Parenting gets more relaxed: the Restoration and the Georgians

'Ann desires her love and thanks you for the little wax doll, which, I am sorry to say she soon made share the like fate of the King and Queen of France.'
(Geraldine Mozeley, Letters to Jane from Jamaica, 1788-1796)

In the late 17th century, after the Restoration in 1660, childhood began to be seen not only as preparation for adult life but also time to enjoy.  In Britain it is possible that the overturn of the political order in the Civil War (1642-51) also shook up the social order allowing new concepts to emerge. Lord Clarendon (1609-1674) attributed the change to many families going abroad during the troubles, some to France, having their children educated at French academies, exposed to French fashions, cookery, Catholicism, and manners.  'Children have lost reverence for their parents; parents have neither authority nor any sense of responsibility for their children...' he lamented
(The life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon...written by himself, Oxford edition, 1759 Edward Hyde was chief minister to Charles II)

Charles II dancing at the Hague, c.16670. Gonzalez Coques,
National Maritime Museum

Since the French aristocracy lived by rules still more formal than those of the English court, Lord Clarendon's views are possibly coloured by prejudice.  However it is possible that British exiles were also affected by contact with the far more informal small courts of the Netherlands and Germany, and with the households of the Dutch merchant middle classes where, wealthy though they were, rigid formal manners had never been the fashion.  The difference in attitude between the Dutch and British before the Civil War can easily be seen by comparing the many delightfully informal paintings of Dutch and Flemish interiors with British 17th century equivalents.  Perhaps the charm of that way of life was not lost on the British exiles.

Like Lord Clarendon, Roger North (1651-1734) deplored Restoration laxity and approvingly described his own mother's strictness in his memoirs:
'We had, as I say'd, stubborn spirits, and which was more grievous, (she) would force us to leave crying and condiscend to the abject pitch of thanking the Good Rail, which, she say'd, was to break our spirits, which it did effectively.'
(Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North, ed. A. Jessopp, 1887)

John Aubrey's well known comparison of family life before and after the Restoration was written about 1660:
'...In those days fathers were not acquainted with their children...for whereas one's child should be one's nearest Friend, and the time of growing-up should be most indulged, they were as severe to their children as their schoolmaster; and their Schoolmasters as masters of the House of Correction.  The child perfectly loathed the sight of his parents as the slave his Torturer.  Gentlemen of 30 and 40 years old, fitt for any employment in the commonwealth, were to stand like great mutes and fools, bare headed before their Parents; and the Daughters (grown women) were to stand at the Cupboards side during the whole time of the proud mothers visitt, unless (as the fashion was) 'was desired there leave (forsooth) should be given them to kneele upon cushions...'
(John Aubrey, Brief lives, ed. from the original manuscripts...ed. Oliver Dick, 1949 edition)
Although Aubrey condemned any form of indulgence, he felt that the selfishness and bad habits caused by over-indulgence was preferable to breaking their spirits with over-strictness

John Locke in his very influential Thoughts on Education,  upholds strict discipline, but the changing attitude to relationships between parents and children is evident in this passage:
'Would you have your Son obedient to you when past a Child; be sure to establish the Authority of a Father as soon as he is capable of Submission, and can understand in whose Power he is...as he approaches more to a Man, admit him nearer to your Familiarity; so shall you have him your obedient Subject (as is fit) whilst he is a Child, and your affectionate Friend when he is a Man.'
(John Locke, Some thoughts concerning education, 1693)

Title page of the first edition (Wikipedia)

However, relationships through the 18th century remained frequently quite formal by later 19th century standards.  The well-know writer Mrs. Sherwood, born in 1775, never sat down in her mother's presence, (The life of Mrs Sherwood,  1857)
The title page is from Mrs. Sherwood's History of the Sherwood Family, one of her best known improving stories for children.  It includes the famous account of Mr. Fairchild taking his children to see the dead body of a man, a murderer, hanging on a gibbet till it should rot away, as a lesson on what can happen to disobedient children who grow up to be wicked, passionate people who do wrong to others and break the law.

History of the Fairchild Family,
(Wikipedia)

The novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, writing in the mid-19th century, was struck by an old Shropshire lady's account of her childhood which interestingly resembles the quotation from John Aubrey.  She wrote it up for Sartain's Union Magazine, 1849 as The Last Generation in England, and later re-used the material in Cranford:
'Although an only child she had never sat down in her parents' presence without leave until she was married; and spoke with infinite disgust of the modern familiarity with which children treated their parents.
' "In my days," said she, "when we wrote to our fathers and mothers we began 'Honoured Sir', or 'Honoured Madam', none of your 'Dear Mamas', or 'Dear Papas' would have been permitted.'' 'Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, OUP 1972 Appendix)

A few children's letters which have been preserved from the 18th century show that not all families were so strict.  Lord Femanagh's eldest son John wrote to him from school in 1722:
'Dear Papa, I desire you to send for me home on Wednesday night, for to be at home on Thursday for to see the Duke of Marlborough buried.'   and: 'Dear Papa, George brought me some Gingerbread which you were so kind as to send me, as also a couple of Handkerchiefs.
(Verney letters, ed. Lady Verney, 1930, Vol. 2)
John's cousin Betty, aged nine, writes more formally: 'Honoured Sir, I was mightily pleased with your kind letter...My Mama desires if it had not beeen for me to a been in the Contrey before now, all well there, my Grandfather was so kind as to give me a guinie (guinea)...'She had been taken to London to be touched for the King's Evil by Queen Anne.(Verney letters, Vol. 1)

On the other hand, many autobiographical accounts show that although relationships between children and their parents were now often fairly informal, parents were still generally extremely strict:
'We were exceedingly fond of our Father.  t the same time his word was Law.  It never entered our minds, I believe, to disobey him, and I am reputed to have been in the habit of informing visitors that papa required implicit obedience.'  (Augustus Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 2)  This is an extract from Anna Gurney's reminiscences of her father, John Joseph Gurney, around 1824, and strict obedience was probably more commonly the rule in religious middle class families where, however, it was generally combined with loving concern.

