The victims were all prostitutes. A skilled London coach-maker could earn up to five guineas (£5, five shillings) a week – considerably more than most middle class clerks. They wouldn't normally have to 'work' in the same way that other people would. As a result of these dangers, toshers generally worked in groups, instantly recognizable in their canvas trousers, aprons with many large pockets (in which to stash their booty), and lanterns strapped to their chests. In the early 19th century the only cadavers available to medical schools and anatomists were those of criminals who had been sentenced to death, leading to a severe shortage of bodies to dissect. Discarded cigar butts could be recycled and marketed as new. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 established ‘workhouses’ in place of the old poor houses. The squalid and unsanitary conditions that were brought on by immense overcrowding made life very dismal for poor Victorian children and their families. If people lived near the water their would be jobs as riggers, builders of ships and boats, fishing, cooks. If a family was admitted, all its members would be separated, and might never see each other again. A mawkish Christmas song about a poor boy who wants to buy a pair of shoes for his sick mother so she'll "look beautiful if [she] meets Jesus tonight"? Reindeer aren't the only animals on Santa's payroll. They were clothed, and even, occasionally, washed. This was especially true in the higher economic classes, where women weren't required to work and use their minds to keep their families afloat like lower class women were. Back then, people were forced to think of some imaginative ways to earn a living, from seeking out treasure in the sewers to literally selling excrement. Most of the jobs held by those in the town were tough, gruelling and manual. Ross Bagdasarian Sr. wrote the song, which was released in 1958, and it was enormously successful—reaching the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart and netting three wins at the first annual Grammy Awards. The "Drops of Jupiter" rockers tried to get into the holiday spirit in 2010, but with lyrics that rhyme "smile" with, er, "smile," and "Before I get too old and don't remember it, so let's December it and reassemble it," we want to hide behind the Christmas tree, not rock around it. Girls and Boys as young as eleven years worked as servants in people’s homes doing the allotted jobs. Which is all very noble and great. Building also had a lot of jobs. After the crimes of Burke and Hare were discovered, the Anatomy Act of 1832 finally helped bring an end to the grisly resurrectionist trade by giving doctors and anatomists greater access to cadavers and allowing people to leave their bodies to medical science. The shipbuilding yards and the new docks in London and the north east required huge labour forces, but demand was unpredictable. Rat catchers usually employed a small dog or ferret to search out the rats that infested the streets and houses of Victorian Britain. There was a ready market for young virgins. To dissuade her delusional daughter, Peevey sings that her mom said a hippo would eat her up, but then "teacher says the hippo is a vegetarian." Photograph of a Glasgow slum by Thomas Annan, 1868. Wealthy Victorians enjoyed a good and easy life ; Poor Victorians had a rough and hard life, often ending up in the workhouse or early death. But if the repeated refrain of "wiggly wiggly Christmas" doesn't make you want to tell your kids that Santa has a cold and cancel the holiday altogether, we're not sure what will. A clerk, reduced to the workhouse perhaps because of a gap between jobs, had to try to break granite rocks with a heavy hammer, in an open shed with no protection from frost or heat, when he had never held anything heavier than a pen. Taking into consideration that women generally did not work except as cooks, maids, cleaners, prositutes, washing women, most jobs were done by men. The middle class families did not usually have as many servants as the upper class families. The nineteenth century saw a huge growth in the population of Great Britain. The railways generated employment for porters and cab-drivers. Another suitable occupation, in the eyes of the authorities, was oakum-picking: unravelling lengths of tarred rope, for use in calking the seams of battleships. During the late 1800s there were probably about 30,000 street sellers (known as costermongers) in London, each selling his or her particular wares from a barrow or donkey-cart. Make your last-minute shopping on Amazon even easier with deep discounts on Samsonite luggage, smart notebooks, Fitbits, and more. Rich afforded holidays, fancy clothes and new inventions. Labourers at London docks waiting for employment from The Graphic, 1886. It was extremely dangerous work: Noxious fumes formed deadly pockets, the tunnels frequently crumbled, there were swarms of rats, and at any moment the sluices might be opened and a tide of filthy water might wash the toshers away. Some poor children became stuck in the chimneys or were unwilling to make the climb, and anecdotal evidence suggests their bosses might light a fire underneath to inspire the poor mite to find their way out