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Life in the Victorian era

What was life like in Victorian times?

Living in the Victorian era was exciting because of all the new inventions and pace of change and progress, but it was a hard time to live in if you didn’t have much money. Even very young children had to work if their family needed them to.

However, life had improved a lot for people by the end of the Victorian era. Laws were put in place that made working conditions a bit better in factories and mines, and that stopped young children from working by requiring them to go to school instead. More people were living in cities, but hygiene and sanitation was more important thanks to people like Florence Nightingale . Plus, the Victorians started the Christmas traditions like sending cards and decorating trees that we know and enjoy today!

Top 10 facts

• The inventions of machines in factories replaced jobs that people used to do, but people were needed to look after the machines and keep the factories clean.
• Factories were built in cities, so people ended up moving to the cities to get jobs. Half the population in Britain lived in cities by the end of the Victorian era.
• Cities became crowded, busy and dirty, but discoveries about hygiene and sanitation meant that diseases like cholera were easier to prevent.
• People in the Victorian era started to use electricity for the first time , and to listen to music by playing records on the gramophone.
• Steam trains made travel a lot easier, and rich people started to go on holidays to the seaside in places like Blackpool and Brighton.
• There was a big difference between rich and poor in Victorian times . Rich people could afford lots of treats like holidays, fancy clothes, and even telephones when they were invented.
• Poor people – even children – had to work hard in factories, mines or workhouses. They didn’t get paid very much money.
• By the end of the Victorian era, all children could go to school for free. Victorian schools were very strict – your teacher might even beat you if you didn’t obey the rules.
• The way we celebrate Christmas was begun in Victorian times – they sent the first Christmas cards and made Christmas crackers.
• Charles Dickens was a famous Victorian author who wrote A Christmas Carol , Oliver Twist and other famous novels.

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Did you know?

• At the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837, most people would have used candles and oil or gas lamps to light their homes and streets. By the end of the Victorian era in 1901, electricity was available and rich people could get it in their homes.
• Poor people could work in mines, in mills and factories, or in workhouses . Whole families would sometimes have to work so they’d all have enough money to buy food.
• Children in poor families would have jobs that were best done by people who weren’t very tall. They would have to crawl in small spaces in mines, or underneath machines in textile mills. It was very dangerous!
• Rich people didn’t have dangerous jobs like these. In fact, some didn’t even have to work! They could afford to buy the new inventions coming out like the telephone, the gramophone (for playing music) and electric light bulbs.
• Rich Victorians were the first to go on seaside holidays – some of the places they’d go are spots where we go on holiday too, like Blackpool, Brighton and Southend.
• Victorian children loved it when their mum and dad let them see a magic lantern show. This was a slideshow of pictures that told a story – the machine that showed the pictures was called a magic lantern.
• Almost all families in Victorian times – except for the very poor ones – would pay people to be servants who would do their household chores for them. This included cooking, cleaning, washing and even serving dinner. Women who were servants were called maids, and men were called footmen. The head servant would be a man called a butler.
• There was a rule for everything in Victorian times – even about the sorts of clothes you’d wear in the morning or evening, and when in the city or in the country!
• All men wore hats in Victorian times (rich men wore top hats, poor men wore caps). When a man wanted to say hello to a lady, it was good manners to tip the brim of their hat down, then push their hat back onto their head.
• It was bad manners if a man spoke to a woman he didn’t know without someone else introducing them first.
• Children always had to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to their family members every time the child came in or went out of a room. Try doing that for a day in your home!
• Children were not allowed to shout, complain, interrupt or disagree with anyone . They had to do as they were told, and be cheerful and quiet all the time.

Victorian gallery

• A railway poster advertising Brighton and Volk’s Electric Railway
• Women in a Victorian workhouse
• Clothes that a wealthy Victorian man would have worn
• Victorian dresses with bustles (Credit: Lovelorn Poets via flickr)
• A Victorian hoop skirt
• How children dressed in the Victorian era
• A Victorian magic lantern
• An early Christmas card
• A Victorian living room
• A Victorian kitchen
• A Victorian-style pushchair

Victorian inventions like the steam engine and innovations like steel-making led to machines being made that could produce lots of the same thing at once. Factories were filled with machines like these. While it used to be that one person would be a weaver and make cloth, machines could now do that job instead and make cloth that didn’t cost as much.