Lord Shaftesbury(1801-1885) on the other hand, scarcely saw his parents when a boy, and said of them:'I and my sisters...were brought up with great severity, moral and physical, in respect of both mind and body, the opinion of our parents being that, to render a child obedient, it should be in constant fear of its father and mother.'
(Edwin Hodder, The life and work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, 1886, Vol. 1)

The increasing informality of family relationships from the Restoration to the early 19th century is shown not only by children's letters and accounts of their parents, but also in relatives' accounts of their children.  The change is evident in the long series of Verney letters, and is even more striking if these are compared with the extremely formal tone of the15th century Paston letters.  In these and the early Verney letters the children are scarcely mentioned, but by the mid 17th century their affairs are beginning to occupy a considerable amount of space.  Ralph Verney's great grandmother, Lady Denton, who was extremely severe with her own daughters, interceded  at length for her grandson in 1632:
'I heare he is disliked, he is so strange (shy) Sonn, you did see he was not soe, nor is not soe, to any where he is a quanted (acquainted), andhe must be woone with fair menes.  Let me begge of you and his mother that nobody whip him but Mr. Parrye, yf you doe goe a violent waye with him, you will be the first that will rue it, for i veryly beleve he will reserve ingery by it.' ((Verney letters op.cit, Vol. 2)

Another grandmother, Lady Anne North, whose severity to her own children was described by her son (see above) sent her son this particularly charming account of the ceremony of putting little Frank into his first long trousers, aged about eight:
'You cannot beleeve the great concerne that was in the whole family here last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to help to dress little Frank in his breeches...Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her weding night more hands about her, some the legs and some the armes, the Taylor butt'ning and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that had I not a finger amongst them I could not have seen him.....But this was not all, for there were great contrivings while he was dressing who should have the first salute (kiss), but he sayd if old Land (his nurse?) had been here she should, but he gave it to me to quiett them all.  They are very fitt, everything, and he looks taler and prettyer than in his coats.  Little Charles rejoyced as much as he did, for he jumpt all the while about him...PS When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion because they had not sent him one.'
(Roger North, op.cit. Appendix 1, letters from Anne, Lady North, 10 Oct. 1679)

Among all the alarms and disorders of the Civil War Sir John Oglander, who had been called to London and put under open arrest still wrote home in 1643 '...I play you write me word whether my letters be broken up, and whether you received little Jack's coral...' (Corals were often used for teething)
(Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell symphony, 1945)

Parents from the mid 17th century on seem to be able to express far more freely their grief at losing children, which is indication that it has become socially more acceptable to express affection freely and openly.  Although it has often been said that parents in earlier times did not care deeply for their children, because their feelings were rarely publicly expressed, it is more probable that they were acting according to the conventions of an extremely formal society.  John Evelyn's obituary for his five year old son Richard is probably the best known expression of this new freedom:
'...died my dear son Richard to our inexpressible grief and affliction; five years and three days old only but at that tender age a prodigy for wit and understanding; for beauty of body a very angel; for endowment of mind of incredible and rare hopes....(Diary of John Evelyn, Vol. 1, 1658. Edited by W. Bray, 1879)

The Rev. Ralph Josselin wrote in the 1640s, pathetically balancing human grief with correct religious feelings: 'My little sonne in all peoples eyes is a dying child, Lord thy will be done, thou art better to mee than sonnes and daughters, though I value them above gold and jewells.' (Diary of the Rev. Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683, ed. E. Hockliffe, Camden Soc. 3rd series, no. 15 1908)

Another diary entry which shows a parent trying to moderate his feelings in view of the immensely high infant mortality rates is the Rev. Philip Henry's.  While expressing his unbounded delight at the birth of his wife's first child, he writes apprehensively: 'I am bid to expect to see him often at Death's door and must moderate my love for him lest overloving end in overgrieving.'  Five years later it did: 'At sunsett this day hee dy'd our first born...a forward child, manly, loving, patient under correction, oh that I could now bee so under the correction of my heavenly father...'
( Diaries and letters of Philip Henry MA, 1631-1696 ed. Matthew Leu. 1882)

In the 18th century Verney letters the children are frequently referred to by affectionate epithets such as 'Our young Flock' and 'Young Hopeful branches.'  Detailed accounts of their health and doings were constantly passed between members of the family:
'All the three pretty children have had bad coughs that make them look thin.', 'My little girl is very brisk and well, but goes not perfectly Alone.'  'Your Godson is grown a brisk boy...he is the life of this house...he can say most of his Catechise and his prayers, and is so far the Christian you engaged he should be.'
(Verney letters of the 18th century, Vol. 1 op.cit)

Such accounts in family letters are not at all uncommon from the later half of the 17th century on, and give  tantalising glimpses of family life nearly three hundred years ago:
'Charles (aged 3) sed att diner he would call for a glas of Claret as Papa did; and not drink water.'
(Elizabeth Hamilton, The Mordaunts, an eighteenth century family, 1965, based on a collection of family letters and documents dating from end of the 17th century to the 1820s.)

'Pray desire Cousen Peg to buy me a pair of leading strings for Jak, ther is stuf made on purpose that is very strong for he is so heavy I dare not venture him with a comon ribin.'
(Verney letters of the 18th century op. cit, vol. 2)

'I am sorry your dear Boy has beat out his teeth.  Nature I hope will soon suply that defect; mine did not sleep last night till after midnight for want of his marbles, a new purchase that he is very fond of.'
(Verney letters op.cit. vol. 2)

Niky Rathbone: childhoodblog@gmail.com

A bit less education for the Girls: Puritans and Cavaliers

'Those that think one language enough for a woman may forbear the languages, and learn only Experimental Philosophy'

A 17th century book of instruction for girls

By the Restoration educational horizons  for well-bred upper class girls had narrowed down to preparation for marriage and a life of leisure. those learned Tudor ladies were no more.  The prospectus for Mrs Makin's school for young ladies reads:
'Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old that can read well may be instructed in a year or two (according to their Parts) in the Latin and French Tongues...Those that please may learn Limning (a kind of painting), Preserving, Pastry and Cookery.  Those that will allow longer time may attain some general knowledge in Astronomy, Geography, but especially in Arithmetick and History.  Those that think one language enough for a woman may forbear the languages, and learn only Experimental Philosophy.' (Mrs. Makin's school prospectus, c. 1673, Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School, 1929)

This is the prototype for the girls' school in the 17th century.  By the time of Charles I the daughters of Royalist families were regularly being sent to such establishments as noble families gradually ceased to maintain large private courts where young girls could be sent to be suitably 'finished'. With the Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the Commonwealth in the mid 17th century all that was swept away by the strict moral code of the Puritans for a time, but such establishments returned to favour, along with a more lax moral attitude, with the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II (1660)

In these schools for young ladies great emphasis was placed on manners and deportment.  Hannah Woolley,  in her advice to 'The Female Younger Sort' takes the line familiar from the books of courtesy:
'...be courteous and mannerly to all who speak with you...When you come to School salute your Mistress in a reverent manner and be sure to mind what she injoyns you to do or observe...Having done this, salute civilly your Schoolfellows...Show not your ill-breeding and want of manners by eating in the school, especially before your Mistress.'
(Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman's Companion or a Guide to the Female Sex, 1675, Gardiner op.cit)

Needlework and embroidery formed an important part of the curriculum, although most of it appears to have been not practical but  the kind elegant young ladies might use to occupy themselves.  The subjects advertised have a curious similarity to the occupations of Victorian girls, and show indirectly that well-to-do young ladies were being released from the necessity of running the household, and had time on their hands:  in the past young girls learned cooking, preserving, spinning, weaving, sewing, cleaning.  Mrs. Woolley's prospectus, however, advertises:  'All works wrought with a Needle, all transparent works, Shell-work, Moss-work, also cutting of Prints and adorning Rooms or Cabinets or Stands with them.  All kinds of Beagle-works upon Wyers or otherwise.  All manner of pretty toys for Closets, Rocks made with Shells or in Sweets.  Frames for looking-glasses, Pictures or the like.  Feathers of Crewel for the Corner of Beds.'

