My grandmother was born late in the Victorian era in 1894 and she would always say that exploitation was rife in 'the old days' especially when it came to child labour.
She lived until 1991 though.
Great pictures.
That is interesting Opti
My dear Great Auntie Kitty was born in 1896, and I had the wonderful pleasure of her discussing with me, first as a child, then an adult, the history of the family and society in general from the Boar War, the Great War, then through the Second World War. She outlined as a primary witness the history that I have studied ever since, and loved. The interesting thing with her though, from a middle class family, was she was in service married to my Great Uncle Billy who was the chief chauffeur for Lord and Lady Pilkington, the glass family, and thus they lived in a lodge on the estate. She never recognised the "service" bit as really being a servant, and very much in a working class role. To her she was superior to the "servants" of the main house, very much at the top of the pecking order in social status, even looking down on people who lived in council houses (bless her!!
) which used to really get under my mothers Eastender skin!
Connecting this with what you correctly observe Opti, my Great Aunt thought that the lot of the working class, as highlighted in those pictures, was somehow deserved! Reading history it has always been apparent that this was a typical attitude, certainly up to the Great War, but also to a lesser degree up to WW2, of society, even amongst the working class themselves. They used to look up to the upper classes, and toff their hats to them, in recognition that they believed they were superior beings. Thank God the Great War started to show how false that was, with the upper, ruling classes getting everything so wrong and so many working class boys losing their lives or ending up badly injured, with no welfare support in existence. I do not think my Great Aunt ever saw it that way, although she had suffered the terrible loss of her elder brother, my Great Uncle Wally that she continually weeped about. British society had developed in this mould, only to be eventually shattered by the World Wars, the new Labour Party and the unions.