Educating the Poor in the 18th and 19th centuries.

'Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are...very pernicious to the Poor, who are forc'd to get their Daily Bread by their Daily Labour...Those who spent a great part of their youth in learning to Read, Write, and  Cypher, expect and not unjustly to be employ'd where those Qualifications may be of use to the; the generality of them will look upon downright labour with the utmost Contempt...'
(Bernard de Mandeville, Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, 4th ed. 1725
See also on internet, The Fable of the Bees)

William Underhill, The Village School,
(Wolverhampton Art Gallery)

In  the 18th and 19th centuries there was fierce debate over whether or not education should be universal, compulsory, run by Church or State, teaching methods and the curriculum.  Especially in America there was a lot of disagreement about the relative merits of the study of classical languages, science, modern languages and other subjects with direct practical uses.

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries a British, or a New England, child, especially in the middle classes, might begin his, or her, schooling at a dame school such as that described by the poet William Shenstone:

'Lo now with state she utters the command!
Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair;
Their books of stature small they take in hand
Which with pellucid horn secured are,
To save from finger wet the letters fair;
The work so gay than on their backs is seen;
St. George's high achievements do declare;
On which thilk wight that has y-gazing ben,
Kens  the forth-coming rod, unpleasing sight,
  I ween....'  (The Schoolmistress, 1737)

It was just this kind of school which William Gray attended with the poet Tennyson in the 1760s:
'Betsy Dales...held her school in her own sitting room and lodging room.  Her sceptre was a long hazel rod, polished by long use, which Tennyson and I well remembered.  Not I think that he ever felt its stroke.  Being a gentleman's son, when he rebelled, which he often did, he was tied to the bed post.'
(Mrs. Edwin Gray,  Pages and diaries of a York family 1764-1839.  Macmillan,1927)

A dame school (BBC Archive, Victorian schooling)

Children were sent to dame school at about the age they now go to playgroups or, in the late 19th century after Pestalozzi's educational methods became popular, to kindergarten.  Boys intended for a conventional classical education would often then be sent to begin Latin and Greek with a clergyman, as they often took a few pupils to supplement their incomes.  Alternatively boys or girls might be sent for a few years to some free charity school.

Working class children generally received only basic education, and sometimes not even that. Many were sent to a dame school for a few years before starting work at about age seven.  They might learn to read, possibly to write.  From the late 18th century increasing numbers learned to read in Sunday schools set up by charities or by their employers.  Girls sometimes attended work-schools where they learned a useful trade; sewing or lace-making, for example, getting a basic education and also earning their keep.

Horn books, used to teach the ABC and Lord's Prayer
The text was covered in a very thin sheet of horn, to protect it from little fingers
(Pinterest)

The 1697 Report for the Reform of the Poor Law gave great encouragement to the development of charity schools.  It had an appendix by John Locke, then Commissioner of the Board of Trade, which set out a plan for setting up working schools in every parish.  His plan was to see that relief intended for children was not spent by their parents in the ale house, and giving children industrious work habits early in life.  He also hoped the products of their labour would help pay for their maintenance:
'The children of the labouring poor are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness, so that their labour is also generally lost to the public till they are twelve or fourteen years old...The most effectual remedy for this, that we are able to conceive, and which we humbly propose, is, that working schools be set up in each parish, to which the children of all such as demand relief of the parish, above three and under fourteen years of age, whilst they are at home with their parents, and not otherwise employed for their livelihood, by the allowance of the overseers of the poor, shall be obliged to come.  By this means the mother will be eased of a great part of her trouble in looking after and providing for them at home, and so be more likely to work; the children will be kept in much better order, and be better provided for, and from their infancy be inured to work which is of no small consequence to making them sober and industrious all their lives after.'
(John Locke, Report for the reform of the Poor Law, 1697  Quoted in Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society, 500-1948, Univ. of Toronto Press, 1969)

The school diet was to be plentiful but plain; bread, with warm water gruel in winter.  On the cost of the scheme Locke calculated hopefully:
'Whereas it may reasonably be concluded that computing all the earnings of a child from three to fourteen years of age, the nourishment and taching of such a child during the whole time would cost the parish nothing, whereas there is no child now which is maintained by the parish but before the age of fourten costs the parish fifty or sixty pounds.'
(John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning  Education, 1693, Appendix A)

John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education

The most successful work schools were run by charitable organisations such as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society for the Reform of Manners, founded 1691.  These were religious organisations founded to bring the poor to God.  Many were set up by Nonconformists such as the Quakers and Baptists.

The SPCK, the most important of these reliugous organisations, did not set up schools but linked together the efforts of various groups scattered all over Britain.  Originally the  SPCK was interested in providing basic education in reading, writing and religion, but it soon became attract to the idea of work-schools and in 1719 decided to employ children doing piece work for industry:
 'spinning, sewing, knitting or any Employment to which the particular Manufacturers of their resprective Countries (sic; counties) may lead them....this will bring them to an Habit of Industry as well as prepare them for the Business by which they are afterwards to subsist in the World, and effectively obviate an Objection against the Charity Schools, that they tend to take poor children off from those servile Offices which are necessary in all communities and for which the wise Governour of the World has by Providence Resigned them.'
(Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School, 1929, p. 27,quoting from the SPCK REports, 1737)

The idea of work schools was very popular in America, where John Locke was very much admired.  In Pennsylvania many similar schools were established by different religious sects, particularly the Moravians.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pennsylvania USA
(Britannica)

There is a description in Harper's Magazine 1882 of the Wilson Industrial School and Mission, New York, which Miss Fryatt describes as 'the pioneer of the many industrial schools since organised in New York City'.  It only took girls and was a day school.  The pupils had three hours tuition in English in the morning, a warm dinner and two hours plain sewing in the afternoon.  They also learned how to carry out simple household duties of the kind that would help them to enter service as maids.  There were classes in religious instruction for both the girls and their mothers.  The pupils were mostly German immigrants from what Mis Fryatt describes as one of the worst slums in the city.
(Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. 64, 1882, p.374-381)

The New England Primer, 1777,
(Internet Archive, internet edition available)

The New England Primer .  It was compiled by the Rev. John Rogers, martyred for his faith at Smithfield, London, in the reign of Queen Mary, 1554.  His Primer, with its woodcut of Rodgers, burned at the stake, watched by his wife and ten children, became the standard for all young American Puritans in New England  to study their first alphabet, vocabulary and grammar

