The Victorian Period was the era during the reign of Queen Victoria.

The period (and Queen

Victoria’s life) lasted from 1837 to 1901. It was called the best of times and the worst of times.
The Victorian Age was marked by change-induced crisis in politics, economics, religion, and
social affair. A great deal of change took place in this area because of the Industrial Revolution.
Overall, the Victorian Period was a time of conflict and reform.

Blacksmiths had a place among the working classes, and men worked with their hands and arms
in a hot grimy oven. Blacksmiths, who have a history that goes back thousands of years, have a
far higher economic and social position than farm or factory workers. Blacksmiths remained in
demand independent and in demand until well into the twentieth century when the automobile
destroyed many of their opportunities for work.

London’s transport infrastructure was developed in the Victorian Period. Railways were the
demise of canals, tramways took over from omnibuses, and for most of London the beginnings of
the underground system were laid. The first passenger railway opened up in 1836. Others soon
followed and the 1840’s to 1860’s were the boom years of the railway in London. The first
underground line, the Metropolitan Railway opened in 1823 and was a huge success, carrying
40,000 passengers on its first day. Unlike the modern Tube system today, it was a normal steam
train running underground and there were ventilation shafts along the way to let the steam out.

Prison Ships (Hulks) were used as places of confinement and punishments for offences. There
are three decks, of floors, called the upper, middle, and lower decks. They communicate by two
large openings at the center and the foremost end; and, as these openings in each deck are placed
above those in the deck below, they form a kind of tube, reaching from the hold to the
atmosphere above. The habitable part of the upper deck was 84 feet long by 38 feet 6 inches
wide; and is divided into two lateral portions by a central passage; the inner boundary being a
partition consisting of iron bars reaching to the full height of the deck. Near the bow of the vessel
are two small rooms appropriated to the sick, and an open space for the ladder and hatchways.
The prison on the middle deck is 79 feet long by 45 feet wide. There are seven ports of each side,
four bulkheads, ten classes, and the dividing passage that opens to the chapel. The prison on the
lower deck was 115 feet long by 43 feet wide, and was a space occupied by dark cells and
storerooms. The floating prison could hold six hundred men, of these 124 on the first deck, 192
on the middle deck, and 284 on the bottom deck.

The original prison at Newgate was built in 1188, but rebuilt in 1770. After being badly damaged
by the Gordon Riots in 1780, George Dance was commissioned to design a new prison at
Newgate. Newgate prison was divided into two sections. There was the Common area for poor
prisoners and a State area for those who could afford more comfortable accommodation. These
sections were further divided between felons and debtors. The freedom to walk around could be
bought, if enough money changed hands. Prisoners were also housed according to their ability to
pay, ranging from a private cell with a cleaning lady and visiting prostitute, to simply lying on the
floor with no cover and barely any clothes. Leaving prison was not simply a matter of finishing a
sentence and walking out. A departure fee had to be paid and, until it was prisoners could not
leave. Every Monday morning large crowds would assemble to watch the public executions.

The establishment of a national system of education came late in England mainly because of the
social, economic and religious climate of the country. Social Education was not mandatory until
the Education Act of 1870. The higher classes of society had no interest in advocating the cultural
development of the working classes. Neither did the mass majority of the working class have any
real interest in education. Child labor was a common practice in this period and working class
families were very reluctant to give up the earnings of their children for the benefit of education.
Religious conflict also delayed the establishment of a national system of education. One example
of this can be seen in the clauses regarding education in the 1843 Factory Bill. There was violent
opposition on the part of nonconformists and Catholics alike because, according to the bill,
headmasters had to be of the Church of England. The idea of secular education had never been
popular during the century. Education had been almost exclusively under the control of the
church.

There were many rules of etiquette in the Victorian Period.

• Victorian Girls were trained early on in life to prepare herself for a life dedicated to home
and family if she married, and charity if she didn’t.
• Invitations must be sent at least seven to ten days before the day of the event, and should
be replied to within a week for their receipt, accepting or declining with regrets.
• Rise one’s feet as respect for an older gentlemen.
• Break bread into morsels rather than eating the bread whole.
• Conversation is not to talk continually, but to listen and speak in turn.
• When introduced to a man, a lady should never offer her hand but merely bow politely
and say, “I am happy to make your acquaintance.”
• A gentleman may delicately kiss a lady’s hand, the forehead or at most, the cheek.

The Victorian City of London was a city startling contrast. New building and affluent
development went hand in and with horribly overcrowded slums where people lived in the worst
conditions imaginable. The population surged during the 19th century, from 1 million in 1800 to
over 6 million one century later. A combination of coal-fired stoves and poor sanitation made the
air heavy and foul-smelling. Even royals were not immune from the stench of London, when
Queen Victoria occupied Buckingham Palace her apartments were ventilated through the
common sewers. For all the economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions
among London’s poor were appalling. Children young as five were sent to work begging or
sweeping chimneys.

