post #2

#2: Victorian Burials

~ Courtney K. ~ 5 Comments

This actually came as a shock to me while I was searching through the vast list of The Victorian Dictionary website and spotted the headline: Death & Dying. From the previous blog post, I read about the overcrowded state that London was in during the Victorian Era due to the migration of citizens from all over England settling down in the modernizing, vast city. Frankly, I did not even think about what happened past all of the disease that would be transferred from close living quarters of people, especially in the impoverished districts of London. Let alone the devious nature surrounding burials that churches were trying to shove under the carpets.

Death was, and still is, a rather expensive investment. Only the rich could afford a singular plot of land for a grave and a headstone out in the spacious countryside, “Wealth in London helps a man after death” (Bartlett 94).  Rather than providing proper burials to those living in the city of London the churches would provide mass burials down in the basements of the churches. Tens of thousands of bodies lying to rot beneath the feet of worshipers. The church collected the money from grieving families, carted the bodies to the cellars, and collected donations from the worshipers whom contracted diseases from the bodies beneath the floorboards.

Victorian London thus brought overcrowded to an entirely new level in body count surrounding the living and the dead. With disease on the rise and not much room left in the basements of these churches, disposal of the older corpses were deposited into the Thames until quicklime was rendered a more practical method of disposing of older corpses under the noses of the House of Commons. And with whatever land was accessible by plots surrounding the church, the ground was used for mass graves. Quite a horrific way of burying the dead in one of the most famous modernizing cities in the entire world. Yet, the church capitalizing on the deaths of those in the impoverished class expresses the corruption slithering around during the Victorian Era. The lack of heath and safety regulations regarding the burying of human remains during this time period was slim-to-none, and allowed for the actions of the Church to get away with robbing the people of their money and the deceased of a plot of land. And those who could not even afford buy a coffin, let alone bury the dead, could only leave the deceased within the homes with family members, to decompose for days on end (Sims 1883). The collaboration of these numerous factors (overcrowded living, corruption, and poverty) played a key role in the eruption of disease and the widespread death and miasma surrounding the city of London. A shocking yet intriguing section to happen upon in The Victorian Dictionary, and an absolutely horrifying time to live, and die, in the history of London.

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Works Cited:

Jackson, Lee. “Victorian London – Publications – Social Investigation/Journalism – London by Day and Night, by David W.Bartlett, 1852.” Dictionary of Victorian London. Web. 27 Aug. 2015.

—. “Victorian London – Publications – Social Investigation/Journalism – How the Poor Live, by George R. Sims, 1883.” Dictionary of Victorian London. Web. 27 Aug. 2015.

Katelynn Vyas Post # 2 “Ragged Schools”

~ Katie Vyas ~ 3 Comments

Author Lee Jackson in the article “Ragged Schools” from “The Victorian Dictionary” applicably quotes Victorian author and social commentator Charles Dickens in regard to the social plight of London and the construct of the “Ragged School” system, in an editorial from London’s Daily News. Although London was viewed as the “capital city of the world” paradoxically it was “a vast hopeless nursery of ignorance, misery and vice: a breeding place for hulks and gaols.” “Ragged Schools” were nondenominational, funded by a variety of charities and other “benevolent individuals.” They were few and far between. Those compassionate individuals who committed themselves to this construct had the notion that working class men and woman could be “reclaimed” from the “wretch and filth” of London’s industrial complex. Their goal was to save future generations from similar plights. It is important to note that prior to this time all students paid a tuition fee for attending school and few could afford the luxury (Jackson).

In his article, Jackson further notes that in 1844 the first attempt to provide academic instruction to the working class poor of London’s East End was initiated by a “society called the Ragged School Union” and notes that immediately afterward “two hundred of these schools were opened.” Jackson utilizes the “Jurston Street School to illustrate a typical ‘Ragged School’.” It “opened on Sunday evenings,” had an “average yearly attendance of 250 children” and was serviced by “25 teachers.” Jackson again provides a superb example of how the system worked by introducing Mr. Ainslie, a former student of a school in Windsor. Accordingly, Ainslie “had himself been a bad and abandoned man, who was reclaimed, and who now sat there, with his dirty face, teaching and doing more good than thousands of other of ten times his capacity.” Clearly, London’s “Ragged School System” provided a free education to the East End’s working class children while enabling them to overcome the economic, social and political hardships of the industrial society in which they lived (Jackson).

 

Jackson, Lee. “Dictionary of Victorian London – Victorian History – 19th Century London –Social History.” Dictionary of Victorian London – Victorian History – 19th Century London – Social History. Yale University Press, 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 26 Aug. 2015.<http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm>.