What was life like for poor Victorians?

The Victorian era ran from 1837 until 1901, which in comparison to something like the medieval period makes it very recent, so most people would assume things for the average person would be much better. This most definitely was not the case when it came to the Victorian era, with the gap between the rich and the poor being one of the biggest it had ever been in British history.

Worklife as a poor Victorian

One big difference between working anywhere in modern-day Britain and the Victorian era is the amount of help you would receive from the government and the laws that protect you in the workplace. None of these existed in the Victorian era and people were victimized on a regular basis. There were no unions or people to complain to, and if you tried then you’d most often be seen as a trouble maker and people would be reluctant to hire you.

There was also no guarantee of wages and employers would often take money out of everyone’s pay if one person broke something. There was also nothing to stop an employer from using someone for labor for a week with the promise of payment on the Friday, and then simply firing them on the last day without handing it over.

(People who owned small businesses weren’t much better off than the average person and were just as run-down as people’s homes)

Workplaces would always be manual labor in a workhouse, mine, farm, or some kind of dirty and uncomfortable job, which you would be expected to supply your own clothes for. Many of the jobs available were mind-numbingly boring and often dangerous, but nothing should be avoided like a job in a workhouse because this was the closest thing to slavery that regular people endured during the Victorian era.

The Victorian Workhouse

If you found yourself working in one of these places then you were truly in a bad position, but you wouldn’t realize it until it was too late. Workhouses were usually factory-type jobs, but would also provide food and accommodation for their workers, which of course had to be paid for and after this deduction, the worker would barely have enough money left over for a loaf of bread. The only way a person would have to feed and home themselves would be to continue working at the same place, but this arrangement of not being homeless and starving would only stand as long as you worked there, leading to a never-ending cycle of simply existing as a worker with no way of leaving.

(Workers from the Camberwell workhouse in south east London, taken in 1896)

The pub paying trap

The other method commonly used by workplaces to trap people in their service was to have them paid from the local pub. Many people didn’t have a bank account and everything was done in cash, but instead of the employer handing out the wages themselves at the end of the week, they would send all the money to the local pub, with whom the employer had an agreement with, and people would have to go there to collect their pay. The trick here was that a worker would come into the room after a long and hard week at work, and see everyone with large meals and pints of beer.

A regular employee would only make just enough to get them through the week, so spending wildly in a pub would only put them in a position where they were forced to work another week. Without the ability to save up, a worker would be trapped in a life of working all week, then going to a pub on Friday before repeating the cycle for the rest of their lives.

Victorian Home life

The chances of the average person owning their home would be very small, and most would rent to wealthy landlords who didn’t care for their struggles. Bedrooms would often have to be shared, sometimes between people who didn’t know each other and just needed a room, and it was common for families to put several children together in the same bedroom as living spaces were often cramped.

(There was no public street cleaning during the Victorian era, so if there was a mess it was the problem of whoever lived close to it)

Cooking would be done in front of the fireplace because cast iron stoves and ovens were far too expensive for the average person, with most meals consisting of basic soups and stews. The average family would only be able to afford meat once a week and would often save this for the Sunday roast, with pork being the most affordable and accessible choice.

Wages and prices in the Victorian era

The currency system in the Victorian era consisted of pounds(L), shillings(S), and pence(D). Earnings would vary greatly from job to job, but for someone who could be considered poor, the average wage would be about £20 a year. For some comparison of how much this actually is, if you lived in the notoriously poor London district of Soho in the 1880s, rent for three small rooms in a shared house would be between 10 and 20 shillings a week depending on the rooms. There are 12 pence to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, so rent at the lower end would be 10 shillings / half a pound per week, making yearly rent £26.

Considering rent is more than you would earn, this would force you to live with at least one other person who worked just to be able to survive. As for food, a loaf of bread in the 1880s varied between 1 and 3 pence, depending on the size and how much of it was actually “bread”. Potatoes, grain, and basic vegetables like cabbage would always be on the menu, and the average person would be able to afford just enough to keep themselves fed to a basic level, which led to a low level of health for many poor people.

(A classic Victorian living room from a large manor house. Scenes like this would often not be seen for the entire lifetime of a poor person)

After rent, coal, and necessary expenses, there would be little money left over to spend on expensive things like fruit and meat, leading to many people developing nutrient deficiencies, and entire districts were noticed to be of poorer health than others.

The Alcohol problem

One issue associated with the working class during the Victorian era was the problem with alcoholism. There were very basic water treatment plants in the country at the time, and they were also very rare and ineffective and didn’t cover the poorer districts. This meant that everyone had to get their water from rivers, streams, and wells, which were all completely untreated. In the past, this problem was solved with something called small beer, which was simply just normal beer that had a very low alcohol content, normally around 1.5 ABV. This amount of alcohol was enough to stop harmful bacteria from spoiling the water, but meant people weren’t drunk all the time.

This method of avoiding bad water became a favorite during the Victorian era, with people choosing to drink beer over water to avoid getting sick, or maybe that was just an excuse. It was difficult to find safe drinking water and the prices of alcohol were extremely low, making it accessible to even the poorest of people. Public houses and breweries could be found within short walking distances of each other across entire cities, leading to alcoholism being one of the biggest social problems people had to face.

Dangers of living as a poor Victorian

You were not protected by “any” worker’s laws at all, so if your boss wanted to fire you for no reason, there was nothing you could do about it.

The same applied to rent protection, with the landlord being able to throw your things on the street one day with no notice.

Crime was extremely bad in the poorer districts of bigger cities, and with no such thing as security cameras, DNA testing, or fingerprint recognition, criminals were almost guaranteed to get away with it. Most of the crime involved alcohol-related incidents, with certain areas being known for mass brawls on a daily basis.

Disease was everywhere and the average person wasn’t able to afford a doctor. Even if they could the chances of them being able to actually do something with the medicine available at the time was extremely low.

Homes would be infested with lice, mites, rats, and all other kinds of nasty disease-carrying creatures trying to find your food supply.

Many jobs were very dangerous and wouldn’t provide the necessary safety equipment, such as masks for people working in mines. It was also common for people to have slight deformities because of their jobs, like the profession known as the one-legged dancer. This would involve a person using one leg to power an axel that would spin a potter’s wheel or spinning yard at a constant speed. This is basically employing someone to be a low-voltage motor for a piece of equipment, but because of the position of the equipment, the same leg would normally be used, leading to a 45-hour single-leg workout every week.