Hackney became popular for such schools, because of its healthy situation, just outside London.  Pepys went on an excursion there to see them on 20th April 1667:
'That which I went chiefly to see was the young ladies of the schools whereof there is great store, very pretty' (Pepys Diary 20 April 1667)
Many condemned these schools as worldly and kept their daughters at home employing governesses and tutors.  Aubrey in his Miscellanies calls the finishing schools 'places where young maids learn pride and wantonness' (John Aubrey, Miscellanies upon various subjects, 1626)
and Thomas D'Urfey's popular and scurrilous play Love for Money; or, The boarding school, 1691, was a severe blow to their popularity.

The daughters of devout Puritans were not to be found in such dubious establishments.  They were usually educated at home, frequently by their parents, generally along traditional lines, emphasising their domestic role.  Anthony Walker, a Puritan, but writing after the Restoration of the Monarchy says of his daughters' upbringing:
'her (his wife's) first Care was, to keep their Minds uncorrupted by Vanity or Pride, therefore kept them at home, not to save Charges, but avoid Inconveniences.'
(Anthony Walker, The Holy Life of Mrs. E. Walker, 1690)

Puritan parents would have been as one with the influential Tudor Catholic Juan Vives who had been tutor to the Princes Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, in emphasising  domesticity, piety and seclusion in the education of girls, for although Vives did believe in a wider curriculum for girls than most Puritans would accept, he did not mean  it to be at the expense of their chief role: 'Let her both learn her book and besides that to handle wool and flax (Vives, Instruction of a Christian Woman c.1529) This is a sentiment any Puritan would have echoed, or any ancient Greek or Roman for that matter.

The education of the Puritan Walker girls  included some surprisingly liberal, even frivolous subjects, which would not have been taught in the strictest Puritan households or have been approved of.  In addition to housewifery taught by their mother, they had a 'French Dancing Master in the House, and had a Writing and Singing-Master come to them.'

The upbringing of Lady Grace Mildmay was more typical of a Puritan girl's education.  Born in 1552, so being educated in the Tudor period, but a good example of a Puritan education, she was brought up by a poor relation governess and her mother, who used to beat her severely, and 'never so much as for lying'.  She studied writing, accounts, the herbal, needlework, and the lute, to which she sang psalms.  She read the Bible every day, and in her notes for the upbringing of her own daughter says, 'it is not possible for parents to be good or to have any virtues in them who seek not to make their children good.' and 'It is a matter of great importance to bring up children unto God, and to cause them to forsake the vanities and follies of this short and momentary lyfe.'. (Diary of Lady Grace Mildmay,  quoted in Quarterly Review, vol. 215, 1911)

Nor was religion neglected in non-Puritan households.  Lady Anne Halkett,  born in 1622, daughter of Thomas Murray, tutor to the future Charles I, says of her childhood: 'for many years together I was seldome or never absent from divine service, at five a'clocke in the morning in the summer, and at sixe a'clocke in the winter, till the usurped power (ie the Puritans who beheaded Charles I and set up the short-lived Commonwealth) putt a restraint to that pubicke worship so long owned and continued in the Church of England, where, I blese God, I had my education.' ( Autobiography of Anne, Lady Halkett, Camden Society Publications, 2nd series, no. 13 1875)
Lady Anne Halkett was educated at home and had masters to teach her and her sister French, to play the lute and virginals and to dance, a gentlewoman to teach them all kinds of needlework.  Incidentally, this is the lady who rescued Charles I's second son James from captivity during the Civil War.  As James II he rewarded her with a pension.

It is interesting that even in Puritan families music still remained an important part of the curriculum, although its role might be suitably adapted.  It was clearly an enormously important part of everyday life, and in girl's schools retained its importance for some time; Purcell;s Dido and Aeneas was originally written for a girls' school to perform to parents and friends, which gives some indication of the general musical standards expected.  In boys' schools, however, music was rapidly driven out by the expansion of the curriculum.

Niky Rathbone: childhoodblog@gmail.com

The English Puritans and their children

'My pretty Child, remember well,

you must your ways amend;

For wicked Children go to Hell,

that way their courses tend.'

(Henry Jessey, A looking glass for children, 1673)

The influence of the Reformation and of the slowly gathering strength of the Puritans took far longer to be felt than the effects of the Renaissance on education.  Although the Reformation had immediate consequences in the reign of Henry VIII ,as far as religious doctrine was concerned one of the most profound effects was the general increase in the intensity of religious feeling brought about by sectarian controversy.  This did not begin to show its full effect until the 17th century, when, through the Civil War and Interregnum the beliefs of the Puritan minority had a profound effect on the religious attitudes of the nation.  Nor did the influence of the Puritans on religious life cease after the restoration of the Monarchy in spite of the various Acts of Parliament passed against those who did not conform to the practices of the Church of England; the various Nonconformist sects gained rather than lost strength and from the late 17th century played an increasingly important part in improving social conditions as well as having an important effect on religious attitudes, and children's education.

Puritanism grew steadily in England from the end of the reign of Queen Mary I in 1558 when many Puritans who had gone into exile returned to England.  A prominent Puritan, Hugh Rhodes, wrote a book of courtesy printed in 1577 which is is interesting to compare with the earlier examples.  The advice on manners is much the same, but there is far more advice to parents on the spiritual upbringing of their children.  Rhodes placed great importance on this, like all Puritans, saying: 'The cause of the world being so euill of lyuing as it is, is for lack of vertue, and Godly bringing up of youth.'
He advised parents to keep a very strict watch over where they go and who they meet, to prevent them from becoming corrupted: 

'nor let your Chyldren go whether they will, but know whether they goe, in what company...Take hede they speake no wordes of villany...nor shew them much familiaritye...Mark well what vice they are specially inclined unto, and break it betymes.'.  Of course he advised parents to carechise their children frequently: 'Take them often with you to heare Gods work preached and then enquyyre of them what they heard, and use them to reade in the Bible and other Godly Bokes.'  Rhodes also voices the Puritan prejudice against fairy tales and romances which was to become so general in the 19th century among all right-minded parents and teachers: 'but especially keepe them from reading of fayned fables, vayne fantasyes, and wanton stories and songs of loue, which bring much mischiefe to youth...'
(Hugh Rhodes, The boke of Nurture, or schoole of good manners for men, servants and children...1577 EETS original series no. 32)

 Puritans addressed themselves with a particular sense of urgency to the salvation of children.  Lady Grace Mildmay expressed this sense of responsibility when she wrote: 'It is not possible for parents to be good or to have any virtue in them who seeke not to make theyre children good'
(Lady Grace Mildmay Diary, quoted in Quarterly Review 1911, vol. 15 p.128)