The work of charity schools was supplemented from the 1780s by Sunday schools.   Nonconformists set many of these up and ran them as part of their efforts to make Christianity meaningful to the working classes and the poor.
Although Robert Raikes is credited with being the first founder of Sunday schools, in fact the idea seems to have been but into practise independently in several parts of the countr.  By 1786 Raikes' friend Samuel Glasse thought 200,000 children were being taught and the movement continued to spread throughout the 19th century.  (from entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, Raikes, Robert)

Sunday schools provided basic education for children such as apprentices who were not able to take advantage of other schooling opportunities.  Th schooling provided varied considerably according to the school.  Basic religious knowledge centred on the Bible would be the main subject, and most Sunday schools also attempted to teach children good personal habits.  In the Sadler Report on child labour, 1832, the Rev. G.S. Bell is quoted pointing out that children working a fifteen hour day had no time to learn basic household skills; speaking of girls he said:
'The generality of them are as unfit as they possibly can be to fill the important station of a cottager's wife.  How should they, considering the length of labour to which they are now subjected...I am acquainted with many that can scarce mend a hole in their garments.' (Michael Sadler, Report of the Select Committee on Factory Children's Labour, Parliamentary Papers 1831-2, vol. 2, p. 423  Sections available on the internet)

Brook St. Ragged and Industrial school, London, 1853
(BBC Archive, Victorian schooling)

Although the children were taught to read they were not necessarily taught to write, since many of the school founders clearly felt this would make them unfit for their pre-ordained station in life.  The redoubtable Hannah More, founder of Sunday schools in Cheddar among numerous other good works, made her position clear in a letter to William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery campaigner:
The children at her schools learned the Bible, the catechism, and 'such coarse works as may fit them for servants.  I allow of no writing for the poor' (Dictionary of National Biography, More, Hannah)

However, Sunday schools did a great deal of important work, and did partly fill a much felt need for education.  This is shown by the attendance figures and individual testamonies.  For instance, Mrs. Trimmer, the writer, opened a Sunday school in Brentford in May 1786.  By July 159 children were attending, by June 1788 over 300. (Dictionary of National Biography, Trimmer, Sarah)  These were children who were most probably working all the week, maybe 14 hours a day.    By 1803 enough schools had been opened throughout the country for the Sunday School Union to be formed.

Witnessed brought before the Parliamentary Commissioners investigating working conditions were frequently asked whether they had attended Sunday schools, and many did so, although they often said they tended to fall asleep.  Those who did not often excused themselves on the grounds of exhaustion, and many clearly would have liked to attend.  One of the clergymen interviewed testified that, 'since this Factory Bill has been agitated, when I have been at the Mills the children have gathered round me for a minute or two as I passed along, and have said, "When shall we have to work 10 hours a day?  Will you get the Ten Hours Bill?  We shall have a rare time then; surely somebody will set up a necy (sic, night) school; I will learn to write, that I will."'
(Michael Sadler, Report of the Select Committee on Factory Children's Labour, Parliamentary Papers 1831-2, vol. 2, p. 470  Sections available on the internet)

Parents were often equally concerned to get some education for their children, particularly in mining districts, where night schools and Sunday schools were especially popular.  The 1842 Report of the Commissioner for Mines showed that many children attended,  though it was not easy for them.  One witness testified:
'When his son (aged six) gets a little more hardened to the pit, his father means to send him to night school and stop an hour off his sleep.'  The child had been at school from the age of three until he was sent down the mine.
(Report of the Comissioner for Mines, British Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Industrial Revolution, Children's Employment, Vol. 6, p. 90.  Surprisingly, this does not appear to be available on the internet, though some references are available. It makes shocking reading)

Charles Shaw was a child worker in the North Staffordshire potteries in the 1840s.  He attended dame school but had to leave and go to work at age seven.  He remebered, as he was working, seeing a boy about his own age reading a book, and the bitterness he felt at being deprived of education:
'the sight of this youth reading at his own free will forced upon my mind a sense of painful contrast between his position and mine.' (Charles Shaw, When I was a child, 1903, p.21)

In 1811 Andrew Bell, Superintendent of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church began to set up a national system of Church day and Sunday schools, largely run by volunteers.   Fashionable ladies often  became involved with this charity work, providing annual teas for the children and taking an interest in finding them work when they left.  The schools often provided a good education of its kind. In Two Generations, there is a description of one:
'The children were given a uniform dress consisting of poke bonnets, dark prints and white tippets, and were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and excellent sewing (they were all girls) They executed all the needlework for the underclothing of my sister Alice's trousseau'  This was in the days before sewing machines, when sewing, and knitting were really valuable skills.

The patrons of such schools could be very high-handed:
'On one occasion my mother, who took a great interest in the dame school, finding that the children's hair was often untidy, sent an imperative order that the locks of all the scholars should be shortened to the backs of their necks - and, with the message, the barber to execute it.'
(Osbert Sitwell, Two Generations, 1940, Memoirs of Mrs. Campbell Swinton, p.68)

A Ragged School for girls
(BBC Archive, Victorian schooling)

These schools were usually run on the monitorial system, largely developed by Joseph Lancaster.  This system, which was also very popular in America in the early 19th century, depended on the use of the brightest children as pupil-teachers.

The 1870 Education Act which provided for the setting up of school boards in all districts of the U.K. marked the transfer of control of the education system from the Church, but compulsory education did not finally become law in Britain until the 1880s.  Parents and employers continued to flout the ever-increasing restrictions in the employment of children until well into the 20th century.  Ages were frequently falsified until registration of births was made compulsory, and still more frequently school attendance, particularly in country districts, was simply irregular, according to demand for the children's labour.  Farmers often expected to have the labour of their workmen's whole families made available to them at particularly busy times, and children tended to be taken away from school to help get in the crops, working in family units, with even toddlers helping by twisting corn stalks to bind the sheaves.  Parents would also keep their children back to help with gleaning, for this was generally a field-hand's perquisit and an important addition to wages.  The depressed entries in the Akenfield school log show the difficulties rural teachers faced:

'June 1889: attendance bad.  Picking stones has ended and weeding in the fields still continues...Twenty boys hardly ever attend and are seen working.  The law is broken here with impunity...work how you will, it is uphill work in rural schools.'  'April 3rd 1890.  Field-work, gathering stones, cow keeping and farm work has reduced the average.  35 out of 61 attended.  It is impossible in my opinion to teach either Geography or Grammar owing to the bad attendance caused by the farmers sending the children out on the fields....'
(Ronald Blythe, Akenfield.  1969.  p.165. 'Akenfield', a made up name, was based on a real village in East Anglia)

In Lark Rise to Candleford Flora Thompson described her village school around 1900:
'The girls in their ankle-length frocks and long, straight pinafores, with their hair strained back from their brows and secured on their crowns by a ribbon or black tape or a bootlace, the bigger boys in corduroys and hobnailed boots, and the smaller ones in homemade sailor suits or, until they were six or seven, in petticoats.
(Flora Thomoson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 1945, p.171)

'Governess' taught all the classes herself in one room, with the assistance of two monitors aged about twelve.  Flora Thompson does not mention the absenteeism which plagued the teacher at 'Akenfield' but at about thirteen schooling finished, the boys going onto the local farms and the girls into service in local farmhouses and later, if they were lucky, in some grand country house, following a pattern which had been traditional for centuries.

