Dickens travelled the streets making observations of the city so that he was able to describe to the readers the sights, sounds and smells of it. He wanted the readers to experience everything how the children would.
Victorian London was a place of extremes, in the 1800’s the population was around 1 million and it was going through the industrial revolution. The city was both reaping the benefits and suffering the consequences. All of this and the building of the new railroad made the population of Britain grow and it would reach up to 4.5 million by 1889. The upper and middle class lived very near to unbelievable poverty and filth. The poor street sweepers attempt to keep the streets clean of manure. There were pickpockets, prostitutes, drunks, beggars and vagabonds of every kind to add to the everyday life of Victorian London.
Up until the second half of the 19th century people were still drinking water from the Thames in which raw sewage flowed into, causing several outbursts of cholera along with the great stink of 1958, the disease and sewage in the drinking water made a link with Dr. John to find that all the victims of the cholera outbreak was connected with the same water pump. A plan was put together by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, completed in 1875, which finally provided adequate sewers to serve the city.
A new law was put into place ‘the new poor law’ enacted in 1834. Before it had been burden of all the parishes to take care of the poor. The new law required that all the parishes worked together to create regional workhouses where aid could be applied for. The workhouse was little more than a prison for the poor.
Victorian children worked in manufactories. They worked long hard hours to satisfy the needs of the parents because the families were so poor. The conditions of employment were terrible. They didn’t have any shoes because the parents were too poor to buy them. At the time there wasn’t any insurance and if there was any illness with the children or they had accidents they had no help and couldn’t claim any money. Children were employed for jobs where small were particularly needed, to fit in small places for instance. The children were very unhappy and didn’t enjoy working in the factories.
The children were often ill because they lived in factories and in unhealthy flats or suburbs with poor hygiene. Because of the industrial revolution there was lots of pollution, many children became very ill, and their lungs were backend. They had tuberculosis. The rate of mortality was high. Poor children didn’t go to school, only rich children did, and there were very few of them.
They had bad nutrition and ate food that didn’t help their health. The poor were treated differently to other people; they were treated as slaves and were put away if they were in debt, which most of them were. On being sent to the workhouses families were split up leaving the children traumatised. Fathers felt they needed to go to the workhouse so they would be able to provide for their family. Dickens was a champion to the poor, he repeatedly pointed out the atrocities of the system in his novel.
He has made scrooge the main character because he is a nasty, selfish man who only cares about himself. He is the kind of person who wouldn’t think about the poverty of children. I think that