Mrs. Elizabeth Jocelin wrote The Mother's Legacie to her Unborn Child out of this sense of spiritual duty: 'Yet still I thought there was some good office I might do for my Childe more than onely to bring it forth
(tho' it should please God to take me.) When I considered our frailty, our apt inclinations to sin, the Devil's subtilty, and the world's deceitfulness; against these how much desired I to admonish it?'
(Elizabeth Joceline 1625)

In Puritan families adults and children were encouraged to keep spiritual diaries noting their progress towards salvation, or otherwise, and any evidence of divine grace.  (Similarly, Catholic children would be expected to go to Confession.) As a result of this regular diary-keeping many more details of day to day life are available from the 17th century onwards.  Evidence of divine grace seems to have given some diarists trouble, and God is credited with some curious interventions:
'I find we have another mercy to praise the Lord for. Thea has voided abundance of worms, some almost a quarter of a yard long...The Lord be praised'
(Dorothy Oglander to her husband, 1663, in Aspinall-Oglander, Cecil Nunwell Symphony, Hogarth Press, 1945)
 'This last night Matthew fell out of bed, not hurt, a wonderful preservation, blessed bee God, even our God' (Diaries and letters of Philip Henry MA 1631-1696 ed. Matthew Henry Leu, 1882)

At the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) legislation had been passed requiring heads of families to catechise their children and instruct them in the principles of religion according to the Church of England.  The reasons for this were political, since religious schism was one of the principal causes of political dis-unity in th 17th century.  Most heads of families regarded catechising their children as one of their most important duties towards them, and Puritans were particularly scrupulous about this.  Catechising children is noted regularly in their journals and diaries: 'Nov. 1 1661.  I catechised & instructed my children after supp, and wee had family duty, & went to bed,...'
(Diary of the Rev. Henry Newcome...ed. Thomas Heywood, Chetham Soc. Vol. 18 1849)

Children in Puritan households like that of Mrs.Walker learned to read at an early age, so that they could begin to study their catechism and Bible: 'To promote and forward their religious instruction she taught them to Read as soon as they could pronounce their Letters,.,,and sowed the Seed of early Pious Knowledge in their tender Minds, by a plain, familiar catechism.'
(Anthony Walker The Holy Life of Mrs. E. Walker...1690)

The best known Puritan work addressed to children, which remained in common use throughout the 19th century in both Britain and America is the Nonconformist minister James Janeway's Token for Children, Being an exact account of the conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young Children, 1671-2.

(British Library)

This was an attempt to terrify both parents and children into salvation. It contains two prefaces, one addressed to parents asking: 'Are the souls of your children of no value? Are you willing that they should be brands of hell?'  The second preface is addressed to the children:

  'You may now hear (my dear lambs) what other good children have done, and remember how they wept ad prayed by themselves...Did you ever get by yourself and weep for sin and pray for grace and pardon?...How dost thou spend thy time?  Is it is play and idleness, and with wicked children?...Were not these sweet children, which feared God and were dutiful to their parents?...What do you think is become of them, now they are dead and gone? Why, they are gone to heaven, and are saying hallelujahs with the angels...they shall never be sick, or in pain any more...And are you willing to go to hell to be burnt with the devil and his angels?  Would you be in the same condition as naughty children?  Oh hell is a terrible place, that's worse a thousand times than a whipping...Would you not do anything in the world to get Christ, grace and glory?  Did you never hear of a little child that died?  And if other children die, why may you not be sick and die? (James Janeway A Token for Children, 1671-2)

At a time when early death was only too common the effect on sensitive children of constant threats of hellfire may be imagined. John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress,  has left one of the best known accounts from this period of his childhood fears of hell:
'Even in my childhood he (God) did scare and affrighten me with fearful dreams...Also I should, at these years, be greatly afflicted and troubled with the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell-fire.  These things, I say, when I was but a child, but nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul that then, in  the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often much cast down and afflicted in my mind.'
Bunyan, however, in spite of the dreadful warning of his nightmares, admits he 'had but few equals (especially considering my years, which were tender, being but few) both for cursing, swearing, lying and blaspheming the holy name of God...'(Bunyan, Grace Abounding, 1666)

Bunyan's account calls to mind the most dramatic of Janeway's little biographies:
 'of a notorious wicked Child, that was taken up from begging, and admirably converted, with an account of his Holy Life and Joyful Death, when he was nine Years old.'
He was, says Janeway, 'a very monster of wickedness, and a thousand times more miserable and vile by his sin than by his poverty.  He was running to hell as soon as he could go, and was old in naughtieness when he was young in years...He would call filthy names, take God's name in vain, curse, and swear, and do almost all kind of mischief, and as to any thing of God's worse than a heathen.' (James Janeway, A Token for Children, 1671-2)

Another well known Nonconformist, Abraham Chear, wrote the well-known To a young Virgin, 1663:

'When by Spectators I am told

what Beauty doth adorn me,

Or in the glass when I behold,how sweetly God did form me.

Hath God such comliness display'd

and on me made to dwell

'Tis pitty such a pretty maid

As I should go to Hell'

(In Henry Jessey A looking-glass for children 1673)

It seems surprising that a strict Nonconformist should encourage a young girl to think about her looks; one of the characteristics of Nonconformist writing for children is that girls were constantly assured that a good nature shining out is all the beauty a face needs.  The first Puritans seem to have believed, until they were undeceived, that good Christian principles are all that is needed and god nature will follow.  But those little children did need lots of reminding:

'My little Cousin, if you'll be

your Uncle's dearest Boy;

You must take heed of every deal

that would your Soul destroy.

You must not curse, nor fight, nor steal

nor spend your time in games,

Nor make a lie, what e'ere you ailes,

nor call ungodly names.

With wicked Children do not play,

for such to Hell will go;

The Devil's children sin all day

but you must not do so.'

(Abraham Chear, 1673 op.cit)

The Nonconformist minister John Angier had a typical Puritan upbringing.  His mother, 'being a choice and gracious Christian, often spake to him of Soul concerns, wept and prayed much for him.'  He experienced religious conviction of being saved at about twelve, but after that he often had doubts which, he says, 'he kept to himself, and often retired into a corner, being ashamed that anyone should know of his heart-grief'  To him this would have been a sign that his spiritual re-birth had not been genuine.  He had a brother with the good Biblical name of Bezaleel.
(Oliver Heywood, Narrative of the life of John Angler, Minister of the Gospel at Denton, 1685,  Chetham Soc.  vol. 97, 1937)

The spiritual sufferings of children were welcomed as signs of their impending spiritual redemption:
 'The briny tears for the natural Death of one very desirable Child were swallowed up by the Tears of Gladness for the lively symptoms of the Spiritual Birth of another...The Pathetick Earnestness with which the Child cried for Pardon and supplies of grace, enflamed and melted all that heard her.'
(The Holy Life of Mrs. E. Walker, 1690)

This child's parents went on to record, with deep satisfaction, their little daughter's spiritual forwardness, much as a modern parent might describe signs of great intelligence:
'About four Years of Age, on days of Prayer and Fasting, she would sit by me the whole Day, and at Prayer hold up her little Hands...' ((op. cit. )