However, Flora Thompson recorded the wind of change which was blowing even through remote Oxfordshire villages by her time; instead of teaching children to know their place, Miss Shepherd 'taught them that poor people's souls are as valuable and that their hearts may be as good and their minds as capable of cultivation as those of the rich, and read them stories of boys of poor parents who became great men (there were no women, Laura noticed)'
Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 1945 p.182)

Alison Uttley, the children's writer, and daughter of a respectable but not rich farmer also gives a description of a typical state school in Britain in the late 19th century:
'fifty children had lessons in the long open room.  On the walls were glass cases full of geological specimens, grey, brown and black stones, sparkling stones, bright green malachite, fossils and shells...Little classes of childdren, each with a pupil teacher, sat along the room, and in the centre sat the headmaster at his desk...By his side was the cane with which he swished the hands of unfortunate childdren...The lessons, the games, the singing and music, the open-air drill when little girls used wands and boys iron dumb-bells, all made a wonderful life for me.'
(Alison Uttley, Ambush of Young Days, 1937, p.155-9)

These schools were tough, but gave many children their start in life.  Schools for the 'gentry' could be just as rough.

Nurses and Governesses; surrogate parenting

'Parents were aware that the child could be a nuisance, and a whole hedge of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and schoolroom, was necessary, not so much to aid the infant as to screen him off from his father and mother, except on such occasions as he could be used by then as adjunct, toy or decoration.'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand! An autobiography, 1943, Vol. 1, p.92)

John Sargent, The Sitwell Family, 1900 (Wikipedia)
Edith, Sir George, Lady Ida, Sacheverell, Osbert

Though family life began to be, as it were, fashionable, in the 19th century, many parents did not, in fact, spend a lot of time actually with their children.
In the 19th century large households gradually developed a complete suite of rooms set aside for the children and their servants, usually at the top of the house.  Kenneth Clarke, born 1903, describes his as: 'behind a green baize door on the edge of the servants' wing.' (Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)

There would normally be a night nursery, a day nursery, possibly a schoolroom, and often all this plus bathrooms, scullery, governess's room and sick room, also used as a bedroom for visiting children.  This was the arrangement at Bear Wood, built 1865-74.  The owner, John Wood, proprietor of The Times  newspaper, eventually had thirteen children to fill this complex.
(Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House, 1979, p.263-272)

Although parents were officially the ultimate authority, the nurses or governesses who took care of children most of the time would obviously be important figures in their lives.
As Eleanor Farjeon put it:
'The departure of the First Governess, like the departure of the First Nurse, creates a Nursery cataclysm.  They are The Nurse, The Governess, as our parent are The Parents.'
(Eleanor Farjeon, A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935, p.408)

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
Image: Alchetron)

It was usual for children to be gradually integrated into adult life in families such as these.  When they were little they often saw their mother for a short while in the morning, informally in the nursery, and would be brought down to the dining room for both parents and any guests to see them after dinner.  Elizabeth Grant, born 1797, has described the routine in her family in the early 19th century:
'When father was at home, all appeared at late dinner, or rather at the second course, in full dress, like the footmen.  We sat in a row - we four, little Mary and all, on four chairs placed against the wall - trained to perfect quiet...to hear and not to speak; but on the dessert appearing we were released, walked forward to receive a little wine, a little fruit, and a biscuit, and then to have our game at romps....'
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 61.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

Lady Grant with her two children,
(University of Toronto, internet edition)

As the children grew older, they might join their mother at lunch unless, like most boys, they were away at boarding school.  Boys were usually sent away at about age seven. Girls were usually educated at home, and would gradually introduced to their mother's friends and private social circle before they officially 'came out' into society aged about seventeen.

As small children they spent their time with their nanny or nursery maids.  Improvements in prams and push-chairs made nannies and their little charges more mobile in the late 19th century, and a complex nanny-oriented social life developed in fashionable cities such as London, Brighton, Bath, Boston and New York.

Compton Mackenzie, who had an extraordinarily vivid and long memory, recalls what it felt like to ride in one of those early prams:
'I wonder if many people recall the sensation of riding in a 'pram' - that bump down from the pavement into the roadway and that bump up when the opposite pavement was reached.  One shot forward against the safety-strap as one bumped down, and backwards as one bumped up.  And then those ominous words "its coming on to rain", after which the hated hood was raised and the brass catches - or whatever they were called - were straightened with a click.  The world on either side of one was excluded...'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave I, 1963, p. 91)

Nannies would congregate in the public parks with their charges; children's tea-parties were arranged.  There were strict hierarchies of importance, depending, in Britain, on the rank of one's charges or, in east coast America, on wealth or that great mark of social distinction, descent from the original Mayflower immigrants.

Hulton Archive

In that great nanny haven, Kensington Gardens, for instance, 'Untitled' nannies might not occupy certain benches.  This complex snob system was evolved more or less spontaneously by the nannies themselves.  Just as having a nanny for the children became a middle class mark of social arrival, so being in charge of the infant section of some distinguished house conferred social distinction on the nanny, who in her anxiety for her own status would often pass on an exaggerated idea of their personal importance to her charges
(see Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and  Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, p. 197-204)

Several autobiographies mention those, to the children, rather boring nanny-organised occasions.
The most evocative account is the writer Virgina Woolf, of walks twice a day in Kensington Gardens:
'There was the Broad Walk, the Round Pond and the Flower Walk.  Then...there were two gates, one offosite Gloucester Road, the other opposite Queen's Gate.  At each gate sat an old woman.  The Queen's Gate old woman was an elongated, emaciated figure with a goat-like face, yellow and pock-marked.  She sold nuts and bootlaces, I think. And Kitty Mase said of her: "Poor things, it's the drink that makes them like that"...The other old woman was round and squat.  To her was attached a whole wobbling balloon of air-balls.  She held this billowing, always moving most desirable mass by one string...for a penny she would detach one from the bellying soft mass, and I would dance away with it...'(Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, 1976, p.35)

'This is the old woman shown in Arthur Rackham's illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, almost blown away by her enormous bobbing bunch of coloured balloons.  Periodically the walks were strewn with minute sea shells, and until the park keepers came with their roller and ground them down to powder, the children would rush up and down making collections, while their nanny sat conversing with other nurses on a circular bench under one of the big trees, generally on the subject of the misdoings of their respective charges.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p. 16)

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,
 illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1906
(Pinterest)

One of the few other diversions was sailing boats on the Round Pond, where one day Virginia Stephens' Cornish lugger sailed right to the middle and suddenly sank.
(Virginia Woolf, b. Virginia Stephens, op.cit. p.75)

At about five years old the children generally began to take lessons from a governess, and there was frequently  considerable rivalry between her and the nanny, generally won by the governess as the children inevitably grew into her sphere and out of that of the nanny.

