Childhood Transformed: Working-class Children in Nineteenth-century EnglandChildhood Transformed provides a pioneering study of the remarkable shift in the nature of working-class childhood in the nineteenth century from lives dominated by work to lives centered around school. The author argues that this change was accompanied by substantial improvements for many in the home environment, in health and nutrition, and in leisure opportunities. The book breaks new ground in providing a wide-ranging survey of different aspects of childhood in the Victorian period, the early chapters examining life at work in agriculture and industry, in the home and elsewhere, while the later chapters discuss the coming of compulsory education, together with changes in the home and in leisure activities. A separate section of the book is devoted to the treatment of deprived children, those in and out of the workhouse, on the streets, and also in prison, industrial schools and reformatories. Offering a fresh and more focused approach to the history of working-class children, this book should be of interest to all lecturers and students of nineteenth-century social history. |
Contents
Chapter One Agriculture and workshop industry | 11 |
Chapter Two Iron manufacture mining and other | 42 |
Chapter Three The factory system and the midcentury | 73 |
Chapter Four Children at home | 101 |
Chapter Five Education and religious observance | 128 |
Chapter Six Children and the Poor Law | 161 |
Chapter Seven Street children waifs and strays | 192 |
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Common terms and phrases
adult agriculture apprentices apprenticeship areas attendance Birmingham Black Country Britain cent certainly chapel chapter child labour Children's Employment Commission church schools classes commissioners compulsory course cruelty discipline district Dr Barnardo earlier early nineteenth century eighteenth century elementary schools employed England and Wales enquiry Eric Hopkins especially evidence example fact Factory Act factory reform furnaces further half housing Ibid ill-treatment improved increasing Industrial Revolution industrial schools infants inspectors juvenile kind Lancashire legislation leisure Lionel Rose living London manufacture middle-class mills mothers nature nineteenth century NSPCC numbers of children Old Poor Law Old Swinford Hospital outdoor relief parents parish part-time pauper Poor Law Board population punishment reform religious rural school boards Second Report seems Select Committee Society sometimes street Sunday School textile thought towns trade treatment twelve usually Victorian wages Webbs week women workhouse working-class children workshop young