A Tale of Two Jubilees

Just in case you missed it, this is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year and lots of celebrations are planned. Only one other British monarch, Queen Victoria, has celebrated their Diamond Jubilee. Queen Victoria’s reign was from 1837 to 1901: the longest for the United Kingdom to date. Third place in the ‘royal stakes’ goes to Victoria’s grandfather, George III, who was crowned king in 1760 and died in 1820. There were many celebrations for Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, even though the queen had been unpopular for a time following her virtual retirement from public life after the death of her beloved Alfred, the Prince Consort.

A major landmark of Victoria’s reign was the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in 1851. But for ordinary people, perhaps the introduction of the Elementary Education Act in 1870 (which enshrined in law the principle that all children aged five to twelve years old should attend school) had a more lasting impact.

I think the most memorable event of our Queen’s reign was the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969. But great strides have taken place in medicine, too, such as the eradication of smallpox. It’s hard to say what will be viewed by future generations as the most significant event of Her Majesty’s reign. Perhaps the invention of the world wide web? What do you think?

Images: The Coronation of Queen Victoria. Cassell’s Illustrated History of England Volume VII, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c. 1873).
Cover of Queen Victoria and Her People, (Educational Supply Association Ltd, 1897). This positively hagiographic biography of Victoria was a Diamond Jubilee souvenir for schoolchildren. Both images from the author’s collection.

Tracing Your Ancestors’ Childhood

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve just signed a new book contract for Pen & Sword! In Tracing Your Ancestors’ Childhood, I’ll be exploring the history of childhood and education in England and Wales, and discussing relevant records and archives for family historians. I’ll be looking at your ancestors’ childhood experiences at home, school, work, and in institutions such as workhouses for the period from 1750-1950. This handy reference guide will include court records, charities, wartime children, and child emigrants to the USA, Australia and Canada.
I’ll update this blog when more information becomes available about a release date.
Photo: The author growing up in Salford in the 1960s. 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.