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Life in the Victorian era

What was life like in Victorian times?

Living in the Victorian era was exciting because of all the new inventions and pace of change and progress, but it was a hard time to live in if you didn’t have much money. Even very young children had to work if their family needed them to.

However, life had improved a lot for people by the end of the Victorian era. Laws were put in place that made working conditions a bit better in factories and mines, and that stopped young children from working by requiring them to go to school instead. More people were living in cities, but hygiene and sanitation was more important thanks to people like Florence Nightingale . Plus, the Victorians started the Christmas traditions like sending cards and decorating trees that we know and enjoy today!

Top 10 facts

• The inventions of machines in factories replaced jobs that people used to do, but people were needed to look after the machines and keep the factories clean.
• Factories were built in cities, so people ended up moving to the cities to get jobs. Half the population in Britain lived in cities by the end of the Victorian era.
• Cities became crowded, busy and dirty, but discoveries about hygiene and sanitation meant that diseases like cholera were easier to prevent.
• People in the Victorian era started to use electricity for the first time , and to listen to music by playing records on the gramophone.
• Steam trains made travel a lot easier, and rich people started to go on holidays to the seaside in places like Blackpool and Brighton.
• There was a big difference between rich and poor in Victorian times . Rich people could afford lots of treats like holidays, fancy clothes, and even telephones when they were invented.
• Poor people – even children – had to work hard in factories, mines or workhouses. They didn’t get paid very much money.
• By the end of the Victorian era, all children could go to school for free. Victorian schools were very strict – your teacher might even beat you if you didn’t obey the rules.
• The way we celebrate Christmas was begun in Victorian times – they sent the first Christmas cards and made Christmas crackers.
• Charles Dickens was a famous Victorian author who wrote A Christmas Carol , Oliver Twist and other famous novels.

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Did you know?

• At the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837, most people would have used candles and oil or gas lamps to light their homes and streets. By the end of the Victorian era in 1901, electricity was available and rich people could get it in their homes.
• Poor people could work in mines, in mills and factories, or in workhouses . Whole families would sometimes have to work so they’d all have enough money to buy food.
• Children in poor families would have jobs that were best done by people who weren’t very tall. They would have to crawl in small spaces in mines, or underneath machines in textile mills. It was very dangerous!
• Rich people didn’t have dangerous jobs like these. In fact, some didn’t even have to work! They could afford to buy the new inventions coming out like the telephone, the gramophone (for playing music) and electric light bulbs.
• Rich Victorians were the first to go on seaside holidays – some of the places they’d go are spots where we go on holiday too, like Blackpool, Brighton and Southend.
• Victorian children loved it when their mum and dad let them see a magic lantern show. This was a slideshow of pictures that told a story – the machine that showed the pictures was called a magic lantern.
• Almost all families in Victorian times – except for the very poor ones – would pay people to be servants who would do their household chores for them. This included cooking, cleaning, washing and even serving dinner. Women who were servants were called maids, and men were called footmen. The head servant would be a man called a butler.
• There was a rule for everything in Victorian times – even about the sorts of clothes you’d wear in the morning or evening, and when in the city or in the country!
• All men wore hats in Victorian times (rich men wore top hats, poor men wore caps). When a man wanted to say hello to a lady, it was good manners to tip the brim of their hat down, then push their hat back onto their head.
• It was bad manners if a man spoke to a woman he didn’t know without someone else introducing them first.
• Children always had to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to their family members every time the child came in or went out of a room. Try doing that for a day in your home!
• Children were not allowed to shout, complain, interrupt or disagree with anyone . They had to do as they were told, and be cheerful and quiet all the time.

Victorian gallery

• A railway poster advertising Brighton and Volk’s Electric Railway
• Women in a Victorian workhouse
• Clothes that a wealthy Victorian man would have worn
• Victorian dresses with bustles (Credit: Lovelorn Poets via flickr)
• A Victorian hoop skirt
• How children dressed in the Victorian era
• A Victorian magic lantern
• An early Christmas card
• A Victorian living room
• A Victorian kitchen
• A Victorian-style pushchair

Victorian inventions like the steam engine and innovations like steel-making led to machines being made that could produce lots of the same thing at once. Factories were filled with machines like these. While it used to be that one person would be a weaver and make cloth, machines could now do that job instead and make cloth that didn’t cost as much.

