Victoria comes to the throne at the tender age of 18 in 1837 and reigns supreme for a staggering 64 years until her death in 1901. Not only is she queen of England, she is also the empress of India and head of the rest of the enormous British empire.
Her reign sees Britain at the height of its power. It also sees the Industrial Revolution accelerate its pace and the transfer of people from the countryside into the cities, where most live in rotten slums and have equally rotten jobs. Not, of course, that life in the countryside is any better for those left behind, especially for those looking for anything other than really bad career choices.
Are you that special person we are looking for? Is your idea of a great day at work one that involves you standing all day in a barn full of rotting flesh, dog poo and chicken dung? Then tanning – the conversion of cattle and sheep hides into leather – is just the career for you.
You'll be getting your hands dirty from your very first moment at work, de-fleshing and de-hairing cow hides from dawn to dusk. The unique smell of rotting animal tissue will soon become a comforting backdrop to your working day, enlivened at times by the fascinating aroma of old, warmed-up dog and chicken faeces, which will be stored in a foetid pool to de-lime the hides. If you're really lucky, the foul pool won't be changed for months just to get that lovely bacteria-infused mixture going.
Strangely, the rest of the population doesn't seem to have the same affection for this environment, so you'll be forced to work some distance from them. In 1882, the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen writes a play – An Enemy of the People – in which a tannery has contaminated a local (and lucrative) spa. But the doctor who exposes this crime is vilified by the rest of the community!
Would you like to work in the high-tech world of steam? Well, more accurately, in the fire box of the high-tech world of steam. A man of small proportions and some pot-holing experience is currently being sought by the Great Western Railway to crawl into the bowels of its great steam locomotives to clean them.
A penchant for carrots is advantageous if you are to stand a chance of seeing a thing in the pitch dark. Once you have raked out the ashes and left the fire bars gleaming, you can wriggle your way back out and enjoy a good stretch in the inspection pits raking out the ash pans. This will make you really appreciate your time in the fire box.
The term 'navvy' originated with the 'inland navigators' who constructed Britain's canals. It's now used for the men – a quarter of a million them – who are needed to build the thousands of miles of railway track that are set to span Britain: digging the cuttings, laying the lines and packing the ballast. The job might particularly suit Irish immigrants escaping the horrors of the potato famine.
You will have the muscles of Hercules after pushing 200 wheelbarrow loads of soil up unbelievably steep-sided banks every day or shovelling 20 tonnes of stone scalpings. When the artist Ford Madox Brown includes a navvy in his painting Work (1859-63), he writes: 'Here is presented the young navvy in the pride of manly health and beauty; the strong fully developed navvy who does his work and loves his beer ...'
No accommodation is offered with the position, however. You will probably live in a squalid communal dwelling with all the other workers, their families and, of course, their cholera, dysentery and typhus.
With agricultural wages down by a third in the last 10 years, times are hard. Why don't you help out your mum and dad and earn a few extra pennies a week scaring birds from the fields? Work starts with the dawn chorus and ends with the setting sun.
We also have work for your brothers and sisters sowing seeds and gathering stones. Realistically, you won't stand a chance of escaping poverty, but you may make enough money to put a little more bread and cheese on the table.
