Children as a Resource During the Victorian Era

This is the story of Rozalyn Smythe and her discovery of how Victorian children were considered a resource not only by the state but by their families as well.

The beginning is always the hardest part of any story. Everyone wants to make theirs’ interesting or unique. When writing one is told that their writing must make an entrance, that it must grab the reader’s attention. The first lines of a story, a good story, are recited to others as a form of endearment or enthusiasm about the tale. Famous stories that survive the test of time have their first lines used as identifiers or hints during trivia games. Reader I am sorry to say that this story will probably not be one of those tales. My first lines I write here will not be something passed from ear to ear or stand the test of time. Nevertheless, the tale I have to tell is still one of significance. This is the story of how I learned that England’s children were being used as a resource.

It all began with a set of grey steps that lead to the apartments of a Lord and Lady Price. Their quiet street reminded me of a photograph. Everything had its proper place, from the well-placed trees to the carriages that somehow muffled their hoof-steps. I was afraid of walking up the steps. I thought if I moved towards the entrance I would break the spell cast on the quiet little street. I took a breath and made my way up the steps. Before I could even knock on the door a woman opened it looking rather surprised.

“Oh, pardon me!” Her voice was soft like a small bird and her eyes were the color of robins’ eggs. I had never imaged what a porcelain doll would look like if it came to life but the young woman in front of me took away any chance I had to wonder. A quick breeze could probably topple her over without a second thought. The little bird turned around and chirped through the doorway, “Mother, your scribe is here!” With that she floated down the steps followed by what I assumed was a governess and was whisked away in a carriage down the muffled street.

“Are you going to stand there all day or are you coming in?” A rather gruff looking maid shook me from the spell of the quiet little street with its porcelain bird people. I nodded at her and hurried inside to what I believed to be a castle packed into a London townhouse. I had never seen so many extravagant things glittering at me in my life. Everything seemed to have gold dust sprinkled onto it, from the polished wood floors to the golden chandelier hanging trivially in the front parlor. The maid scurried around me into a room to my left and announced my arrival, “Rozalyn Smythe, here for your ma’am.”

How did the maid know my name? I looked down and realized my social card was in my hand but she hadn’t bothered to take it. Walking into the main sitting room was like stepping into the Great Exhibition. I could see every part of the Empire muddled together in this room alone, from the tapestry strewn ceiling all the way down to the tiger skin rug. I think there was even an Egyptian sarcophagus displayed in the next room.

“I’m so glad you could come, Miss. Smythe. Your mother was so persuasive about your dictation ability, I hope you can live up to her praise. I am Lady Price and you will be helping my husband Lord Price while his secretary is out sick for the week.” The woman addressing me was the personification of the room we were standing in. Lady Price was a curator of the foreign and shiny…and my mother happened to be her seamstress with a swelling pride for her daughter’s ability to write, thus why I am here. Lady Price lead me to a room down the hall with a large wooden door, knocked, and introduced me to her husband. Lord Price wasn’t the most interesting man in the world. He looked like a portrait off a fashion pamphlet and talked like one too. He was in the textile industry, just as his father did before him, and his father before him and so on and so on. I think it took my first two visits to get through his family history before I actually dictated anything about his work at all.

However, in that time I did get to know his children, who seemed to love to have a visitor in the house. Mary, Samuel, and Howard were three of the melancholiest children I’d ever met. Though they showed interest in me they were never allowed to speak out of turn or do anything outside of their ordinary stature. Mary was a bright young girl who dreamed of one day becoming an actress, something her mother condemned to the highest degree. I had accidentally walked in on her performing a rather captivating scene from Hamlet. She had Ophelia’s death down to the very syllable yet she was not allowed to perform. It was a crime to me that this young girl’s talent would never see the light of day because of the stubbornness of her mother. She would marry highly just like her sister Hazel. Hazel was the little bird who had almost run me over leaving the day I arrived here. She was to be married to a Count from a country I never caught the name of. The boys didn’t have it any better. They were expected to do tremendously in life even at the ages of fourteen and ten. Samuel being the heir to the textile company sometimes sat in on the sessions that his father and I had and would take notes of his own. Howard, even though he was still so young, poured over his books like they were his life raft. His private tutors praised him highly but I don’t believe I ever saw the boy smile.

I remember one day while I was strolling down the hall I found young Howard sitting in the library. The Prices’ had a very extensive library, they had books from all over the world hidden in their shelves but they all seemed to be covered in a layer of dust. I picked up Frankenstein and went over and sat quietly by the boy. He was poring over a book of mathematical equations and didn’t even look up to acknowledge my presence. I asked gently what he was going. He didn’t answer me but kept reading. However, I would not be disheartened, I was determined to unlock the mind of the youngest Price child. I knew he was more than just top marks and a solemn face. I asked him gently what his favorite book was, I told him mine was Frankenstein and held it up for him to see. Without looking up Howard told me that he had no time for frivolous fiction reading. The sound of a young boy with no imaginative reading to his name broke my heart a little. I quietly laid the book down next to him saying that a boy without an imagination is like a summer without sunshine, it’s possible but it’s quiet gloomy and unfulfilled. I left the library worried for that boy. He was so determined to become a man far before his time.

This sadly was the tradition I believe among the higher classes in England. Many families would groom their children simply for the idea that one day they would marry well and settle down giving whatever extra they had to their parents and their own children once they had them, and they would indeed have them.[1] The line must go on, the family name must be passed down and to a son of course. Boys would have a pick of what they wished to study and take up a profession.[2] Some professions were looked upon more highly than others depending on the family but they were educated. Girls’ lives were spent either between their houses, depending on the season, or sent away to private schools. Usually they had very expensive tutors that would come and teach them the trick of the trade. Singing, dancing, painting, reading, drawing, writing, some numbers, some maps, and a lot of pointless needlework. They would fill their days with appropriate books and small projects to keep them occupied until they could be married.[3] All for the good of the family of course, and that’s just how things worked.

