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What Were Real Victorian Values
What Were Real Victorian Values
By Lee Jackson
Queen Victoria
She would not be amused
The Tories have revisited the Victorian values debate. Child labour,
workhouses - are the values of that time really something worth reviving?
But this was also a society in which child "mudlarks" spent hours knee-deep
in the Thames scratching for waste pieces of coal; in which teenage girls "of
loose character" openly touted for business; and in which penniless widows
would do hours of debilitating needlework for a handful of pennies, rather
than starve or be accommodated in the dread workhouse. Not the ideal
society, by a long chalk.
But did Victorian parents really take greater responsibility for their children?
Possibly. I cannot help but think that Mr Grieve puts himself in the slippers of
Newspaper banner
Jack the Ripper's murder most horrid
One need only read the full life histories of Jack the Ripper's victims - that's
the real story of the Victorian East End. It's not a uniform history of a shared
moral values and responsible parenting.
As for community spirit - again, one wonders whether slums like St Giles
(today's Covent Garden) were crammed full of good neighbours. Certainly,
the Victorian slums had their share of young criminals - boys of whom James
Greenwood, a popular journalist of the day, wrote in 1869: "They are
impregnable alike to persuasion and threatening. They have an ingrain
conviction that it is you who are wrong, not them."
Not at all. The Victorians transformed the world a good deal, with better
housing for the poor, through both charities and local government. They
fostered the beginnings of the trade union movement. They began
regulation of factories and workplaces. And they introduced public education
and countless public health measures.
All contributed to a better society. But I am not sure that the Victorians knew
how to deal with crime, any more than we do today. I'm inclined to believe
that we are better off without flogging, the death penalty, the suicideinducing "separate system" (tantamount to solitary confinement for every
prisoner) and transportation.
Perhaps those charged with our moral welfare should try looking forward, as
well as back?
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6175437.stm