Victorian Life

I was discussing earlier with my parter about our grandparents and why they never mentioned half the things that you find out only through family research. Its probably the subject that all family historians talk about when tracing their own family. Why did granddad never mention that he had an older brother and who were my cousins and why did I never see them? Its so easy to look at our ancestors through the eyes of how we are and live today, but the views of the people was completely different back then. People were not open about family and social issues like how we are today. For one thing divorce was never really said or heard of unless the family had some kind of wealth. The married couple would just part and lead their seperate lives, howver for many people who had an unhappy marriage they just put up with living with eachother for either the sake of their children or because in many cases as the man was the main income the women was dependent on him to survive.

A big issue that wasn't dicussed or blasted in the media as it is today was sex. Sex was not a talked about subject as it is done today, for many people learning about the birds and the bees came at a later stage in life than school. It was down to the parents to tell their children about sex and it was only to be done once they were married. Contraception didn't exist and if you conceived a baby out of wedlock then you were frowned upon by almost everyone and your parents depending on the sort of people they were may of even sent you to an unmarried mothers home. Your child would be a bastard and you and the father of the baby were either forced to marry by your parents or in some cases some families made them give up the child for adoption.

Classes and Culture
Another important factor that we may tend to forget about victorian life was that classes played a big role in society. This included first class which was for the wealthy and rich, the middle class who might be business owners and had a fairly were comfortable lifestyles, working class who had to work to survive and the poor who would be either in the workhouse on the streets. The was a big gap between rich and poor. The rich and middle class society would not be seen to socialise with the poor and in many ways they blamed the poor for being poor. It was also only for the rich and middle class to get good schooling and education to better themselves in life. If you were born into the poor it was very difficult to make your way in the world. Society on a whole put huge amounts of pressure on peoples lives and it was for the poor a fight for survival. If you hadn't a penny to rub between your hands then you and your family didn't eat and this is also another reason why so many children in the bottom two classes were lucky if they made past the age of six. The lack of nutrition and a varied diet made babies, children, the sick and elderly more susceptible to diseases and illness. If they didn't die of starvation when they caught an illness their immune systems were unable to fight the illness therefore many of them died.