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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.