There is a modern myth that until quite recent years the vast majority of women devoted
themselves exclusively to home-making and the bearing of large families, and that only a few
engaged in gainful employment. Victorian women provided a vast reservoir of labor necessary
for an expanding though immature economy whose fluctuations demanded additional workers at
some times, fewer at others. The exact size of the female working population is impossible to
know since the Census returns usually almost always greatly under-estimated it; the numbers of
women factory workers may of well have been more or less accurate, domestic services probably
rather less so, but thousands of milliners and seamstresses, washerwomen, framework knitters,
mailers, straw planters, and women workers who worked in their own homes must have escaped
the Census. The Census of 1851 gave a total of 2.8 million women workers over the age of ten in
employment out of a female population of 10.1 million, forming a proportion of 30.2 percent of
the whole work force.

In the 19th century, children lived in very difficult conditions because they lived near factories
and in unhealthy flats or in suburbs with poor hygiene. They had bad nutrition. They ate some
bread, pork, milk or cheese (not every day). This favored infant mortality and diseases. Towards
1830 charity associations came to help children and their families. It gave food and clothes to
everybody. After 1840 school was an obligation and children stopped working. But the conditions
remained very difficult for all because streets and suburbs were very dirty in England. In 1830,
children could be ill with cholera when they drank water. Streets in London were dirty.
Conditions of life were very difficult. Children lived in the street and the industrial revolution
caused pollution. Many children were very ill. Children's lungs infected and they blackened. They
had tuberculosis. These diseases were the infection of the lungs. Whooping cough was
practically the same as tuberculosis. It was a virus. In the 19 the century vaccines didn't exist. The
rate of mortality was high.

Although many scholars refer to the Victorian Age as that of Puritanism, the amazing changes
that took place during Queen Victoria’s reign challenged all prevailing beliefs in the fields of
religion, spirituality and overall, the supremacy of the church of England. It was an age of
Democracy; it was an age of popular education, of growing brotherhood and social unrest.
Several people tried to put forward alternative views of religion, and their writings found wide
acceptance among the general public. As the result of conflict two schools of religious thoughts
were born- The Anglican Group, who believed in the traditional infallibility of the Church of
England and the Non-Conformists who were outside the High Church.

That the shameful practice of child labor didn’t have an important role in the Industrial
Revolution from its outset is not to be wondered at. In the vicinity of Halifax scarcely anybody
above the age of 4 was idle. The children of the poor were forced by economic conditions to work
with his family in the debtor’s prison. Many children worked 16 hour days under atrocious
conditions, as their elders did. Ineffective parliamentary acts to regulate the work of workhouse
children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours a day had been passes as early as 1802. Soon
laws were enforced that regulated kids from 11-18 to work at most 12 hours per day, children 9-
11 at most 8 hour per day and children under nine not allowed to work at all. These laws only
applied only to the textile industry, where children were put to work at age 5, but no to a host of
other industries. Iron and coal mines (where children started working at 5 and usually died before
they were 25), gas works, shipyards, construction, match factories, nail factories, and the business
of chimney sweeping.

At some point in history, having an unpaid debt would have been considered sufficient grounds
for imprisonment. The debtor would be held in a designated debtor's prison until his or her family
could satisfy the creditor's demands. A debtor's prison during the Middle Ages was often a large
communal cell where both men and women lived in filthy conditions for months or even years,
depending on the size of the debt and their family's ability to raise the money. Some debtors were
allowed to work off their own debts through labor, but many were condemned to remain behind
bars.

A debtor's prison was also a prime breeding ground for all sorts of diseases, which often led to a
number of fatal outbreaks long before debts could be repaid in full. Some prisons allowed brief
visitations from family members, and a few even allowed debtors to live outside the prison in
order to produce their goods or pursue their trades. The concept of a debtor's prison was primarily
to motivate family members to eradicate the debt as quickly as possible. Imprisoning the head of
the household provided more than enough incentive, but quite often the debtor's families did not
have the necessary skills or experience to run a profitable business.

The practice of imprisoning debtors in a squalid debtor's prison continued for several centuries.
The early United States government tolerated the establishment of a debtor's prison until passing
a law to end the practice in 1833. The British parliament followed suit in 1869, although it was
still legal to briefly jail certain debtors who could afford to repay their debts but chose not to do
so. Only a handful of countries around the world still have designated debtor's prisons for those
who cannot repay large debts and do not have the legal protection of bankruptcy to ward off legal
collection efforts by their creditors.

Apprenticeship is a time of balancing short term gains against long term advantages. You can
make a decision to take lower wages for a year or so in order to gain an interesting job, good
salary, and job security. If you make this decision, you know that if you successfully serve as an
apprentice, you will gain these benefits. But apprenticeship is not only a benefit for you. It is also
a benefit to the industry and the whole of society. That is why apprenticeship has a long and
honorable history. For thousands of years, such things as shoes, furniture, household utensils, and
other essential items of everyday life were produced by families or clans that specialized in
making one of these items. By the twelfth century, these craftsmen began to organize themselves
into guilds.

