Victorian jobs
Websites
Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Ashbourne: Victorian labour
www.ashbourne-town.com/history/labour.htm
A portrait of the Derbyshire town in the mid-19th century. Discusses all the
types of work that went on in the town, with special emphasis on malting, tanning,
clock-making, lace embroidery, stay-making, cotton spinning and domestic service.
The Beginning of the London Fire Brigade
www.angliacampus.com/education/fire/
london/history/victoria.htm
History of the first horse-drawn fire engine, firemen in the Victorian era and photos of the uniforms they wore.
The Black Country Living Museum
www.bclm.co.uk/
Based around Dudley Castle, historic buildings from all around the Black Country have been moved and rebuilt at this museum in a tribute to the traditional skills and enterprise of the people that once lived in the heart of industrial Britain.
Class and poverty 1790-1885
www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/History/ESH/staff/
freeman.html
Go the Resources section and read extracts from Seebohm Rowntree's Poverty:
A study of town life (1902), James Greenwood's A Night in the
Workhouse (1866), originally published in the Pall Mall Gazette,
and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1851).
Clifton Suspension Bridge
www.clifton-suspension-bridge.org.uk/
Read the story of this Grade II-listed structure, beginning in 1754.
Ironbridge Gorge Museums
www.ironbridge.org.uk
This series of museums in Shropshire tell the story of the Industrial Revolution through images, objects and re-enactments.
Jack Black (rat catcher)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Jack_Black_%28rat_catcher%29
Interesting little piece about the royal rat catcher Jack Black who had a sideline
in breeding unusually coloured rats that he then sold as pets. It is believed
that Beatrix Potter was a customer and dedicated her book Samuel Whiskers to
her pet rat.
Match Workers Strike Fund Register
www.unionhistory.info/matchworkers/matchworkers.php
Trade union website with a history of the match workers.
Time traveller's guide to Victorian Britain
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/
H/history/guide19/
Travel through the grinding poverty and grimy industry that characterised the
world of Queen Victoria and her dissatisfied subjects.
Victorian children
www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/
Q/qca/victorians/
A website for pupils and teachers that includes information on Victorian schools
and some of the people who helped children.
Victorian diary
www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/
V/victoriandiary/
Website for 9- to 11-year-olds based on a Channel 4 series in which a girl
writes a diary from the age of 10 until she is a mother at the end of the 19th
century.
The Victorian dictionary – cleaning, rubbish collecting
and scavenging
www.victorianlondon.org
Click on 'Professions and trades' to find information on chimney
sweeps, dust-yard scavengers, mudlarks and bone-pickers, with extracts from
Victorian publications such as the Pall Mall Gazette.
The Victorian dictionary – the navvy
www.victorianlondon.org/
Tons of information in this guide to the social history of Victorian London,
which includes an extract from a publication written in 1867 on the role of
the navvy. Click on 'Professions and trades', then 'Building
and construction' to find the extract.
Victorian Social History: An overview
www.victorianweb.org/history/sochistov.html
Links to a variety of articles about conditions of life and labour that look
at Victorian occupations, child labour, wages and the cost of living and the
lack of social security.
Victorians uncovered
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/
V/victorians/
Lifts the skirts of 19th-century respectability when child prostitution flourished,
white slavery was rife and the age of consent was 12.
The workhouse
www.workhouses.org.uk/
Comprehensive and well-illustrated website that, through records and archives,
examines the Poor Laws and looks at life for adults and children in the workhouses
of Victorian Britain.
Books
The
Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels, edited
by David McLellan (Oxford Paperbacks, 1999)
Engels' work on the plight of industrial workers in England in the 1840s is still
considered one of the best studies of the working class in Victorian England.
This edition includes a map of Manchester c. 1845.
Get
this book
The Crystal Palace: A portrait of Victorian Enterprise by Patrick Beaver (Phillimore, 2001)
The Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park to house the treasures of the world gathered together for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It became a microcosm of Victorian life, industry and leisure, reflecting every aspect of its age. This book provides the narrative for a unique building that is also an enlightening social study of the period.
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this book
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (Penguin, 1989)
Seminal work, written in 1921, that explodes the myths of high Victorianism
and addresses chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip. Strachey exposes
the self-seeking ambitions of Cardinal Manning and the manipulative, neurotic
Florence Nightingale, as well as the public-school system and the whole structure
of 19th-century liberal values.
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The Industrialisation of Britain, 1780-1914 by Phil Chapple (Hodder Arnold, 1999)
Economic growth was of momentous importance in the 19th century, transforming Britain into the 'workshop of the world'. Synthesising much complex research into an accessible form, Chapple examines the nature of industrial growth in the railways, agriculture and overseas trade.
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Inventing the 19th Century: The great age of Victorian inventions by Stephen Van Dulken, (British Library, 2001)
Chronicles a period of enormous technological change using illustrations of original patent drawings from the British Library's collections. An entertaining and informative volume for anyone interested in design technology and engineering.
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Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson (Penguin, 1973). Out
of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Originally written towards the end of her life in 1939-43, Flora Thompson's
wonderfully precise and dispassionate record of country life on the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire
border at the end of the 19th century describes the existences of peasant,
yeoman and craftsperson, including the rare pleasures that marked a self-sufficient
world of desperately hard work and bitter poverty. Highly recommended.
Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jeremy Black and Donald M MacRaild
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
Examines political structures, ideologies, wars and international relations,
economic and social history, religion, culture and ethnicity. Britain, as opposed
to England, is the focus of the book. The coverage is enhanced with supplementary
background information on key personalities and pivotal events, with numerous
illustrations.
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this book
The Oxford Companion to British Railway History edited by Jack
Simmons and Gordon Biddle (Oxford University Press, 1999)
A classic work of reference, considered by many to be the most important book
ever published on railways in Britain.
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this book
Poverty and Poor Law Reform in 19th-century Britain, 1834-1914 by David Englander (Longman, 1998)
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was one of the most important pieces of social legislation ever enacted. The author explores the changing approaches to poverty over this period and assesses current debates on Victorian attitudes to the poor.
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The Timetraveller's Guide to Victorian London by Natasha
Narayan (Watling Street, 2004)
From the audacious Crystal Palace to the slums of St Giles, London in the Victorian
era is a place of greater contrasts than at any other period. Here the streets
are teeming with gents and pickpockets, vicars and prostitutes, philanthropists
and murderers. Aimed at young readers.
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this book
The Victorian Workhouse by Trevor May (Shire, 1997)
Discusses the Poor Laws and the philosophy behind the workhouses in Victorian Britain. Words from and images of those who lived in them
bring the horrors of this environment to life.
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this book
What the Victorians Did for Us by Adam Hart-Davis (Headline, 2002)
The Victorian era was a time of extraordinary prosperity and development, when Britain was a world leader in steam engines, iron and steel production, cotton and woollen mills and international trade. This book is a celebration of Victorian achievements and a reflection of the fact that we still live in a Victorian world.
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