Context

Question 1

1. Voting

Answer 1

1/5 men and 0 women

Those in power were always aristocratic men who voted for parties that catered to their advantage.

The poor remained poor with little hope for change in the short-term, at least through political means.

Question 2

2. Starvation

Answer 2

“the hungry 40s”
Economic uncertainty which led to poverty and hardship.

Question 3

3. The Poor Law

Answer 3

Those in absolute poverty were redirected to institutions such as workhouses and prisons: these were places of last resort where in exchange for bed and resort people worked in terrible conditions for no wages.

Some committed suicide rather than going to one.

No welfare state - education and healthcare were not free.

Question 4

4. Communism

Answer 4

In the 40s Karl Marx published the communist manifesto - offered a radical vision of the world in which people came together to share wealth equally - the idea of communism began to arise - could be a potential solution to the poverty in London.

Question 5

5. Industrial revolution and population

Answer 5

Cities expanded rapidly and factories offered work, and partly to do with fewer jobs - overpopulation - Scrooged viewed the poor as the ‘surpluss population’

Question 6

6. Regular church attendance

Answer 6

Despite the moral corruption of Victorian Londeners, people valued regular attendance of Church - where at night, rich men would sleep around with prostitutes and go out and get heavily drunk, they still attended Church, forming the facade of a happy, Christian, moral family. Dickens condemns this.