at the top of the chimney. There was no such thing as Child Protective services like we have today.There were laws that were passed over a period of several decades that slightly improved the working conditions and treatment of children. Catching rats was a dangerous business—not only did the vermin harbor disease, but their bites could cause terrible infections. The workhouse itself would provide the work. They frequently caught the rats alive, as they could sell the animal to “ratters,” who put the rats into a pit and set a terrier loose upon them while onlookers made bets about how long it would take for the dog to kill them all. "Christmas Don't Be Late" needs no additional explanation as to why it's annoying other than "the Chipmunks sang it." A lot of manual jobs. Begging might make more illegally, especially if the beggar woman could use – even hire – a small child. After 1856 the advent of the sewing machine improved the lot of some women, but not all had access to a machine, and the new technique required was daunting. The “job” of crossing sweeper reveals the entrepreneurial spirit of the Victorian poor. It feels weird to pick on The Wiggles, an Aussie children's group who are supposed to be high-energy and wacky. She spent many years working in the office of the Solicitor of the Inland Revenue and lived in Gray’s Inn and Hackney, before retiring to live in Oxford. Often they were able to live luxurious lives based purely on their inheritance and property. Victorian London had a huge network of over-worked sewers under the city, washing away the effluence of the crowded metropolis. There are songs that are perfect, classic, and timeless—like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" or Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas Is You”—and then there are these 10 holiday horrors. We'd prefer coal in our stockings. If you do speak Swedish, you get the added benefit of Sean telling Santa to "come and bring your ho ho hoes." Unsurprisingly, leech collectors were in danger of suffering from excess blood loss and infectious diseases. Why you need to protect your intellectual property, An Account of Four Persons Starved To Death in a Workhouse, 'Lambeth Workhouse for Casual Ward for Females' and 'St. Nor could private charities stem the tide of the destitute. Illustration for a song about the workhouse contrasting a miserly and well-fed overseer with starving, ragged clothed inmates, estimated 1843. The London omnibuses needed 16,000 drivers and conductors, by 1861. A number of charitable individuals and societies attempted to 'save' prostitutes, who were mostly outcast and desperate. Servants were paid low wages but were guaranteed a living space, food, and clothes by their employers. Many of the servants had moved from the country, where many of the farming jobs had been eliminated by the invention of machines. The very poorest families had to make do with even less - some houses were home to two, three or even four families. All the climbing in the claustrophobic space of a chimney meant many sweeps’ elbows and knees were scraped raw, until repeated climbing covered them with calluses. The Victorian era, in the 19th century, was a time when the difference between men and women was very distinct. The homes of the poor : A poor Victorian family would have lived in a very small house with only a couple of rooms on each floor. (Victorian Web.) One of the most famous Victorian rat catchers was Jack Black, who worked for Queen Victoria herself. This was the top of the working class pyramid. Most women found work in textile or clothing factories under harsh conditions, while others found trades in such things as metals, pottery or laundry. Throughout the Victorian Era, there were four main social classes. In many ways, workhouses became synonymous with the Victorian era. and the other one is 'We Are the World.'". The Hierarchies of Victorian Workers: Craftsman, Semi-skilled Factory Operatives, and Laborers; Victorian Wages for Skilled and Unskilled Labor: The Example of Construction Workers on the Thames Embankment; The Prince of Victorian Manual Workers: The Skilled Craftsman; Artisans Blacksmiths; Work in the Slate Quarries of North Wales; Semi-Skilled Labor. There are several reasons why there was a great demand for servants in Victorian times. Smaller sweeps were the most sought-after, so many were deliberately underfed to stunt their growth and most had outgrown the profession by the age of 10. It might come in useful if she progressed up the ladder of domestic service to become a ladies’ maid. Next time you complain about your boring desk job, think back to Victorian times—an era before the concept of occupational health and safety rules—and count yourself lucky. In some cases, the boys would get stuck inside the narrow chimneys and suffocate. The workhouse might deny the starving applicants even the bare shelter it provided. By the time the Victorian era ended, around half the population lived in cities.There was a big difference between rich and poor. Coal mining and other types of mining. In the Victorian era, this work was mainly performed by teenage girls who worked in terrible conditions, often for between 12 and 16 hours a day with few breaks. There