So, what did people do if machines did all the work? Well, the machines needed looking after, and factory owners wanted people who could do that as well as take care of other little jobs around the factory. Since factories were usually built in large towns and cities, and people needed new jobs, most people moved to where the factories were. By the end of the Victorian era, half of the people living in Britain lived in cities.

This meant that cities were crowded and dirty . If you were poor and couldn’t afford to live in a very nice place, it was easy to get sick. There was a large outbreak of cholera in London in 1853-1854 that killed 11,000 people. Most people thought that the disease was coming from areas that just smelled nasty and got passed around through scents in the air, but Dr. John Snow worked out that the disease was actually spreading because of a cesspit that was leaking into a water pump where people drank from. By the end of the Victorian era, London had a better sewage system and sanitation was a bigger concern – plus, people knew more about how diseases are passed from one person to another.

Other famous Victorians who believed that proper hygiene and sanitation were needed to be healthy were Florence Nightingale and Dr. Joseph Lister. Dr. Lister was a surgeon who discovered that cleaning wounds and surgical instruments prevented infections.

Jobs that people had in Victorian times included usual ones like lawyers, doctors, teachers and vicars, but there were other jobs too:

• Engineers were needed to build bridges, buildings and machines
• Miners to get coal, iron and tin
• Mill workers to keep machines running and produce textiles
• Farm workers to tend and harvest crops
• Railway porters to sort out passengers’ luggage
• Navvies who broke ground for railway tracks to be laid down
• Nightmen to clear out the sewers in crowded cities
• Maids, butlers, cooks and other servants in the home

Steam engines needed coal to run them, so mining coal was very important . Working in coal mines was hard, and sometimes entire families would do it just to earn enough money. There were also mines for iron and tin in different parts of Britain.

Only poor people would work in factories and mines, and both were pretty unhealthy places to be. The air would be thick with dust from the mines or from the cotton being spun for cloth, and working hours were long.

If someone didn’t have a home (or money to afford a place to live), they could go to a workhouse , which was a place that provided food and beds in exchange for doing work. While this sounds pretty handy, it wasn’t very nice. Men, women and children all had to live separately, so families couldn’t stay together. The food wasn’t very good, and children weren’t taught how to read and write. Everyone had to wear the same uniform, and breaking any rules would mean strict punishment.

If you were rich, then life was completely different! Rich Victorians lived in large houses that were well heated and clean. Children got a good education either by going away to school or having a governess who taught them at home (this is usually how girls were educated).

Wealthy people could also afford to buy beautiful clothes. All women in Victorian times wore dresses with long skirts, but rich women could get the latest fashions that needed special underclothes to wear properly. They wore dresses that needed hoop skirts underneath to make the dresses spread out in a dome shape around their legs. Or, they wore skirts that lay mostly flat but that poofed out a bit around their bottom – this was called a bustle.

All men, whether rich or poor, wore waistcoats. Rich men also wore top hats and carried walking sticks.

Names to know:

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) – Florence was the founder of modern nursing; she knew it was important to keep hospitals clean and well-run. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) – a famous Victorian author who wrote A Christmas Carol , and many other books about life in Victorian times Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – a Victorian author from Scotland who wrote the famous children’s stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped . Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) – a popular Victorian poet; one of his poems was ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, which was about the Crimean War. Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905) – founded children’s charity Barnardo’s in 1870 as a home for children who were orphaned or didn’t have a place to live, which meant they didn’t have to go to a workhouse Mrs Isabella Beeton (1836-1865) – an author who wrote a famous book about cooking and housekeeping that many people in Victorian times used Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – a Victorian naturalist who wrote On the Origin of Species and came up with the theory of natural selection, which led to scientific research into evolution . Joseph Lister (1827-1912) – Lister was a surgeon who introduced the idea of keeping surgical instruments free from germs, and disinfecting wounds.

Related Videos

Just for fun...

• Take a quiz about Victorian life
• See a map of the British Empire in Victorian times
• Explore a Victorian painting
• What can you learn about life in Victorian times from looking at the census ?
• Organise a Victorian Experience Day in your own school!
• Can you spot what differences there were between homes for rich people and homes for poor people ?
• Find out about Washday Monday and domestic life in a 19th century weaver's cottage
• How to make Victorian Christmas crackers  and  Victorian Christmas tree ornaments.
• Try your hand at Victorian cookery  with recipes like  beef stew with dumplings  (Hodge Podge), roast goose and apple batter pudding
• Learn to play some Victorian parlour games
• Read some Victorian poetry like The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear or The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Sing 'Hurrah, the Nineteenth Century' , a KS1 learning song