There seems to have been little attempt to distinguish between degrees of sinfulness, the thoughtlessness of childhood being as sure a path to hell as the misdeeds of the most hardened criminal.  Elizabeth Joceline makes a determined effort to equate disobedience with breaking all the Ten Commandments:
...thou canst not bee a disobedient child but thou art a murderer...of thy father...by thy disobedience his gray head brought with sorrow to the grave...'(E. Joceline The mother's legacie to her unborne childe.  1625)
As a result children often became morbidly over-anxious over relatively trivial faults:
'If I desired any thing that was grateful to my Appetite, when it was brought to me I durst not make use of it, because I thought it to be the satisfaction of a base sensual Appetite'  (Walker, op. cit)

'When his child was about five or six years old, she had a new plain Tammy Coat...having looked upon her Coat, how fine she was, she presently went to her Chair, sate down, her tears running down her eyes, and she wept seriously to herself.  Her Mother...said to her, How now? What is the matter that you weep?  The Child answered... I am afraid my fine Cloaths will cast me down to Hell.  Her Mother said, it's not our Cloaths but wicked hearts that hurt us.  She answered, "Aye, Mother, fine Cloaths make our hearts proud."'(Jessey, op. cit)

It is not surprising that  children often had no sense of proportion about their faults when adults accepted such confessions completely seriously. The spiritual sins of the Rev. Ralph Josseline when a child, though unspecified, sound more promising work for the Devil:  '...oh ye strange prodigious unclean lusts when I was yett a child; how often have I walkt with delight to meditate upon such courses, being too well acquainted with those scenes by books which I had; yett I bless God who kept mee from all outw'd uncleanness; praise bee to him, and for this I desire to loath and abhorre my selfe.' (Diary of the Rev. Ralph Josselin 1616-1683, Camden Soc. 3rd series, vol. 15 1908)

The famous reverend Richard Baxter has also listed the chief 'sins' of his youth:
'I was somewhat excessively addicted to play, and that with covetousness, for money.  I was guilty of much idle foolish chat, and imitation of boys in scurrilous foolish words and actions (though I durst not swear)
I was too proud of my masters' commentations for learning.
I was too bold and unreverent towards my parents.'
(Autobiography of Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae abridged from the folio, 1696, ed. J.M. Lloyd, 1925)

Like Lydgate, Baxter 'was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears...To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil, I have oft gone into other men's orchards and stolen their fruit, when I had enough at home.'  Like most children he loved fairy tales, but as an adult disapproved of them.
'I was extremely bewitched with a love of romances, fables, and old tales, which corrupted my affections and lost my time.' (Baxter op.cit)

The Rev. Henry Newcombe reveals in his diary that as a boy he spent his Sundays 'going nutting' and 'playing bandy ball' (op.cit) and when John Angier went up to Cambridge, away from his mother's influence, he 'fell off to vain companie and loose practises...see the slippperiness of youth.'Oliver Heywood's Life of John Angier, op.cit)

It is something of a relief to read these accounts of backsliding and irreligious behaviour; conformation of the essential normality of Puritan youth.  


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Moral Stories for Children

' A State is civilised in proportion to the number of its members, who have a lively sense of moral obligation... Where such a spirit does not prevail, the most flourishing condition of commerce and manufactures will be found an empty boat....'

(Thomas Beddowes, The History of Isaac Jenkins, preface to the 5th edition, Bristol, 1793)
Most of the source books for this post are now available on the internet, and it is well worth reading some of them.

Her Benny, A tale of Liverpool life.  1890
(Google eds. New York Public Library)

The growing concern of the British public about the living conditions of the poor, and particularly their children, was expressed in poetry and fiction, and quickly became a major theme of British children's books.  Their popularity is a sign of a developing social conscience in the Victorian period.  

In the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries most children's stories were written to serve a moral purpose by people who were working with the poor.  They saw it as very important to train children to be charitable.  There were very many stories written about the pleasures of giving, and relieving the wants of the needy, rather than selfishly spending pocket money on oneself.  Children were encouraged both by stories and in real life to visit the sick, to provide not only money but also to make and give woolly scarves, baby clothes, plain sewn shirts and warm shawls to the less well off.  There was very little state help for the poor and charity was extremely important.

Since many of these stories were written by people involved in religious movements there is generally a lot about conversion and the power of prayer in them.  Frequently the hero or heroine is exposed to, and resists, terrible temptation to steal or lie, cardinal sins for Victorian children.  Benny, saved from sin by his sister Nelly, prays for forgiveness at her urging: 'If you plaise, Mr. God, I's very sorry I tried to steal but if you'll be a trump an' not split on a poor little chap, I'll be mighty 'bliged to yer.  an' I promise 'e I won't do nowt o'the sort agin. (Silas Hocking, Her Benny, 1879)

Froggy, the crossing sweeper, when offered stolen money cries defiantly: "Take your two bob back again I say.  I'd rather starve than steal...'('Brenda, Georgina Castle Smith, Froggy's Little Brother, 1875) The same innate honesty is apparent in Oliver Twist, an outstanding example of the Victorian belief that gentle birth somehow genetically transmitted such gentlemanly  characteristics as honest, politeness and meekness combined with the ability to stand up fearlessly for the right.  The appealing Oliver probably did as much as a whole series of Parliamentary Reports to arouse public concern for children in the parish workhouses, and for those neglected outcasts begging on the streets whom Fagin and people like him used and corrupted.  The subtle irony of Dickens' description of Oliver's appearance before the Board of Guardians compresses into a few sentences the world of difference between observance of the spirit and the letter of the Acts for the training of pauper children:
  '"Well! you have come here to be educated and taught a useful trade", said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.
   "So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock" added the surly one in the white waistcoat.'  (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838)

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838
(Wikipedia)

It is easy to deride these moral stories and to forget that when there was only very basic state provision for the poor the encouragement of private charity was absolutely essential.  Children's books, rather than adult fiction, pioneered social realism in the portrayal of the conditions of the poor long before the great adult social novels of the 1840s and 1850s.

