SAMPLE 3 – STUDENT WORK
Assignment 1: Report on the Social and Cultural development of society in
Britain between 1800 to 1860
Introduction
Any analysis of the way Oliver Twist reflected the society of 1800 – 1860 would need
to take into account both attitudes of the period and the way society was constructed
at that time. Whether or not Twist was an accurate reflection will be discussed in this
report by analysing the political attitudes to poverty and the place of children in this
era. Further analysis will also be made into the importance of literature and it’s
impact as a mode of mass communication at this time.
Historical Background
The most important thing to remember about this period of time is that it coincided
with The Industrial Revolution. Society saw a complete overhaul during this time as
work available to people changed massively, thanks to new technologies and the
emergence of new means of transport.
The population exploded and people began flocking form rural areas where they
worked on the land to urban areas where new industries came into being. With this
shift in population came new types of work for people but also and perhaps more
importantly a very cheap workforce for those who owned these new means of
production, UK Parliament (2013, online) describes the Industrial Revolution as
follows:
The Industrial Revolution, which began three hundred years ago, was a
period of unprecedented technological, economic and social change that
completely transformed British culture from a largely rural, static society with
limited production and division of labour into the world’s first modern industrial
society.
In Oliver Twist we are shown how the cheapest and most exploited of these workers
were children, coming out of a workhouse, he was offered as a Chimney Sweep by
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Mr. Bumble and the Board. Luckily he escaped this fate as his prospective master
had already been responsible for the deaths of three of his previous charges
because of unsafe practices. It was not uncommon at that time to start a fire in the
hearth to smoke out a young boy who may have fallen asleep whilst cleaning a
chimney.
The prevailing idea of the time was that children were a commodity to be used for
labour and even when there was provision for them to get access to an education by
means of the 1870 Education Act, the school leaving age was seven at this point,
they were deemed old enough to join the labour force.
Records from the National Archive show that 49% of the labour force in the period
was under the age of twenty. There was a law passed which prohibited the use of
children as chimney sweeps as early as 1788, but due to their size and agility
children were still used for this purpose for most of the century.
Safety of child workers was largely overlooked and many would be so tired from
working long hours in factories that they would fall asleep and suffer horrendous
injuries whilst using heavy machinery. The following story, taken from the National
Archive (2013, online) is an example of such an occurrence. Martha Appleton,
employed as a scrounger to pick up bits of cotton that had fallen onto the floor,
fainted and had her fingers severed off from the unguarded machine at which she
worked.
It could be argued that while children in the UK no longer have to work and enjoy an
education, others in developing countries still endure poor working conditions and
very low pay. GAP the large clothing retail chain has more than once been found
guilty of child exploitation charges as McDougall in his article “Child sweatshop
shame threatens Gap’s ethical image” (McDougall, 2007, online) illustrates, with his
story of a young Indian boy making clothes in sweatshop conditions.
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Political Landscape and Attitudes towards the poor: The Ruling Parties
Before going on to look at the political attitudes towards poverty during the period, it
would be helpful to illustrate the political landscape of Britain at this time. An
important thing to remember is that the country pre-industrial revolution was feudal
and power was held mostly by the monarchy and the church. Most working people,
worked in exchange for a small amount of land, franchise was limited only to those
who owned land and therefore wealth.
In 1884 the Representation of The People Act extended franchise to those in rural
areas who had largely been ignored in the 1867 Representation of the People Act, a
move largely opposed by Conservatives as the following quote from the History
Learning Site (2013) illustrates:
They believed that their powerbase was rural England and that any extension
of the franchise in rural England would be at their expense as the poorer
people in the counties were unlikely to vote for the party that seemed to ooze
wealth and privilege.
While Tories were definitely for the king and believed in the Diving right of Kings
(Fraser 2013) Whigs formed from various groups with two broad aims, firstly that
James II should be unable to take the throne due to his Catholicism and secondly
that dissenters should be tolerated. (History Learning Site, 2013)
Today these parties form our government as two sides of the coalition and are most
commonly known as Conservatives (Tories) and Liberal Democrats (Whigs).
Poverty
When it came to attitudes towards the poor, the political landscape was dominated
by the prevailing attitude that the poor were poor because they did not want to work
and were idle. As Pearce and Stewart (1992, p) identify, “Whatever is done for men
and classes to a certain extent takes away the stimulus of doing for themselves… No
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laws, however stringent can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident or the
drunken sober”.
Obviously poverty operates at a relative and an absolute level. In the UK today we
talk about any family living below a certain wage as living below the “breadline”. The
Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a charity that does extensive work in trying to
combat child poverty and its effect, describes child poverty as a child living in
circumstances where resources, especially material resources, do not meet a
minimum need.
During the 1800 – 1860 periods the 1834 Poor Law came into force. While we may
hear today of notions of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, the prevailing and
middle classes regarded all the poor as being underserving and workhouses were
set up under the auspices of the 1834 Poor Law to try to ensure the following:

End out-relief for the able bodied (out-relief being a charitable system of
providing grants of money for food, fuel, clothes etc.) to the poor of the parish,
which was becoming very costly.

Act as a deterrent to the able bodied worker.
This is an illustration of what was thought to have been one of the first workhouses
to be built in Abingdon.
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Who can forget the iconic scene of Oliver when so starved he asked for more of the
watery gruel which was his regular diet? In the book he was heavily castigated for
this, to the extent of being publicly flogged to deter others from having the affront to
request extra rations. Giddens (2013) illustrates that such a low standard of living
conditions was offered in workhouses so as to make people do all they could to
avoid poverty. However there were some workers during this time for whom life and
work was not quite so bade and who lived in better conditions, however they were
not necessarily the norm.
