Babies were often unwelcome burdens and many children were seen as "a menace" in 19th century Britain, a University of Queensland study has found.
Examining an area largely unexplored by historians, Dr Mary Kooyman's PhD study of attitudes to childhood in 19th century Britain revealed that, largely for economic reasons, children were rarely valued.
"We understand children as ?precious goods' now, but I started this study looking at whether babies were welcomed and it became quite obvious that some babies just came and were a darn nuisance," she said.
Dr Kooyman said children often were feared as a criminal threat or a financial burden - and most of them were expected to ?earn their keep'.
"Some extraordinary things were said, for instance: ?This man has three children. One is bringing in sixpence a week, but the three-year-old is not employed.' It is beyond belief, but it was meant seriously at the time," she said.
"There were economic reasons for these attitudes to children. There was an enormous poverty-stricken class and these people had no vote, no power, no social services, and charity was enormously important. It was a population with a lot of young people, a population with no safety nets, and therefore there was no other way out. If you had children, they had to support themselves because the ordinary person couldn't afford to."
Dr Kooyman said at times, children under 15 comprised more than a quarter of Britain's population and the "devastating torrent" of juveniles made people uneasy.
"At certain periods in London particularly, children under the age of 14 were considered a menace," she said. "The problem was that a large proportion of children had to earn their own livelihood, but there wasn't a great deal of work around. Without work, children were tossed out on to the street and that made people anxious. They didn't see them as children; they saw them as criminals and they were worried because they feared for their lives."
Dr Kooyman found that while many children were feared, mistreated or ignored, the introduction of compulsory education in 1870 marked a turning point in their fortunes. "It was very significant because until then, parents had complete control over their children," she said. "But after 1870 they couldn't send them out to work; they had to send them to school.
"When all these children were roaming the streets, people didn't know what to do with them. They could emigrate them, punish them, put them into homes - or they could educate them, which they eventually did. Of course it didn't solve the problem immediately. As late as 1891 legislation had to be introduced to stop people who had earlier abandoned their children from reclaiming them in order to put them out to work."
For more information, contact Dr Mary Kooyman (telephone 3378 9743).
