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What was life like for the lower class in the Victorian era?
Working class people often lived in cramped, back-to-back terraced housing . These houses were often poor quality and families lived in overcrowded conditions, often living in one room in a house. This overcrowding led to poor public health and was a consequence of the industrial revolution.
What was housing like in the Victorian era?
The houses were cheap, most had between two and four rooms – one or two rooms downstairs, and one or two rooms upstairs, but Victorian families were big with perhaps four or five children. There was no water, and no toilet. A whole street (sometimes more) would have to share a couple of toilets and a pump.
What conditions did the poor live in in Victorian England?
For the first half of the 19th century the rural and urban poor had much in common: unsanitary and overcrowded housing, low wages, poor diet, insecure employment and the dreaded effects of sickness and old age.
What is a Victorian poor house?
The Victorian Workhouse was an institution that was intended to provide work and shelter for poverty stricken people who had no means to support themselves.
What were poor Victorian houses like?
A poor Victorian family would have lived in a very small house with only a couple of rooms on each floor. The very poorest families had to make do with even less – some houses were home to two, three or even four families. The houses would share toilets and water, which they could get from a pump or a well.
What was life like in a poor house?
Conditions were very harsh; on entering you were stripped, bathed and issued with a uniform. Husbands, wives and children were separated and could be punished for talking to one another. Inmates followed a prescribed daily routine while the able bodied were set to work, although it was not compulsory.
What was it like in a poor house?
In these facilities, poor people ate thrifty, unpalatable food, slept in crowded, often unsanitary conditions, and were put to work breaking stones, crushing bones, spinning cloth or doing domestic labor, among other jobs. In the United States, the idea emigrated along with English colonists.
How did poor people live in the early 1900s?
In 1900, the average family had an annual income of $3,000 (in today’s dollars). The family had no indoor plumbing, no phone, and no car. About half of all American children lived in poverty. Most teens did not attend school; instead, they labored in factories or fields.
What was the difference between upper class and lower class Victorian houses?
The difference between upper class and lower class was vastly greater than it is today. Wealthy families lived in large Victorian houses three and sometimes four stories high with several rooms. They had more than one bathroom and even had flushing toilets.
What were the social classes in the Victorian era?
During this era, women were generally classified into very specific social groups: the upper class, the middle class, the lower middle class, the lower class, and the underclass. [16] As the Victorian era was based on the principles of gender, race and class. [17]
What was life like for the poor in the Victorian era?
The poor or lower class of the Victorian era had a very rough life. (More…) Few eras in history can evoke such ideas of contrast between the lives of different people as that of the Victorian era of 1837-1901 in Britain. (More…)
What were some of the worst houses in the Victorian era?
Some of the worst houses were ‘back to backs’ or courts. The only windows were at the front. There were no backyards and a sewer ran down the middle of the street. Housing conditions like this were perfect breeding grounds for disease. On the other hand, the homes for the middle classes and the upper classes were much better.