VICTORIAN CHILDREN first year

Who went to school?

At the start of the 19th century very few children went to school. Most poor children worked. If they went to school, their families lost the money they earned.

There were some good schools for boys, for example, grammar schools and public schools. Only richer families could afford to pay the school fees, though some schools gave free places to poor boys. Poor girls did not go to school when the Victorian age began meaning they had little education. Girls from wealthy families would usually be taught at home by a governess. Sometimes, wealthy girls may have attended boarding schools too.

Where did Victorian children play?

Although many children worked in Victorian times, they still had time to play.

Outdoors, most Victorian children played in the street or in the fields and woods. Not many families had gardens big enough to play in, and there were no children's playgrounds. Rich families had playrooms or nurseries, but poorer children played wherever they could find space. With ten or more children often crammed into one or two rooms, play-space for poor families was a luxury. Playing outside was the usual escape.

 

Street fun

In street games, children shared toys like hoops, marbles and skipping ropes, with friends in the street, or in the school playground. They played chasing games such as tag and played catch with balls. If they hadn't got a proper ball, they made balls from old rags, and bats from pieces of wood. They also played hopscotch. Victorian children were able to play out in the street as there was less traffic than today. There were no cars until the 1880s. They crowded around street musicians, wheeling a barrel organ, which played tunes when the handle was turned.

Sometimes barrel organ players had a monkey with them.

Books for children

Victorian children were often given books with improving moral lessons, about characters with names like Lazy Lawrence and Simple Susan. A favourite story was Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies about a badly treated chimney-boy. There were lots of books written specially for children, such as Treasure Island (about pirates) by R L Stevenson and Black Beauty (about a horse) by Anna Sewell. Perhaps the most famous Victorian children's book is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) written by Lewis Carroll.

Children's games

Children played outdoor chasing games such as tag (which had lots of other names, such as touch or tig), and others like Tom Tiddler's Ground, where one player (Tom) tries to catch anyone trespassing on his or her ground, shown by a line. They also played a version of musical chairs, using cushions or old rags to sit on. At Easter, children played 'Egg-Shackling'. In this game, everyone put an egg with their name on in a basket or sieve, which was shaken until the eggs broke. The last egg left unbroken won.