Life in the 1890s

Life in the 1890’s

Today we are going to tell you about life back in the 1890’s, about 130 years ago. You were either very rich or terribly poor. Back then the average pay per hour was 22 cents and your average earnings per week was only $13.00, now it’s $960.00. Doctors were paid up to $3.00 an office visit, they earn about $300.00 per office visit now. Today $3,063.76 was worth $100.00 in 1890.

So now we’re going to talk about home life. First, bathrooms. In an apartment, there were about 40 people sharing one bathroom. Imagine when the plumbing clogs! Bathtubs were very rare. In 1880, 5 out of 6 houses in cities didn’t have bathtubs. If you did have a bathtub it was probably in the kitchen. Ever heard of privacy! The poor used to cut up newspapers for toilet paper. This meant that it was common to get paper cuts. Some desperately poor people built houses out of junk on the street.

Now we're on to getting around. Did you know that every day there was 60,000 gallons of horse urine and 2 and a half million pounds of horse manure lying on the streets. Garbage sometimes piled up 4 feet high. All that would really smell bad, am I right? In 1895 there were only 8 automobiles in the country.

1880 education. Some poor children went to night school (they often fell asleep) and worked during the day because their family couldn’t afford most day schools. Rich children had private tutors or went to private schools. A female teacher would be fired if she married. A man could have a spouse and still teach. The children were sometimes smarter than the teachers. Tell that to your teacher. Younger children, nicknamed Abecedarians, sat in the front of the school (the schools were only one room) and older children sat in the back. 12 full years of school became mandatory in 1852. Black students only had about 100 days of school in a lifetime. That’s not very fair, is it? The 1890s were tough times for everyone but are still fun to learn about. We hope you enjoyed this article and will find out more about the 1890s.