Social changes.

The increase and success of industry meant that the middle classes grew in numbers and these people had more money to spend. They built large elaborate houses that were filled with china and glass ornaments and paintings. Middle class women were expected to manage the household, with servants, including a cook and possibly a butler and coachman. They would not have a job, apart from helping charities because it was not considered “respectable”. As the middle classes employed servants this gave more women leisure time to try new sports, such as archery, tennis and croquet.

For the wealthy, fashions reflected increasing prosperity; women wore crinolines. Later women wore a bustle at the back. Men wore frock coats and winged collars. In the 1860s walking-sticks with silver knobs also became popular. Children from wealthy Victorian families saw little of their parents except at tea-time.

For working class children life was very hard. Most poor children did not go to school as they were expected to work. There was virtually no help for the unemployed, sick, old or poor at this time. People either starved, begged in the streets or were sent to the local workhouse.

The enormous difference between the wealthier Victorians and the poverty of the working class stirred many social reformers to start voluntary organizations.

Education and learning.

One area that changed completely was education. At the beginning of Victoria’s reign, the state left children’s education mostly to the churches and parents and there was little interference by the state.

Wealthy people’s sons got the best education, usually being sent away to Public (fee paying) schools such as Eton or Rugby, but, even in wealthy families, girl’s education was inferior. Girls were educated at home by governesses. Many people thought that educating girls too much would harm them. Accomplishments to catch a husband such as singing, dancing, sewing, were thought to be more important than academic subjects were for upper class girls. 

Middle class families educated their sons too, sending them to lesser fee-paying boarding schools, grammar schools or other day schools. Poor children might go to a Dame school, charity or church school, a “ragged school”, run by philanthropists or charities for the very poorest children and orphans or a Sunday school, run primarily to give children a religious education. However, most children worked in factories, businesses, climbing chimneys, and in mines. The industrial revolution called for a huge labour force and children were cheap to employ. Some families were so poor that everyone had to earn what they could.

British Governments slowly introduced Health and Safety at Work regulations over the Victorian period and, eventually, forbade children working in many industries. Governments introduced Education Acts throughout the Victorian era, not because of an outbreak of loving kindness by politicians but for ulterior reasons. There were two driving motives, one was the increasing realization that the increasing complexity of machines and the fact that Britain’s industries needed to remain competitive in the World market, required an educated, or at least literate, workforce. The 1832 Electoral Reform Act had widened the franchise by one million and further measures for electoral reforms widened the franchise further. As Robert Lowe, liberal Member, said during the Commons debate on the 1867 Education Act, “We must educate our future masters”, in other words one purpose of education was to educate people so that they used their vote wisely.

Acts attempting to regulate or restrict children’s employment had been introduced from 1800 but were mainly unenforced, The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 forbade children from working more than 12 hours per day and banned children doing night work, but local magistrates did not enforce the act. The 1819 Factories Act restricted children working more than twelve hours per day in cotton mills, but again local magistrates did not enforce the law. The 1833 factories Act required that child workers receive two hours schooling each day. The 1867 Electoral Reform Act meant that most working men in towns could vote.

The 1870 Forster Education Act established school boards in each area and stated that there should be a school place for every child and that where there were insufficient schools board schools should be set up. It also gave the two church organizations, which ran schools grants. The act did not make education compulsory, or free.

An 1876 Education established school attendance committees to encourage children to take educational opportunities and making parents responsible for ensuring their children received basic instruction. Committees could, if they wished, pay school fees for poor children but this was not compulsory.

The 1881 Education Act made school attendance compulsory for all children aged 5 to 10. However, school fees were around three old pence per week and many poor parents could not afford this sum.

In 1891, The Fee Grant Act made elementary education free and an 1899 Education Act raised the school leaving age to 12. The combined effects of all these Education Acts effectively reorganized Primary Education giving the state a much greater role in the sector but education for all children was only at this level. Britain was lagging behind France and Germany in having no organized Secondary education provision. The 1902 Balfour Education Act provided for funding Secondary schools from the local rates.

The Victorian education reforms laid firm foundation stones for the comprehensive state education system that Britain has today. At the beginning of Victoria’s reign, education was haphazard, and educational provision left to churches and charities. In 1841, 33% of British men and 44% of British women signed their marriage certificates with a mark because they could not write their own names. Today, literacy rates in Britain are at 99% because of its system of universal compulsory education.

The Victorians continued with education reform despite fierce opposition. Factory owners did not want to lose the cheap labour that children provided. The churches, wanted to keep their control over education. The upper classes opposed educating the poor because they believed that education would make them think and find their lives dissatisfying and revolt against the established order. They did but it was a very quiet revolution, an evolution rather than a revolution and one in which education played a small part.

Education was part of the great Victorian push forward. Education was a necessary part of the great strides that Britain made during this time in engineering, industry, politics, science and discovery. All these were the strands leading to Britain becoming a modern nation. The impact of education reforms on Victorian Britain was enormous. At the beginning of Victoria’s reign children were working in mills, factories, mines, and other establishments doing all types of work. At the end of the Victorian era all British children aged between five and twelve were at school. The Victorian education reforms were the beginning, the 1870 Forster Education Act began a process that would continue until in 1973 the school leaving age would be sixteen. The Victorian reforms in education gave poor children a childhood by giving them a free compulsory education. Today in Britain, the idea that small children should work is unthinkable. The education reforms gave the British people the great gift of literacy and numeracy and the sense that education was for everyone, boy or girl, rich or poor, and that education was a right rather than a privilege.