poverty & social injustice

• there was a common belief among wealthier people in victorian times that poverty was simply a result of laziness
• the poor law of 1834 removed any government support for people who struggled for money
• their only option was to enter a workhouse, which provided food and shelter in exchange for hard manual labour in cruel conditions
• those who got into debt were jailed in debtors' prisons until the money was paid
• scrooge refers to these establishments when he refuses to donate money to the charity collector in stave 1
• scrooge's description of the poor as the 'surplus population' refers to an idea called malthusianism, which dickens strongly opposed
• malthusianism claims that poverty is caused by an excess of people and the only way to reduce poverty it to reduce the size of the population
• dickens had a lot of first-hand experience of the suffering of the poor
• dickens' father was put in a debtors' prison when charles was 12 and he was taken out of school and made to work, which gave him a strong sense of injustice
• he realised that poverty was usually the result of bad luck or unfortunate circumstances rather than laziness
• dickens' books are full of social commentary on the gap between rich and poor
• dickens went to visit many places where poor people lived and worked and wrote about the things he witnessed, and his descriptions were often shocking to the upper classes who were ignorant of how much the poor really suffered