Victorian slum house

With all the interest in Queen Victoria and all things Victorian, I found a great contrast flipping through the television channels the other day. There is a series on PBS where modern day participants replicate living conditions of the poor in various decades of the 1800’s in England. When people think of the Victorian times they think of the romantic and affluent stories when over half of the populations was living in squalor and trying to survive. Great social changes came into being out of the suffering of men, women and children trying to survive in sweatshops, selling food or working in dangerous factory conditions.

Some other things that we learned about from pain and suffering in Victorian times were proper hygiene, food storage and medicine. For example, many people got sick or died from milk that went bad o got lead poisoning from lead in so called beauty products and medicines.

I find the study of this time period to be very interesting. It was the time of the industrial revolution with many immigrants coming to England of course America and the countries shared many of the same problems. The influx of immigrants made things worse and people piled into tenements to save money and wages went down as more people were desperate for work. The close quarters also helped diseases such as smallpox and the flu spread quickly and many people died.

When you visit old cemeteries you will often notice many graves of babies and young children. There was no such thing as prenatal care and many children died shortly after childbirth or from contagious diseases. Many ladies died in childbirth as there were no cesarean sections and many ladies had disfigured their bodies by wearing tight corsets that created tiny waists which were considered to be beautiful but detrimental to the female body.

Many rich Victorians would actually pay for tours of the slums to ridicule and pity the slum dwellers like they were a poverty zoo. Many believed at that time the poor were just lazy and brought these circumstances upon themselves or deserved to go to the work house or poor house which was a last resort. Single mothers were especially looked down upon during this time period. These women often had to sent children off to work or become indentured servants. If you love history, you will love this show, it is similar to Colonial House or Frontier House which were other popular series of the past that would put modern families into historical periods to see what it really was like to survive during those times. Happy Collecting!

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