Charles Dickens Research Paper

The Victorian Child: Child Labor and Children Rights in Victorian Society

“…The next influx of that irradiation which our enlighteners are pouring in upon us, will illuminate the world with grave descants on the rights of youth, the rights of children and the rights of babies!” – Hannah More, author and educator in 1799 In reference to these words by an author in the late 1700s, it is evident to see that rights for children were something considered as universally silly at the start of the 19th century. Under the rule of Queen Victoria, however, England headed towards a more child-dominated society that by the time of her death, many child rights laws had been passed and gained significant support. Yet it is important to note that children

Dickens also was a child right’s activist and the impoverishment and exploitation of children was a strong theme throughout many of his novels. The novels contain a strong concern about the vulnerability of children at the time as he himself was sent to work at a blacking factory together with his family when he was 12. The novel Oliver Twist was written as a response to the Poor Law that was passed in 1834. The Poor Law was “intended to reduce the poor rates” by establishing workhouses throughout the country . These workhouses were intended to motivate the poor into working hard and earning what they can as no other able bodied person was to receive money or help from the government except when in a workhouse . The conditions in these workhouses were harsh, splitting up children and families and subjecting them to terrible living conditions. Dickens illustrated this real-life horror that was faced by the poor in Oliver Twist. In an article called Votes for Women written by Elizabeth Robins in 1909, it was stated that “what [the Poor Law] revealed is an incompetence and legalized cruelty in the treatment of the poor…that thousands of innocent children are shut up with tramps and prostitutes; that there are workhouses which have no separate sick ward for children, in spite of the ravages of measles, whooping cough…etc.

Lord Ashley, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury helped to establish the first Children’s Employment Commission in 1840. Lord Ashley also became president of the Ragged School Union, an organization that focused on constructing numerous schools for the poor. The Children’s Employment Commission published reports on the conditions of children working in mines and collieries . These reports and testimonies proved to be quite shocking to the public and was the inspiration behind the famous protest poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning called “The Cry of the Children” written in 1844. In the poem, Browning emphasizes on the dire situation of the working children and pleads members of the government to change the laws and reform. Browning closes the poem questioning the effects of industrialization and asking the government, “How long/O cruel nation/Will you stand to move the world/On a child’s heart?