England in the 1890's

Taylor_Writes · Jan 8, 2012

Hello there. I'm new to this area of the forum, and I have a feeling that I'll be here more often because I have a new idea for a potential series that takes places in 1980's. I guess if I have any new questions I'll just post them here.

My idea has two teenage boys as the MC's, probably 16-18 years old. *insert boring information here about the idea*.

Now, I was thinking of scenes that I could include, and one of them involved drinking alcohol of some sort - wine, probably. I was wondering if there was any drinking age back then. You know, like here in Canada, my province is one of those that requires you to be 19 to purchase and drink alcohol. My "mainest of the MC's" parents are dead, so I would have to figure something out.

Second question: School. How old were people when they graduated back then? Seventeen or eighteen like they are now, or was it younger? I know that people would drop out earlier - I think you had to be thirteen - but what if they continued with their education?

Third question: If boys came from a wealthier, but not the wealthiest, family, how would they be treated? I'd imagine they wouldn't be forced to drop out... But would they have jobs outside of school?

Thanks for all of your help. If you need something to be clearer, I'd be happy to explain it further.

ULTRAGOTHA · Jan 8, 2012

1890s or 1980s?

In the 1980s the legal drinking age in England was 18. Children under 5 could not be given alcohol even by their parents except for in a prescription or emergency. Children 6-15 could drink at home or at a friend's house with parental permission and children 16 and 17 could drink in public with meals provided (in England and Wales) an adult ordered the alcohol. In Scotland no adult need be present.

School leaving age was 16.

The 1886 Intoxicating Liquors (Sale to Children) Act banned the sales of alcoholic beverages to children under 13.

Compulsory education in the late 19th century

As to what a child did after leaving school if he did not then go on to University, that would depend on whether he was gentry, trade or aristocracy and on his family's view of work.

waylander · Jan 8, 2012

Young men of 16-18 drinking - entirely dependent on the attitude of their father/guardian I would say though you did not specify whether this was in private or in public.
Are these boys being privately or publicly educated? It was fairly uncommon for boys in public education to be educated beyond 16

waylander · Jan 8, 2012

ULTRAGOTHA said:
1890s or 1980s?

In the 1980s the legal drinking age in England was 18. Children under 5 could not be given alcohol even by their parents except for in a prescription or emergency. Children 6-15 could drink at home or at a friend's house with parental permission and children 16 and 17 could drink in public with meals provided (in England and Wales) an adult ordered the alcohol. In Scotland no adult need be present.

School leaving age was 16.

Not so. It was 10.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_Education_Act_1880

Taylor_Writes · Jan 8, 2012

I'd meant to say drinking in private and public. They were publicly educated too, I guess.

waylander · Jan 8, 2012

Publicly educated - then by 16 they would be working.
No major restriction on them drinking AFAIK though it depends on where they are.

ULTRAGOTHA · Jan 8, 2012

waylander said:
Not so. It was 10.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_Education_Act_1880

It was 10 in the 1890s.

In the 1980s it was 16, surely?

waylander · Jan 8, 2012

Correct.
16 in the 1980s

Taylor_Writes · Jan 8, 2012

Ok, continuing from my questions on education: What if one of my characters wanted to become a doctor? I tried searching that up on my own and had no luck whatsoever.

waylander · Jan 8, 2012

Taylor_Writes said:
Ok, continuing from my questions on education: What if one of my characters wanted to become a doctor? I tried searching that up on my own and had no luck whatsoever.

Your character would apply direct to one of the medical schools. By 1890 there were quite a number of these, including one for women. The best known were in London but many other major cities had them.

Taylor_Writes · Jan 8, 2012

So, they could do that even if they left school at sixteen?

waylander · Jan 8, 2012

The easiest way would be for them to be privately educated.

"By the late 1800s attempts to make medical degrees more scientific and broader in scope affected students. The cost of this specialised medical education made it difficult for anyone who was not from a middle-class or wealthy background to learn medicine. In America and Britain evening schools of medicine had allowed working students to study part time, but these now began to disappear."
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/practisingmedicine/doctor.aspx

Possibly they assisted a doctor and attended evening study or approached the doctor's old school of medicine with a reference from him.

Richard White · Jan 8, 2012

You might want to read a history of W. Somerset Maugham. He trained as a medical doctor during that specific time period. There are some very in-depth stories about him (both biographical and one good write up by the hospital he trained at.) He delivered 63 babies in a two-week span during his internship.

I don't have my bibliography handy, but here's the line from the body of the paper I did on Maugham - " A.K. Banerjee, in the essay “William Somerset Maugham: medical student at St Thomas's Hospital 1892 to 1897--'Liza of Lambeth'” in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, stated . . . "

That should allow you to find it under scholar.google.com

jaksen · Jan 9, 2012

If you're talking about the 1890's...

If it helps any, I know that boys, 13-15 years old, were still pulled out of school and apprenticed to skilled workmen in order to learn a trade at that time. This happened in both England and New England. In the upper classes, of course this didn't happen. But it was common in the lower or working classes, and in some cases in the middle class.

And some boys, of course, would learn their father's trade.

Taylor_Writes · Jan 12, 2012

New question: was there any sort of illegal trade in the 1890's? For instance, there is drug dealing nowadays. All I know is the slave trade or something like that, but that's it.

Drachen Jager · Jan 12, 2012

Opium was big back then. I'm not sure how illegal it was in England at the time. Most of the other drugs society has problems with today were either legal or unheard of.

Though, come to think of it, if one of your guys is going to medical school, there was a good trade in dead bodies for medical dissection in those days. They even made a movie about two famous bodysnatchers recently (I think it came out last year).

Rachel77 · Jan 12, 2012

I don't know how legal the opium dens were, but there's that. There was definitely a sex trade, and underground/illegal fight matches (bare-knuckle boxing was made illegal a few decades prior, but I think there were still some underground spots that held competitions).

If you haven't checked out the Victoria listserv, I highly recommend doing so. It's a very active listserv with extensive archives, and more than a few novelists have come on asking questions on specific topics.

ETA: Oh, yes! As Drachen Jager says, there was demand for dead bodies for medical schools to dissect (can't believe I forgot about that).

And come to that, there was a lot of interest in new discoveries -- strange animals, strange plants, that kind of thing. Not that these were necessarily illegal, but illegal and underhanded methods were employed when collecting some of these specimens.

waylander · Jan 12, 2012

Homosexual activity was illegal back then so there was a black market in rent boys

Priene · Jan 12, 2012

Taylor_Writes said:
New question: was there any sort of illegal trade in the 1890's? For instance, there is drug dealing nowadays. All I know is the slave trade or something like that, but that's it.

Drachen Jager said:
Though, come to think of it, if one of your guys is going to medical school, there was a good trade in dead bodies for medical dissection in those days. They even made a movie about two famous bodysnatchers recently (I think it came out last year).

Great Yarmouth was the place to go for corpses. Poor folk would sell their recently deceased to Londoners up on the train, and there was also a huge graveyard that got regularly pillaged.

ULTRAGOTHA · Jan 12, 2012

Smuggling was illegal.

Taylor_Writes · Jan 12, 2012

Smuggling what, for example? *stupid moment*

waylander · Jan 12, 2012

Spirits - Brandy in particular, Tobacco

Drachen Jager · Jan 12, 2012

Tea, silk, spices. Anything that had high value/size ratio and you'd want to avoid the tariff on.

Taylor_Writes · Jan 12, 2012

Okay. Would you be penalized the same for different things, or would it vary...?

ULTRAGOTHA · Jan 12, 2012

A Google search of smuggling in Victorian England will get you some good places to start.

England in the 1890's

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