Shocking Labor Practices That Were Legal In Charles Dickens’ Age

Published February 5, 2016
Updated January 11, 2017

2.House work: Masters and Maids

Charles Dickens Victoria Poverty

Thomas Kennington’s famous painting, “A Pinch of Poverty,” captures the distress of the poor in Victorian England. Source: Foundling Museum foundlingmuseum.org.uk

The Master and Servant Act of 1823 criminalized any employee who breached a contract. Indeed, an indentured servant who attempted to cut his or her ties with a master and seek work elsewhere could be considered a “criminal,” while their often-abusive masters remained shrouded in legal protection. This act — meant to discourage workers from organizing and demanding better treatment — effectively forced employees to stay loyal to their masters irrespective of what they did, out of fear of prison.

And this fear was real: In a single year, decades after the law was passed, over 10,000 servants were tried for violating this law. None of their masters faced prosecution.

Wrote lawyer Ernest Jones at the time, “[I]n one year alone, 1864, the last return given, under the Master and Servants Act, 10,246 working men were imprisoned at the suit of their masters — not one master at the suit of the men!”

author
Teresa Cantero
author
Teresa is a freelance journalist and former Fulbright scholar now based in Spain. She has an M.S. in Global Affairs from New York University and a Bachelors in Journalism from the Universidad de Navarra.
editor
Savannah Cox
editor
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.