Best books about Victorians for children

Find out more about Victorian life:

• Watch a kids' video about Victorian life: BBC History: Day In The Life Victorians
• Details of the household staff at Shibden Hall , including the butler, the housemaid and the under-housemaid
• Watch BBC Bitesize videos about life in Victorian Scotland: school in Victorian Scotland , home life in Victorian Scotland , work in Victorian Scotland and holidays and leisure in Victorian Scotland
• Make your own Victorian Christmas
• See Victorian toys like zoetropes, tiddlywinks and samplers
• Listen to short audio dramas about the lives of children in Victorian times on BBC Schools Radio
• Information about lots of different aspects of Victorian life: health , entertainment , crime and punishment and transport and travel
• Find out about Victorian buildings and houses in an architecture podcast from FunKids
• Children's information about Victorian schooling , Victorian fashion , Victorian workers and Victorian families
• Read facts about health and food in Victorian times
• Immerse yourself in  fiction books set in Victorian times
• Discover life in a Victorian weaver's cottage the interactive way: listen to and watch the looms and imagine living without heating or electricity
• Find out about 7 innovations which changed Victorian England , including central heating
• Find out about how children worked in Victorian mines and Victorian cotton mills
• Information about Victorian homes : workers' housing and upper class houses
• See a photograph of a Victorian swimming costume
• The life of Michael Marks , entrepreneur and founder of M&S!
• See logbooks from a Victorian school , digitised by Year 5 and Year 6 children

See for yourself

Explore lots of places with Victorian history

See life as it was more than 100 years ago at  Blists Hill Victorian Town

Learn about coal mining in Victorian times at the National Coal Mining Museum for England

Visit Tyntesfield , a Victorian stately home in Somerset

See writer Thomas Carlyle’s house in Chelsea, decorated as it would have been in Victorian times

Explore a Victorian workhouse , and learn about the people who would have lived and worked there

Visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to see clothes that upper class Victorians would have worn

Take a tour of the Charles Dickens museum , which is in a house where the famous author used to live

Embark on a virtual tour of the Crystal Palace, site of the Great Exhibition of 1851 organised by Prince Albert , to see its beautiful and innovative design and discover amazing facts about the exhibition it housed

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The Victorian Era Primary Resource

Learn all about this period of amazing inventions and discoveries.

This history primary resource explores Britain’s Victorian period in a fun, colourful comic. Join max the mouse on his time-travelling journey to discover the significant events that occurred during this exciting period in British history. When was the Victorian era? How did the British empire expand during Queen Victoria’s reign? What were the ground-breaking inventions of the Victorian era?

Pupils will learn about the key social, political and cultural changes that occurred during Britain’s Victorian period in this National Geographic Kids history primary resource.

The teaching resource can be used in study group tasks for discussion about the Victorian era and 19th century Britain, It could be used as a printed handout for each pupil to read themselves, or for display on the interactive whiteboard, as part of a whole class reading exercise.

Activity : In the same way that Queen Victoria dedicated monuments to her husband Albert, ask pupils to design a monument dedicated to someone they love or feel inspired by. They could also design their own postage stamp/s, inspired by their favourite people, places and things. Once finished, get the children to present their work to the class, or write a short description explaining their designs.

N.B.  The following information for mapping the resource documents to the school curriculum is specifically tailored to the  English National Curriculum  and  Scottish Curriculum for Excellence . We are currently working to bring specifically tailored curriculum resource links for our other territories; including  South Africa ,  Australia  and  New Zealand . If you have any queries about our upcoming curriculum resource links, please email:  [email protected]

This History primary resource  assists with teaching the following  History objectives  from the  National Curriculum :

• Know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world.
• Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

National Curriculum Key Stage 1 History objective:   

• Pupils should be taught: significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
• Pupils should be taught: the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements. Some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods [for example, Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong]

National Curriculum Key Stage 2 History objective:

• Pupils should be taught a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066

This History primary resource  assists with teaching the following  Social Studies Second level objective  from the  Scottish Curriculum for Excellence :

• I can discuss why people and events from a particular time in the past were important, placing them within a historical sequence
• I can compare and contrast a society in the past with my own and contribute to a discussion of the similarities and differences

Download primary resource

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Lessons - The Victorians

The Nuffield Primary History project developed a range of approaches and techniques for doing history with children, between and 1991 and 2009. The resources produced by the project are all real lessons which have been taught by real teachers. They include guidance on teaching and examples of children's work. Many of the lessons have been developed by teachers as part of their continuing professional development. A narrative style was used to describe the lesson and what happened. Read more

The project was developed by Jon Nichol, formerly of the School of Education, University of Exeter, Jacqui Dean, formerly School of Education and Professional Training, Leeds Metropolitan University, Ray Verrier, the late John Fines and others. Sarah Codrington coordinated the project from the Nuffield Foundation.

