Our first activity when we arrived at The Royal Gunpowder Mills was when we went to the toyshop. We learnt that the poor children had to make toys. They used wooden dolly pegs and they cut up tatty old dusty clothes
After we visited the toyshop, we went to the seaside and got nice and tanned. The rich used to walk around and glide in tight corsets for fashion. This was called promenading. The ladies waists were 40cm round. All their ribs broke, they got hot and fainted. All of their insides were squashed and they couldn’t sit, speak or breathe properly. They also had 1 penny for a lick of ice-cream out of a little glass jar with a small top. They also said that they had a dipper at the beach, who was paid to push their heads under the salty water, because they thought that salt was healthy and good for them. I felt sorry for the poor because they had no pennies or half pennies for a delicious, scrumptious lick of ice-cream.
Once we had finished our lunch we went to the Workhouse to earn 15 pennies to buy ou rself nice cabbage soap. I was a shoe shiner and I had a tiny piece of polish on a brush to clean a shoe, which had dust and dirt over the top. I was so shocked when I heard that the children worked from age 7 and over and that they worked 11-12 hours every day from early in the morning until very late at night. When I was scrubbing the shoes I had pain running through my back, hands, neck and arms, running through like a shivering river.
Finally we went to a Victorian school; hard working on our A,B,C’s and 1,2,3. Learning on a blackboard and writing with white chalk. Teachers asked questions, however you had to stand up to and answer the teacher politely, “Yes maam” we shouted. If you were naughty, you would have been whacked with the cane or stood facing the wall wearing a cone pointy hat.
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I would recommend other people visiting The Royal Gunpowder Mills, because not only did we have an educational visit, but we changed back in time to the Victorians with a funny hat and costume.
Recount by Tiegan