A Christmas Carol - The Kansas City Repertory Theatre

LONDON’S YOUNG POOR
Many children in London were poor, even homeless. Most spent their days earning money for their
families, instead of going to school, as does Martha Cratchit in A Christmas Carol. Children had to share
beds: four people in the same bed. They often had to take turns to sleep in the beds or on mattresses.
Many families owned tin baths which they filled with water, usually once a week. The family members
all used the same water, one after the other. Houses were warmed by coal fires, which made the area
smelly and smoky in the winter.
Because of the poor living conditions and
lack of proper nourishment, there were
thousands of children, like Tiny Tim, who
were sickly or had ailments and died
young. Many people were too poor to
buy medicine or go to doctors and there
were no vaccines to prevent diseases like
measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria,
whooping cough, and polio. As a result, a
large percentage of children died from
these illnesses. In 1839, nearly half of the
funerals were for children under the age
of ten.
Child laborers in London, circa 1900.
Since many parents did not allow their children to work in the new textile factories, factory owners
bought children from orphanages and workhouses, making them virtual slaves, housed in crowded and
filthy buildings. The children, who usually began work at age ten to thirteen, were forced to sign
contracts indebting them until age twenty‐one. By the beginning of the nineteenth century these
“pauper apprentices” made up about a third of the cotton industry workers.
In needlework factories in London, teenage girls worked twelve to eighteen hour days, six days a week.
In the coal mines, boys and girls as young as five were put to work in the shafts because of their small
bodies. Stripped of most of their clothes, chained to coal carts, they performed dangerous and grueling
work underneath the earth.
Many children grew up without education and virtually no chance to escape the cycle of poverty.
Dickens felt that this cycle of poverty could be broken by education and became interested in the
“Ragged Schools” in London. Ragged Schools were for poor children in the cities who could not afford
the tuition of the more common private schools. These schools were not well attended, however,
because many of the children had to work to support their families.
A Christmas Carol: Learning Guide Page 17