It was a tough time to be a member of the working class.
Thomas Rowlandson/Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Rowlandson/Wikimedia Commons
New technology, industrialization and mechanization pushed thousands of Victorians from the country to the city, as that’s where the majority of the jobs were. These working class people were mostly unskilled laborers, and their working conditions were grim at best.
Without the workers’ protections we see today, the Victorian-era working class had to toil in unsanitary conditions without access to clean water or food. In many cases, they lived on the streets and had to walk long distances to get to their jobs.