Thompson (1963, p. 268) described the experience of pit workers in Sunderland in
1832 for example, whose work may have been terrible but who were earning 24
shillings per week and who lived rent free, it is worth noting also that their fuel and
medical costs were also taken care of. However, before outlining the experience of
some, Thompson also quoted the condition of London artisans who were ‘rarely
beaten down so low – there were many half-way stages before the workhouse door
was reached, his history varies from trade to trade’.
Further Indications of Poverty
Other important indicators of poverty are infant mortality and life expectancy. The
cramped living conditions in inner cities that arose during the industrial revolution
gave rise to many diseases as people were forced to live in dirty conditions and
without a clean safe water supply. Cholera was rife, (cholera being a water borne
disease) and was found to come from water pumps which held contaminated water.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens, through the eyes of Twist, described how dirty and
overcrowded London seemed, and though the population was burgeoning, life
expectancy was low. In fact low life expectancy and high infant mortality was part of
the reason that people did have bigger families, as children were a resource for
helping to support families and help parents when they could no longer work. Writing
in Family Tree Magazine, Professor Michael Anderson (2009) describes how bleak
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the situation was. Life expectancy in England and Wales was 25 on average and
infant mortality peaked at 150 deaths per 1000 births in 1890.
A Picture In Words
How do we know so much of the events of this time, and other periods in the past?
At the time Oliver Twist was written, books and newspapers were becoming more
widespread and mass communication was becoming a major means of passing on
information. As literacy levels were starting to rise, oral history i.e. stories passed
down through generations was used but becoming overtaken by the power of the
written word.
Novels that were set in the time period that they were written , (not science fiction
and futuristic stories by HG Wells for example) described how society was for the
characters in their stories and those experiences were often a reflection of some
experience of the author. Charles Dickens for example was a product of a working
class family and he only escaped being put in a debtor’s prison with his family
because he had got an apprenticeship as a tanner.
In British Political History, Pearce and Stewart (1992) look at the importance of
literature and some of the writers of this time. They point out that the likes of
Dickens, Trollope and George Elliot for example were all 1860 literary figures and
that their work was invaluable for the insights it could give into their society. They
also argue that Dickens widespread popularity in Britain in the mid-18th Century
makes him so useful in our thirst for knowledge of this era. This was all helped of
course by a rise in literacy levels. Professor Mitch (1992) describes how literacy
rates (measured by marriage registry signatures) almost doubled in the final sixty
years of the Victorian era.
Conclusion
To conclude, Oliver Twist it could be argued reflected the society of 1800-1860 as it
describes the way in which people living in poverty were regarded by the ruling
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classes and the conditions in which they lived. The level of disease experienced by
people living in the new towns due to poor sanitation and the conditions in which
they worked, led to low life expectancy and high levels of infant mortality. Children
were not required to receive any statutory education until 1870 and worked in
factories and as chimney sweeps, with little regard for their safety as illustrated in the
story of Martha Appleton.
Additionally as literacy levels rose, literature became more widespread as a means
of communication, through both books and articles in magazines, Writers of the time
started gaining in popularity and today we use their texts to inform us of how life was
in the era 1800-1860.
References:
Professor Michael Anderson (Aug 2009), Family Tree Magazine
Fraser, A. (2013). Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink
1832. USA: PublicAffairs
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1884_reform_act.htm
McDougal, D. (2007) child sweatshop sham threatens Gap’s ethical image (available
at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/oct/28/ethicalbusiness.india accessed
on 28/10/13).
Mitch, D.F. (1992). The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England: The Influence
of Private Choice and Public Policy. USA: University of Pennsylvania Press
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/childla
bour.htm accessed on 20/10/2013.
(http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/measuring-child-poverty-consultationresponse.pdf)
(Accessed on 20th September 2013)
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/archiveshighlights/industrial-revolution/) (Accessed on 18th September 2013)013).
SAMPLE 3 – STUDENT WORK
Pearce, M and Stewart, G (1992) British Political History 1867-1990 London:
Routledge
Thompson E.P. (1963) The Making of The English Working Class. London: Penguin
Publishing
SAMPLE 3 - ASSESSMENT CRITERIA AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
HISTORY – SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT DB7/3/AA/03G
LEARNING OUTCOMES
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
4. Understand the value of literature
as a means of understanding
society
5. Understand the importance of the
pre dominant means of mass
communication
6. Understand the
political/philosophical ideologies of
periods of time
4.1. Analyse how a given literary text reflects society at a
given time
5.1. Evaluate the means of mass communication in a
given period
6.1. Analyse 2 of the political/philosophical ideologies
which prevailed in a given period of time
Humanities and English standardisation event
SAMPLE 3 – GRADING DESCRIPTORS AND COMPONENTS
GD2: APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Merit
The work:
a. Makes use of relevant
 Perspectives
and/or:
c. Very good levels of
 Insight
 Analysis
Distinction
The work:
a. Makes use of relevant
 Perspectives
and/or:
c. Excellent levels of
 Insight
 Analysis
GD5: Communication and presentation
Merit
The work shows very good command of
 Language (including technical or
specialist language)
Distinction
The work shows excellent command of
 Language (including technical or
specialist language)
GD7 – Quality
Merit
The work:
d. Is structured in a way that is
generally logical and fluent
Humanities and English standardisation event
Distinction
The work:
a. Is structured in a way that is
consistently logical and fluent