In 2011, the Nuffield Foundation passed the Nuffield Primary History resources to the Historical Association for continued dissemination to primary teachers.

EYFS Medium Term Plan - Toys and Games

This EYFS Medium Term Plan is based around the theme of Toys and Games. It is designed to give teachers and early years practitioners different starting points for learning about the past, across all areas of learning. The activities could be led with a whole class or as small group...

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In times of tight budgets and with the new financial year on the horizon in April, now might be a good time to look at different ways to resource your history curriculum effectively. Alongside all the resources for teachers available from Primary History and the HA website, the following list...

Victorian Britain: short lessons and exemplars

Please note: these resources pre-date the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. A series of lessons, exemplars and guides to help you teach your students about Victorian Britain.

Victorian Britain: a brief history

Victorian era | Questions | Industrial revolution | Social reforms | Empire | Teaching the Victorians | Citizenship | Victorian achievements | Key concepts < This resource is free for everyone For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free or discounted CPD and...

Introducing the Empire through coins

This coins lesson introduces children to the complex and controversial subject of the British Empire in a practical, hands-on way. (These resources are attached below) The lesson can stand alone or form an introduction to an in-depth study of empire, immigration and emigration. It overlaps usefully with geography and citizenship....

Investigating Victorian mining disasters

Please note: these free resources pre-date the 2014 National Curriculum.  In this series of lessons about two mining disasters, I integrated learning in history, literacy and ICT. As the children are an able group, I intended to challenge them to explore primary written sources, to identify differences between them, to...

Brunel and Clifton Suspension Bridge

Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For a more recent resource, see our Primary scheme of work on Brunel. The focus for this literacy hour lesson was a picture, used as a text. The literacy hour genre was non-fiction. In it we studied a specific Victorian, the engineer...

Famous People: Florence Nightingale (KS1)

The life of a famous person from the past and why she acted as she did Florence Nightingale: her life, why she went to the Crimea, and what happened as a result of her work. Cross-curricular work: this lesson stretches and challenges all children, regardless of their ability, whilst teaching...

Victorian child labour in textile factories

Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources see: Victorians (Primary History article, 2014) Scheme of work: Sarah Forbes Bonetta Scheme of work: Brunel What was life like for workhouse children in the early nineteenth century? The aims of the lesson were for children...

Victorian child labour: slate mining

Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources see: Victorians (Primary History article, 2014) Scheme of work: Sarah Forbes Bonetta Scheme of work: Brunel Download Resources 1 and 2 as well as the teachers' notes.  Resources 1 gives you the paragraphs for the children to cut...

Children in Victorian Britain: Down the Mine

This resource is free to everyone. For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum....

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Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. In these lessons we investigated real objects from late Victorian times. The aim was to enable the children to become more independent in their learning and to extend their literacy. The two lessons described formed part of a Year 1 topic...

Detectives: what were schools like in the past?

In this lesson we asked what clues (objects and pictures) can tell us about the past. How were schools in the past different from ours? (Resources attached below.) The objectives were: To introduce the children to the idea of history as detective work. To help the children to make comparisons...

Grace Darling

I taught a short history topic on Grace Darling, using a painting as the main focus, to encourage evidence-based learning. The painting depicts Grace and her father rowing towards the rocks where the remains of the Forfarshire are resting, with the lighthouse in the distance. The speaking and listening elements...

Local study: Fulwell Windmill

Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated. The lesson formed part of a local study of Fulwell and Fulwell Windmill in Sunderland. It could also be taught as part of the Victorian Britain Study Unit. The children had already looked at maps and...

Children in Victorian Britain: Henry at boarding school

Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources see: Victorians (Primary History article, 2014) Scheme of work: Sarah Forbes Bonetta Scheme of work: Brunel In this lesson children pursued an historical enquiry, raising questions and using original sources. They gained an understanding of conditions in early...

Electric Telegraph developed by William Cooke and Charles Wheastone. Swinging needles transmit message in code in 1858.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.

The German engineer Karl Benz built the first motorcar in 1885. It was a three-wheeled vehicle powered by a one-cylinder gasoline engine. The speed limit for cars was four miles per hour.