So, what did people do if machines did all the work? Well, the machines needed looking after, and factory owners wanted people who could do that as well as take care of other little jobs around the factory. Since factories were usually built in large towns and cities, and people needed new jobs, most people moved to where the factories were. By the end of the Victorian era, half of the people living in Britain lived in cities.

This meant that cities were crowded and dirty . If you were poor and couldn’t afford to live in a very nice place, it was easy to get sick. There was a large outbreak of cholera in London in 1853-1854 that killed 11,000 people. Most people thought that the disease was coming from areas that just smelled nasty and got passed around through scents in the air, but Dr. John Snow worked out that the disease was actually spreading because of a cesspit that was leaking into a water pump where people drank from. By the end of the Victorian era, London had a better sewage system and sanitation was a bigger concern – plus, people knew more about how diseases are passed from one person to another.

Other famous Victorians who believed that proper hygiene and sanitation were needed to be healthy were Florence Nightingale and Dr. Joseph Lister. Dr. Lister was a surgeon who discovered that cleaning wounds and surgical instruments prevented infections.

Jobs that people had in Victorian times included usual ones like lawyers, doctors, teachers and vicars, but there were other jobs too:

• Engineers were needed to build bridges, buildings and machines
• Miners to get coal, iron and tin
• Mill workers to keep machines running and produce textiles
• Farm workers to tend and harvest crops
• Railway porters to sort out passengers’ luggage
• Navvies who broke ground for railway tracks to be laid down
• Nightmen to clear out the sewers in crowded cities
• Maids, butlers, cooks and other servants in the home

Steam engines needed coal to run them, so mining coal was very important . Working in coal mines was hard, and sometimes entire families would do it just to earn enough money. There were also mines for iron and tin in different parts of Britain.

Only poor people would work in factories and mines, and both were pretty unhealthy places to be. The air would be thick with dust from the mines or from the cotton being spun for cloth, and working hours were long.

If someone didn’t have a home (or money to afford a place to live), they could go to a workhouse , which was a place that provided food and beds in exchange for doing work. While this sounds pretty handy, it wasn’t very nice. Men, women and children all had to live separately, so families couldn’t stay together. The food wasn’t very good, and children weren’t taught how to read and write. Everyone had to wear the same uniform, and breaking any rules would mean strict punishment.

If you were rich, then life was completely different! Rich Victorians lived in large houses that were well heated and clean. Children got a good education either by going away to school or having a governess who taught them at home (this is usually how girls were educated).

Wealthy people could also afford to buy beautiful clothes. All women in Victorian times wore dresses with long skirts, but rich women could get the latest fashions that needed special underclothes to wear properly. They wore dresses that needed hoop skirts underneath to make the dresses spread out in a dome shape around their legs. Or, they wore skirts that lay mostly flat but that poofed out a bit around their bottom – this was called a bustle.

All men, whether rich or poor, wore waistcoats. Rich men also wore top hats and carried walking sticks.

Names to know:

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) – Florence was the founder of modern nursing; she knew it was important to keep hospitals clean and well-run. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) – a famous Victorian author who wrote A Christmas Carol , and many other books about life in Victorian times Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – a Victorian author from Scotland who wrote the famous children’s stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped . Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) – a popular Victorian poet; one of his poems was ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, which was about the Crimean War. Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905) – founded children’s charity Barnardo’s in 1870 as a home for children who were orphaned or didn’t have a place to live, which meant they didn’t have to go to a workhouse Mrs Isabella Beeton (1836-1865) – an author who wrote a famous book about cooking and housekeeping that many people in Victorian times used Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – a Victorian naturalist who wrote On the Origin of Species and came up with the theory of natural selection, which led to scientific research into evolution . Joseph Lister (1827-1912) – Lister was a surgeon who introduced the idea of keeping surgical instruments free from germs, and disinfecting wounds.

