Industrial Life

Biography - Victoria, Queen of England

Victoria was born in 1819, the only child of the British royal family. Victoria became Queen of England when she was 18 years old. Victoria became queen when William IV died 27 days after Victoria's eighteenth birthday. Victoria had grown up protected from the harsh reality of the Industrial Revolution and the effect it was having on people across England. In fact she was horrified by her first sights of Industrial England, which she saw on a trip across the country as a teenager. She described what she saw as, “black, engines flaming, coals, in abundance; everywhere, smoking and burning coal heaps, intermingled with wretched huts and carts and little ragged children." Early in her rule, she was dependent on her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, who tried to protect Victoria from the harsh realities of British life and even advised her not to read Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens because it dealt with "paupers, criminals and other unpleasant subjects". In 1839, Victoria met Prince Albert, her cousin from Germany and immediately fell in love with him. They were married the next year and had nine children together. Albert was very interested in the technology of the Industrial Revolution and convinced Victoria to support British industry. He convinced her to take her first trip by train in 1841 and afterwards she said she was “quite charmed” by the experience. Under his direction, Victoria supported the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 which was showcase of industry and art from around the world that demonstrated British power. The Great Exhibition was housed in a greenhouse like building called the Crystal Palace that covered several acres of land. In addition, Albert thought that Victoria should be made aware to the hardships of the Industrial Revolution and should something about child labor and poverty. Albert’s death in 1861 had a deep impact on Victoria and she remained in mourning for the rest of her life.

Under Victoria’s rule, the British Empire expanded to become the largest empire in the world by adding territory in Asia and Africa. By then end of her rule, Britain controlled an empire that contained 20% of the world’s surface and 25% of its population. Victoria strongly supported the British imperialism and believed that British rule was beneficial to people around the world. The British often took colonial lands through war, such as the Opium Wars in China or the war against the Zulu in southern Africa, and used military power to put down rebellions, such as the Sepoy Mutiny in India. was very interested in the well being of her colonial subjects. Victoria supported these wars, writing, "If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate Power, we must… be Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, CONTINUALLY.”

While Victoria never traveled to her overseas empire, she was interested in her colonies and how the people under her rule lived. She was especially interested in India, which she described as the “Jewel of the Crown”, meaning the most important of her colonies. She even had the British government create the title “Empress of India” to show her connection to the country. She did symbolic gestures to connect her to India, such as having an Indian secretary who taught her Hindi, having Indian food included at royal dinners and wearing Indian jewelry.

Queen Victoria was the longest serving monarch in British history. During her reign Britain went through the Industrial Revolution and built a world-wide empire – it was said that, “the sun never set on the British Empire”. The period that she ruled Britain is remembered as a “golden age” that is called the “Victorian Era".

Biography - Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in England in 1812 to a poor family. When he was a child, his father was put in debtor’s prison because of unpaid bills and the young Dickens was forced to work in a factory. This experience had a deep and lasting impact on Dickens that he would use in his writings. Dickens went on to work in an office and then as a court reporter in London. It was during this time that he met his wife Catherine, with whom he would have ten children. Dickens began to write fictional stories based on what he saw in the streets of London. These stories were published in newspapers in monthly installments, which means that each month a new chapter of the story would be released, and people would follow along for months. These stories, published serially, made Dickens a popular writer. His readers ranged from the wealthy nobles and industrialists to the poor workers, who would pool (collect) their money together to buy his stories. Because his stories were published in newspapers, they were more affordable to the lower classes, who could usually afford newspapers, but not the luxury of books. His first novel was Oliver Twist, which told the story of an orphan living in the streets and included many points from Dickens’s own childhood. This novel and his other stories, like A Christmas Carol, made him famous in England and the United States. Dickens traveled twice to the United States giving lectures across the country. While in the United States, he spoke out against slavery.

Dickens is known as one of the first "realist" writers because of the way he described the brutality of life in industrial England. This was clear in his novels Bleak House, which deals with the hypocrisy of British society (because some people were incredibly rich, while most were very poor), and Hard Times, which described life in an industrial town at the peak of economic expansion. Dickens was very critical of the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution and felt that his writing would make society aware of the terrible living conditions of the poor in the industrial cities, especially the children. Dickens spoke about the need to help the poor and he also donated money to clean up the slums and build proper housing for the poor.

Source # 1 - Video on the impact of new technology on life - click here.

Source # 2 - The following is an excerpt from the novel Hard Times, written by Charles Dickens and published in 1854 - It is a description of the fictional city of Coketown, where the novel takes place.

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which serpents (snakes) of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.

It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down...

It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Source # 3 - Picture of the Workers' Houses in London (1872)

Classwork Source # 1 - Photograph of a Floor of Power Looms in a Model of a Factory

Classwork Source # 2 - Video of a Power Loom in a Factory - click here

Classwork Source # 3 - Illustration from Frances Trollope's book Michael Armstrong (1840) - Frances Trollope was a British writer. She wrote the book Michael Armstrong to show people the conditions for child workers in industrial factories. In writing the book, Trollope visited Manchester, England, to see the condition of children working in factories and talked to people trying to work for better working conditions for children.

Classwork Source # 5 - Chart showing the change in workers' wages over time