In Year 9, we study the slave trade, and how people benefit from it. One of our tasks was to write a diary of one of the people involved. We were given a role each, and mine was to imagine myself as a female slave who was captured by African Traders and sold to a British Merchant. I thought my diary came out quite well because I put a real diary look on it to make it more effective, and many of the other students also used creative ways to make the diaries look as authentic as possible. At the end of the task we assessed each others work and offered some targets for development. I enjoyed this task of making a diary.

"I have researched my Victorian ancestors to find out what living conditions were like for them. My great, great, great grandfather, John Woolley, his wife, Betty, and their six children lived in Victorian times. Their house was in Lancashire near Manchester and John worked as a Locomotive driver near by. His eldest daughter, Sarah Woolley, was a Milliner (she made hats) at the age of fifteen and the other five children went to school. My great, great grandfather, William Woolley, was John's second eldest and he was twelve in 1871. The family would have been ordinary poor working class people of that time." S.W.

Population increased dramatically in the nineteenth century from roughly 21 million in 1825 to around 40 million by 1900. The growth in population put huge strains on housing. Many people went to towns and cities in search of employment but there was insufficient accommodation for everyone. As a result there was intense overcrowding and living conditions were horrendous.Students imagined if health inspectors had been allowed to visit some of the homes of typical factory workers of the time, what they might have included in their reports.

The Victorian era is sometimes called the greatest in Britain’s history. It was the time of our longest reigning monarch, Queen Victoria (reigned 1837-1901), our empire was at its strongest and it was the peak of our Industrial Revolution. There were many new laws passed, great things built and great people born. But was Victorian Britain as great as it seemed on the world’s stage? That is the question I plan to answer in this essay.

An example of something that was debatably good and bad, were Workhouses. These were part of the Poor Law Act of 1834. Workhouses were where poor people who had no job or home went. Many people thought they were good because they took poor people off the streets, gave them medical care, food, clothes, money, education and training for a job. However, others argued that Workhouses were not all they seemed. When you first went into a workhouse you were given a medical examination. If you were ill you were sent to the infirmary. This doesn’t sound too bad, but the doctors were all men, so many women felt very embarrassed. Also, when you first went in, you were given a brand new uniform. Again, it’s good that you got new clothes, but uniforms are a way of regimenting people and controlling them. Women and men had different areas in the Workhouse, so families were split up. The children’s education was mainly geography, RE and arithmetic. People who were for Workhouses said that it was great that they actually got an education, and in those days people thought religion was very important. People who were against Workhouses said that they didn’t teach the children the two most important skills of all, reading and writing, which were needed to get a good job. The punishments were severe, but people said this taught the occupants good manners and decent behaviour. This idea of Workhouses being horrible places was primarily fuelled by Charles Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist’. It paints a picture of an awful, repressive place where the staff ate all the nice food and their leftovers were mixed in with gruel and fed to the occupants. A quote from the book shows just how little they were apparently fed, ‘each boy had one porringer, and no more - except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides…’. However, we now know that the information we get from the book may not be entirely reliable. I don’t think anyone except those who lived in the Workhouses will ever know what they were really like.

The Factory Act of 1833 greatly improved life for children working in factories. Before the Factory Act very young children were sometimes employed, children were made to work extremely long hours and they were usually given no schooling or education of any kind. However, the Factory Act changed quite a lot of this. It stated that children under nine were not allowed to work, and children between the ages of nine and thirteen had to be given two hours of education a day. The government also employed inspectors to go round factories and see if they were abiding to this new law. The inspectors had a tour of the factory, spoke to some of the workers and spoke to the owners. There was a flaw in this though. The owners who were not obeying the rules were scared of what the consequences might be if these inspectors spoke to their workers and found out the truth. Some bribed their workers to say good things. Some threatened their workers, so they were too scared to tell the truth. Another flaw in the Factory act was that if a child worked on a farm, they did not need to be over nine years old. Also some of the children’s jobs had unfortunate by-products that the government didn’t really know about and neither did some of the children until they actually started the job. If you worked as Match Girl you could get horribly sick from an illness called fossyjaw, which was when the white phosphorus in the matches basically dissolved your jawbone. This was excruciatingly painful. There were other detestable jobs as well, like chimney sweeps, who had to climb into very small spaces and often got lung infections from the soot up the chimneys. Overall, the Factory Act was a step in the right direction.