Related Videos

Just for fun...

• Take a quiz about Victorian life
• See a map of the British Empire in Victorian times
• Explore a Victorian painting
• What can you learn about life in Victorian times from looking at the census ?
• Organise a Victorian Experience Day in your own school!
• Can you spot what differences there were between homes for rich people and homes for poor people ?
• Find out about Washday Monday and domestic life in a 19th century weaver's cottage
• How to make Victorian Christmas crackers  and  Victorian Christmas tree ornaments.
• Try your hand at Victorian cookery  with recipes like  beef stew with dumplings  (Hodge Podge), roast goose and apple batter pudding
• Learn to play some Victorian parlour games
• Read some Victorian poetry like The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear or The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Sing 'Hurrah, the Nineteenth Century' , a KS1 learning song

Best books about Victorians for children

Find out more about Victorian life:

• Watch a kids' video about Victorian life: BBC History: Day In The Life Victorians
• Details of the household staff at Shibden Hall , including the butler, the housemaid and the under-housemaid
• Watch BBC Bitesize videos about life in Victorian Scotland: school in Victorian Scotland , home life in Victorian Scotland , work in Victorian Scotland and holidays and leisure in Victorian Scotland
• Make your own Victorian Christmas
• See Victorian toys like zoetropes, tiddlywinks and samplers
• Listen to short audio dramas about the lives of children in Victorian times on BBC Schools Radio
• Information about lots of different aspects of Victorian life: health , entertainment , crime and punishment and transport and travel
• Find out about Victorian buildings and houses in an architecture podcast from FunKids
• Children's information about Victorian schooling , Victorian fashion , Victorian workers and Victorian families
• Read facts about health and food in Victorian times
• Immerse yourself in  fiction books set in Victorian times
• Discover life in a Victorian weaver's cottage the interactive way: listen to and watch the looms and imagine living without heating or electricity
• Find out about 7 innovations which changed Victorian England , including central heating
• Find out about how children worked in Victorian mines and Victorian cotton mills
• Information about Victorian homes : workers' housing and upper class houses
• See a photograph of a Victorian swimming costume
• The life of Michael Marks , entrepreneur and founder of M&S!
• See logbooks from a Victorian school , digitised by Year 5 and Year 6 children

See for yourself

Explore lots of places with Victorian history

See life as it was more than 100 years ago at  Blists Hill Victorian Town

Learn about coal mining in Victorian times at the National Coal Mining Museum for England

Visit Tyntesfield , a Victorian stately home in Somerset

See writer Thomas Carlyle’s house in Chelsea, decorated as it would have been in Victorian times

Explore a Victorian workhouse , and learn about the people who would have lived and worked there

Visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to see clothes that upper class Victorians would have worn

Take a tour of the Charles Dickens museum , which is in a house where the famous author used to live

Embark on a virtual tour of the Crystal Palace, site of the Great Exhibition of 1851 organised by Prince Albert , to see its beautiful and innovative design and discover amazing facts about the exhibition it housed

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The Victorian Era Primary Resource

Learn all about this period of amazing inventions and discoveries.

This history primary resource explores Britain’s Victorian period in a fun, colourful comic. Join max the mouse on his time-travelling journey to discover the significant events that occurred during this exciting period in British history. When was the Victorian era? How did the British empire expand during Queen Victoria’s reign? What were the ground-breaking inventions of the Victorian era?

Pupils will learn about the key social, political and cultural changes that occurred during Britain’s Victorian period in this National Geographic Kids history primary resource.

The teaching resource can be used in study group tasks for discussion about the Victorian era and 19th century Britain, It could be used as a printed handout for each pupil to read themselves, or for display on the interactive whiteboard, as part of a whole class reading exercise.

