What type of jobs did victorians have

Like the toshers, these workers made their meagre money from dredging through the gloop looking for items of value to sell, although in this case they were plying their messy trade on the shores of the Thames instead of mostly in the sewers. Seen as a step down from a tosher, the mudlarks were usually children, who collected anything that could be sold, including rags for making paper , driftwood dried out for firewood and any coins or treasure that might find its way into the river.

Not only was it a filthy job, but it was also very dangerous, since the tidal nature of the Thames meant it was easy for children to be washed away or become stuck in the soft mud. Tiny children as young as four years old were employed as chimney sweeps , their small stature making them the perfect size to scale up the brick chimneys. Inhaling the dust and smoke from chimneys meant many chimney sweeps suffered irreversible lung damage.

Smaller sweeps were the most sought-after, so many were deliberately underfed to stunt their growth. Most had outgrown the profession by the age of Some poor children became stuck in the chimneys or were unwilling to make the climb, and anecdotal evidence suggests their bosses might light a fire underneath to inspire the poor mite to find their way out at the top of the chimney.

Fortunately, an law made it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to climb and clean a chimney, though some unscrupulous fellows still continued the practice. Rat catchers usually employed a small dog or ferret to search out the rats that infested the streets and houses of Victorian Britain. Catching rats was a dangerous business—not only did the vermin harbor disease, but their bites could cause terrible infections.

The rats could be stored like this for days as long as Black fed them—if he forgot, the rats would begin fighting and eating each other, ruining his spoils. Crossing sweepers were regarded as just a step up from beggars, and worked in the hopes of receiving a tip.

Their services were no doubt sometimes appreciated: The streets during this period were mud-soaked and piled with horse manure. The poor sweepers not only had to endure the dismal conditions whatever the weather, but were also constantly dodging speeding horse-drawn cabs and omnibuses.

In the early 19th century, the only cadavers available to medical schools and anatomists were those of criminals who had been sentenced to death, leading to a severe shortage of bodies to dissect.

Medical schools paid a handsome fee to those delivering a body in good condition. Leeches can survive for up to a year with no food, so they could be stored at the pharmacy to be dished out as required.

Pity the poor person whose only chance for an income was to be a pure finder. Their job was to scour the streets of large cities, searching for and collecting dog feces that was used in the older formulations for making leather.

Leather was in great demand in Victorian times, as it was used not only as tack for horses but for shoes, boots, bags, and in bookbinding. Pure collectors haunted the streets where stray dogs gathered, scooping up the poop and keeping it in a covered bucket before selling it on to the tanners. Some collectors wore a black glove to protect their scooping hand, but others considered it harder to keep a glove clean than a hand and eschewed the practice altogether.

Sickness was rife among these people, usually teenagers who could carry the large buckets, and death was not uncommon. In Victorian London, and several major cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, there were huge underground sewer networks for removing and washing away the effluence of the city. Toshers made their living by sorting through the mounds of raw sewage in the sewers, looking for anything valuable they might clean up and take to the local pawn shops.

It was extremely dangerous work: Noxious fumes formed deadly pockets, the tunnels frequently crumbled, there were swarms of rats, and at any moment the sluices might be opened and a tide of filthy water might wash the toshers away.

As a result of these dangers, toshers generally worked in groups, instantly recognizable in their canvas trousers, aprons with many large pockets in which to stash their booty , and lanterns strapped to their chests. Most toshers also carried a long pole with a hoe at the end to investigate piles of human waste for dropped treasures, or with which to steady themselves if they stumbled in the gloom.

After a major Act of Parliament in , it became illegal to enter the sewers without permission. Rather than abandon the trade however, many toshers began working late at night or early in the morning to avoid detection. Despite the stinking and dangerous conditions, it was a lucrative business for the working classes, with many a coin or silver spoon sloshing about in the quagmire.

Similar to Toshers; they make their meagre income by sorting through the detritus of other people. However in their case, their territory is exclusively the banks of the River Thames. Considered as a step down from Toshers, these children collected anything that they could find at low tide.

This included rags used for making paper , driftwood for fires , and any coins or other treasures that might have been washed into the river. Not only was it a filthy job, but it was also very dangerous, since the tidal nature of the Thames meant it was easy for children to be washed away or become stuck in the soft mud.

See Vermin Control. This occupation had nothing to do with religion. At the start of the nineteenth century, the only cadavers available to medical schools were those of known criminals who had been hanged.

As the medical profession grew in number, there developed a sever shortage of cadavers available for the teaching of anatomy. Medical Schools would pay handsomely for the delivery of a body in good condition.

As a result, many wily Victorians saw an opportunity to make money by robbing recently dug graves. The "profession" was taken to an extreme by William Burke and William Hare in Scotland, who were thought to have murdered at least 16 unfortunates between and The pair enticed victims to their boarding house, plied them with alcohol and then suffocated them, ensuring the body stayed in good enough condition to earn the fee paid by Edinburgh University medical school for corpses.

After the crimes of Burke and Hare were discovered, the Anatomy Act of finally helped bring an end to the grisly resurrectionist trade by giving doctors and anatomists greater access to cadavers and allowing people to leave their bodies to medical science. In Victorian times matches were made by hand, by cutting wood into thin slivers, and then coating the ends with white phosphorous.