This system meant that many children were practically brought up by nurses and governesses or tutors.  For only children it could be a lonely life.  Margaret Lane gives a sad picture of lonely little Beatrix Potter, later famous as the creator of Peter Rabbit, living in her well-regulated nursery with all her material needs provided for, playing with her doll Topsy, eating her daily cutlet and rice pudding, always the same, dressed up in muff and button boots to go for her daily walk, and almost forgotten.
(Margaret Lane The tale of Beatrix Potter, 1946 chapter 1)

Beatrix Potter aged 8 with her parents
(V&A)

However the nursery could also be a haven to which, like Leonard Woolf would look back to with nostalgia all their lives:
'I can still feel myself physically enfolded in the warmth and safety of the great nursery on the third floor of the house in Lexham Gardens, the fire blazing behind the tall guard, the kettle singing away, and nurse, with her straight black hair parted in the centre, and her smooth, oval peasant face, reading the Baptist Times or the visions of the opium eater (Confessions of an English Opium Eater, de Quincey)...and occasionally far off could be heard the clop-clop if a horse in a hansom cab or four-wheeler,...I never again found any safety and civilisation to equal that of the gas-lit nursery.'
(Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 1880-1904, Hogarth Press, 1960 p. 60-61, internet ed. available.  Somehow nurse had got hold of a copy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and read it over and over again)

For many children in the American South their black Mammy epitomised the same security:
'None but a Southerner to the manner born can appreciate or imagine the tie that bound us of that old-time South to our dear black mammy, in whose capacious lap the little ones confided to her care cuddled in innocent slumber' says Mrs. Clay of Alabama in her memoirs
(A Belle of the Fifties...Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama...1853-66, 1905, p.211, e-book available)
As in many European families the children's black mammy frequently held a privileged position on the household long after her charges had outgrown the nursery.  How did those children reconcile their upbringing with slavery?  Is the role of Scarlett O'Hara's beloved black mammy in Gone with the Wind intended to point up this inconsistency? The Black American actress Hattie McDaniel, as  Mammy, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the 1939 screen version of Margaret Mitchell's book about slavery and the American Civil War.  As I write, August 2017, a theatre in Memphis has just cancelled its regular summer showing of the film, as romanticising slavery.

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy,
Sleznick International Pictures, 1939)

Employing nurses to bring up children probably began with hiring wet-nurses to feed babies breast milk, which was pretty universal in any families that could afford one, and really only declined when bottled milk became available.

 By the 19th century, as the 1814 wage bill for Nunwell, a country house on the Isle of Wight, shows, the wet nurse had decreased in importance to a mere human milk machine.  This bill included a nurse, nurserymaid and under-nurserymaid, paid 18 guineas a year, 8 guineas and 8 guineas plus tea allowances.  The previous year there had also  been a wet nurse at 4/6 a week plus tea allowance.  Tea had now overtaken beer as the beverage of choice for nursemaids.
(Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony, 1945, p. 179-80)

The whole organisation of the nursery was now under the direction of the head nurse, later called the nanny.  This meant that the nanny no longer had to be a young woman, and quite frequently a beloved nanny remained with the family for life, or even returned to nurse the children of her original charges.
Ruskin's nurse Anne had previously nursed his father, though it was more usually the mother's nurse who was retained, almost taking on the role of many grandmothers today.
Ruskin numbers Anne with his parents as one of the people he most loved.
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, 1900, Vol. 1, p. 34, internet ed. available)
This is very common.  R.L. Stevenson dedicated A Child's Garden of Verses to his 'Dearest Cummy':

'The angel of my infant life -
From the sick child; now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold.'

This nurse, Alison Cunningham, was a strict Presbyterian Covenanter who told him tales of Scottish history.  Many years later he said to her:
'"It's you, that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie"
"Me, Master Lou,", I said; "I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.""Ay, woman", said he, "But it was the grand dramatic way ye had of reciting the hymns."'
(Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1901, Vol. 1 p. 37, internet ed. available)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) aged 7
(Wikipedia)

Such nurses could, of course, exercise a very powerful influence over their charges' future lives.
The seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, the great philanthropist, had an extremely unhappy childhood.
Shaftsbury scarcely saw his parents and attributed the formation of his strong religious faith and moral character entirely to Marie Millis the housekeeper who cared for him until he was seven.(Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, KG, 1886, Vol. 1, p. 51.  Internet ed. available)

Many children, however, divided their affection between nanny, whom they loved in an everyday way, and parents, particularly their mothers, whom they associated with treats, parties, glamour and excitement.  Winston Churchill give a classic comparison of the two relationships in My Early Life:
'My mother always seemed to me a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power...I loved her dearly, but at a distance.  My nurse was my confidant.  Mrs. Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants.  It was to her I poured out my many troubles, both now and in my schooldays.'
(Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930, p.18. internet ed. available.  Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was a rather rackety American socialite.  Although she was a distant figure in Churchill's early life she became a close confidante and supporter when he was adult)

Winston Churchill aged 10, 1884
(BBC Archive)

As adults many people, like Leonard Woolf, described their mothers as adoring them, even when it is clear they only saw each other for a couple of hours each day.
 Possibly nannies acted as a kind of buffer state, taking on all the unpleasant, disciplinarian aspects of mother and leaving child and mother free to idealise each other.   (Leonard Woolf, op.cit, p.54)
Compton Mackenzie certainly seems to have rationalised his relationships this way.  His nanny does not seem to have been actually unkind, just strict, unimaginative, grumpy:

'Looking back on it now, I think that having to deal with unreasonableness in an elderly woman was a valuable preparation for life because it taught me very early to expect people to be stupid and to be agreably surprised when they were not.'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, 1963, p.38)

Annie Curry operated a system of rewards and withdrawal of privileges; perfectly normal, enlightened 19th century practise, which he bitterly resented:
'Apparently anything even mildly pleasant came under the category of treats.  It was a treat to walk on the grass in the Gardens; it was a treat to help to push Stella's perambulator; it was a treat to have the sponge floating beside him in the bath...'She tied their hands in bags at night to prevent nail biting, gave them nasty medicine, insisted they ate all their fat, and, probably unintentionally, terrified Compton Mackenzie with threats of being carried away by climbing coalmen:

'Michael caught his breath.
"Can coalmen climb?" he asked, choking at the thought.
"Climb like kittens," said Nurse.