Activity : In the same way that Queen Victoria dedicated monuments to her husband Albert, ask pupils to design a monument dedicated to someone they love or feel inspired by. They could also design their own postage stamp/s, inspired by their favourite people, places and things. Once finished, get the children to present their work to the class, or write a short description explaining their designs.

N.B.  The following information for mapping the resource documents to the school curriculum is specifically tailored to the  English National Curriculum  and  Scottish Curriculum for Excellence . We are currently working to bring specifically tailored curriculum resource links for our other territories; including  South Africa ,  Australia  and  New Zealand . If you have any queries about our upcoming curriculum resource links, please email:  [email protected]

This History primary resource  assists with teaching the following  History objectives  from the  National Curriculum :

• Know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world.
• Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

National Curriculum Key Stage 1 History objective:   

• Pupils should be taught: significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
• Pupils should be taught: the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements. Some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods [for example, Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong]

National Curriculum Key Stage 2 History objective:

• Pupils should be taught a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066

This History primary resource  assists with teaching the following  Social Studies Second level objective  from the  Scottish Curriculum for Excellence :

• I can discuss why people and events from a particular time in the past were important, placing them within a historical sequence
• I can compare and contrast a society in the past with my own and contribute to a discussion of the similarities and differences

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The Victorians Homework Tasks

Subject: History

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

3 February 2015

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• Victorian Children

Victorian Children and Life in Victorian Times

Victorian Toys and Victorian Games

What toys and games did victorian children play.

Not only in Victorian times but since the beginning of humanity toys of some type or other have been a part of children’s lives. We can only imagine what children used for toys in the earliest years of humankind’s existence. A toy may have been no more than a modified rock or stick but it served its purpose of pacifying the child.

Sometimes a child’s curiosity or need for entertainment can only be satisfied with a toy. It is interesting to note that some of the earliest Victorian toys and games (or even earlier than Victorian times) resemble those that are used today. The game Quoits for example resembles ring toss and Skittles resemble bowling. You’ll learn more about these games as you read on.

It is important to note that Victorian Toys and Victorian Games were very expensive to buy in Victorian Times. Even wealthy children were allowed very few toys. Only the wealthiest could afford a Rocking horse like the one shown above. The cost of many toys at that time exceeded the average weekly pay that a father might earn. Educational toys were also very popular.

No PS3’s or Wii’s  For Victorian Children – Rich or Poor

Victorian toys and Victorian games meant a lot more to Victorian children  than they do in the modern era. There were no video games or computers to entertain children.  Sometimes a child’s imagination was his or her best friend. The poor Victorian children did not get new toys. Mothers would make dolls for the girls if they were lucky and toys were whittled out of wood for the boys. A tightly wadded piece of cloth could serve as a ball to kick around in the streets. Poor Victorian children would rarely have more than one toy and it was usually handmade or handed down through the generations. They would guard it with their lives…it was all they had!

Children were encouraged to also play parlor games together, such as charades. This was a way to entertain them without expensive toys.

Let’s Take a Look At Some Of The Victorian Toys and Victorian Games

Jumping rope.

This is a toy or exercise that is still popular today. We know it better as a Jump Rope but in Victorian Times it was known as skipping rope. Like today it was more popular with girls than boys.

Rich Victorian families would buy Skipping ropes with fancy hand carved handles but the poor families could easily make their own.

Victorian Era Automata Toys

Automata toys were usually made of wood and had moving parts powered by a hand crank. The teacher and students in the Automata toy pictured would move at different intervals depending on the gear work located under the floor.

 In a world without video games and the like, Victorian children would be fascinated for hours playing with this toy. It was mostly a toy for rich children but could be made by hand if the father of a poor family was good at working with wood.

Toy Soldiers

In these modern days we that live in, video games such as Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Battle field 4 have taken the place of playing with Toy Soldiers. But a young man in the Victorian age loved playing with toy soldiers. A boy in the 1800’s would use his imagination to carry out the many battles that his Toy Soldiers might face on any given day. The soldiers were often made of cheap metals such as tin or wood.