One thing that happened that was actually quite good, was the Public Health Act of 1875. Before this, general health and cleanliness was abominable. Diseases like cholera and typhoid fever were common, because of the open sewers and dirty water. They also spread quickly because of the large amounts of people living together in a very small space. I read one account where three families were living together in a room of 2.6m square! Some houses even had animals living in with the people. The Public Health Act helped to start to prevent things like these. It stated that open sewers were banned, thanks to Joseph Bazalgette’s sewage system. Houses were made further apart, rubbish collection was introduced and public health inspectors had to be provided by the local council. They basically had to go round whatever town or city they were employed in and check that sanitation and health of the people was alright. Another thing that helped improve public health was in 1853 the tax on soap was taken off, meaning poor people could buy it and become more hygienic by washing with it.

However, children still did not get education for free as we do today until 1891. A law was passed saying that every child under the age of thirteen is entitled to a free education. Before this, if a poor child wanted to go to school they usually had to attend a ‘ragged school’. These were introduced in the 1840’s and were often just normal people teaching in whatever place they could find. They mainly focused on writing, reading, arithmetic and of course, bible study. These were the things needed to get a good job. In 1844 the ‘ragged schools’ were established as charities and began to rely on people donating money to them. It was still quite a long wait until education became free. Unfortunately, even after the law was passed, a lot of children still did not go to school because they had to work to support their families.

It was not just laws, but people too, who changed Victorian society. Charles Darwin published his ‘Origin of Species’ in 1859. He was the first person to voice his ideas about humans descending from apes in evolution. This caused a huge amount of argument. People in Victorian times were very religious, so naturally thought that God had created humans, as he had everything else. This challenged that idea and caused a great amount of religious doubt, so the Church were very angry. Charles Darwin actually sparked a huge debate between himself and Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford. Wilberforce obviously took the side of the Church. A lot of people were very angry with Darwin, but a lot also wanted to hear what he had to say. Even nowadays, most scientists believe in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

So, how vile was life in Victorian Britain? A lot of laws were passed and a lot of great people born. The wealthy were certainly living in the lap of luxury, but did life really change for the ordinary people? At the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, life was pretty vile, but I think as it went on more and more things were done to try and make life better. For all you can say about Workhouses, they did give people homes, money, food and eventually a job. The Factory Act (1833) made life a lot better for children working in factories. There were some flaws that the government did not foresee, but it did a lot more good than bad. The Public Health Act (1875) defiantly made a significant amount of difference to the cleanliness people’s lifestyles. It also hindered some killer diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Children getting education for free did exactly what it said on the tin. Although education was only free for children up to the age of 10 at first, this age limit was raised over time. All the entrepreneurs who lived and died in Victorian Britain made a positive contribution to Victorian life. In conclusion, even though people were not as lucky as we are today, their life was improved a lot during Queen Victoria’s reign. Their life wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t as vile as it was before Queen Victoria came to power.

Bibliography

Books

‘The Victorians-Robert Hull’

Websites

http://www.ourwardfamily.com/children_of_the_1800's.htm

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era

http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/182_08_180405/pur10144_fm.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

www.google.com/ig

In Year 9 we were asked to produce a project on the First World War. To make our project a success, dealing with both emotions as well as fact, we decided to use several different methods to present our work. This included a soldier's diary, letters to soldiers from women at home, a leaflet and a fact file of tactics and weapons. During the time that we were making our project we went on a day trip to Ypres in Belgium. Here we learned a lot about the War, and we had the chance to explore real trenches. This gave us a good idea of what we were writing about. We learned a lot when completing this project. We began to realise how much the soldiers went through for this country, such as trench foot, lice and extremely cold and wet weather. When in Ypres we visited a WWI graveyard, which made everyone very emotional. This was a valuable and interesting subject to learn about.

Why is it that the ones who most need to remember are the ones most likely to forget?

World War One, what a sad, sad story,

A story of hope, love and glory,

Those lives we lost always remembered,

The guns fired their last, that day in November,

Shots fill the air, startling sounds all around,

A sudden blast, as a bomb touched the ground,

Those courageous men, fighting together,

They are in our thoughts today and forever,

Our lives are changed, forever and ever.

K.S.