The Victorian era was a dark and hard time for many children. During these times, unlike today, child labouring was a thing which people were accustomed to. A number of times young kids would go to work rather than school. First, during this time child labor was a common thing, the kids of many parents in fact would have their children work. Children as young as 3 years old, would work in coal mines and factories to help support their families. Due to the fact that a bountiful of parents could not afford to give their kids an education. During this time steam was the number one source of energy, in order to obtain steam you had to have water and heat. To make heat, a great amount of coal had to be burned. Therefore coal mines had a large number of children working, and having children working in the coal mines attracted many mining companies. Not only were they able to maneuver in tight spaces , but they did not demand a high amount of pay (“Victorian Child Labor”)
However the atrocious conditions in which these young kids worked in lead to many defects in their growth. The coal mines were dark, making
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One of those jobs was chimney sweeping, which had kids brush off the accumulated soot in the chimneys. Smaller children were adequate for this job since they were diminutive, that made them perfect for fitting into small chimneys. The results of this kind of work were calluses that would develop on the hands and knees of the young ones, since they had no protection against the rough brickwork. In conjunction with this they also inhaled all the soot inside the chimneys, and the consequence of this was lung damage. Ever so often some of the children would get stuck in the chimneys, to solve this problem the bosses of the youngsters would commence to light a fire to encourage them to wiggle themselves out. At time this lead to suffocation (“Small Children Worked as Chimney