Marbles are still played with today but are starting to fade away a little. In Victorian times, marbles were a popular toy. You could play many games with marbles. Poor children usually had marbles made of clay while the rich kids might have marbles made from real marble.

As with all children from the olden days up to now there is a great desire to emulate their parents. They want to act grown up just like their parents. That’s why the miniature toy Tea Set was so popular with young Victorian Girls. They could gather their friends around a table and have a nice little tea party of their own, just like their mother.   Miniature Tea Sets were a toy that rich Victorian Kids played with for the most part.

Hoop and Stick

Although this toy/game looks very simple, it was very popular. The object of the game was to keep the hoop rolling as long as possible. Children played this game outside and many times it would be played as a competition between several children to see who could roll the hoop the farthest.

Kaleidoscope

Pictured to the left is a Victorian Age Kaleidoscope. A child could look through one end and see a brightly coloured design at the other end. As the child would twist or shake the Kaleidoscope and the psychedelic design would change into another design and the more it was repeated the more it would change. This was a fascinating toy for a child in those days. At the bottom of the page is a video of what one might see while looking through a Kaleidoscope.

One might say that this was actually the beginning of movies and eventually television as we know it today. Actually some of the early Disney cartoons were made using this principle. There were other names for moving picture toys such as Phenakistoscope, Thaumatrope, Cinematrope and Praxinoscope. They would usually come with extra cardboard or paper inserts so a child could change the moving picture inside. The video at the bottom of the page will explain what a Zoetrope is better than I can put into words here.

Victorian Doll

Obviously this is one toy that has been around for a long time and will be around for many years to come. It seems that at a very young age almost every little girl acquires the desire to copy their mother and care for a child or at least a good substitute for one. A doll fills that need quite well. China Dolls became popular during the Victorian age.

 One reason for that popularity might have been because it was said Queen Victoria had a large collection of China Dolls from her childhood. China Dolls were very expensive and were typically owned by rich children. Dolls owned by the poorer class of children were usually handmade.

Hobby Horse – Rocking Horse

There were no cars in Victorian times so horses were the main source of transportation . This made the Hobby Horse or Rocking Horse very popular. Wealthy Victorian Children could afford the expensive rocking horse while the poorer children played with a Hobby Horse. A Hobby Horse could easily be made by hand considering the body consisted of a wood pole or dowel rod.

Sometimes wheels could be affixed to the lower end of the Hobby Horse so a child could roll it around and not just drag the wooden end along the ground. Even though they were much cheaper, Hobby Horses had the advantage of being mobile and could be used inside or outside while the rocking horse had to stay in one spot while being ridden and usually inside.

The Whip and Top

The predecessor to the spinning top, a Whip and Top consisted of a cylinder type object (The Top) with a pointed bottom and a stick with a string or piece of leather tied to the end(The Whip).   A child would set the top to spinning by wrapping the string around the top and give the stick a pull. This would make the top spin at a high rate of speed. The child would keep the top Spinning by whipping it on the sides with the string or leather strap. Hence the name.  

Spinning tops

Spinning Tops were actually just a simplified version of the whip and top. Original spinning tops where set to spinning by using ones fingers to spin it.

Yo-Yo’s did not become popular until the early 1900’S but they were used by many children in the Victorian Days. Yo-Yo’s are known to have existed as far back as 500B.C. Today there are professional Yo-Yo’ers who compete all over the world.

Ring toss or even Yard Jarts most likely evolved from Quoits. It was a game that had anywhere from one to 9 poles or pegs and several rings. The rings were usually made of rope. As with ring toss the object was to through the rings over the pegs to score points.  

Toy Theatres

As we have learned, a lot of the Victorian toys and Victorian Games involved the child’s desire to emulate or copy their parents or grownups in general. Toy Theatres were no exception. While the parents were going to the Theatre children were pretending with their toy theatres. Toy Theatres were copied after the grown up theatre shows of the day.

