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Young George was published in London in 1902 by a woman Name Edith Farmiloe. She was inspired by the children she observed playing in the streets in lower-class London during the very late 1800s. The protagonist George and his four siblings spend most of their childhood days as their mother locks them out every day before she goes to work. George is left to care for his siblings while also dealing with an alcoholic mother and going through the trials of just being a child himself. The story follows, in a child-like manner which depicts fighting and playtime, where they watch and try to mimic the rich kids in the park. George is meant to care for them in the streets, find their meals and put them to bed every single night. George refers to his youngest sister as “his baby” and sort of seems to take ownership of her away from their mother, as he likely feels like she is his child for how much he is a caregiver to her. The book ends when winter hits, which is the worst time of year for the children when the five are locked out of their house after their mother is locked up for the night. They wait long hours in the cold till the morning when his sister Lily becomes sick. She is taken to the hospital by her mother, however, she never returns.

Farmiloe, Edith. Young George. William Heinemann, 1902: Cover. Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.

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Research Question

Sources

Key Findings

Edith Farmiloe (Author)

Drink in Everyday Life

Drink in the Working Class

Women & Drink

Children & Drink

Conclusion

Bibliography

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Using the book Young George by Edith Farmiloe as a primary source, I want to explore the representation of alcohol usage and abuse in children’s literature, because I want to further my understanding of how this Victorian Era book reflected the challenges that the urban impoverished children endured at the time.

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So to study my research question, I am using text Young George and then Fruits of Intemperance wood art piece by George Cruikshank as primary sources. Secondary sources, deriving from the key points found in my primary sources surrounding alcohol use, will be placed at the end in a bibliography.

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Fruits of Intemperance by George Cruikshank (1854)

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Fruits of Intemperance by George Cruikshank (1854)

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This piece of art was done as woodwork, by George Cruikshank in 1854 that was meant to push his Teetotalism beliefs through the use of art. He was a children’s illustrator despite this very political and adult piece. When this work was published, a movement was being pushed to ban alcohol in England and Cruikshank supported this movement and used his art as a piece of protest. Specific to Young George includes; early death of the children and the mother teaches her children to take a strong drink. Additional things include; suicide, increase in violent crimes, prison, insanity, hospital visits, execution and bankruptcy (Cruikshank).

Cruikshank, George. Fruits of Intemperance. John Cassell, 1854: Woodwork Panel, Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.

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1: Edith Farmiloe

Edith Farmiloe lived in a poor district of London where she would observe the children left on their own in the streets and made them the subject of her sketches and writings (Benezit Dictionary of Artists). Young George was written to show how challenging life could be for children from poor families (. This creates an understanding that Farmiloe was writing from personal experiences of the children in her neighbourhood of South Hackney, London. Therefore, making the occurrence is George’s life a valuable piece of information to use when studying urban life in Victorian London.

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2: Drink in Everyday Life

The Victorians live in a society where drink and alcohol consumption was very normalized, as well as popular in the populations, among all class levels. It is discussed how drinking went “from dawn till dusk and on into the wee small hours so we know that many people liked to drink,” (Hands). In 1869 Thirty-three years before Young George was published, the government began attempting to gain control over alcohol consumption. It became morally, politically and religiously wrong to drink and public drunkenness began being punished, but the public still continued to consume it in large degrees (Hands). However, society was also leaning into capitalism, so while there were stigmas and punishments around drinking, it was important to the government for the alcohol economy to continue to flourish (Hands). Therefore, leaving the public to consume alcohol legally and frequently.

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3; Drink in the Working Class

The concerns from the government surrounding drinking from the section above, derive from the acts of the working class Victorian London people. This was because the men and women frequented the bars and open acts of public drunkenness versus the higher classes (Hands). This was due to the fact that alcohol in the workplace was being discouraged, so drinking seemed symbolic of free time and for the working class, their jobs would have been dangerous, dirty and what the upper classes would not want to do, essentially. This creates for a mindset leaning toward an escape from their jobs and poverty (Hands). However, there was a higher rate of teetotalism movements happening in Britain in general at the time (Harrison) which could help to explain why Farmiloe, as a narrator shames George’s mother.

This can be seen in this image below, by the tone Farmiloe uses it is judgemental to the mother’s character. This would allow for the Victorian reader to understand the connotations behind showing George’s mother as an alcoholic so blatantly; an act that would not be relevant to children’s literature today.
Farmiloe, Edith. Young George. William Heinemann, pg 3. Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.

