Aquila Children's Magazine AQUILA Magazine Best Bits | Page 23

Are you Oliver Twist? You could
probably survive at least a few
weeks in a Victorian workhouse.
Joking aside, remember
not only would you have
had to endure many
tough conditions all at
once, you would also have
been separated from your
parents and siblings. Are
you still sure you’d be
able to make it?
MOsTlY b s
Yes, you’re easy-going but you’d
probably not last more than a
day in a Victorian workhouse.
You’d be up at 6am and
working by 7am, and apart from
a short break for a really bland
and nutrition-less lunch, you’d
work all the way through to
6pm and be expected to be in
bed by 8pm. And that’s not
mentioning the type of work
you’d be doing...did someone
say bone crushing?
MOsTlY c s
You’re lucky workhouses are a
thing of the past. You wouldn’t
survive longer than five
minutes. With your love of
luxuries, it is hard to imagine
the harsh conditions that the
Victorian poor had to endure –
as well as relinquishing all
power and all individual
identity – in many ways the
workhouse was worse than
prison.
Poverty was rife in Victorian Britain
(Hmmm, I’m pretty certain it ’s still
about today, ed) . There were many
reasons for this. For one thing, the
Industrial Revolution, which had
begun around 1760, meant that
machines were now doing jobs that
were traditionally done by people.
There was less paid work to go round.
The class system was also inflexible. It
meant that there was little chance that
you would grow up to be any wealthier
than your parents. In 1834, the New
Poor Law Act was passed. The idea
behind it was to ‘help the poor help
themselves’. One of the main features of
the New Poor Law was that England
and Wales were divided into areas called
unions. Within each Poor Law Union a
workhouse was built.
Workhouses were places able-bodied
people without jobs or homes could go
to if they wanted food and shelter – but
they had to work for it. (I’m guessing
we’re not talking about cosy 9-5 desk
jobs here, are we?) Workhouses
weren’t prisons, in most cases poor
people entered them voluntarily and,
with notice, they could leave voluntarily,
but the treatment they received and
conditions inside were bleak.
Workhouses also didn’t cater for
vagrants, who were seen as a ‘lower
class of person’ to the ‘deserving poor’.
However, on the flipside, it is believed
that these institutions saved thousands
of Victorian Britons from starvation.
TaKiNg iT FuRtHeR
If you had been in government in the
Victorian times, what would you have
done differently to help people in
poverty?
Hutton
MOsTlY a s