Lady Victoria Colliery at Newtongrange
Lady Victoria Colliery is one of the surviving examples of a coal mine from the Victorian Era. The mine is adjacent to the city Edinburgh, Scottland where Elizabeth Barrett Browning first published her poem The Cry of the Children in a popular, local magazine. The poem was written condemning child labor and the conditions of children in the workforce at the time.
Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell is located in North Central London, between King’s Cross and London. It includes the sub-district of Finsbury. It is an older parish that has existed since Medieval times and continues to the present. Its name comes from the clerk’s well in Farrington. In the seventeenth century, it developed into a more fashionable part of town with expensive residences. At the time of Oliver Twist, it had made a turn for the worst as a strong criminal element encroached into the neighborhood.
Education Act of 1870
The Education Act of 1870 was a life changing act for children. Before this Act was established only those who could pay to go to school achieved an education. In almost every case, the upper-class were the ones that recieved such an education. This Education Act, however, opened up the possibilty of recieving an education for many lower and working-class children. It allowed those children access to an education that would not have been available to them otherwise.
Jane Eyre, Freak Shows, and British Imperialism
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “freak of nature” became a part of general vocabulary in 1847. The popularity of this term demonstrates the general public’s obsession in 1840’s Britain with the bizarre and abnormal. In this same year, Charlotte Bronte published her classic novel Jane Eyre. The connection between the appearance of the term “freak of nature” and Jane Eyre is interesting when considering the role of Bertha Mason in the context of the novel and the time period in which it was written.