The guilds became very powerful. The right to work at a trade depended upon membership in the
proper guild. The guilds were the rough equivalent of today's union. These craft Guilds consisted
of apprentices, journeymen, and masters. They set the conditions of apprenticeship, controlled
working conditions, and set wages for journeymen.

An apprentice lived with the master who taught a skill. The apprentice was taught the complete
skills of the occupation. He lived in the house of the master and was provided with food, clothing,
and other basic necessities, but was almost never paid any wages. Sometimes he was taught
reading, writing and arithmetic. Generally, at the end of the apprenticeship he was given a new
suit of clothes and an agreed upon sum of money. Sometimes the apprentice had to demonstrate
the skill that had been learned. The apprentice then became a journeyman.

During the Middle Ages a complex system of courts developed to deal with both civil and
criminal law cases. By the nineteenth century courts exercising criminal jurisdiction could be
considered under three headings, Magistrates’ Courts, Assize Courts, and the Court of King’s (or
Queen’s) Bench. At the beginning of the nineteenth century individual justices of the peace
frequently tried summary offences (those not needing to be heard before a jury), in their own
home. Many of the country houses of the gentry contained a justice room’ for this purpose. This
practice became less common by the 1830's and was abolished by the Summary Jurisdiction Act,
1848. From then on all summary trials had to take place at formally constituted Petty Sessions,
before at least two magistrates. These Petty Sessional courts existed back in the eighteenth
century but were rather casual affairs. An Act of 1828 had tightened up procedures and carefully
defined Petty Sessional divisions within counties. Neither formal nor informal types of court
involved the hearing of indictable offence, i.e. those requiring to be heard before a jury.
The principal court of the magistrates was Quarter Sessions, held in each county town, and
known as the Epiphany, Lent (or Easter), Summer and Michaelmas Sessions. Pressure of
business could lead to extra or special Quarter Sessions being called. These courts were held
before a bench of county justices, with a jury. Many boroughs, by their charters, also ran their
own Borough Sessions, before magistrates appointed by the corporation. Bedford had its own
borough court. These borough Quarter Sessions also tried indictable offences. Professional judges
travelled on a circuit, covering a number of counties to deal with criminal cases assigned to them
by the bench of county or borough justices. Usually these were the more serious cases, including
capital offences. Before 1842 the line between Assize and Quarter Sessions cases was rather
blurred; an Act of that year consigned all capital offences and those with life imprisonment for
the first offence to the Assizes. Cases were heard before a single judge and a jury. Circuit
boundaries changed over the years but during the period under review Bedfordshire was part of
the Norfolk Circuit, which also embraced Bucks., Hunts., Cambs., Suffolk and Norfolk itself.
Usually the Assize court was held in the county town, twice a year, the Spring or Lent and the
Summer Assize. London was a special case, and in 1834 the Central Criminal Court, popularly
called the Old Bailey, was set up for the metropolitan area of Greater London; it was an Assize
Court. In origin this was the king’s personal court, with a variety of functions connected with
protecting the interests of the Crown. Cases could be referred to it where it was believed that a
fair hearing in a particular locality was impossible. It was also a court of review for magistrates,
who could ask it to rule on points of law. Judges at the Assizes normally consulted their
colleagues on points of law but, in 1848, the Court for Crown Cases Reserved was set up for this.
During the nineteenth century there was no appeals procedure or court of appeals. A convicted
criminal’s only hope was the Royal Pardon, in practice delegated to the Home Secretary. Finally,
in 1907, the Court of Criminal Appeal was established.

From 1788 to 1823, the Colony of New South Wales was officially a penal colony comprised
mainly of convicts, marines and the wives of the marines. The early convicts were all sent to the
colony, but by the early 1800s they were also being sent From 1788 to 1823, the Colony of New
South Wales was officially a penal colony comprised mainly of convicts, marines and the wives
of the marines. The early convicts were all sent to the colony, but by the early 1800s they were
also being sent directly to destinations such as Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land, Port
Macquarie and Moreton Bay. Twenty per cent of these first convicts were women. The majority
of women convicts, and many free women seeking employment, were sent to the 'female
factories' as unassigned women. The female factories were originally profit-making textile
factories. The Parramatta Factory grew as an enclave for pregnant women and also served as an
orphanage from the 1830s. Twenty per cent of these first convicts were women. The majority of
women convicts, and many free women seeking employment, were sent to the 'female factories'
as unassigned women. The female factories were originally profit-making textile factories. The
Parramatta Factory grew as an enclave for pregnant women and also served as an orphanage from
the 1830s. From 1810, convicts were seen as a source of labour to advance and develop the
British colony. Convict labour was used to develop the public facilities of the colonies - roads,
causeways, bridges, courthouses and hospitals. Convicts also worked for free settlers and small
land holders.