The History of Isaac Jenkins, by Thomas Beddoes, physician and close friend of the poet Coleridge, was published in 1793.  It describes the great harvest failure of that period and the effect on one poor family.  Here is part of the description of the sufferings of that winter: 

   'What was to become of the poor, now their little store was all eaten and gone?...It was bad already with them and a worse look-out...God be thanked; there are kind charitable folks in the world, or else many an honest poor creature would have perished for want that winter!...Notwithstanding there came great sickness over all the country, and numbers were swept away by the spotted fever, especially among the poor.  It went worst with the little children, for they died, generally one, sometimes two or more, where there were six or seven in a family.  And nothing was to be heard in the dark of the evening, but the church bells tolling for funerals...' (Thomas Beddoes The History of Isaac Jenkins, London, 1793)

Nonconformist Christian groups were particularly active producing moral stories which described the conditions of the poor.  Many of the writers were actively involved in working with the poor, in Sunday schools and ragged schools and various charities.  The moral stories and religious tracts were published by organisations such as the Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge and the Religious Tract Society.  It is hard to tell how much influence they had on the children who read them but many autobiographies mention famous titles such as the best-selling Jessica's First Prayer by Hesba Stretton, 1866:

Hesba Stretton (Sarah Smith) Jessica's First Prayer 1882 ed.
(Archive.Org. University of Connecticut)Just one of many editions

'A thin and meagre face belonged to the eyes, which was half hidden by a mass of matted hair hanging over the forehead, and down the neck; the only covering which the head or neck had, for a tattered frock, scarcely fastened together with broken strings, was slipping down over the shivering shoulders of the little girl.  Stooping down to a basket behind his stall, he caught sight of two bare little feet curling up from the damp pavement, as the child lifted up first one then the other, and laid them one over another to gain a momentary feeling of warmth.  Whoever the wretched child was, she did not speak; only at every steaming cupful which he poured out of his can, her dark eyes gleamed hungrily, and he could hear her smack her thin lips, as if in fancy she was tasting the warm and fragrant coffee.'  Jessica the little beggar girl is reclaimed for God by the local chapel, taught to read and keep herself neat and clean, and eventually adopted by the coffee stall owner.

Children were taught to differentiate between the deserving and undeserving poor, between those who kept their children clean and their houses neat as a new pin, whatever the weather, and whether or not hot water was easily available, and those sluts whose houses and children were filthy and whose husbands, if they had them, spent their money at the ale-house or on gin.

The feminist campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, also wrote the story of Caroline who has been allowed, as a moral lesson, to spend all her pocket money on finery so that she has none left to help the poor family her guardian confronts her with.  Mrs. Mason, having looked about for a suitable object of charity has found one: 'They ascended the dark stairs, scarcely able to bear the bad smells that flew from every part of a small house, that contained in each room a family, occupied in such an anxious manner to obtain the necessaries of life, that its comfort never engaged their thoughts.  The precarious meal was snatched, and the stomach did not turn, though the cloth on which it was laid was dyed in dirt.  When tomorrow's bread is uncertain, who thinks of cleanliness?  Thus does despair increase the misery, and consequent disease aggravates the horrors of poverty.'

(Mary Wollstonecraft, Original stories from real life, 1788)

Original drawing by William Blake for the 1791 edition, (Library of Congress)

Children's writers were fond of reminding their readers of the contrast between their comfortable lives and those of poor children, to encourage charity.  The Little Beggar Girl by one of the Taylor sisters is just one of an enormous number of similar poems included in children's anthologies:

'There's a poor beggar going by,

I see her looking in,

She's just about as big as I,

Only so very thin.

She has no shoes upon her feet,

She is so very poor

And hardly anything to eat,

I pity her, I'm sure.

But I have got nice clothes, you know,

And meat, and bread, and fire,

And you, mamma, that love me so,

And all that I desire

.....

Here, little girl, come back again

And hold your ragged had,

For I will put a penny in,

So buy some bread with that.'

 (Jane and Anne Taylor, Select rhymes for the nursery, 1807)

 After the revelations of the series of 19th century Parliamentary Reports on labour conditions, the hardships of poverty were often exaggerated by being described with unrelieved grimness for dramatic effect, while the poor, as fictional characters, were often sentimentalised.  Writers of fiction both for children and adults found in the sufferings of the poor a theme which moved their readers.  The working children of the poor excited particular concern partly because compassion of the weak and helpless was a quality which Victorian society admired, partly because the Victorian middle class was well on the way to creating a cult of cosy, sheltered childhood.  From Jane Eyre to Oliver Twist and Andersen's Little Match Girl, all wrung the heart precisely because they were children enduring sufferings which the reader no longer associated with a rather idealised idea of childhood.

Charles Kingsley's famous book about the moral education of a young chimney sweep boy, The Water-Babies was also inspired by Parliamentary Reports into working conditions, in this case those of chimney sweeps' boys, which had not improved much since the 1817 Report into their conditions, mainly because no adequate system of inspection had been set up.  Lord Shaftsbury pressed for further reforms in the 1840s and Kingsley's book helped to rouse public opinion.  The Water-Babies is a very unusual combination of fantastic fairy tale and social realism, and this is probably why it became a children's classic when most moral stories have been condemned as either too moralistic or too sentimental.  ' "Oh yes" said Grimes, "Of course it's me.  Did I ask to be brought here into the prison?  Did ask to be set to sweep your foul chimneys?  Did I ask to stick fast in the very first chimney of all, because it  was so shamefully clogged up with soot?  Did I ask to stay here - I don't know how long - a hundred years, I do believe, and never get my pipe nor my beer, nor nothing fit for a beast let alone a man."

"No", answered a solemn voice behind, "No more did Tom, when you behaved to him in the very same way."'  (Charles Kingsley The Water-Babies, 1863)

Mr. Grimes and Tom.  Illustrator Anne Grahame Johnstone,
c.1960? This children's classic ran to many editions.

Macdonald, himself from a poor background, included some pointed criticism of the insensitivity of some do-gooders in At the Back of the North Wind:  'I have known people who would have begun to fight the devil in a very different way.  They would have begun by scolding the idiotic cab man; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the wailing baby.'  

Few writers who wrote adult novels about the poor concerned themselves with children, but there are a few exceptions.  Dickens used characters such at Tiny Tim in 

A Christmas Carol and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop to heighten pathos in his novels. Arthur Morrison in Child of the Jago wrote the entire novel from the ;point of view of a child brought up in one of London's 'courts'; tenement blocks round a central enclosed square where, in some districts, the police would only venture in twos.

Arthur Morrison A Child of the Jago.
(Illus: Londonfictions.com)

A similar realistic novel is George Moore's Esther Waters, about that shocking unmentionable subject, unmarried mothers.,  It contains an expose of baby-farms, the subject of several Victorian scandals. Unmarried mothers who kept their babies found it very difficult to get jobs except as wet-nurses. Many simply abandoned the babies they could not support, as they had done for centuries. Thomas Coram opened the Foundlings Hospital in London in 1745 out of compassion for the babies whose bodies were to be found on every city dung heap.  In Victorian times infants began to be left in the care of a baby-farmer while the mother went to work.  The baby farmer was tempted to spend as little as possible on their care, to increase her profit, and in several cases these women were actually convicted of murdering their charges, having taken them for a fixed sum saying they would arrange their adoption.  In Esther Waters the baby-farmer Mrs. Spires offers to take Esther's baby off her hands for five pounds, and it is quite clear what will happen to him: '"It goes to my 'eart,'" said Mrs. Spiers, "It do indeed, but, Lord, it is the best that could 'appen to 'em; whoe's to care for 'em?  and there is 'undreds and 'undreds of them - ay, thousands and thousands every year - and they all dies like the early flies.  It is 'ard, very 'ard, poor little dears, but they're best out of the way - they're only an expense and a disgrace. "'

Moore believed that his book helped to remedy this situation by encouraging legislation making baby-farming illegal, and by helping also to create sympathy for unmarried mothers.