A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with yellow cat's eyes and horrid prehensile arms.'
(Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street, autobiographical novel, p. 20-21 and p.33)

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy in his research discovered that few children had the misfortune to suffer genuinely cruel nannies.  Even those who did, he notes, rarely admitted to disliking them which is probably because they had become surrogate mothers, covered by the same taboos.  Cruelty and misery are more commonly associated with governesses who would often take charge of both boys and girls from about the age of five to seven when boys generally went as boarders to prep school.
J. Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, chapter 9)

Nannies in the park
(Pinterest)

The redoubtable Viceroy of India, Lord George Curzon's account of his governess Miss Paraman is particularly interesting since her evident effect on his character, and his future career, are so well documented.  Lord Curzon describes her physical and mental cruelty to him and his sisters.  She appears to have been quite sadistic; Lord Curzon later concluded she was probably insane:
'She made us trundle our hoops all alone up and down a place near the hermitage where were tall black fir trees and a general air of gloom of which we were intensely afraid.  She forced us to confess to lies we had never told, to sins which we had not committed, and then punished us savagely as being self-condemned.  For weeks we were not allowed to speak to each other or a living soul.  At meals she tool all the dainties for herself and gave us nothing but tapioca and rice.  I suppose no children so well born or so well placed ever cried so much, or so justly.'
(Leonard. Mosley, The End of an Epoch, 1960. internet ed. available)

Moseley sums up the effect on Lord Curzon:
'Thereafter, it could almost be said that he spent his life looking for stronger, more ruthless and more egotistic characters upon which he could bruise himself...'' and quotes Lord Kitchener's remark:
'There is only one thing that Curzon likes more than hurting others...and that is to persuade others to humiliate him.'  (Moseley, op.cit. p10) Against that, according to Wikipedia Curzon had a firm, happy marriage.  I don't know whether Leonard Moseley has any link to Oswald Moseley, but Wikipedia says two of Curzon's daughters, and his second wife, had affairs with him.)

Lord Curzon as a Hindu God
(Maratha Punch, 1899, Baksheesh!)

Similar experiences, though documentary evidence is sadly lacking, might help to explain the late 19th and early 20th century upper class passion for flagellation and other sexual games of humiliation.  Although there is also probably a connection with bullying and beatings inflicted at school, Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians notes that in such sexual fantasies the beater is a woman not a man, and the accompanying humiliations are often those of the nursery.

It is also suggested by Gathorne-Hardy that nursery maids sometimes prematurely aroused the sexual instincts of their charges, intentionally or not, leading, in later life, to strong sexual attraction to girls of their class.  No doubt many little boys sharing a room and sometimes a bed with their nurse maids made discoveries which could form the basis of adult fantasies, in spite of the nanny habit of undressing under their enormous, tent-like calico night-dresses.
Compton Mackenzie,. for instance, says he made his first innocent sexual exploration when put to bed with Ellen, one of the maids.  He woke in the middle of the night and 'started to explore the sleeping Ellen in the course of which I was astonished to find myself, like Dante once upon a time in a Selva Oscura (dark jungle) which I searched in vain for my own little appendage, and being greatly puzzled by not finding it anywhere...' (Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, p.162. )

(The pram society.com)

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) said that by the end of his career such cruelty as Miss Paraman's would be impossible since by that time the governess system had largely disappeared while it had become normal for children to spend. a great deal more time with their parents.  However, unless parents keep a close watch over their children the system is always open to abuse.  The novelist F. Anstey
(Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1956-34) for instance, had a nurse stricter than his father liked. She believed children should eat everything set before them, and used to serve up any crusts left from supper at breakfast next morning until their father found out.  Anstey says:
'Somehow none of these petty oppressions, of which these are only instances, lessened our affection for Fanny; it never occurred to us that she was going at all beyond her authority.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p.15)

Kenneth Clark  (1903-1983) felt his parents' servants got back at their employers by being unkind to him as a small boy.
'They gave me uneatable food although they themselves lived off the fat of the land.  I remember a cheese so full of weevils that small pieces jumped about the plate; I remember branches of bitter rhubarb, sour milk, rancid butter - and, of course, nothing but obstinate silence.  It was an unconscious programme of revenge.'
(Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)
Children rarely have enough critical sense, lacking experience, to know that people are not doing their jobs properly.

Lack of parental control over the nursery and schoolroom could also work in the child's favour. Elizabeth Grant's father laid down extremely strict rules about diet, and a rigorous spartan regime, which was frequently relaxed by sympathetic nursery maids when he was not around.
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 56.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

The Sitwells' nurse supplemented the children's plain diet with little treats of winkles and shrimps which she bought herself. (Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand, 1943 Vol. 1, p. 92)

Mother lays down the law to Nurse
(Pinterest)

Although Lord Curzon is right saying that by Edwardian times children of wealthy parents  saw a lot more of them than when he was a boy, far more boys were sent away to boarding school.  Since they were often sent away to prep school at seven school life was just as important as family life.

Death, religion, and the Victorians

'No one will ever understand Victorian England who does not appreciate that among highly civilised countries...it was one of the most religious that the world has ever known.  Moreover, its particular type of Christianity laid a direct emphasis on conduct...'
(R.K. Endsor quoted in Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The public school phenomenon, 1977 p,70)

Queen Victoria as a Child, Martin Archer Shee,
(Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,
Culture Service, Leighton House Museum)

All well brought up Victorian children received religious instruction which in Britain mostly meant Protestant Christianity.  The discoveries of Darwin and the religious controversies of the 19th century led in most cases to the abandonment of literal interpretation of the Bible, and caused many adults to re-assess their beliefs, but on the whole they did so within the Christian faith.

The work of the Nonconformists among the working classes had given people a strong sense of religious duty by the beginning of Queen Victorian's reign. This was increasingly identified with social duty and care for people's bodily welfare; almost as important as caring for their souls.

