Victorian Underclass

During class on Tuesday we took a geocashing tour of all the sites of where Jack the Ripper had killed several of his victims. The journey was mostly threw East London, the portion of London in which has historically always been considered the slums of London.
All of Jack the Ripper’s victims had several things in common. They all lived in the neighborhoods of East London in the White Chapel area, the victims were all women, and they all worked as local prostitutes.

Back in this time during the Victorian age women were not considered equal to men. With the Industrial Revolution just getting started life for the urban poor was very hard. “The technology of the Industrial Revolution had a great impact on society. Inventions not only introduced new industries for employment, but the products and services produced also altered society. Mining to extract the coal and other raw materials needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution was a major new industry, and before 1842 even women worked in the mines”(Wickapedia: Victorian Age). Those who did not work in the coalmines worked long hours in factories, with horrible working conditions, and where labor laws were nonexistent.
Due to the Industrial Revolution, which drew, a lot of people to London caused a great housing shortage. “Available housing was scarce and expensive, resulting in overcrowding. These problems were magnified in London, where the population grew at record rates. Large houses were turned into flats and tenements, and as landlords failed to maintain these dwellings slum housing developed. Kellow Chesney described the situation as follows: ‘Hideous slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up a substantial part of the, metropolis... In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a single room’” (Wickipedia Victorian Age Poverty).

The working conditions were so horrible and the wages were so low many people were not able to afford their rent. Because of this many women turned to prostitution. Prostitution was very common in poor urban areas, where women had limited power and control. It was considered an easy way for them to make money in order to support themselves. At this time in history their were much more women compared to men. Their for many did not even have a chance to get married, and their fore no one to support them, causing many of them to find work out on the streets. During this time period prostitutes were highly looked down upon, their were some efforts to get these women from working on the streets but it was very hard for them to become respectable people in society, they were seen as a social problem