Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The bad effect of child labor
Effects on workers' lives in the industrial revolution
The bad effect of child labor
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The bad effect of child labor
Poverty the Product of Child Labour and Juvenile Crime as seen in Charles Dickens’ “The Prisoner’s Van” and Henry Mayhew’s “Boy Crossing-Sweepers and Tumblers” The Industrial Revolution in Britain during the 18th Century required a higher demand for labourers which ultimately forced children part of the poor and working class to work in order to provide for themselves, or for their families in order to escape poverty. Further, “the economic and social difficulties associated with industrialization made the 1830s and 1840s a “Time of Troubles,” characterized by unemployment, desperate poverty, and rioting” (“The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age: Review: Summary”). Charles Dickens’ journalistic sketch, “The Prisoner’s Van,” focuses primarily on two sisters forced into prostitution by their mother, and also touches on a number of boys caught for pickpocketing. Henry Mayhew’s journalistic sketch “Boy Crossing-Sweepers and Tumblers” focuses on the interview of a teenaged boy who works as a cross-sweep and tumbler in order to support himself, The majority of individuals of the Victorian era were dealing with the effects of industrialization, unemployment, and namely the poverty. This lack of jobs required individuals and families to force their children to find any type of work, be it working in coal mines, selling their bodies, or even stealing. One way children would try to make money was through pickpocketing. This is seen towards the end of Dickens’ Journalistic sketch where he tells of the “other prisoners—boys of ten, […] going joyfully to prison as a place of food and shelter” (Dickens 3). The poverty “70 per cent of the population” (Black xliv) is experiencing, is so extreme that these young boys are thankful for being arrested and sent to prison because they are guaranteed food and a place to
... serious crimes could be sentenced to a life of hard labor back in the nineteenth century. In addition, the author demonstrated the life of poor people and the struggles placed upon them. In real life, some people were even so poor that they had to rob graves like Worms did. Finally, some children had to resort to robbing from other living people to help feed themselves like Darkey and Penny. All in all, these events could have actually happened in history.
A significant English novelist, Charles Dickens was born during the Victorian-English era on February 7, 1812 in Landport, now part of Portsmouth, England. He was the second child and the eldest son of eight children to John Dickens and Elizabeth Dickens. Theatrical and brilliant, his mother, Elizabeth Dickens, was a storyteller and an impersonator. On the other hand, Dickens’s father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. John Dickens was an unselfish, welcoming, and loved to live a high quality life, even though he could not often afford it. He put his family through continuous insatiability because of financial debt. This eventually resulted in him being sent to prison, “His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory significant novelist, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison” (Victorian Web). Later after his release form prison, he retired form the Navy Pay Office and worked as a reporter. One can conclude that these problematical events in his early childhood made his life arduous because he had to pay of his father’s financial debt, but also he had to maintain a well education to become who he wanted to be.
Dickens portrays London as a places crawling with sickness and death. Dickens having lived in London during this time period would know what he was talking about. He shows us the horrid treatment of the poor at the workhouse, especially in Chapter III when young Oliver is locked up for a week up, simp...
Charles Dickens is a famous novelist who was born on February 7TH 1812, Portsmouth England. His novel ‘Oliver Twist’ had been serialized and to also show Dickens purposes, which was to show the powerful links between poverty and crime. The novel is based on a young boy called Oliver Twist; the plot is about how the underprivileged misunderstood orphan, Oliver the son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, he is generally quiet and shy rather than being aggressive, after his parents past away he is forced to work in a workhouse and then forced to work with criminals. The novel reveals a lot of different aspects of poverty, crime and cruelty which Dickens had experienced himself as a young boy in his disturbing and unsupportive childhood, due to his parents sent to prison so therefore Charles, who was already filled with misery, melancholy and deprivation had started working at the age of twelve at a factory to repay their debt.
Charles Dickens’ novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. He lived through that world at an early age; he saw the bitter side of the social class system and had wanted it to be exposed, so people could see the exploitation that the system rests on. But he presents these criticisms through the lives of characters, Pip and Magwitch.
