Out Now!

 

My latest release, Young Workers of the Industrial Age, is out now!

It's currently on special offer at Pen and Sword, or alternatively you can buy it on Amazon UK. 

American readers can pre-order it here on Amazon US  - it will be released in the USA on 30 November. 

The Great Exhibition, 1851.

Once upon a time, in the reign of Queen Victoria, a fairytale palace of glass was built. 

The Great Exhibition of 1851 showed the wonders of Britain’s industry and empire.

But there was a dark truth behind this glittering display. Great Britain’s industrial might was built on the backs of men, women and little children.

In A Welsh Coal Mine.

Children of all ages worked day and night. They toiled in the silk mills, cotton factories and bleachworks. 

They toiled beneath the ground in coal mines, far from the light of day. And they toiled in the dark heart of the glasshouses, lit only by the blaze of the furnaces.

Children worked on the land, too. Their work, like helping bring in the harvest. was regulated by the seasons. 

The Gleaner, 1830s. 

It was incredible just how many different trades and industries used child labour in Britain. Children also worked in people's homes as domestic servants.

Over the next few blog posts, I’ll be taking a look at some of these occupations, and the perils that children faced in some of them.

All images from the author's collection. 

Life In the Georgian Court

Today I'd like to welcome the fabulous Catherine Curzon to my blog. Catherine's new book Life In the Georgian Court has just been published by Pen & Sword, and I'm sure it will be a must-read for fans of that era! 

The Greedy End of a Gluttonous King

Whilst researching my book, Life in the Georgian Court, I came across no shortage of dramatic stories and tragic deaths. From smallpox to strangulation, guillotine to gangrene, our 18th century royals didn’t always die the most peaceful deaths.

Spare a thought then for Adolf Frederick, the King of Sweden who met his end on 12th February 1771 not by bullet or beneath the battlefield bayonets, but as a victim of pudding.

 When the Swedish monarch settled down to enjoy a meal that, as the saying goes, really was fit for a king, he wasn’t in the mood for a simple snack. This well-liked king enjoyed nothing more than indulgence and on this day, he was going to indulge himself like no man had before.

As the hours drew on, he tucked into lobster, caviar, sauerkraut and kippers in abundance, the seemingly endless procession of food barely slowing as the evening passed. The ravenous monarch devoured everything that was set before him, swilling it down with glass after glass of the finest champagne. Yet for every plate that he cleared, Adolf Frederick still had room for more.

One of the king’s favourite desserts was a dessert known as semla, a sweet roll popular in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Most diners would content themselves with one or, with a very sweet tooth, maybe two of these super-indulgent treats but at Adolf ’s last meal, the king just kept on going. This was the last meal before Lent so the king was determined to feed himself up, and nothing was going to stop him.

To finish his meal, Adolf wanted semlas… lots of semlas; fourteen portions served in hot milk, to be exact. Once the greedy king was finally sated, he retired to his chambers where his stomach began to grumble and soon, so did he. Adolf died that same day; whether his last meal contributed to his demise we cannot be certain, but posterity has recorded Adolf as the king who ate himself to death, the victim of one semla too many.

About the Author

Catherine Curzon is a royal historian and blogs on all matters 18th century at A Covent Garden Gilflurt's Guide to Life.

Her work has featured by publications including BBC History Extra, All About History, History of Royals, Explore History and Jane Austen’s Regency World. She has also provided additional material for the sell-out theatrical show, An Evening with Jane Austen, which she will introduce at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, in September (tickets are available here).

Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Film and when not dodging the furies of the guillotine, she lives in Yorkshire atop a ludicrously steep hill.

Her book, Life in the Georgian Court, is available now from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Book Depository and all good bookshops!

About Life in the Georgian Court

As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history and in France, Revolution stalks the land.

Peep behind the shutters of the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia and the epoch-defining family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover.

Behind the pomp and ceremony were men and women born into worlds of immense privilege, yet beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Take a journey into the private lives of very public figures and learn of arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and scandals that rocked polite society.

Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, Prinny makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage and Marie Antoinette begins her last, terrible journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell.

Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.

New Book Contract: Regency Spies

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve just signed a new book contract with Pen and Sword for their new Social History imprint!

‘Regency Spies: England's Rebels and Revolutionaries Exposed’ will explore the shadowy world of the network of government spies and agents provocateurs which kept watch on Britain’s underprivileged masses during the Napoleonic wars.  The upper classes feared a replay of the French Revolution on British soil: the threat of an armed insurrection or a French invasion was taken very seriously.  Any hint of sedition was ruthlessly suppressed.

The ‘Great War’ against Napoleon had a devastating effect on the British economy.  Taxation reached record levels to pay for the war, and the poorer classes endured great hardship.  Hunger fuelled riots for cheaper food and Luddite attacks on mill-owners, factories and machinery.

The spy network had some famous successes, like the discoveries of the Despard plot, the Pentrich Rising and the Cato St conspiracy.  Sometimes the government’s efforts descended into high farce, like the ‘Spy Nozy’ affair, in which poets Wordsworth and Coleridge were shadowed by a special agent.  But the stakes were incredibly high: agitators risked the horrors of a traitor’s death if found guilty.

The book will tell the stories of the real conspirators against the government, and the tragedies which befell ordinary folk entrapped by agents provocateurs.  The provisional launch date for ‘Regency Spies’ is mid-to-late 2015.

Images from the Library of Congress British Cartoons collection:

Satire identifying reform with revolution by Cruikshank, 1819. 
‘True reform of Parliament: patriots lighting a revolutionarybonfire in new Palace Yard by Gillray, 1809. Sir Francis Burdett is making a speech and waving a bonnet rouge [cap of liberty] shaped like a fool's cap as Horne Tooke lights on fire a pile of acts and charters, as well as a Bible, with a flaming baton labeled "Sedition" while three creatures add to the flames. James Boswell, Samuel Whitbread, Lord Folkestone, and Henry Clifford add documents to the pile as a mob destroys Parliament in the background.

The Right Path

During Georgian times, many people in the upper and middle classes regarded ‘the poor’ as a problem that society was lumbered with permanently, as ordained by heaven. The work ethic was all-important; idleness was frowned on. The devil ‘found work for idle hands to do.’  Families who did not use every means to support themselves, for example by making their children work, were considered improvident and a burden on the poor rates.

Educational writers such as Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) and Hannah More (1745-1833) advocated work for young children as a good way of preventing them falling into lazy habits. Trimmer thought that schools of industry, such as the one at Lewisham (1796) which taught knitting and spinning, were a good way of setting poor children on the right path.  People were more willing to take children on as apprentices if they already had some training.

This idea continued into Victorian times; often workhouses had industrial schools attached to them where children learnt skills to help them earn a living. Many charity schools, such as the ragged schools, like the Westminster Juvenile Refuge and School of Industry gave homeless children food, a safe place to sleep and training in skills such as shoe-making, tailoring, leather-gilding, wood-turning or French-polishing.

Images: Hannah More, who opened several Sunday schools in Somerset. Lady’s Monthly Museum, July 1798.

Sarah Trimmer, a keen supporter of charity and Sunday schools. Lady’s Monthly Museum, November 1798.

The Lambeth Ragged School which opened on 5 March 1851.  Illustrated London News, 8 March 1851. All images from author's collection.

Schools Which Weren’t Really Schools

Child labour in the Victorian countryside was not confined to working on farms or in the fields. Families turned to domestic industries and handicrafts to bring in a few more pennies. Children worked for long hours in close, stuffy rooms in the straw-plaiting, shirt-button making, glove-making and pillow-lace industries. (Straw plait was used to decorate bonnets or make hats).

During the nineteenth century, thousands of women and children were employed making pillow-lace (hand-made lace) in Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Devonshire.
Children as young as five years old worked in lace ‘schools’, which were really workshops.
Bedfordshire children worked an eight hour day, for which they earned just a penny or three halfpence. The children became ill and had eye problems after doing such intricate work for long hours. Sometimes the children were taught a little reading and writing, but their parents expected them to perform a minimum amount of work per day.
The ‘schoolmistress’ who supervised the children used a big stick to keep their minds on their work.

