Context

• ACC was written in 1843 at a time of great change in early Victorian Britain.
• Many lived in squalor and the housing was appaling.
• The gap between the rich and the poor widened and workers had to toil for hours for little pay.
• Children didn't go to school and worked long hours for low wages.
• There was no healthcare, if you got ill and couldn't work your whole household was at risk of death.
• A small number of people became very wealthy.
• If you couldn't pay off debts you would go to workhouses where families were separated.
• If you couldn't pay off debts you were sent to debtors' prisons. Charles Dickens' dad was there.
• Dickens encorporated The Malthusian theory of population, which described that the human population grows more rapidly than the food supply until famines, war or disease reduces the population.
• 1834 poor law wasn't for the benefit of the poor at all and Charles Dickens wanted more change.