were some businessmen who found the very concept of making a child work in hazardous factories unreasonable. Rat catchers caught rats by hand, attracting them by rubbing a mixture of sweet-smelling oils on thei… Boys could hold horses’ heads while the driver took a break, or sell newspapers or fast food in the streets. It was an instant hit in 1953, and Peevey even performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show. Dogs’ turds could be collected and sold to the tanneries. We have looked at some of the deadliest jobs for Boltonians in the Victorian-era: 1. Despite the clean-sounding name, this job actually involved collecting dog feces from the streets of London to sell to tanners, who used it in the leather-making process. Singer Bob Geldof, determined to funnel money to a higher cause by way of a charity song, enlisted Bono, Boy George, George Michael, Phil Collins, Sting, and many others to form a supergroup known as Band Aid that would record the vocal track for the song in one marathon 24-hour session. The houses would share toilets and water, which they could get from a pump or a well. The sentence of hard labour imposed on convicts was applied equally to male paupers in the ‘casual ward’, who were physically weak, and often unaccustomed to manual work. The new manufacturing processes that spun out of the Industrial Revolution presented new employment opportunities for lower-class Victorian women. An experienced convict might earn 9 pence a day at stone-breaking. Leather was in great demand in Victorian times, as it was used not only as tack for horses but for shoes, boots, bags, and in bookbinding. However, the MLS explains that it was towards the end of the Victorian era that the lantern trade flourished. Please consider the environment before printing, All text is © British Library and is available under Creative Commons Attribution Licence except where otherwise stated. Leeches can survive for up to a year with no food, so they could be stored at the pharmacy to be dished out as required. Medical schools paid a handsome fee to those delivering a body in good condition, and as a result many wily Victorians saw an opportunity to make some money by robbing recently dug graves. Your income did not play a role in what social class you were in, but source was. In reality, things were not so tidily demarcated. Health and medicine for the poor . And then there was a made-for-TV movie based on said song? As a recurring feature, our team combs the web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Jobs of the Middle Class Victorian Middle Class men had "clean" jobs, or mental jobs. In the 1880s and 1890s, more than 30 firms were engaged in the production of … They became responsible for terrible working and living conditions. Some collectors wore a black glove to protect their scooping hand, but others considered it harder to keep a glove clean than a hand and eschewed the protection altogether. Choose Yes please to open the survey in a new browser window or tab, and then complete it when you are ready. Cooks, butlers, gardeners, housemaids, nannies and governesses were employed by this social class. It wasn’t until people like Lord Shaftesbury and Thomas Agnew took action that true change took place. You can find gifts that are perfect for every age group without having to break the bank. Their services were no doubt sometimes appreciated: The streets during this period were mud-soaked and piled with horse manure. Failed American Idol wannabe William Hung, who quickly became famous for his tone-deaf rendition of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs," managed to put out a holiday album. East London had the most well-known slums of that time. Anyone familiar with Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist will remember that one of the orphan’s hated early jobs was as a mute for undertaker Mr. Sowerberry. Ask Santa for a PlayStation! Skilled work Skilled jobs were blacksmith, craftsmen, and artists Semi/Unskilled work Usually 1 of each type of skilled workers in a town semi-skilled jobs were mining and textile mills how it relates semi-skilled workers were mostly big company employees and underpaid Most of Rich Victorians always had servants. Liza Picard examines the social and economic lives of the Victorian working classes and the poor. The pay was pitifully low. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Yet the most familiar images of Victorian life are bleak indeed. Even in 2004, the world was a cruel and unusual place. The rats could be stored like this for days as long as Black fed them—if he forgot, the rats would begin fighting and eating each other, ruining his spoils. Liza Picard researches and writes about the history of London. It might come in useful if she progressed up the ladder of domestic service to become a ladies ’.! Those keeping score, that 's three more Grammys than Queen 's `` Bohemian Rhapsody '' received ‘workhouses’ in of. On Santa 's payroll been able to afford to get treated unless they were able to afford get... Victorian working classes and the city, washing away the effluence of the differences between rich Victorians always servants... 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