Life of the Poor and Oppressed Essay

I am going to be comparing and contrasting two literary works set during the Victorian era in London, England. Both of the literary works comment on the harsh realities that people were facing in London due to poverty and injustice. The nineteenth century Great Britain saw a huge growth in population due to growth of cities as a result of the industrial revolution and immigration both foreign and domestic. However, the result of this in pouring of people created a problem. The search for employment became a factor. “Skilled and unskilled people were looking for work, so wages were low, barely above subsistence level. If work dried up, or was seasonal, men were laid off, and because they had hardly enough to live on when they were in work, they had no savings to fall back on (Daniels).” Children were forced to work in dangerous and unfair environments and housing was scarce, too expensive, or not available close to where work was. Large amounts of people began living together in unsanitary housing situations and “great wealth and extreme poverty lived side by side because the tenements and slums were only a stone’s throw from the large elegant houses of the rich (Daniels).” Henry Mayhew “was asked by the Morning Chronicle to be the metropolitan correspondent for its series “Labour and the Poor.” His interviews with workers and street folk convey a vivid sense of the lives of London’s poor (1601).” In his interview with a seventeen-year-old boy, who had lost his father and was abandoned by his mother, this young boy had to work in a cotton factory in Manchester that barely allowed him survival. After two years of working there he tells Mayhew that, “I ran away, for I had a roving mind; but I should have stayed if my master hadn’t knocked me about so (1602).” This is a picture of not only the harsh conditions of the work itself, but of the treatment that lower class citizens received from their “masters.” Along with a young, free spirit, the treatment was harsh enough that this boy was willing to beg on the streets rather than stay there and work the rest of his life. However, as he traveled to London in hopes of better work and better opportunities, “when [he] arrived to London, all [his] hopes were blighted (1602).” He spent many days looking for work, sleeping in unions or slums, and begging on the street for food. He was starving and desperate a good part of the time, but the boy tells Mayhew that he never stole anything. He claims that hardly any of the young boys and girls that were around him and in the same situation stole and that if it was happening he never saw it. I think this speaks volumes of the character that humans still have, despite their physical desolation. I think there is a generalization that people make, even now, on those that are impoverished that mark them as a threat or danger to society, claiming that they will steal or kill to get what they need. I think this is beautiful that this young boy makes it a common practice not to do harm to anyone, even though society is harsh and unjust to him. He goes on to say that there is “a great deal of sickness among the young men and women…fever, colds, and venereal diseases, are very common (1603).” He also says that in seven years of being in that lifestyle, he never did get sick. This boy, despite the cards he has been dealt in life, remains honorable and steadfast in his disposition. There is a lot to be learned here. It is very humbling to read about such harsh realities that humans have faced, sometimes almost the entirety of their lives, yet they never give up or give in. The second literary work is by Ada Nield Chew, “who left school at the age of eleven to help her mother with taking care of house and family. In her early twenties, she worked as a tailor in a factory in Crewe. She wrote a series of letters to the Crewe Chronicle about working conditions in the factory(1606).” In her letter titled “A Living Wage for Factory Girls at Crewe, 5

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