(George Moore, Esther Waters, 1894)

The popular best seller Ministering Children, 1854, is not only about the satisfaction to be gained from helping the poor, but about doing it in the right way, not just with money which might be misused, but with visits to the sick, comforting broths, warm clothing and good deeds.  In the preface Maria Charlesworth explains her aim:  'May it not be worthy of consideration, whether the most generally effective way to ensure this moral benefit (of practising charity) on both sides, would not be the early calling forth and training the sympathies of children by personal intercourse with want and sorrow.' (Maria Charlesworth, Ministering Children, 1854)

Ministering Children, 1867 ed.
(University of California, Archive Bookmaker)

Sometimes the writer breaks off the story to make a direct appeal, as in the best seller Froggy's Little Brother by Brenda; Georgiana Castle Smith , 1875:

  'Parents and little children, you especially who are rich, remember it is the Froggys and Bennys of London for whom your clergyman is pleading when he asks you to send money and relief to the poor East End.'  In Flora Thompson's Oxfordshire village where people were relatively poor 'many tears were shed over Christie's Old Organ and Froggy's Little Brother, and everyone wished they could have brought those poor neglected slum children there and shared with them the best they had of everything.' (Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 1945)

Froggy's Little Brother by 'Brenda' 1875
(University of Roehampton)

Children's stories in both Britain and America often included scenes such as the one in Little Women where the girls give their Christmas breakfast to a family of starving immigrants: 'A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled up under one old quilt, trying to keep warm.  How the big eyes stared, and the blue lips smiled, as the girls went in.  "Ach, mein Gott!  it is good angels come to us!" cried the poor woman crying for joy.  "Funny angels in hoods and mittens," said Jo, and set them laughing.!' (Louisa M. Alcott,  Little Women, 1868, an American story which was a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic)

The pathos in  most American  stories about the poor, as in Little Women, derives from the loss of a parent or facing straightened circumstances rather than actual starvation, as in Susan Warner's best-seller Queechy, 1852 which was based on her own experiences.  The popularity of books like this and Little Women may have been partly due to the uncertainties of life in America where fortunes were quickly made and as quickly lost.  The book was hugely popular in Britain with both adults and children; in Susan Warner's biography it says there were ten thousand copies sold at one railway station in England, but the publishers scouted the idea of sending the author a cent!' 

The optomistic, resourceful orphan girl was America's unique contribution to the genre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Heroines such as Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, or Jo in Little Women faced up to a hard world and made it love them for their impetuous but always good-hearted efforts to please and help others.

Mrs. Francis Hodgson Burnett, a British writer who emigrated to America on her marriage successfully combined the two types of story into one of the classics of its kind, A Little Princess, the story of a little girl whose rich papa leaves her at a select boarding school while he is on an expedition in search of further sources of wealth.  Letters stop coming and the bills remain unpaid.  Vindictive Miss Minchin makes Sara, once the prize pupil, into the school drudge.  Throughout all her trials she behaves with immense unselfishness and nobility.  In this enormously satisfying story the reader can not only enjoy identifying with Sara through miseries that are, masochistically, increased as a result of her immensely noble behaviour, but is rewarded not merely by a happy ending but by even vaster riches than those of which she was abruptly derived at the beginning of the book.  Moreover she magnanimously forgives Miss Minchin for making her the drudge of the school when the bills stopped being paid.

Here is Sara who has found sixpence in the street and bought hot buns when she sees a beggar girl: 'The child was still huddled up on the corner of the steps.  She looked frightful in her wet and dirty rags.  She was staring with a stupid look of suffering straight before her, and Sara saw her suddenly draw the back of her roughened, black hand across her eyes to rub away the tears which seemed to have surprised her by forcing their way from under her lids...Sara opened the paper bag and took out one of the hot buns, which had already warmed her cold hands a little...The child stared up at her; then she snatched up the bun and began to cram it into her mouth with great wolfish bites.  "Oh my! Oh my!" Sara heard her say hoarsely, in wild delight.  "Oh my!" Sara took out three more buns and put them down.  "She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving."But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun.  "I'm not starving, "she said, - and she put down the fifth.'  A great piece of writing which never fails to move an audience.

Illustration to an Edwardian edition
(Fotobook.com)

With so very many moral stories on the market 19th century readers may have eventually suffered from benefactor fatigue.  It may have been with some glee that they read parodies of the moral story such as Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring:
   '...there came toddling up to them such a funny little girl!  She had a great quantity of hair blowing about her chubby little cheeks, and looked as if she had not been washed or combed for ever so long.  She wore a ragged bit of a cloak, and had only one shoe on.
"You little wretch, who let you in here?"  asked Gruffanuff.
"Give me dat bun" said the little girl, "Me vely hungry."
"Hungry! What is that?" asked Princess Angelica, and gave the child the bun.
"Oh, Princess!" says Gruffanuff, "How good, how kind, how truly angelical you are !"...
"I didn't want it," said Angelica.
"But you are a darling little angel all the same" says the governess.
"Yes I know I am" said Angelica....' (William Makepeace Thackeray, The Rose and the Ring, 1855)

Edith Nesbit also gave a subtle twist to the Ministering Children theme:
'"Do you mean to say...that you and Alice went and begged for money for poor children and then kept it?"'
(Edith Nesbit, The New Treasure Seekers, 1904)

Child slavery Part II

'Naked to the waist, an iron chain fastened to a belt of leather runs between their legs clad in canvas trousers, while on hands and feet an English girl, for twelve, sometimes for sixteen hours a day, hauls and hurries tubs of coal up subterranean roads'. (Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil or, The Two Nations, 1845)

Children had been used as cheap labour for centuries without remark.  One interesting thing about this passage from Disraeli's Sybil, 1845, is that it was written at all:

(Title page from Wikipedia)

The details of Disraeli's description are taken directly from the recently published Report of the Commissioner for Mines, 1842 ( British Parliamentary Papers.  Industrial Revolution.  Children's Employment, vol. 6) one so shocking that Disraeli has actually toned down his facts.  The Report on conditions in the Lancashire mines breaks for a paragraph out of factual Commissioner's prose: '...any sight more disgustingly indecent or revolting can scarcely be imagined than these girls at work...the girls as well as the boys stark naked down to the waist...their sex was only recognisable by their breasts...at least three-fourths of the men for whom they 'hurry' were stark naked.'

The Commissioners and Disraeli were particularly upset by the conditions in which small children were found working, and by their extreme youth:'Infants of four and five years of age work as trappers in the dark, opening and closing the air doors to the galleries for the coal wagons.'  The children were down there in the pitch dark for hours at a time.  One of the Commissioners was particularly upset by Margaret Leveston, six years old, coal-bearer.  He tells her story in her own words:  'Been down at coal-carrying six weeks; makes 10 to 14 rakes a-day; carries full 56lb of coal in a wooden bachit. "The work s no guid: it is so very sair.  I work with sister Jesse and mother; dinna ken the time we gant (to work in the morning) it is gair dark." A most interesting child, and perfectly beautiful.'

