Victorian Britain – KQ5b – Victorian poor and the workhouse; what does Martha’s story tell us?

NB This is an additional lesson that does not appear on the planner.

This topic couldn’t be more relevant to today. We frequently hear it said that the poor are always with us: so are the problems of what to do with them! By looking at a case study of the Victorian New Poor Law and the associated workhouses, pupils will be challenged to think beyond their initial 21^st century horror at the system to try to understand why so many Victorians wanted and supported it.

Looking at a cameo of how one 12 year- old girl was treated by the system allows pupils to personalise some of the bigger issues. The core activities involve pupils in inferring from clues about conditions in workhouses and then creating speech bubbles to show the different points of view of supporters and critics such as Dickens.