Poor Children in the Victorian Era

Abstract

This study aims to show the situations of poor children in the Victorian Era during the nineteenth century in Britain, how they suffer in their childhood and how they were classified into rich and poor. Those who were poor lacked of dwellings, health and education. The study explains the threat of the children of the streets to big cities in England, the capital London was in top, by spreading serious types of crime. Also it depicts the work of children in factories in crucial and unhealthy circumstances for long hours irrelevant to their age. The researcher applies the analytical and descriptive method to accomplish this literary work. As a result of urgent humanitarian appeals, a specialized hospital for children was established in London to take care of the poor children of the streets as well as other various health centers for the same purpose. The data of this study has been obtained from some previous researches and different references that related to the topic. Victorian Era was a fertile land to produce valuable works of literature by well-known writers like Charles Dickens who reflects the abused of poor children during the Industrial Revolution in many of his novels. There was some improvement in legislations concerning labor and education as an inevitable result of great efforts of social reformers and writers.