Victorian Children's Life PDF

STAGE 3 Unit focus: Victorians Text focus: Information Text Life Of A Child The life of a child in Victorian Britain was defined by how wealthy they were. Children in rich families...

STAGE 3 Unit focus: Victorians Text focus: Information Text Life Of A Child The life of a child in Victorian Britain was defined by how wealthy they were. Children in rich families had a much easier upbringing than those in poor families. By the time Queen Victoria took the throne, there was also a group of people called the middle class. They weren’t as rich as the aristocracy, but they were much be er off than the poorest. These children o en had access to education, but they didn’t have all of the delights of the rich children. You have probably moaned about going to school at some point. Most Victorian children didn’t have the opportunity for a long time. They had to pay to get an education, and it was too expensive for the poorest families. Poorer families o en had more children as well, which made it even more expensive. It didn’t become free until 1891. Instead, most Victorian children were sent out to work. They didn’t go into easy jobs, either. In fact, there weren’t many easy jobs in Victorian Britain. Children were sent to work in confined, dark spaces doing jobs that adults were too big to do. These included working inside dangerous machines and fixing them when they broke. Lots of children died doing these jobs. One of the most infamous jobs for Victorian children was as a chimney sweep. Victorian houses didn’t have gas fires. They relied on burning wood and coal. This created lots of soot that could clog chimneys. It needed somebody small to crawl up inside and scrub them clean. The risks to chimney sweeps were many. The flues didn’t go straight up and out of the roof. That would have allowed rain to fall into the house and extinguish the fire. Instead, they twisted and turned on their way out. Lots of children died by becoming stuck in the chimney. They o en suffocated on the soot. Other children died when the house owners forgot that they were up there or just didn’t care and lit a fire. The hot smoke burned the children to death in the chimney. Even if they survived without getting stuck or burned, the soot caused cancer. Most chimney sweeps didn’t live past 20 years old. They o en started as young as 6 years old - some A were only 4. ding ro Rea und all resources ©2023 Literacy Shed e um C u r r ic ul Th http://www.literacyshedplus.com Chimneys used to be a lot larger. The Great Fire of London in 1666 changed things. New building rules were introduced that meant that chimneys had to be narrower and kept cleaner. This made chimney sweeping infinitely more dangerous. By the Victorian period, chimneys were only around 18 inches wide. Get your teacher to mark out a square that size and see if you can fit through it comfortably! It’s about the same size as the space under a normal school chair. Wealthy children weren’t sent out to work. Their lives weren’t always easier, though. Schools were very strict. Children were beaten and forced to sit in freezing classrooms. However, they had expensive clothes, went on holidays and had lots of toys. All of those were out of reach for poorer children. VOCABULARY FOCUS 1. Which word in the first paragraph means “described by” or “depended on”? 2. Find and copy a word that describes a space as “small and restricted”. 3. How is something being “infamous” different to it being “famous”? 4. Find and copy a word that means “put out” a fire. 5. If somebody is “wealthy”, what do they have a lot of? VIPERS QUESTIONS S Why didn’t most Victorian children go to school? R When could everybody go to school for free? S Why did lots of children get stuck in chimney flues? R How wide were Victorian chimneys? I How did life change in a small way for poor children by the end of Victoria’s reign? all resources ©2023 Literacy Shed http://www.literacyshedplus.com