 However, the attitude of parents of whatever sect towards their children's religious observance during the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and America is shown typically by the Rev. Mr. Hawtrey's reaction to his son Stephen's casual remark, "Oh, I don't like sermons".
 Their gentle-tempered father, his voice trembling with emotion, said:-
' "If ever I hear one of my children saying a word showing want or respect towards the Word of God or religion, I will disinherit him!" and immediately left the room.  The children were awe-struck, and could not speak, but began to cry.  In a few minutes their father returned, and said, "If I have spoken too angrily, my children, it was because I could not hear a word said of disrespect towards religion", and he wept.'  (Florence Molesworth, The history of the Hawtrey family, Vol. 1, 1903, p. 154.  Internet archive version available)

The keynote here is 'respect'. The observance of religious faith differed from sect to sect and was expressed in different ways over the years, as religious conflicts were at least partly resolved.  The steady divorce of religion from politics and the growing respect for the Nonconformist social contribution much reduced anti-sectarian discrimination.  Although religion was still of prime importance in most middle class people's lives it began to find expression in work among the disadvantaged rather than in personal soul-searching and prayer. Children were encouraged to develop social consciences early and involve themselves in constructive work rather than continuing to practise the introspection of the early Puritans.  This religious and moral training, reinforced by public schools, formed the exceptionally honest and conscientious administrators who governed Britain and the Empire, and bred the many missionaries who felt called to take Christianity to far-flung countries and British slums.

Lord have mercy on us, Henry Baraud, c.1850
(Newstead Abbey)

In many households Sunday meant no books except the Bible or religious works, no toys, or only toys with Biblical significance such as Noah's Ark, positively no games, no music or singing except hymns, no running up and down.  The author of Vice Versa, F. Anstey as a child had a set of Scripture bricks showing biblical incidents with texts, Alison Uttley was allowed Noah's Ark.  The Anstey family read Ministering Children, a best-selling story about helping the poor, 'which always affected me with the profoundest melancholy.' and The Fairchild Family, which was rather less successful: 'But a spirit of such irreverence came over us and she (mother) and we laughed so much that I think the readings were given up.' (F. Anstey, A long retrospect, 1936 p. 12, 24, Alison Uttley, Ambush of young days, 1937 p. 123)

Children and adults went to church, often twice, perhaps because it provided one of the few possible diversions on Sundays.  The Ansteys went to St. Paul's in the morning and the Congregational chapel in the evening, enjoying the music at the first and the sermon at the second.
(F. Anstey, A long retrospect, 1936, p.23)
Younger children generally learned a Bible text, older children might teach Sunday school.  Few allowances were made for children, and they were usually expected to observe Sunday as rigorously as adults.  For those who had no deep religious conviction to sustain them it was often excruciatingly boring.

We praise thee o' Lord, Henry Barraud, c.1850
(Newstead Abbey)

So the popular American author Mrs. Lydia Child strongly recommended parents take care not to prejudice children against religion by too strict observance on Sunday.  She quotes the story of the little girl who on being told how God had come down to earth remarks, "Oh, what a good time the angels must have had, when God was gone away."
(The Mother's Book, 4th ed. 1832 p. 72)

Children traditionally began their religious instruction early, particularly in Nonconformist households like the Quaker Gurneys:
"We were very little children when he (their father, Joseph Gurney, brother of Elizabeth Fry the prison reformer) began to take us into his study for times of religious retirement and prayer.,..I think I shall never forget the very great solemnity, the holy, and, to me as a little child, the almost awful feeling of these occasions"
(Augustus Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 2, p. 17  Internet edition available)

Earlham Hall, East Anglia,
Childhood home of Elizabeth Fry, and the Gurney family.
 (Wikipedia: University of East Anglia)

This was also the rule in American Nonconformist households like the Swedenborgian Alcotts:
'On Sundays we had a simple service of Bible stories, hymns, and conversation about the state of our little consciences and the conduct of our childish lives.'
(Louisa May Alcott, her letters and journals,  ed. Ednah D. Cheney, 1889, p. 29.  Internet edition available Louisa May's famous children's story, Little Women was loosely based on her own childhood)

For others, like Samuel Butler, the experience was more unpleasant.  The semi-autobiographical The Way of All Flesh embodies the very image of a traditionally stern Victorian upbringing:
'Before Ernest could crawl he as taught to kneel; before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the Lord's Prayer, and the General Confession.  How was it possible that these things could be taught too early?  If his attention flagged, or his memory failed him here was an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it out was to whip it, or shup him in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood.'
(Samuel Butler, Ernest Pontefex or The Way of All Flesh, 1903, Methuen ed. 1964 p.79.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Saumeu Butler aged 23 (Wikipedia)

Augustus Hare received his first religious instruction as a similar early age but he was made of more resistant stuff than the unfortunate Ernest Pontefex:
'After dinner to-day, on being told to thank God for his good dinner, he would not do it...talked to him about his dinner, did not he love God for giving him so many good things, and I knelt by him and prayed God to forgive him for being so naughty....'The result was a tantrum; Augustus eventually consented to say grace, sitting under the table.
((Augustus Hare, The years with mother, ed. Malcolm Brown, 1952, p., 16.  Abridgement of
The story of my life, 1896.  Interent edition available).

Researching Augustus Hare I discovered that he included the story of The Vampire of Croglin Hall
in his Story of My Life, here's the cover of the Penny Dreadful based on his story (credit: Vaultofevilproboards)

Many such children could scarcely begin to grasp the concept of God and Heaven, and the results of this early instruction were sometimes rather comic.  The Unitarian preacher and social reformer W.J. Fox (1780-1864) had his first religious instruction at the age of four when his brother died:
'On this occasion my father ...made the first attempt to inform my mind as to the existence of a Heaven.  It was rather premature; years afterwards my deity was a huge old muscular man stretched out at full length on the upper side of a solid sky, and at this time it was with great difficulty that I attained such elevation of thought as to understand that little Charles was gone a long way above the height to which the smoke ascended from the tallest chimneys in our street.'
(R. & E. Garnett, The life of W.J. Fox, public teacher and social reformer, 1786-1864.  1910, p.6.  Internet edition available)

The children's writer Alison Uttley was equally literally-minded as a child.  One day of fitful bursts of brilliant sunshine she came running in, radiant, crying:
'"I've seen Jesus! I've seen Gentle Jesus peeping through the clouds!"'
(Ambush of young days, 1937 p.63)

One of Alison Uttley's well-known Little Grey Rabbit books
(Amazon internet)

Marianne Mordaunt's son John, aged seven, wanted to know all about God and Heaven in very precise detail. He demanded:
'"Do you think I shall think every thing in Heaven as beautiful when I have been there a good many years, as I shall the first year...Does God take part of the angels to make us?"'
(Elizabeth Hamilton, The Mordaunts, an eighteenth century family, 1965, p. 256  There is a bit of background on the book and family at mordauntfamilyhistory.com.)