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4; Women & Drink

After an 1877 survey, it proved that nearly 25% of the drunken arrests involved women (Hands). Specifically for lower class women, which George’s mother would fit, they drank more publicly and under criticism because of this. While it was acceptable to purchase alcohol from a grocer, the act of sitting in a pub and getting drunk in a public setting which was frowned upon (Hands). “In the slums and in poorer working-class areas, women drinkers were a more visible presence within pubs,” (Hands) which leads into the idea that drinking culture for adults of the working class was heavily based around being away from the home.

The image below shows George and his siblings being locked out all night as their mother is taken to lock up - for what readers can most likely assume had something to do with public drunkenness.

Farmiloe, Edith. Young George. William Heinemann, 1902: pg 33. Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.

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5. Children & Drink

Many Victorian children were subject to consuming alcohol, or at least being more familiar with it than we are today because of the laws which were in place. Today, serving alcohol to anyone under the age of nineteen is illegal, but in Victorian England, it was normal for a child to run to the local pub for their parents to fetch the dinner beer (Hands). This was depicted in Young George as well, and even shows the young girl taking a sip from the cup (Farmiloe). Which is of course why it would be considered more normal for Edith to have included alcohol consumption of children in her book because that was the reality of the setting as well as the targeted audience of her books. For an impoverished Victorian child, opening a book to see another child drinking would not have been shocking but just another daily occurrence. Thora Hands interviews individuals as well whose mothers drank during their pregnancy, believing that beer especially, had nutrition in it that was important and therefore almost encouraged to drink, (Hands). This leads me to speculated that having five children and an alcohol problem, George’s mother likely consumed alcohol when pregnant as well.

The image below depicts George's sister, Caroline, sipping beer after she fetched it for her mother.
Farmiloe, Edith. Young George. William Heinemann, 1902: pg 20. Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.

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From the key findings above, it is clear to see that drinking was a huge part of the lower class culture which young George and his siblings lived in with their alcoholic mother. While readers today would be able to classify this as harmful to those children as well as the adults, in 1902 when the book was published these things were very normal. Edith Farmiloe unknowingly created an excellent resource for researchers to base questions off regarding the lives of impoverished Victorian children. Utilizing this piece of literature, which was meant for children and to reflect the neighbourhoods the readers would have lived in, it provides a good reflection piece that can be used to study the very specific topic of Victorian lower class alcohol consumption and how that translated into everyday life for these individuals.

Farmiloe uses a slightly critical tone when discussing alcohol in Young George which could come from the rise of teetotalism in British society, blooming in the late 1800s. By comparing this to Fruits of Intemperance it does follow the same themes of what bad can come from engaging in alcohol consumption. The fact that both works were also done by children’s illustrator and author, leads me to believe that Farmiloe and Cruikshank were both attempting to convey an anti-drinking message to children; perhaps before it is too late and addiction has settled into them through inheritance.

This would make sense considering the key findings from my research. If drinking is already a huge part of lower-class neighbourhoods, it is easy to sense that it would seep into the minds of children that being a functioning alcoholic (as George’s mother was) was normal. If growing up, seeing public displays of drunkenness brought by people they knew and perhaps even family members, this would create a state which being drunk was okay in the mind of a child. Adding this as well onto the lenient laws placed around who could buy alcohol, it is easy to see why children would be inclined to drink, as did George’s sister did when fetching the dinner beer (Farmiloe).

In conclusion, Young George and Fruits of Intemperance both provide very important information regarding drink and impoverished families in Victorian London. The evidence in Farmiloe’s book coincides with the laws and statistics that have been collected surrounding drinking in the Victorian era. Young George confirms the existence and normalcy of drinking in the lower-class London neighbourhoods and how it affected the children of these societies and how it differs from today’s modern society, where we can recognize the harm alcohol is doing to George and his siblings.

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Cruikshank, George. Fruits of Intemperance. John Cassell, 1854.

"Farmiloe, Edith."  Benezit Dictionary of Artists. October 31, 2011. Oxford University Press. Date of access 25 Apr. 2019

Farmiloe, Edith. Young George. William Heinemann, 1902.

Hands, Thora. Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: Beyond the Spectre of the Drunkard. Palgrave MacMillan, 2019

Harrison, Brian. Drink and the Victorians: the Temperance Question in England 1815-1872. ACLS History E-Book Project, 2005.

“New Exhibition - 'Edith Farmiloe: The Children Of The Poor'.” Just Beverley, 3 May 2017, justbeverley.co.uk/articles/1306/new-exhibition-edith-farmiloe-the-children-of-the-poor-opens-on-saturday-at-the-treasure-house-beverley.