This is an extremely dangerous and toxic chemical. The work was primarily the responsibility of teenage girls; 12 — 16 years old. They worked indoors, in terrible conditions, for anywhere from 12 — 18 hours per day. They were required to eat at their work-stations, and thus their food was often contaminated with the dangerous chemistry.

Matchstick sellers were frequently younger female members of the same family, forced to work to keep the family afloat. Tiny tots as young as 6 years old could be seen on street corners in the larger cities, in all kinds of weathers, plying their trade. They would try to keep the matches dry, as, otherwise, the product was useless. Often out on the streets from am to pm, these tiny children might earn as much as a shilling a week 12 pennies ; money that went to keep the family alive.

See Chimney Sweeping. The mute was then required to lead the coffin on its processional route to the family graveyard. Being an engineer was a relatively new occupation in both the UK and on the Continent.

From the mid eighteenth century, right through the nineteenth century, engineering blossomed. From when the canals were first started, through the development of the railroads, and the need for civil engineering, engineers were required to ensure that things worked.

Men such as Brindley, the Dadfords, Outram, and Smeaton blazed trails that had never been seen before in the West. Using crude instrumentation, they were able to determine land slopes and hill and mountain terrains.

And plan the first canals and build the first non-stone bridges. The Sankey Canal was the first British canal of the Industrial revolution, opening in From that point and through to about , more than 4, miles of canals were built in the UK. These required civil engineers for the construction of locks and lock equipment, tunneling engineers for the required tunnels the longest in the UK was the Standedge tunnel in east Lancashire at a length of more than 3 miles , aqueducts the Pontcysyllte in Wales, at more than 1, feet long, the longest in the UK , and shorter aqueducts to carry the canals over roadways.

From these beginnings, civil engineers like Thomas Telford built the first completely iron bridge in Shropshire, England opened in , and later men like Abraham Darby who developed the ironworking processes required.

Not long after, the railroad was invented, with George Stephenson designing the first steam locomotive, the Rocket, in The first commercial railway in the world was the Liverpool to Manchester line opened in From these early beginnings, engineers then designed the looms and spinning machines for the great expansion of the cloth industry, the kilns and casting equipment for the potteries, the first iron and then steel marine vessels, and, finally, the internal combustion engine in Germany that initiated the automotive industry.

See also Science and Engineering. In almost all cases, religious leaders in Britain came from the gentry. There was usually a sequence of occupations for the males in any family, as follows: First Son inherited the title; Second Son went into the military, with a purchased commission; Third Son went into the Ministry; Fourth Son became an educator or teacher.

In Victorian times, the church was the center of the community, as well as the focal point of community life. The church leader Vicar was granted a residence, as well as an annual stipend that provided for his temporal support and well being. To a great extend both the Vicars and Rectors consider second in command performed their tasks well. They cared for the parish members, both spiritually and physically, and were active in organizing all the major parish activities.

Ambitious members of the Clergy would compete for higher offices as they matured, first becoming Bishops, then Archbishops, and, at the peak, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This calling was next in order to the Monarch, who was the titular head of the church. At the start of the Victorian Era, education was almost always limited to the upper classes. It was felt that educating the lower classes would be a waste of time, as they would never have a need for things learned in school. This concept probably went back to the Middle Ages, when the need for education was limited, and the church specifically limited any chances for such because of the use of Latin in the church.

The Victorian Era yielded great developments in terms of education, and this time period had distinct characteristics in regards to the educational system. Public education evolved significantly at this time primarily because of new laws that were developed to make education compulsory for a wider range of individuals.

Though many advancements in the field of education came to fruition in Victorian England, there were still significant gaps between social classes and genders. As a result of all of these multi-faceted aspects of British education, literacy rates among the population increased dramatically by the end of the era.

Thus at the start of the era, the occupation of a teacher or educator was limited to either young women who had not been married, or to older women who, for some reason, had not become married. Except for the field of higher education University , males tended not to be interested in becoming teachers, and the salaries were particularly low.

University Professors will be introduced later. A man called Lord Shaftesbury was obviously touched by the story and the spattering of public outcry that followed. The Chimney Sweepers Act made sure that all chimney sweeps had to be registered with the police.

Then their work had to be officially supervised. The guidelines of the previous acts would be enforced as well. Victorian Child Labor was nothing new for Britain or all of Europe for that matter.

Children had been used for labor for centuries. It was expected of them to help support their families. Laws were passed and then amendments to those laws were passed until the use of children under the age of 16 years of age was prohibited for full-time work. But up until these laws were passed child labor in Victorian times was rampant. Factory and mill owners saw children as cheap effective labor. They worked for a mere fraction of what an adult earned.

And girls were even cheaper. Because of their size and youthful energy there were jobs that children performed as good or even better than adults.

Sometimes you would find more children than adults working at a factory. At the factories children had no rights.

The dirtiest jobs were given to the children. Many times a child would be told to clean under machines even while they were running. There were little or no safety measures put in place in Victorian times so the occurrence of an injury and even death was not uncommon. Victorian child labor consisted of very long working hours. The normal work week would be Monday thru Saturday from 6 A.

Children would be beaten or fined for falling asleep, making a mistake or being late. He was so impressed by what he saw that he went back to England and started the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Published by Paxton Price on: Mar 2, Home Contact Us. Working Conditions in the Mines One of the on the job aspects of Victorian Child Labor was the dreadful working conditions.