Living the life of a Victorian child

The fabulous Rainbow Theatre recently visited St Bede’s Prep school to give a workshop on the lives of Victorian Children to the Year 7 pupils.

The workshop began with the pupils taking part in various role plays. They learnt about the schooling in Dame, Ragged and the viciously controlled Yorkshire schools; realising just how fortunate they are to be at a school like St Bede's.

Others took part in scenes depicting factory workers and the horrific accidents that happened; the solitude, fear and back-breaking labour down a coal mine and discovered how some children had to become scavengers to survive. It really was stomach churning to think of children sifting sewage for valuables and collecting 'pure' to sell to the poor for fuel. The pupils later discovered that 'pure' was a euphemism for dog mess!

The pupils had already learnt about children at work in their studies of the Industrial Revolution and this workshop really brought those terrible hardships to life.