Even though the wealth of the family gave the children less freedoms in life I never thought that they would have any kind of connection to any misconduct of the sort. That was until my final day at the Prices’ London house and Lord Price was finishing up his books for the month.

“Ah yes, and finally the workhouse down on Cleveland Street.”

“Covent Garden Workhouse[4]?” Samuel asked looking up from his notes.

My hand stopped as well. Most people who lived in London could smell the Covent Garden Workhouse before they could even see it. It was originally only supposed to hold two hundred people but since its creation they made addition after addition.[5] I had heard that the workhouse was owned by a rather rich family that wished to remained anonymous, and I understood why. I had walked by the workhouse a few times and once I saw children sitting on one of the front steps waiting to go to the church that was down the way. I noticed one child had an eye patch on and some other were missing fingers. They all looked rather miserable sitting there waiting in the cold and rain. I couldn’t believe my ears or really, I could and I chose not to.

“Yes, they’re one in the same Samuel, you know that.” Lord Price went on not missing a beat. Samuel and I made quick eye contact with each other before returning to our notes. I finished up my last day at the Price house on the enchanted quiet street as fast as I could and vowed never to return. I wished nothing but the best for the Prices but how they obtained their money was something cruel beyond imagination. I didn’t even stop at home when leaving the enchanted street behind me. I knew where I had to go, and I knew that I would smell it before I would see it.

The bricks of the workhouse reflected the workers inside: worn, cold, and in desperate need of some love and care. The large building was weather worn to say the least. I wanted to get inside to see for myself what the place had become. It took a while to get into the building but I eventually convinced one of the stewards that I was coming to check on the place for Lord Price and that they could interrupt his dinner if they so choose to but that would not reflect kindly on them. The inside of the building was as I expected it to be: plain and dreary. I managed to wonder my way into the courtyard to find it full of children. Apparently, someone’s hand had gotten caught in a machine and the whole operation had to stop to make sure the machine was undamaged. A group of the children decided to sit down next to me a few missing some fingers, some teeth and there was the one boy with the eye-patch, Andrew was his name.

Andrew described to me what it was like to grow up in a workhouse in the middle of London. He said they would raise at six and not go to bed until eight, working from seven until noon and then one until six.[6] They would get three meals a day if they were lucky, most places could only afford two he assured me. Shoes could be hard to come by and if someone was injured the workhouse doctor wasn’t the most reliable.[7] I had asked Andrew why he was wearing an eye-patch and he got a little flustered. He told me he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone but I reassured him that I would not get him into trouble. He told me in a small shaking voice that one of the machines had over heated and he had the unfortunate incident of being struck in the eye by a hot flying metal piece that had gotten loose. I didn’t ask him to show me what wound because I did not think I could stomach it. I held the child tight for a moment as a tear came to my eye. This poor child was no more than eight years old and had already seen hardships far beyond what most adults would experience in their lifetimes.

Each one of the children had a story about how they were either born into where they were now or how their parents couldn’t keep them anymore and that they were sent here to work. A girl by the name of Elsie showed me how she was missing two of her fingers on her left hand. She said one of the machines took them off and the doctor simply sewed them shut, wrapped them in cloth and sent her on her way. She was no more than ten. I imagined little Howard seeing his female counter part and wondering what he would think of all of this. Would he pity her just as I do or would he see this as a simple predicament of class? A bell rang somewhere and a very large angry woman came out of the workhouse yelling for the children to come inside. I said goodbye to my new little friends and tired my best not to tear up as they marched their way back inside. I wanted to run after them. I wanted to burn the whole place down and set the children free, but where would they go? They had no families to feed them, no laws to protect them. What else could I do but watch them march back into the abyss they came from?

As I watched them go I noticed a man was standing not too far off from where I was standing. He had curly hair and a large goatee that went down to his chest. He was a rundown looking man but dressed well and had a pad of paper and pencil in his hand. He introduced himself as Mr. Dickens. He said that he was writing a piece inspired by this place and that he grew up close to here. He said that he had been watching this place for a while and thanked me for my moment of tenderness with them.  He told me he vowed to have places like this shut down and that children weren’t meant to work such hard labor all hours of the day.

“They all need a little more liberty—and a little more bread.”[8] He said and left without another word.

I went home thinking hard about what I had learned. Though England was in the prime of its life, its children were taking the brunt of all of the work. Aristocratic children are given an easier lifestyle but they have as much choice over their futures as the poorer children do. Higher class children are groomed for their marriage day simply so that their parents can get ahead in their social lives. They must marry well or they must do well for themselves. Poor children are sent to these dark corners of the country to serve out life sentences they were born into and work to keep the country running smoothly with products and materials used to show off the strength of the Empire. The country is run off of the back of children, from societal exchange to the little fingers and eyes lost in the war against metal production progress.

[1] Cooper, Shelia M. “Intergenerational social mobility in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-

Century England.” Continuity and Change. 7 (1992). 1. Online Article.

[2] Lorence, Bogna W., “Parents and Children in Eighteenth Century Europe.” History of Childhood

Quarterly. 2 (1974). 1. Online Article.

[3] Lorence, Bogna W., “Parents and Children in Eighteenth Century Europe.” History of Childhood

Quarterly. 2 (1974). 1. Online Article.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Street_Workhouse

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Street_Workhouse

[6] http://www.workhouses.org.uk/

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse#Early_Victorian_workhouses

[8] Black, Joseph, et al. eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume B. Second

Edition. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2014.

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