This toy originated in China but became very popular in Great Britain in the 1800’s. It is made of a spool type object and two sticks with a string tied to each stick. The goal was to throw the spool in the air with the sticks and string and catch with them. There were many tricks that could be perfected with a lot of practice.

Clockwork Trains

These toy trains were not made popular until the latter part of the Victorian era. A company called Marklin was the first to make complete toy train sets out of soldered tin. A basic toy train set could be bought and then additional parts and sections could be purchased to add to it as time went by. Sadly, Poor Victorian Children could only dream about owning a Clockwork Train.   Only Rich Victorian Families could afford one.   Model train sets didn’t really reach its height as a hobby until the Edwardian era, circa 1901 or later.

According to Wikipedia, Skittles is a predecessor of many of the games of today, such as, bowling and lawn bowling. In the Victorian era this game was typically played outside but had indoor variations as well. It is still a popular indoor pub game in some areas of the UK and United States.   It consisted of a round hard ball and several Skittles, usually around nine. The object of the game was to roll the ball and knock down as many skittles as possible. Although wealthy families could buy fancy and extravagant Skittles sets, this game was played by the rich and the poor since it could easily be made by hand.

Leather Football

Variations of this football and/or soccer have been around since between 2500-5000 B.C, and leather or animal skins have been used to make them just about as long. Football was played on the lawns or in the streets by all classes of people. Yes, the rich children could own a fancy professionally made ball but the poor children could easily make their own.

Books were a great source of enjoyment for Victorian Children, rich or poor. One might not consider a book to be a Victorian Toy or a Victorian Game but children in the 1800’s loved them. They would read them over and over.

Kaleidoscope Video

Zoetrope Video

Published by Paxton Price on: August 22, 2013

Other Pages You Might Like:

• Victorian Child Labour
• Victorian Clothing
• Victorian Houses and Homes

Chertsey Museum Victorian Era Toys – Slideshare – Olivia Blount Herbert Learning What Toys and Games did Victorian Children Play?

Link / Cite this Page

<a href="https://victorianchildren.org/victorian-toys-and-victorian-games/">Victorian Toys and Victorian Games</a>

Stewart, Suzy. "Victorian Toys and Victorian Games". Victorian Children . Accessed on April 10, 2024. https://victorianchildren.org/victorian-toys-and-victorian-games/.

Stewart, Suzy. "Victorian Toys and Victorian Games". Victorian Children , https://victorianchildren.org/victorian-toys-and-victorian-games/. Accessed 10 April, 2024.

Electric Telegraph developed by William Cooke and Charles Wheastone. Swinging needles transmit message in code in 1858.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.

The German engineer Karl Benz built the first motorcar in 1885. It was a three-wheeled vehicle powered by a one-cylinder gasoline engine. The speed limit for cars was four miles per hour.

Guglielmo Marconi, from Italy, is credited with the discovery of radio in 1895. We can't really say he "invented" radio. Nobody ever does invent anything from scratch as each "invention" is the consequence of many previous discoveries and researches (in this case especially those done by James Clerk Maxwell, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Heinrich Hertz.

Thomas Twyford built the first one-piece toilet . Twyford's model was also the first constructed of china, much easier to clean than the previous wood or metal models.

Sir Rowland Hill, a retired teacher, introduced a pre-paid penny post for letters in Britain in 1840. Up to this time the person receiving the letter had to pay for it. With the invention of the stamp, the person sending the letter had to pay.

After the invention of the electric light bulb by Thomas Edison (USA) and Joseph Swan (UK) in 1879, electric light started to replace the dim, yellow gas light, oil lamps and candlelight. Some towns were lit by electricity too, making them more welcoming at night.

Steam was used to power factory machinery, ships and trains. Great iron steamships were built made crossing the ocean faster than ever before. Many people left Britain, sailing away to start a new life in Canada or Australia.

By the 1880s steam power was also being used to turn dynamos in power stations in order to make electricity.

The very first electric train was invented by a German in 1879. Electric trains were quieter than and not as dirty as steam trains but it was many years before they were used for passengers.

Click here to go to our Victorian Invention Timeline

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