1830's Britain

The Poor Law of 1834

The Poor Law was passed in 1834. Previously the poor, aged and crippled had been given food and other assistance by the local authorities in their own parish. Under the new Act, those who needed relief would have to enter poorhouses, or workhouses, to get it. In these workhouses, life was deliberately made so miserable for the occupants that few people would seek assistance. Families were broken up; there was insufficient food and bedding; and, once inside, the pauper could not get out even to go to church on Sunday. The inmates were kept under lock and key and treated like prisoners. To those who framed the Poor Law of 1834 poverty was regarded as a crime, not a misfortune. The new poor houses opened just as hard times threw large numbers of people out of work. The workers turned with hatred on the Poor Law and Parliament. One radical exclaimed:

You can see yonder factory with its towering chimney; every brick in that chimney is cemented with the blood of women and little children. Sooner than wife and husband and son should be surrendered and dungeoned and fed on skilee - sooner than wife and daughter should wear the prison dress - Newcastle ought to be and should be one blaze of fire with only one way to put it out, and that with the blood of all who supported this abominable measure.

Writing of London in 1836, Charles Dickens observes ‘wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper, every room let out to a different family. Fruit and sweet-stuff manufacturers in the cellar, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlour, cobblers in the back, a bird-fancier on the first floor three families on the second, Irishmen in the passage, a musician in the front kitchen and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one…..........filth everywhere, clothes drying and slops emptying from the windows…..men and women in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting and swearing.’

Workhouses

Few writers were more influential than Charles Dickens whose novels often depicted the social evils of nineteenth-century England. One book, "Oliver Twist", illustrates some features of the notorious workhouses. Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse; and on the day that he was born his poor young mother died. Nobody knew where she came from, or who she was. A woman took the baby out of the blankets in which he had been rolled, and dressed him in old calico robes that had grown yellow from long service; for dozens of babies born in the workhouse had worn them too. The parish authorities sent him to a branch workhouse, three miles off - a baby farm, where on old woman named Mrs. Mann took charge of him, for seven pence-halfpenny a week. There he rolled about the floor with twenty or thirty other workhouse babies like himself, with not too much to eat, and very little to wear. Only the strongest babies lived to grow up at Mrs. Mann's.

ENTERING THE WORKHOUSE

WORKHOUSE CHILDREN

THE WORKHOUSE BOYS IN OLIVER!

It is believed that Charles Dickens based his character Oliver Twist on Robert Blincoe (c. 1792-1860) who was a British child worker and workhouse boy.

The story of Blincoe’s childhood was later published as A Memoir of Robert Blincoe. Robert Blincoe was born around 1792. By 1796 he was an orphan and living in the St. Pancras workhouse in London. The fate of his parents is unknown. At the age of six he was sent to work as a chimney boy, an assistant of a chimney sweeper, but his master soon returned him to the workhouse. In August 1799, at the age of 7, he was sold to work in the Gonalston Mill, a cotton mill of C. W. and F. Lambert in Lowdham, near Nottingham. According to his later memoirs, he was one of the 80 7-year-old children the St. Pancras workhouse sold to "indenture" as parish apprentices. They traveled there in wagons for five days. Ostensibly they were supposed to be schooled to better their lives but none of that ever happened. Blincoe and the others lived in a dormitory and their food consisted of porridge and black bread. They worked 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. Blincoe's first job was to pick up loose cotton waste from the spinning frames when the machine was working, even in the face of injury. He lost half a finger. Overseers beat the children on the slightest provocation. Blincoe later stated that he contemplated suicide many times. When Blincoe ran away and tried to flee to London, a tailor who sometimes worked for the mill recognized him and dragged him back. In 1802, when Lowdham Mill was closed, Blincoe and others were sent to Litton Mill in Derbyshire. Treatment remained the same. Blincoe completed his effective apprenticeship in stock weaving in 1813 and worked as an adult worker until 1817. Then he left to found his own cotton-spinning business. In 1819 he married a woman named Martha. In 1822 journalist John Brown met Blincoe and interviewed him for an article about child labour. Brown decided to write Blincoe's biography and gave it to social activist Richard Carlile. In 1828 Carlile decided to publish the tale in his newspaper The Lion in five weekly episodes between January 25 and February 22 and The Poor Man's Advocate. Blincoe's spinning machinery was destroyed in a fire in 1828. Destitute and unable to pay his debts he was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for some time. After his release he became a cotton-waste dealer. This business was finally successful and he was able to pay for his 3 children's education. In 1832 John Doherty published A Memoir of Robert Blincoe in a pamphlet form. In an interview of Employment of Children in Manufactories Committee in 1832 he stated that he'd rather see his children transported to Australia than put them to work in factories. Robert Blincoe died of Bronchitis in his daughters house on guos lane in 1860.

A book has been written about the life of Robert Blincoe:

John Waller - The Real Oliver Twist Robert Blincoe: A Life that Illuminates an Age

Robert Blincoe’s present-day descendent is Nicholas Blincoe who is an English author, critic and screenwriter. He was a columnist for the London Daily Telegraph until September 2006, writing the weekly 'Marginalia' column. He also wrote for the BBC.

In the story, Rockin’ Oliver!, Dickens’s character, Oliver Twist grew up to become a social reformer, using his new wealthy and influential position in life in the Brownlow family, to improve the lot of the poor. He would get laws passed in Parliament to provide better conditions and lay the groundwork for the affluent society, which would eventually exist by the 1950’s. In reality, this grown-up Oliver Twist social reformer was Lord Shaftsbury. After reading Dickens’s novel, he dedicated his life to improving the lot of the poor in the mid-1800’s. Lord Shaftsbury tried many times, and was eventually successful, to end the practice of Climbing Boys, who were young children sent up chimneys to clean them out. He also regulated the number of hours children worked and set up Ragged Schools, which were government-funded schools for the poor, the beginning of our modern primary elementary education.

Lord Shaftsbury’s work was the catalyst for the gradual improvement of social conditions in Britain. Workhouses were completely abolished in 1930. The Beveridge Report in 1942 recommended universal health care, housing, social assistance and employment standards. A series of acts passed by the British government in 1948, with similar acts being passed in Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, brought these new standards into being, thus concluding the push for social improvements and creating a much healthier and affluent society.

Rockin’ Oliver!, set in the 1950’s, is a celebration of this achievement.