From the mid 19th century onwards a number of British writers went to investigate the condition of the poor for themselves.  Henry Mayhew includes such accounts in his work on the poor in London.  Boys would sweep street crossings, hoping for a few pennies from passers-by.  Mayhew says:
'He was a good looking lad, with a pair of large mild eyes, which he took good care to turn up with an expression of supplication as he moaned for a halfpenny.
    A cap, or more properly, a stuff bag, covered a crop of hair which had matted itself into the form of so many paint-brushes, while his face, from its roundness of feature and the complexion of dirt, has an almost Indian look about it....
    He ran before me, treading cautiously with his naked feet, until I reached a convenient spot to take down his statement, which was as follows:
  "I've got no mother or father; mother has been dead for two years, and father's gone for more than that...(He lived with his sister till she got married, then he and his brother in law did not get on)  One day he hit me and I said I wouldn't be hit about by him, and then at that night sister gave me three shillings, and told me I must go and get my own living.  So I cleaned boots, and I done pretty well with them, till my box was stole from me... (He is fifyteen and has swept crossings for two years)  After the Opera we go into the Haymarket, where all the women are who walk the streets all night.  They don't give us no money, but they tell the gentlemen to..." (Henry Mayhew, Mayhew's London, selections from London Labour and the London Poor, 1851, ed. Peter Quennell, Spring Books, 1969 pp.399-402)

Boy crossing sweepers.
London Labour and the London Poor, 
1865 (British Library)

Mayhew's description of the coster girls is interesting to set against fictionalised accounts:
  'At about seven years of age the girls first go into the streets to sell. A shallow-basket is given to them, with about two shillings for stock-money, and they hawk, according to the tome of year, either oranges, apples, or violets; some begin their street education with the sale of water-cresses.  The money earned by this means is strictly given to the parents.  Sometimes - though rarely - a girl who has been unfortunate during the day will not dare return home at night, and then she will sleep under some dry arch or about some market, until the morrow's gains shall ensure her a safe reception and shelter in her father's room.  (Mayhew, p. 91)
In the hands of a writer such as Hans Andersen this dry description becomes a story to wring the heart,
the story of one little match-girl, afraid to go home on a cold winter's night:
'In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year; and the New-year's sun rose and shone upon a little corpse!  The child still sat, in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt.  "She tried to warm herself," said some!'  (Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, A new translation by Mrs. Paull...1867.  Hans Andersen is a Danish writer; translations of his work quickly became very popular in Britain)

Other British writers followed Mayhew in making their own investigations in the slums and producing accounts of what it was actually like for the teeming poor of Britain's big cities, maintaining themselves just above subsistence and coming into contact with the classes above them mainly when they failed to do so. Writers were particularly concerned by the working and living conditions of children, in such pitiable contrast to the sheltered childhood most middle class Victorian children were enjoying.  Hidden away in the back kitchens of squalid courts and tenements, mothers and children too young to be sent out to factories or service did long hours of piecework, paid pitifully small sums for what they produced:
   'In a kitchen, in a house of Jennens Row (Birmingham)...late one evening, I found three little children, busy at work at a table on which were heaped up piles of cards, and a vast mass of tangled hooks and eyes.  The eldest girl was eleven, the next was nine, and a little boy of five completed the conmpanionship.  They were all working as fast as their little fingers could work.  The girls sewed, the baby hooked...'The average earnings for a woman and her children at this work was about 8d a day, when a furnished room cost about 5s3d a week, starvation wages.  Other popular piecework trades were putting pins, buttons and safety pins onto card for sale and varnishing pen-holders.  'Three-halfpence may be earned at home by varnishing 144 penholders.  Each penholder must first be rubbed with sandpaper and then varnished, five coats of the varnish being applied with a sponge.  It is dirty and unpleasant work, and you may imagine the comfort of a slum-kitchen full of children in which three pennyworth of sticky penholders - 288 to wit - are lying about in the process of drying.  'One penny a day can be gained by a child bending the tin clasp round safety pins.  The nimble fingers of children are apt at this work.  Worst of all must have been sewing soldiers' and firemen's leather chinstraps: 'Where firemens's chinstraps have to be made, the needle has to be pushed through four thicknesses of leather.  It is hard work for little hands.' In many of these trades the workers had to supply their own needles and thread, the expense of which must be deducted from their pitiful earnings.
(The quotations above are from Robert Sherard  The White Slaves of England,  1887)

Internet Archive Bookreader, University of Toronto copy)

While earlier accounts of the lives of the poor such as Mayhew's are simply factual later ones are full of strongly emotive language.  Robert Sherard and George Sims were both investigating the conditions of the poor in the 1880s and 90s.  They were filled with a passionate sense of injustice at what they saw, and like novelists used exaggeration to capture the sympathies of their audience, using language which would make the reader compare these children with children leading more pleasant lives:

   'I never saw such little arms and her hands were made to cradle dolls.  She was making links for chain-harrows, and as she worked the heavy Oliver she sang a song.  And I saw her owner approach with a clenched fist, and heard him say: "I'll give you some golden hair hanging down her back!  Why don't you get on with your work?"'  Robert Sherard is describing the chain-makers of Cradley Heath in the Black Country near Birmingham, some of the worst paid workers in the country.  'Elsewhere I saw single bellows worked - at 3d a day to the worker and 6d to the employer - by very old men and women or by little boys and girls.  A particular and pitiful sight was that of a sweet lass - such as Sir John Millais would have liked to paint - dancing on a pair of bellows...As she danced her golden hair flew out, and the fiery sparks which showered upon her head reminded me of fireflies....' (Robert Sherard)

In George Sim's descriptions of London life in the 1880s the same emotional language and contrast between two ways of life is used, and he chose to concentrate on the misery of one child:
   'The attic is almost bare; in a broken fireplace are some smouldering embers...There is a broken chair trying to steady itself against a wall black with the dirt of ages.  In one corner, on a shelf, is a battered saucepan and a piece of dry bread.  On the scrap of a mantel still remaining embedded in the wall is a rag; on a bit of cord hung across the room are more rags - garments of Heaven knows what - it is a dirty, filthy sack, greasy and black and evil-looking.  I could not guess what was in it if I tried, but what was on it was a little child, - a neglected, ragged, grimed, and bare-legged little baby girl of four.  There she sat, in the bare, squalid room, perched on the sack, erect, motionless, expressionless, on duty.  She was a 'little sentinel', left to guard a baby that lay asleep on the bare boards behind her, its head on its arm, the ragged remains of what had been a shawl flung over its legs.  ...I should like some of the little ones whose every wish is gratified, who have but to whimper to have, and who live surrounded by loving, smiling faces, and tended by gentle hands, to see the child in the bare garret sitting sentinel over the sleeping baby on the floor and budging never an inch throughout the weary day from the place that her mother had bid her stay in.
(George Sims, How the Poor Live, 1889)

Internet Archive Bookreader,
University of Carolina copy)

Niky Rathbone e-mail childhoodblog@gmail.com