History

History

A

s I’ve already said, both I and my editors at Usborne have worked very hard to ensure that all of the historical elements in these books are completely authentic. As such, lots of schools that I visit use the books as a class reader to accompany topic work on the Victorians.

It’s A Hard Knock Life

A

lthough education was compulsory by Ben Kingdom’s time, the reality was that most children born into poor families in the East End of London would be expected to work and provide an income of their own. There can often be a romance about Victorian childhood – with images of chimney sweeps, and Oliver and the Artful Dodger singing as they pick-a-pocket-ortwo – but children had to work extremely hard and often in very dangerous circumstances. Ben Kingdom himself is an apprentice cooper and a sometime ‘mudlark’, but other terrible jobs included ‘toshing’ (searching in the sewers for anything that could be sold) and collecting ‘pure’ (dog excrement used in the tanning process in the leather working factories in Bermondsey).

For a contemporary picture of children scavenging for a living I recommend Trash by Andy Mulligan (older readers only). Also Tony Robinson’s The Worst Children’s Jobs in History offers a Terry Deary style introduction to the subject. Children in my class really enjoyed researching these jobs and they followed up by making “Top Trumps” style cards. The four categories we used were Danger (how easily you could get hurt/disabled/killed); Prospects (did the job actually provide a reasonable income or have room for advancement); Age (the youngest you could be to have the job); and, most popular of all, Disgustingness (quite how foul and awful the job is).

A Life Of Crime

C

ertain aspects of Ben’s story and the research which informed it have generated considerable interest in the classroom and on my school tours. In particular, the harshness of ordinary life for Victorian children proved to be fascinating to the children in my school. Ben, and many of the children in both the Watchers and the Legion, find themselves continually walking a very fine line between honesty and survival. Ruby Johnson, for example, lives continually on her wits and her ability to pick pockets, however as we learn more about her as the series progresses it becomes increasingly clear that this is out of necessity, not choice (see Chapter 4 The City of Fear). As well as asking my class what they might do if they were in Ruby’s position, I read them the following quote which goes some way towards showing the risks involved in a life like Ruby’s.



“Edward Joghill, aged 10 years, has not yet been tried by jury, but he has, within the last 2 years, been 8 times summarily convicted, viz:Feb 13 1847. For possession of 7 scarfs &c. 2 months’ impris. May 10. Rogue and vagabond. 1 month’s impris. July 10. Possession of a half-soverign. 1 month’s impris. Sep 13. Simple larceny. 1 day’s impris., and whipped. Sep 27. Rogue and vagabond. 2 months’ impris. Dec 31. Simple larceny. 1 month’s impris., and whipped. May 23 1848 Ditto 1 month’s impris., and whipped. April 15 1849. Ditto. 3 months’ impris., and whipped.” Source: Lee Jackson’s Dictionary of Victorian London

This record relates to Edward’s time at Maidstone Prison over an 18 month period. The suggestion being that he would almost certainly have been incarcerated in other prisons too. My class found these details especially pertinent because they were accompanied by the record of a conversation between the Gaoler and the Sergeant at arms, as follows:Learned Sergeant: “Who is that boy?” Gaoler: “Oh, Joghill. He has been committed by the county magistrates for stealing damsons. He climbed over a garden wall and got a hatful of plums, and he has been sent to prison for a month and we whip him every day.” In my class we followed up with Victorian diary writing and stories based on the life of a London street thief. I have also used Edward Joghill’s story very successfully as a roleplay/hot-seating exercise.