The two videos deals with the terrible working and living condition of children during the Victorian age.

The first video shows a performance in which actors sing about children working conditions.

Through the song is explained that during the Victorian age because of the effects of the Industrial Revolution, factory owners needed more cheap, malleable and fast-learning employees and found it ready-made on the children of the urban workhouses. Since Victorian families were extremely poor, parents sent their children to work in order to provide some money.

Children were compelled to work from very young ages and for long hours in polluted and unsafe environment. No one care about their health, and if they got hurt, they would have been simply replaced – and so even if they were to grow up.

Because of the misery wage they received, children developed snatch skills.

In the end children performing expresses their wish to stop working in such a tortured place and just go to school to get an education.

In the second video there were shown several images still represented people – especially children – work conditions and some slide were those one were explained.

Here again is highlighted that poor families sent their children to work to get some money (on average, children were given only 10-15% of the wages given to adult male workers).

Common jobs for children were working in the tiny coal mine (were explosions were common), or in a cotton mill, or because of their small size they were often required to crawl under he spinning machine blades to pick up extra cotton, or in glass factories where they risked to burn and blind.

The average number of working hours in a day were 12-13 hour – even for the very young children.

In addition of killing work, they were also abused, both physically and verbally.

People began to protest the use of children and so the Factory Act of 1833 was passed. It stated that

• children who were under 9 years old could not work in the textile factories;
• children who were between 9 and 13 could only work 8 hours a day, with a 1 hour lunch break, and also 2 hours of education a day;
• children between 14 and 18 could not work more than 12 hours a day, with a 1 hour lunch break;
• children under 18 also could not work at night.

Regular inspections of the factories and workplaces also took place with the new Factory Act, however, even with it, the children of the Industrial Revolution were still not well protected.