Early and over-earnest religious instruction sometimes made children morbid.  The Puritan practise of driving adults and children alike through fear of hell-fire to self examination and searching of their consciences was, of course, continued into the 19th century by certain ~Nonconformist sects.  The  American writer Henry James, father of the more famous writer, describes his struggles:
'I am sure no childish sinews were ever more strained than mine were in wrestling with the subtle terror of his name.  This insane terror pervaded my consciousness more or less ...made me loath at night to lose myself in sleep, lest his dread hand should clip my thread of life without time for a parting sob of penitence...'
(Quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James, 1953, vol. 1, p.29  Henry James Sr was born in 1809)

The humorous writer Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) author of Three Men in a Boat, had a similar upbringing.  When he 'got' religion, he:
'gave up taking sugar in my tea, and gave the twopence a week to the Ragged School in Threecold Street.  On Sundays I used to pore over a great illustrated Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.  This used to be a popular book in religious houses.'  He agonised over the state of his soul:
'How was I to be sure that I did believe sufficiently?'  His failure to move a mountain of rubbish by prayer alone convinced him that he was not a strong enough believer.  He was extremely miserable about this, and about the possibility of unknowingly committing something called, in his circle, the Unforgivable Sin:  'If only one knew what it was one might avoid it.'  One day in a fit of rage he called his deaf Aunt Fan a bloody fool, and was convinced that this was the unnamed sin.  He suffered in agonies of conscience until someone found out and reassured him.  Most probably the sin was masturbation, but unfortunately he does not go into further details.
(Jerome K Jerome,  My life and times, 1926 p. 21, 22.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1563
(British Library, internet ed.)

Edmund Gosse had the advantage of a father who firmly believed his son was born one of the Elect.  The central event of his childhood was his baptism into full communion at ten.  His father 'admitted the absence in my case of a sudden, apparent act of conversion resulting upon conviction of sin.  But he stated the grounds of his belief that I had, in still earlier infancy, been converted, and he declared that if so, I ought no longer to be excluded from the privileges of communion.'  Edmund Gosse was examined by two elders of the church, amazing them by his humility, knowledge of scripture, and other signs of divine grace.  Large numbers of Plymough Brethren came from all over the county to witness his baptism by total immersion.  (Edmund Gosse, Father and son, 1907, Penguin ed. p. 126-133 )

This famous account of Victorian childhood is well worth reading.  One of the interesting things about Gosse's account of his childhood is the contrast between his father's idealised image of his son and the fallible human reality.  The discrepancy between the two is particularly marked in Gosse's account of his baptism.  At this solemn and central moment which he wholeheartedly entered into, he betrays the very un-spiritual, natural bumptiousness of an over-praised ten year old:

'I would fain close this remarkable episode on a key of solemnity, but alas! if I am to be loyal to the truth, I must record that some of the other little boys present presently complained to Mary Grace that I put out my tongue at them in mockery, during the service in the Room, to remind them that I now broke bread as one of the Saints and that they did not.'

The extreme strictness of Gosse's upbringing as a member of the Plymouth Brethren imposed a considerable strain on him which, though unrecognised during his childhood, he was able to analyse on looking back as an adult. Part of his description of the feat of endurance that was his Sunday is worth quoting with Gosse's comment on it, as an illustration of this.  After breakfast the family and servants had a long sermon and prayers.  Then, in fine weather, they spent half an hour walking in the garden.  Afterwards they each sat in a separate room with Bible and commentary and prepared themselves for the morning service, two hours long, which they attended at 11am.  After Sunday dinner Edmund would go into the garden for a while, and later in the afternoon he and his stepmother went to Sunday school, where he taught a class of smaller boys.  After tea they all went to evening service, followed by the Believers' Prayer Meeting.  All this took Edmund long past his usual bedtime, and he was not only bored but exhausted by the end of the day:

'What made these Sundays, the observance of which was absolutely uniform, so peculiarly trying was that I was not permitted the indulgence of any secular respite.  I might not open a scientific book, nor make a drawing, nor examine a specimen.  I was not allowed to go into the road, except to proceed with my parents to the Room, no to discuss worldly subjects at meals, not to enter the little chamber where I kept my treasures.  I was hotly and tightly dressed in black, all day long, as though ready at any moment to attend a funeral with decorum.  Sometimes, towards evening, I used to feel the monotony and weariness of my position to be almost endurable, but at this time I was meek, and I bowed to what I supposed to be the order of the universe.  (Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, p, 166-7)

Like other children Gosse accepted his early religious instruction without question. His first doubts came when this parents' theories were tested against the directness of his childish logic.

When Gosse tried to obtain a splendid humming top through the power of prayer, justified by his mother's statement that 'no thing or circumstances are too insignificant to bring before the God of the whole earth '   his father, instead of taking the theological line that it was not His Will that Edmund should have the top, told him 'it was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, and that I must do it no more.' (Gosse, Father and Son, p.36-7)

Edmund's faith in his father's directives was shaken, and after an address on 'idolatory' he put them to a further test.  Idolatry, his father informed him, 'consisted in praying to any one or anything but God himself' and 'God would be very angry, and would signify his anger if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone.'  In a spirit of scientific experiment Edmund Gosse tested this: 'With much labour, I hoisted a small chair onto the table close to the window.  My heart was now beating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued my experiment.  I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting the address 'O Chair!' for the habitual one.  He then waited for God's reaction.  When nothing happened, he did not question the existence of God, but his father's omniscience: 'My father had said, positively, that if I worshipped a thing made of wood, God would manifest His anger.  I had then worshipped a chair, made (or partly made) of wood, and God had made no sign whatsoever.  My Father, therefore, was not really acquainted with the Divine practise in cases of idolatry.' (Gosse, Father and Son, p.38-9)

Gosse's experiment weakened his faith in his father, but not his faith in God, and few children at this time would have followed the lead of the independently-minded George Sitwell, who with an Archbishop for a guardian, was over-exposed to religious enthusiasm, and by his own account became an agnostic and later an atheist:
'When I was three or four, I came to the conclusion that I was too young to understand such things properly, and so had better reserve my judgement until I was old enough to form an opinion of my own'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left hand, Right hand, 1945, vol. 1, p.127)

Given the strong religious atmosphere of most Victorian households, and with life expectancy being much shorter than it is now in Modern Europe or America, it is not surprising that death was very much more part of daily life than it is now.  Children were made aware of it early.  Particularly in evangelical households it was quite usual to take children not only to pay their last respects to a dead relative but also to view their corpses, to remind them of their own mortality and so bring them closer to God.

