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Orphans during the Victorian Era in England

By: Maria Eklund

Work Houses

Educational Institutions

Orphanages

The New Poor Law

Works Cited:

"1834 Poor Law." The National Archives. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2012.

Greig, Jodi. "Orphans in 19th Century Victorian England." Orphans in 19th Century Victorian England. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2012.

"Orphanages." IlustratedPastcom RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2012.

"Orphans in Victorian England." Orphans in Victorian England. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2012.

Photos:

N.d. Photograph. Bruceongames.com. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.bruceongames.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/victorian-classroom-children.jpg>.

N.d. Photograph. Nathanville.org. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://nathanville.org.uk/post//media/shared/global/nathanville/JENNER%20-%20ENGLAND%20family%20group_jpg.jpg?mtime=1259136953>.

N.d. Photograph. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.chiddingstone.kent.sch.uk/homework/victorians/children/working.htm>.

N.d. Photograph. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://cookit.e2bn.org/library/1244662712/100_6979a.original.jpg>.

N.d. Photograph. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jdathey/images/home_children.jpg>.

N.d. Photograph. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.open.edu/openlearn/files/ole/imported/blogs/The_Snapshot_of_poor_law_of_1834.jpg>.

N.d. Photograph. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://wiki.uiowa.edu/download/attachments/41143297/Thomas_kennington_orphans_1885.jpg>.

The next option an orphan had was to go to work in a work house. Work houses would take in people of all ages and force them to work in their industrial factories. Many of the factories during the Victorian age produced textiles, silk, cotton, and many other products. The workers were treated horribly and were forced to work in undesirable conditions for many hours, receiving minimal pay. Life in these factories was not suitable for young children, but many orphans found this life of labor better than living on the streets. The final option was to live a life of crime and to steal from others to survive. Children would pick pockets, or steal from others and then sell what they had stolen in order to pay for food and shelter. Orphans who had nobody to turn to for help, and who didn’t want the harsh life of an orphanage or work house would take this route, barely surviving day to day.

Works Cited

Orphanages were created in England to take in and care for children who had no means of taking care of themselves. The orphanages would take in the children, give them food, shelter, clothing and an education, very much like the educational institutions of the time. In these orphanages, the education of the children was centered around being able to get a job upon leaving the orphanage. Boys were prepared for trade jobs while the girls were taught the skills necessary for entering into the domestic services, such as being a governess and other jobs of that nature, which was a very common line of work for the women to go into. Although the orphanages met the basic survival needs of the children, they provided very little quality of life for the children. While living in the orphanage and many children chose to take their chances living on the streets instead of making the orphanage their home.

One thing that came about in England was the New Poor Law, which was aimed at helping those who had no money and needed support from the government, and in a way, protected them as well. This new law helped to take beggars off the street and put them into work houses where they could be clothed and fed. This law effected not only adults but children as well. This law ensured that children who worked in work houses would receive an education as long as they worked a certain number of hours for the company. The New Poor Law aimed to take beggars and orphans off of the streets, to encouraged people to work hard and to support themselves, and it also reduced the cost of caring for the poor. Even if the children still had to endure working in a work house, they had a law that helped make sure that they would receive an education that could serve them well in the future.

Another option the children had was being sent to an educational institution. These institutions were funded by philanthropists with the mission of educating orphans. The children at these institutions received shelter, food, and an education. The education they received was not of the same quality that other children received who paid for theirs, but it was an education nonetheless. The schooling for these children was aimed at preparing the orphans for a lower middle class line of work, such as being a governess. These institutions were crowded, dirty, and when a disease struck an institution, it spread like wildfire. The children were also subjected to poor nutrition and excessively harsh punishment. Life in these institutions forced the children to think about whether they wanted to endure the horrible conditions to necessary to receive an education, or whether it was more desirable them to roam the streets like so many other orphans before them had.

Adoption

When a child had no home to go to, one of the options available to them was adoption. Children could be adopted by relatives, or due to a lack of adoption laws until the 1920’s, could be adopted by neighbors or even strangers who wanted to bring the children into their family. One of the major issues with adoption was that the children would usually be treated according to their class. If a child was adopted by a family of equal class, most things usually went well, but if the child was adopted by a higher class family, they could be ostracized by the family. In such cases, they would be looked upon not as a family member, but as a burden; they were often mistreated and neglected when brought into the home. An orphan could only hope to be adopted into a loving family, because otherwise the risk of being brought into an unloving home greatly increased when the option of moving in with a family member was off of the table.

The Statistics

The number of orphans in England during the Victorian era is shocking. In 1862 it was estimated that eleven percent of children had lost their father by the age of ten, that eleven percent had lost a mother by the age of ten, and that one percent had lost both parents by the age of ten. The numbers were extremely high and they explain how issues relating to caring for orphans were very common in the lives of the people of England during the Victorian era. Orphans made up a great deal of the population and it was estimated that sixty percent of the criminal population was made up of orphans at one point or another. These statistics bring to light the problems that England faced trying to find a place for these orphans, sadly many of them lived lives filled with hard work, poor living conditions, or unkind families.

The Orphans of England

During the Victorian era in England there were massive numbers of orphans, children suffered the most and in some cases were left to fend for themselves. Charity played a key role in the survival of many orphans. Children were not just called orphans if both of their parents died, but could also be titled an orphan upon the death of one parent , if they were abandoned, or forced out of their home due to overcrowding. The life of an orphan during the Victorian era in England was in most cases a miserable one filled with hardship and little joy, unless you were lucky enough to be adopted into a loving family, which was not as the other likely outcomes.

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