The Victorian Child: A Family Story (Part 3)

Final part of this (at last) - looking at the 1880 Education Act allowing for a radical change in the lives of the family's children - with the advent of compulsory education, children's lives in the next twenty years completely changed as did their resulting adult lives.

1881 Census

The 1880 Education Act was passed making school attendance compulsory for children between five and ten and for the first time in the censuses I have noted a significant change in that all the children of this age group are listed as scholars. That’s not to say that some of them might not have been working on the side or skipping school but all of them are put down as being as such. Interestingly, there are a small of teenagers still in school between 11-13 years old, despite their parent’s working class occupations including Hannah Bell (11) whose father was a domestic servant; and William Goddard (11) whose parents were FWKs.

Those teenagers in the workplace still seemed to be following their parents’ trades such as John Matthews (15) FWK though there do seem to be some breaking away entirely such as Tom Goddard (16) gardener.

Overall, there seems to be little change to the status quo except for more schooling in the 5-10 age group. The only other interesting point of note is the enumerator allowing John Atkinson (11) to be put down as ‘Farmers Son’ but crossing out his 14 year old sister Elizabeth’s occupation as ‘Farmer’s Daughter’. An odd sense of 1880s sexism leaks through here – clearly Elizabeth’s role on the farm was simply obvious and not deemed a proper trade or job.

1891 Census

The 1891 census perhaps makes more interesting reading. Though the leaving age for school children was not raised to 13 for another two years, many of the family’s children were still in education at 11/12 including Richard (12) and Arthur (11) Wyatt; Caroline Brooks (11); George Matthews (11) and Mary Percival (11). Mary Percival’s brother, William, was still in education at 14 years old though his father was only an iron worker in Bilston. It is clear that attitudes were changing – that education was seen as a way of bettering job prospects in the highly competitive world of late nineteenth-century Britain.

This is further evidenced by this generation of some children pursuing occupations different to those of their parents. Most notably, Joseph Flavell (16) is a clerk whilst his cousins Emma Baker (19), Joseph Baker (17) and William (13) are a teacher, hairdresser’s apprentice and teacher’s assistant respectively. This is a world away from the jobs of their shared maternal grandparents in the 1860s who were whitesmiths (tin workers). Educational changes in the period 1870-1890 then allowed some young people to move up the social ladder and away from the physically demanding jobs of their parents and grandparents.

There would, of course, be further significant legislation to come (including the Education Acts of 1893 and 1918 raising the compulsory school age to 13 and 14 respectively), yet it is clear that by the 1891 census children’s lives and future prospects were more secure.

Though I don’t plan on further research into the period 1901-1911 at this time it is worth noting that the family’s children born in the latter part of the 1800s went on in general to having more varied and protected working lives. Though many stayed in similar roles to their predecessors such as farming and textiles, an equal number expanded into such careers as teaching and running their own businesses, something their grandparents would not have been able to imagine fifty years before.