Guglielmo Marconi, from Italy, is credited with the discovery of radio in 1895. We can't really say he "invented" radio. Nobody ever does invent anything from scratch as each "invention" is the consequence of many previous discoveries and researches (in this case especially those done by James Clerk Maxwell, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Heinrich Hertz.

Thomas Twyford built the first one-piece toilet . Twyford's model was also the first constructed of china, much easier to clean than the previous wood or metal models.

Sir Rowland Hill, a retired teacher, introduced a pre-paid penny post for letters in Britain in 1840. Up to this time the person receiving the letter had to pay for it. With the invention of the stamp, the person sending the letter had to pay.

After the invention of the electric light bulb by Thomas Edison (USA) and Joseph Swan (UK) in 1879, electric light started to replace the dim, yellow gas light, oil lamps and candlelight. Some towns were lit by electricity too, making them more welcoming at night.

Steam was used to power factory machinery, ships and trains. Great iron steamships were built made crossing the ocean faster than ever before. Many people left Britain, sailing away to start a new life in Canada or Australia.

By the 1880s steam power was also being used to turn dynamos in power stations in order to make electricity.

The very first electric train was invented by a German in 1879. Electric trains were quieter than and not as dirty as steam trains but it was many years before they were used for passengers.

Click here to go to our Victorian Invention Timeline

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Woodlands Junior School, Hunt Road Tonbridge Kent TN10 4BB UK

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The Great Fire of London was a fire that was so big that it burned nearly all of the buildings in London, with the exception of the Tower of London as that was made from stone, and stone doesn't burn up easily.

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8th October 2016

The Victorians was a time for railways, Queen Victoria and the establishment of many familiar companies, such as chocolate maker Cadbury and soft drink company Coca Cola.

Queen Victoria

The Victorian era started when Princess Victoria was crowned Queen, at 18 years old, in 1837. Three years later, she married her cousin, Prince Albert. They had 9 children together, before he passed away in 1861. Victoria was distraught, and missed him so much that she wore black for the rest of her life.

You can find out more about Queen Victoria here.

Life in Victorian Britain

How your life was in Victorian Britain depended on who you were and how much money you had. If you were rich, then life was luxurious, although how luxurious your life was depended on how rich you were. If you were poor, then life was hard, and in some cases, you literally had to fight to survive.

Workhouses were places where some poor people lived and worked. They worked long hours on the factory floors. In return for their work, they would get a roof over their heads and food (although not very much.)

Many workhouses were dark and dirty, and you weren’t treated very well. It wasn’t a place you wanted to be in.

The house(s) that you owned and lived in depended on how much you and your family earned.

Rich families usually had a country estate and a house in the city. During the working week, the owner of the house would usually be in the city for work and go back to their country estate for the weekend. This wasn’t always the case, but it was common.

Middle-class families usually lived in either the outskirts of the city or in medium-sized cottages in the countryside. If the family had enough money, they might have both.

Working class and unemployed people, who usually lived in the cities (although they could be farmers in the countryside) usually rented or owned a terraced house, or for the poorest, shared a single (or double) room with other families as they couldn’t afford to rent an entire house.

Servants for the rich

A more attractive job than working in factories or the workhouse would be to work for a rich family as a servant. You got paid a wage (how much that wage was depended on your job) and a roof over your head. Because you were fed and had a roof over your head, your wage was usually sent back to your family.

Servants were summoned by their owners to particular rooms through a network of bells. In the Servants Quarters’ of that house, there was usually a row of bells, with a sign saying what room it was coming from, so the servants knew where to go, and who was demanding their assistance.

Among the servants, there was a hierarchy, as there was in the family. The more senior your job was, the more time and the closer you were to the family. The closest to the family were the house-steward or the butler (or both, if the family was very rich), the lady’s maid, the valet, the housekeeper and the nanny (who supervised any children.)

Victorians had more free time than in previous eras. With the introduction of weekends and bank holidays, workers could now spend their free time however they wanted. Many people, rich and poor, sometimes decided to go down to one of the many new seaside resorts that were being built.

The seaside

The invention of the railways meant that many people could escape from the city to one of the many new seaside resorts that were being built. Train tickets were relatively cheap, meaning even factory workers and their families could afford a day or two at the seaside.

Piers were being built across the coastline. The first one was built on the Isle of Wight in 1814, and exactly 100 years later, there were at least 100 piers across the British coast.