This was no new custom but a longstanding tradition, late 18th and 19th century moral stories  contain many deathbed scenes like this in The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818:
 '"Should you like to see the corpse, my dear?" asked Mr. Fairchild "You never saw a corpse, I think?"
"No, Papa", answered Lucy: "We should like to see one."
"I tel you beforehand, my dear children, that death is very terrible.  A corpse is an awful sight."
"I know that, Papa," said Lucy, "but we should go."
(Mrs. Sherwood, The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818 p. 146.  Garland facsimile ed. 1977. Internet edition available)

In Victorian children's books, as in novels for adults, deathbed scenes provided emotional climaxes in the narrative.  The death of a major character in a 19th century children's story served to encourage moral and religious faith.  The Religious Tract Society, in fact, expected a Christian death bead scene to be included in the plot of books published by them.  This example is from Little Meg's Children, one of the most popular best-sellers by Hesba Stretton:

'It did not seem  possible to Little Meg that the baby could really be dead.  She chafed its puny limbs, as she had seen her mother do, and walked up and sown the room singing to it, now loudly, now softly, but no change came upon it, no warmth returned to its death-cold frame, no life to its calm face.  She laid it down at length upon the bed, and crossed its thin wee arms upon its breast, and then stretching herself beside it, with her face hidden from the light, little Meg gave herself up to a passion of sorrow.  "If I'd only asked God, for Christ's sake," she cried to herself, "maybe he'd have let baby wake..."'
(Hesba Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868, p.110-111, Facsimile ed. Johnson Reprint Corporation 1970)

Even that iconoclastic romp the Victorian favourite Holiday House ends with Harry and Laura reformed characters at the deathbed of their beloved, exemplary, brother Frank:
'All was changed within and around them, - sorrow had filled their hearts; and no longer merry, thoughtless young creatures, believing the world one scene of frolicksome enjoyment and careless ease, they had now witnessed its realities, - they had felt its trials,- they had experienced the importance of religion, -they had learned the frailty of all earthly joy, - and they had received, amidst tears and sorrow, the last injunction of a dying brother, to "call upon the Lord while He is near...."'
(Catherine Sinclair, Holiday House, 1839, Blackie ed. c. 1896 chapter 17)

Illustration from Holiday House, 1839
 (University of Roehampton internet edition)

In the American author Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women, Part II, published in Britain as Good Wives, the death of Beth has a similar uplifting effect on her tomboy sister Jo, which she expresses in a poem:

'Oh my sister, passing from me

Out of human care and strife,

Leave me, as a gift, those virtues

Which have beautified your life...'

   (Louisa M. Alcott, Good Wives, 1869, Dent ed. 1953 p.209)

Louisa May Alcott aged about 25 (Wikipedia)

Modern authors dispose of parents by sending them on archaeological digs, a lecture tour, or even to prison, and death normally seems only to occur in stories about personal adjustment to it.  In 19th century children's fiction, however, death is another convenient device for removing parents who are an impediment to the plot.

The emotionally shattering opening of The Secret Garden by an English emigrant to the USA, Frances Hodgson Burnett, has everyone but the heroine dying of cholera so that the before the story can get going:
'It was in this strange and sudden way that May found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib.  That was why the place was so quiet.  It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake.'
(Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911)

The Secret Garden, 1st American edition, 1911,
(Harvard University, Houghton Library)

The possible psychological impact on children was not apparent to the Victorians, although many must, like Virginia Stephen, later Virginia Woolf, have remembered the shock of the compulsory visit to a parent's deathbed all their lives:
'No she was lying straight in the middle of her pillows.  Her face looked immeasurably distant, hollow and stern.  When I kissed her, it was like kissing cold iron; the feeling comes back to me - the feeling of my mother's face, iron-cold and granular.
(Virginia Woolf, Moments of being, Sussex U.P. 1976, p.92)
.
This was a world where death was ever-present.  In Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863-4, Julia Snow criticised the practise of taking children to view corpses, which she makes plain was as common in America as in Britain. (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863-4, Vol. 28, p.693-7 internet copy available)

The famous scene in Mrs. Sherwood's History of the Fairchild Family, 1818, where the children are taken to see the corpse of a murderer hanging in chains to rot was omitted from late Victorian editions. (History of the Fairchild Family, 1818 ed., Vol. 1, p.57 internet edition available)   It was true to the time when it was written; public executions and leaving certain corpses on show as a public warning only ceased in 1868, and is still practised in some parts of the world (I wrote this in the 1970s, sadly this has in no way changed)

The History of the Fairchild Family, first published 1818,
 1902 ed.charmingly illustrated by Florence M. Rudland, 
showing how long the book remained popular.
(Project Gutenberg internet ed.)

Lilias Rider Haggard describes in her autobiography an old lady who had been a child in the 1840s telling her how, as a child, her father would tell her to pull the gig's rug over her head and not to look as they drove past Norwich Castle if there had been an execution, so that she should not see the corpses suspended from the bridge (Lilias Rider Haggard, Too late for Tears, 1969 p. 74).   Tess of the D'Urbervilles was inspired by the public execution or a murderess which Thomas Hardy saw as a teenager. (Robert Gittings, Young Thomas Hardy, 1975 p. 32-3)

Although in the reign of Queen Victoria few middle, upper or respectable working class families failed to observe Sunday as a day of worship, by the late 19th century Sunday seems to have been observed with less rigour than in the mid 19th century, at least that is the observation of Edmund Gosse in Father and son, (Penguin ed. 1949 p. 166.  First pub. 1907.  Internet ed. available)

This may have been due to the influence of the Royal household, led by Prince Albert, who found the English Sunday, extremely trying in contrast to the more relaxed German Lutheran Sunday.  In the Royal household Sundays, though not neglected, were treated as holiday, with sailing, skating, battledore and shuttlecock, skittles and country walks.  (Daphne Bennett, Queen Victoria's children, 1980 p.30)

Thomas Younghusband and his Family met Queen Victoria and her Family at Crystal Palace.
C. Wells (Museum of London)