Child Labor in Victorian England Essay Sample

Child labour is the employment of minors who are less than a legally specified age. It began in Great-Britain after the rapid development of large-scale manufacturing in factories. These factories required a lot of employees and used minors as a cheaper and easier solution. Unlike today where children above the age of 15 can work actual decent jobs registered with the government, the children of the Victorian Era were way younger and had less fun experiences while working. 

Child labour was horrendous for the children, they worked long hours, had very bad working conditions and were forced to do gruesome jobs for very little pay. There were different tasks for boys and girls. The girls did domestic services such as laundry work, dressmaking and cooking. The boys had less fun jobs; these included working on the farm, doing carpentry and much more. A lot of boys also left their homes at the age of 16 and went to the military. These children went to work so they could support their poor families with extra money. This was a win-win situation for the employer because it was cheaper to pay minors and they could do more dangerous jobs because of their small size.

The different kinds of jobs 

Because of their size, there were a lot of jobs available for these children. A lot of them worked in the coal mines because they could fit into smaller spaces easier than most adults. Working in the coal mines was not a fun job. The working conditions were dreadful and there was no light so they could not see where they were going. There was also no proper ventilation so a lot of children suffocated on the work floor. Most children that survived this job developed permanent spine deformities because of all the crawling and bending of the back. The worst thing is, there were even more brutal jobs than working in the mines.

One of these jobs was chimney sweeping. It was a brutal job because there was a constant scraping of the knees and arms against the chimneys. To treat these wounds the employer would cleanse these wounds with saltwater and then send the children down the chimney again. This job was known as the worst job during the Victorian Era because the surviving capabilities  were very low. They sent very young kids into the chimneys, these kids were between the ages of 3 and 8 because older children would not fit into the chimneys anymore. A lot of children died during work hours because they would get stuck in the chimney, or they would fall down. A lot of them died due to the constant breathing of soot, which caused them to die of lung damage.

The most popular job was working in factories and textile mills. This job was less dangerous overall but still caused a lot of death because the children had to run under dangerous machines while the machines were still running, so there were no safety measures. The employers of factories and textile mills were very strict and pretty ignorant in my opinion, they beat up children for being too late, making a mistake or sleeping while doing their jobs.

The laws against child labour 

Because of the constant death and the hurting of minors, a lot of people thought that the living and working conditions were not suitable for a child, so the government introduced laws against different types of child labour. The first law that was introduced about child labour was the “Chimney Sweepers Act of 1788” this law stated that the minors who worked in the chimneys would receive proper clothing, have decent living conditions and the most important part was that the they must be above the age of 8. There still were lots of deaths with these kids , so they introduced another law named the “The Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys Regulation Act of 1840” which stated that the people working in the chimney sweeps must be age 21 or above. And the “Chimney Sweepers Act of 1875” stated that all chimney sweepers must be registered with the police. Because there were still a lot of children getting hurt and dying doing other dangerous jobs, Benjamin Waugh created the “The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children” this incorporation ensured that no job was suitable for minors and made sure that they weren’t doing any jobs that were not suitable for them, this society caused the end of child labour in Great-Britain and still exists to this day.

The life of children during the Victorian Era wasn’t as easy as our lives today. They had to work very hard daily so they could help sustain their family. The jobs they had to do were gruesome and not humane. They had physically and mentally abusive jobs and employers. Their experience working was not like ours today because most people today have it way easier. In developed countries, we can work with decent circumstances and have decent paychecks, but to this day there are still a lot of young people  who have horrible working circumstances. In a lot of Third World countries, children work very hard jobs with little pay to help sustain their family just like the people during the Victorian Era, So you can compare the children of the Victorian Era to the people  who work in Third World countries; hard work, little pay and helping their families.