Childhood and Death in Victorian England
by Sarah Seaton
This is well researched! Very sad and terribly disturbing that people sent children to work in horrible situations like this! You have to really want to know all about this subject to like this book. It gets dry after a bit. Not that the subject is unimportant but it is so sad I had to read it in pieces. ( )

CHILDHOOD AND DEATH IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND by Sarah Seaton There were lots of ways for children to die in Victorian England. Accidents, murder, sickness, work, poorhouse, workhouse, infirmary, mining, factories, and lots of other ways. It appears that no one cared much at all for children under age 18 in that time period. Children probably were a "dime a dozen" since everyone had multiple children and there were always 5 more children to step up to take the place of a dead child. There was always an inquest held at a local place of lodging, but the deaths were frequently filed as accidental deaths. It is good that there are more regulations regarding child labor, poorhouses, and workhouses in this century. Invariably a great deal of corruption occurred involving children, Many thanks to #netgalley for the complimentary copy of #childhoodanddeathinvictorianengland I was under no obligation to post a review. ( )

Childhood & Death in Victoria England

Life was cheap in the nineteenth century, and none more so with the life of a child, and the reactions of the populous is rather different today than it was then. This book is not intended to be a morose or morbid fascination with death in childhood, but more of a tribute to the children who did not make it to adulthood.

If you were born into a working-class family, then to get to adulthood was an achievement in its own right, and there were many reasons why a child might not live out their infancy. This book examines the many different reasons why that happened and the responses of the time. To some it may be hard to comprehend, but times were harder, medical care cost the individual, and there was no sense of health and safety as we know it today.

Over five chapters, which cover everything from Industrial accidents to the death of new born deaths via an investigation of infanticide. Infanticide was more common in the nineteenth century and use of the court and newspaper records draws this information out. While child murder was shocking and still is, what this book does do, is remind us that people never change, and that there are people who have learnt nothing from history.

This is an excellent history of childhood deaths, and there is still plenty to be learnt, and this is only the beginning of that education. This book has been well researched, well written and an engrossing read, and you will learn something on every page. ( )