Charles Dickens’ (1812-1970) father had great financial difficulties. The boy had a rather miserable childhood, and the lad spent much of his time in poorhouses and workhouses. Did poverty overwhelm Charles Dickens? Was his negative environment to blame for an unproductive and fruitless life? No it wasn’t. Dickens retreated into his imaginary world and incisively wrote about the need for social reform in what later became such literary classics such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.
Dickens' Criticism of the 1834 Poor Law in Oliver Twist Dickens criticised the 1834 poor law in many different ways within the first five chapters. He does this firstly by cleverly portraying the Victorians attitudes towards the poor. He does this in chapter 1 by referring to Oliver as 'the item of mortality' suggesting how lowly his position in society is. Also the difficulty of Oliver's birth and the fact his mother dies, gives us some idea of the dangers of child birth in Victorian society and the amount of negligence his mother receives from the surgeon.
Note: "The Perils of Certain English Prisoners" consists of three chapters. Chapters one and three consist of material written by Dickens, whilst chapter two comprises the work of Wilkie Collins', completed under the auspices of Dickens. As the material under consideration in this essay is taken from the first and third chapters, and considering Dickens' creative control over the second chapter, "Perils" has been discussed as a Dickens text.
Charles Dickens' Exploration of the Victorian Society's Awful Treatment Of The Children Of The Poor
As a child, Dickens becomes a subject to poverty. When Dickens is twelve years of age, he is sent to work at a warehouse. He is forced to live away from his family for months while his father is in debtors’ prison. Dickens’s life and experiences are his sole inspiration in advocating for the poor ("Charles John Huffam Dickens”). Charles Dickens is responsible for plenty of charitable acts in his lifetime. His books depict his character and his love for people. He is able to sympathize with people struck with poverty because he deals with the same situation in his life. Later in Dickens life, he is gifted with wealth, but never keeps much of the money. He is forced to pay alimony and gives the rest away (Orwell).
Dickens’s mother sent his brothers and sisters into prison with their father, and arranged that Charles should live outside the prison and work with other children.
“Hard Times” by Charles Dickens was well rounded; it showed history and setting, ideas and sentiments, and the art of the novel. Hard times” by Charles dickens can be used as a unique insight into what England was like during the industrial revolution. “Hard times” use of setting and people to create picture of life in the nineteenth century. This essay will focus of “hard Times” sentiments of fact and fancy as well as its views of marriage. A good chapter in the book to review these two ideas is chapter twelve from book two. There are two important ways that Charles dickens added his artistic touch to “Hard Times” first by using the narrator and second by the art of consequence. Overall, “Hard Times” was an important work that was innovative and insightful.
Mr. Gradgrind was a prominent school head that believed in “realities, facts, and calculations.” He is described as a cold-hearted man that strictly forbids the fostering of imagination and emotion, especially in his two children: Tom and Louisa (Dickens 5). Mr. Gradgrind raises his children in Coketown, a Capitalistic industrial town that Dickens calls, a waste-yard with “litter of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, shrouded in a veil of mist and rain” (128). In this town that seems to be impenetrable to the sun’s rays, his children grow up lacking social connections, mor...
Dickens knew how hard-pressed life was for thousands of English families in mid-ninteenth century England, and he knew the legal side of such desperation--a jungle of suspicion and fear and hate. He was especially attentive [if] . . . hungry, jobless men, women, children with few if any prospects became reduced to a fate not only marginal with respect to its "socioeconomic" character but also with respect to its very humanity. (575)
Charles Dickens shows notable amounts of originality and morality in his novels, making him one of the most renowned novelists of the Victorian Era and immortalizing him through his great novels and short stories. One of the reasons his work has been so popular is because his novels reflect the issues of the Victorian era, such as the great indifference of many Victorians to the plight of the poor. The reformation of the Poor Law 1834 brings even more unavoidable problems to the poor. The Poor Law of 1834 allows the poor to receive public assistance only through established workhouses, causing those in debt to be sent to prison. Unable to pay debts, new levels of poverty are created. Because of personal childhood experiences with debt, poverty, and child labor, Dickens recognizes these issues with a sympathetic yet critical eye. Dickens notices that England's politicians and people of the upper class try to solve the growing problem of poverty through the Poor Laws and what they presume to be charitable causes, but Dickens knows that these things will not be successful; in fact they are often inhumane. Dickens' view of poverty and the abuse of the poor