Conditions of Labor in

Victorian England

Tracey Kline, Marni Berkowitz, Callie Rosenfeld, Maria Cook,

Tamerah Slawter
 The Hierarchy of Victorian
Workers1

Professionals (lawyers, clergymen, engineers, teachers,

physicians)

Skilled Labor/Craftsmen (artisans, blacksmiths)

Semi-Skilled Labor (miners, textile mill workers)

Agricultural Labor (sawyers, cider-makers, copse-cutters,

hurdle-makers, heath-turf cutters)

Unskilled Labor (construction workers, sweepers, rat catchers)

Child Labor2
• Child labor was extensive in the iron and
coal mines, factories, and shipyards
• In 1840 London, only 20% of
children had any schooling

• Some children found employment as

apprentices to respectable trades or as
general servants, but most were not so
fortunate
• Most prostitutes were between the
ages of 15 and 22

• Many children worked 16 hours a day

under dreadful conditions
• Parliamentary acts passed in 1802
and 1819 attempted to regulate the
work of workhouse children to 12
hours per day, but proved largely
ineffective
 Child Labor (Cont’d)2
• In 1831, “Short Time Committees,” organized largely by
Evangelicals, began demanding a ten-hour work day
• A royal commission was consequently established,
although it would only apply to the textile industry
• Commission decreed that children aged 11-18 would
be permitted to work a maximum of twelve hours per
day, children 9-11 eight hours a day, and children
under nine would be prohibited from working
• Other industries, such as the iron and coal mines,
where children frequently began working at age 5 (and
generally died by the age of 25), were to be enforced in
all of England by a grand total of four inspectors
 Female Labor3
• Victorian women provided a “vast
reservoir of labour,” although the
precise size of the female working
population is impossible to know

• Middle-Class Women
• The Industrial Revolution did not
do for middle-class women what it
did for lower-class women
• For a single woman of the middle-
class, becoming a governess was
the only option for respectable
employment
• A governess could maintain a
decent living, but could not
anticipate any security of
employment or a defined
status within the household
 Female Labor (Cont’d)3
• Lower-Class Women
• Since women were barred from all professions and higher
public offices, most engaged in servicing the wealthy in
one way or another
• Many women found employment in millinery and
dressmaking
• These two occupations constituted the “higher end” of
female employment, being the “respectable”
occupations for young women of middle- or lower-
class status
• Other common occupations: publicans, hoteliers, house
proprietors, seamstresses, and workhouse matrons
 Wages4
• “According to Dale Porter5, in the mid-1860s workers in
London received the following wages for a 10-hour day and
six-day week:
• Common laborers: 3s. 9d.
• Excavators: 4s. 6d.
• Bricklayers, Carpenters, Masons, Smiths: 6s. 6d.
• Engineers: 7/6 (= £110 pounds/year)

• In better paid positions, particularly the professions, salaries

were indicated in annual amounts.
• Army Cornet ... £200/0/0
• Indian Civil Service officer ... £300/0/0”
 Sadler’s parliamentary
report6
• In 1832, Michael Sadler conducted an investigation of textile
factory conditions that would become one of the most
influential reports on the life of the industrial class
• Its immediate effect: Passage of the Act of 1833, which
limited hours of employment for women and children in
textile works
 Sadler’s Parliamentary
Report (Cont’d)6
• Evidence given to the Sadler Committee 7:
• Mr. Matthew Crabtee revealed having been continually beaten
by factory bosses
• “I generally was beaten when I happened to be too late; and
when I got up in the morning the apprehension of that was
so great, that I used to run, and cry all the way as I went to
the mill.”
• Elizabeth Bentley, when asked how well she ate at the factory,
replied:
• “No, indeed I had not much to eat, and the little I had I
could not eat it, my appetite was so poor, and being covered
with dust; and it was no use to take it home, I could not eat
it, and the overlooker took it, and gave it to the pigs.”
 The Physical Deterioration
of Factory Workers8
• Such perilous working conditions had a drastic effect on
workers’ mental and physical welfare
• The following is a medical observer’s depiction of Victorian
laborers:
• “Their complexion is sallow and pallid... Their stature low...
Their limbsslender, and playing badly and ungracefully... Great
numbers of girls and women walking lamely or awkwardly,
with raised chests and spinal flexures... Hair thin and straight...
A spiritless and dejected air, a sprawling and wide action of the
legs”
 Works Cited
1. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/index.html

2. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist8.html

3. http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/femeconov.html

4. http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/wages2.html

5. Porter, Dale H. The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology,

and Society in Victorian London. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron
Press, 1998.

6. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/workers1.html

7. Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, vol. XV. pp. 44, 95-97, 115, 195, 197,
339, 341-342.

** All pictures obtained from www.victorianweb.org