Victorian Childhood Based On Social Class

Public Domain The domestic situation of most Victorian families offered an endless network of caregivers. Victorian households had six children, but most had a variety of other family and others that lived in their dwelling. The nuclear family that defined the last century was a rare family in Victorian times. Yet, the extended family traditionally thought of by us as a Victorian norm only made up about 10 percent of Victorian households. A traditional extended family is one in which three or more generations lived in the same house. An average Victorian household would consist of the husband, wife, unmarried cousins, farm laborers, maybe one aged parent or aunt, and servants if it was a household of some economic means. The makeup of the Victorian home was in constant flux. Older children married, left to find work, or died. In some areas of industrial homes life expectancy was only in the mid twenties and at the turn of the century not much more than 50 for most middle class people. Infants and children had more than a %50 percent chance of dying before the age of 5 in many communities. It was not uncommon for a healthy child to have lost one or both parents and a sibling before they reached their teens. This is not to mention the changes in household help that occurred frequently as younger folks who worked in these homes married or went on to better jobs. Working class children and farm children often found themselves being farmed out to other relatives or moved to communities to find work and contribute to the family coffers in their early teens. A family that found itself in a growing industrial community would be asked to take on other family members children in hopes they would find employment in exchange for limited economic contribution. Sickly children might have been moved to relatives that lived in the county hoping the air was better for them, but returned to the city if they could not pull their weight on a friend or family's farm. It was about the survival of the family unit and those individual close to the unit that determined the fate of many Victorian children.School was not mandatory for children in England till 1840 and much later in most parts of the United States. The working poor who had ambitions for their children went as far as to ask charitable organizations to arrange night schools in order that children working in sweat shops might have a chance to attend school. In rural communities in the United States farm families pooled their money to hire a school Master or Marm. Most children in rural areas because of weather conditions and the planting season only attended school for three to five months a year. A growing middle class after the American Civil war increased the demand for public High School. A girl in the rural Midwest was more likely to attend high school as her brother would have been needed to work the farm or family business than she was. In an upper middle class family, a smart girl was unlikely to get a University education than her brother was because it was considered a waste of time to educate women whose only future prospects were marriage. In late Victorian times it became acceptable for middle class girls to pursue a degree in teaching so they could have a trade before marriage. Women from the poorest urban areas many of them immigrants had always worked and never had a chance at any formal education. Women teachers especially, were underpaid and undervalued by most communities. . Discipline for children in all social levels was strict. The sexually repressed Victorians went to great extent to punish and discourage all sexual expression in children. The very lowest classes did not have this luxury and were noted to sell young girls that family could not afford to feed into what was essentially domestic prostitution. Corporal punishment was considered appropriate even for infants in some Victorian households. Wealthier families did indulge their children in lessons, games, and parties, but many of these activities were meant to help the child learn the social mores of the day and not just "play" In the 1830's it was not uncommon for children in urban settings to succumb to cholera because of a lack of understanding in the community about the need for clean water. Most cities had amazingly unsanitary conditions that made the whole community at risk for the spread of disease. Respiratory ailments were the norm in these communities where the industrial revolution had caused so much pollution. Many times these chronic respiratory ailments cover up epidemics of whopping cough and tuberculosis. It was not uncommon for children who avoided these ailments to still literarily grow up with "blackened lungs" and have a short life span. Mortality rates for infants, children, and women were high because of all communicable diseases in urban areas where they went unchecked. Most women in children in poorer communities were malnourished and this contributed to low disease survival rates. Diets tended to consist of bread, cheese, beer, and occasionally meat. There were not fresh fruits and vegetables widely available to the poor and in certain climates not even the middle class. The men as head of household got the best and largest portions of any food that was served for they were literally the most important "breadwinner". This lead too many women and children; being deprived of necessary nutrition to have the strength to fight off common diseases Life on the farm the last century had in many ways been healthier for many people. Women breastfeed until most children were two, but their milk was only as good as their diet. Wealthier women could afford wet nurses, but many times these women were less healthy than the mothers of their charges and the infant mortality rate was high. Few children who were fed cow's milk, weak tea, and sugar if their mothers could not breast feed made it through infancy. Victorian childhood prepared most children for a life of hardship and economic uncertainty. A growing middle class assured that a least a growing number of children would have an education and life of not just day to day survival. The lack of serious medical advances for ordinary people made the prospect of death something that the average person faced every day.

Related articles

• A Short History of Life Expectancy
• CFP: VLU "The Victorian Household" (5/16/2014; 11/26-29/2014)


• Life in Victorian England
• The "Killer" Middle-Class Home?

Death in the American Victorian Household Part 1

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In our 21st century society most of us never see death. Our old and ailing tend to die in nursing homes and hospitals. Rarely, our friends and family present at the moment our loved one passes to the next life. We are informed my medical staff the event has occurred and only a few of us take the opportunity to view the body. 
The Victorian era is many times of great interest to us as it was a time when death seemed to be almost morbidly celebrated. It may same strange to us that in a society where untimely death was so common that the process of grief and burial itself consumed such a great part of the lives of the living.

Rope being placed in a casket  then a bell was hooked to make sure no one was buried alive.

Most of the time people died at home in Victorian times. It did not matter if it were in a disease infested city flat or a pastoral Midwestern farmhouse. In the case of the latter, it was most likely that the deceased was dying into the home in which they had been born and that their parents had passed in. Since infant mortality was extremely high, it was very likely the joy of a birth was replaced by mourning for infant taken far too early in life. In urban areas where epidemics may have taken many in the same household , expected rules of display of the body in the home may have had to been put aside to account for several deaths occurring close together in the same household(Rothman, 2005) 
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Death of the head of household was a very grave matter literally and figuratively for a Victorian household. Poor and middle class household faced the loss of the main bread winner and laws demanded debts be paid without regard to the financial welfare of the surviving household. Middle class Widows had no property rights in Victorian America and male relatives who inherited homes could literally put them out on the street. Given that death in childbirth was common and many men married more than once, a disliked stepmother may have found herself going from middle class comfort too the street. Her children if not specifically provided for in a will may have had to rely on the kindness of other relatives to not become destitute.

Soon after a loved one was declared dead, they were in general laid out in the parlor or the best room in the home to allow other friends, neighbors, and other relatives to view the body. In homes with more means the body would be laid out in the casket they would be buried in. In less affluent homes the dead would be simply laid out on a table or set in a chair. Sometimes children would be posed as if they were sleeping in the very beds they had passed in (Rothman, 2005) 
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The deceased would have had their bodies washed and displayed in their Sunday best. Clothing tended to be passed on in even most Middle Class households so if the budget was truly constrained the deceased might be displayed in a simple and cheap white robe or coat. Those who could afford new clothing or elaborate clothing would spare no expense to deck out their dead well yet tastefully. Most upper class Victorians while elaborate in funeral parades to the cemetery kept casket and casket clothing simple, because it was considered an insult to the poor who could not remember their dead with such finery. The Victorians seemed to recognize that at least in display of the body, death was the great equalizer.