Some of the children who worked in straw-plaiting ‘schools’ were very tiny. An investigator for the Children’s Employment Commission in the 1860s found George Tompkins, aged only three and a half years old, making straw plait in a school at Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire.

There are some images of children making pillow lace, and more info on the lace schools, here.
Image: The lace on these morning dresses was almost certainly hand-made. Lady's Monthly Museum, December 1798.

The Rich Child in His Castle, the Poor Child at His Gate

What was life like for a child growing up in Georgian and Victorian times? While researching The Children History Forgot, I was struck by the vast gulf between rich and poor. Children like this smartly dressed boy and girl, born into a genteel family, were educated at home in their early years. Sons were sent to school, then university. Daughters were often educated at home, although some later went to school to learn accomplishments suitable for their future roles as wives and mothers.

Children born into poverty were expected to earn a living from as early an age as possible, like these ‘mudlarks’ scavenging along the banks of the Thames. They collected and sold bits of coal, scrap metal or rope to try to earn a few pennies. The only schools likely to be available to them were Sunday schools, or missions like this one.

Images: Fashion plates, Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance, Vol. XII, 1837.

Children mudlarking on the Thames, Old and New London Vol.III, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1878).

New cover for the Children History Forgot!

My publishers Robert Hale have come up with a lovely new cover for The Children History Forgot, which will be released in a few weeks. I think it really sums up the poverty which so many children endured, and which was a prime factor in the prevalence of child labour in Georgian and Victorian times.  Children were expected to earn their keep from an early age, unless they came from an extremely affluent family.

The Children History Forgot

Once upon a time, Britain forged a mighty industrial empire: built with the blood, sweat and tears of society’s most vulnerable members. The Children History Forgot explores young people’s working lives during the late Georgian and Victorian eras, when boys and girls created almost every item in our ancestors’ homes: bricks, glass, cutlery, candles, lace, cotton and more.

All over Britain, from the coal mines of Wales to the flax mills of Ireland, children toiled in factories and workshops, underground and on the land. A chosen few like Samuel Slater began new lives in America but thousands of others have been forgotten by history: killed by unguarded machinery or poisoned by metal or pottery dust. Many of these were conscript workers: pauper apprentices trapped by their poverty.
My book tells the story of the long, heartbreaking fight for reform. The story of men like Lord Shaftesbury, Richard Oastler and the tireless factory inspectors who battled, not only to improve youngsters’ working conditions and opportunities for education, but also to change society’s attitudes towards childhood. The Children History Forgot takes a fresh look at the true cost of Britain’s industrial success story.

You can pre-order The Children History Forgot at Amazon UK here, or here if living in the US.

The Children History Forgot

I am very pleased and excited to announce my book on child workers, 'The Children History Forgot', has been accepted by Robert Hale and is now going through the production stages!

The book was originally titled 'Stolen Childhoods', but we belatedly discovered there is another book with a very similar title by another author (with a different historical slant) due out next year.

'The Children History Forgot' will tell the stories of young workers (children and teenagers) during late Georgian and Victorian times in many different industries - from cotton manufacture to candle-making.
I will post an update on my blog as soon as publication date is confirmed.

Time Off?

It seems most of Britain is going to take time off to watch the England World Cup game this afternoon. What would the Georgians and Victorians have thought? If you worked in a mill, many factory owners only allowed one or two days’ holiday per year. Some mills and collieries closed down for Whit Monday or Wakes Week. Any time off was unpaid; workers saved up all year for their annual holiday. Under the factory acts, women and child workers were allowed two whole days and eight half days holiday per year. Women and children employed in workshops were not legally entitled to any holidays.
Time off to watch a football match? Not likely!

Image: An early nineteenth century cotton mill. Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, October 1873. (Author’s collection.)