Reminiscent of our class on Monday, while browsing through the different entries in the Victorian Dictionary, I was surprised at how …modern each entry sounded. I read through some of the different London location entries, focusing my attention especially on Hampstead and Highgate (walking along the same path as Shelley, Keats,  Byron and Coleridge was extremely special and moving!), the prisons, and Astrology within Victorian England. Each of these entries, and the entries within the entries, did not seem as foreign to me as I expected. There was not really any information that I found that different from our modern society, whether in America or England. For example, the way David W. Bartlett described his walk-about through Hampstead and Highgate seemed almost identical to what Hampstead and Highgate looked like in 2014.

I was also really interested in the entry about prisons because regardless of what city during what period of time, there is always crime. In the 1875 interview  with the 15 year old convict Jonathan Maxsey,  journalist James Greenwood starts off by mentioning how the young convict grew up with lesser circumstances than most and how he has been to “gaol” at least eight times while still just shy of fifteen years old. When Greenwood offers the now free Maxsey a job by the end of the article, Maxsey responds by telling Greenwood, “I don’t want it; not while I can prig enough in any a hour, p’r’aps, to keep me for a week. Ten hours a day at ‘tannerin for a bit of grub, and a fourpenny lodgin’! Not if I knows it. Why, it ‘ud be wus to me than a summery conviction!” (Rehabilitation of Prisoners). Maxsey’s response to working at a tannery is timeless; to this day, there are many young and underprivileged citizens of the United States who, because they have nothing, would rather commit more crimes in order to make as much money as possible. Whether in Victorian England or current times, as a result of their circumstances, underprivileged youth don’t mind prison because while in prison, they are guaranteed a roof over their heads, a bed, and at least a single meal a day. Maxsey states his opinion very clearly to Greenwood: he would rather be back in “gaol” than working at the tannery for little pay. Maxsey’s attitude really resonates with today’s youth who, although are not living in Victorian London, are still unwillingly bound to the life of criminality starting from a young age due to the constantly widening chasm between classes (but that discussion is for a different post).

With especially Maxsey’s experience in mind,  I have noticed thus far that since Victorian England, social structures and standings barely shifted throughout the centuries. There were, and still are, young convicts who exist even beyond the lower-working class and due to their upbringing, for the most part do not break out of the vicious social cycles that industrialization brought about.