Abuses Of Children During The Victorian Era

Abuses of Children during the Victorian Era Student Name Institution Date Introduction Children who lived in England in the mid-nineteenth century, a period that was referred to as the Victorian era were nothing like children in today’s world. There was a big difference between the poor and wealthy children during this period. Charles Dickens explains the kind of life these children had in his novel ‘Hard Times’ (Charles, 2016). A life where they were forbidden from being imaginative and creative, and they were turned into robots. The British government did not feel proud of its prominent expansion with the majority of their young generation being subjected to child abuse. The novelist has been a tool of creating clear portraits of the social evil that happened during the Victorian era. Accordingly, the paper explores the abuses of children during the Victorian era. Abuses of Children During the Victorian Era During Victoria’s reign, children under the age of fifteen were subjected to tremendous abuses like child labor and sexual abuse which were accompanied by urbanization and industrialization. Child Labor The Victorian children were subjected to work at a tender age for long hours mostly by their parents in order to assist them to pay bills in their homesteads. During this era, nearly 750,000 children were involved in child labor (Hakim, 2012). Child labor was highly influenced by industrialization as well as urbanization which made many families relocate to urban areas. Hasty growth of towns caused overcrowding and outstripped affordable houses. Children who lived in these areas were put to work in coal mines and textile mills, servants and factory work. Safe working conditions never existed during this period, and therefore children worked under poor sanitation. Young girls were also taken as domestic workers to wealthy families while rural children were enforced...