded that it was not simple ignorance that led to the continued purporting of child labor, but simply greed. “Robert North, Yorkshire: ‘I went into the pit at seven years of age. When I drew by the girdle and chain, my skin was broken and the blood ran down … If we said anything, they would beat us.’” (Great Britain Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment and Condition of Children in Mines and Manufactories) One can find numerous examples of unhappy children under or around the age of ten, forced to work in abusive and terrible conditions. Many child laborers lost limbs to the machinery they operated, and some were even decapitated. Those who were maimed lost their jobs, and being maimed, were thus unable to secure another one. Unsurprisingly, many would die from lung cancer and other diseases, caused by the hazardous chemicals they constantly inhaled, before they reached the young age of 25. Hours for such jobs that these child laborers held were long - up to fourteen hours and