Over the past year or so with everything that has gone on in my life, I have found a new love of non-fiction books, particularly history books that are about subjects that are not super common to think about. This is one of those books that I saw and I thought about how I have never read something like this before.

This is a very factual book and in being that it can be very surface-level on the specifics of the stories that it was telling. The lack of information and records from the time period contributes to that as well. There are some parts of the book that be a bit hard to read as the subject is a very dark one and the things discussed can be gruesome, but it is also informative. The author does an excellent job of being blunt and factual with her writing while also infusing it with understanding and not harshness.

If you want to read an interesting book that has a lot of history in it and is about a topic that is not often talked about, then this is a book you should look at.

I received this book as an advanced copy from Netgalley and this is a personal review of it.

I love reading about the Victorian era and what our ancestors had to endure so this was right up my street. It isn't for the faint hearted and it will leave you angry, in disbelief and astonished at the decisions made. Quite a bit of local (to me) history that I never knew. Very interesting read.

Fairly decent for those in Victorian history or childhood though the ages. Gives a few different areas of life that affected kids or were placed into.

A very detailed, almost to the point of obsessive accounting of childhood death in Victorian England. Not sure what I was expecting when I started reading this book but it got to be repetitive. The book highlights the difference between how life was for families and children compared to the circumstances. Can tell a lot of research went into this book by the detailed accounts. Not for the faint of heart readers.

Thank you for the chance to review this book. I am interested in Victorian history, which influences my review from an amateur POV. First of all, I think that this book was an ambitious task, as unfortunately death in Victorian times is a varied and multifaceted topic influenced by so many factors such as overwork and poor health conditions. The subject matter is of course very depressing. However, a strong academic work bridging together childhood and death in Victorian England would be of value to those studying the time period. Anyone who has read in this area knows that Victorian childhood was often influenced by work, sickness, and poor living conditions. This is why childhood and death have a strong link in this time period. I think that the author did an okay job of connecting these things! There is a lot to cover. This is why I think this book would be a great primer in the subject. It was a good idea for a research piece.

Seaton has undertaken a very ambitious review of a broad issue and one that speaks to many more. In her introduction she makes it clear her main source is the Online British Newspaper Archive a wide and growing text asset. She said that she was amazed at the number of child deaths that were reported in this way. But she believes she has spotted a number of parallels between the child death issues reported then and now. She will review her themes and ideas and key cases will be reported substantially as was.
She has broken down her information into five chapter themes. The first is “Industrial Mishaps and Misdemeanours”. Children from poorer backgrounds were required to work from a very young age to support family incomes – or to support themselves if they were separated from their family. So with long hours, no training, few practical safety measures and in many cases totally inadequate supervision, Seaton can list numbers of deaths. Critically she will make it obvious that child injuries and deaths were regarded very much as collateral damage and few employers would be found guilty, an “accidental death” usually being recorded. The long term impact on their families is never really seen.
Chapter 2 covers “Accidents” – this shows that the home might be a place of great risk for children. There were sometimes open fires and this lead to large numbers of the reported deaths – and this is where we see the rare occasions of richer children also potentially at risk. But behind this is over-crowding, single room living and poverty that meant that mothers could be away working leaving children under the care of older (often not so very) siblings. If trouble occurred children might rely on neighbour support. The press reports were mostly indignant about those who failed to act. But children playing outdoors could be at risk from drowning in pits, rivers and canals too.
Chapter 3 is on “Poverty, Paupers and Health”. All people were at risk from a greater range of diseases in this period and treatments in themselves could carry risky ingredients (particular to smaller and weaker babies). There would be a greater expectation of child death rates; this today would be regarded as totally unacceptable. But it includes reports of deaths made probably reflecting wider concerns via media induced scandals. Seaton has identified the issue of paupers being “apprenticed out” from very young ages and the risks to them that occurred, both individually and occasionally en masse. The sheer scales of those abuses are astounding now, so she can just touch on a few examples. She also talks to the establishment of child protection societies and how their monitoring of cases was reported.
Chapter 4 is on “Manslaughter, Murder and Circumstances” and in this erratic chapter she identifies a number of cases. Child murders (and other crimes) were subject to the death penalty so getting convictions would be an issue. But here she has managed to pull together a number of lurid family deaths, many of them likely to be tripped by mental illnesses very much as we see now. But she explores another version of child deaths that are considered in Chapter 5 “Newborn and Early Infant Deaths”. What is infanticide? How likely are people to get caught, especially without a body? How many babies in a family can die before murder is considered an issue?
From this you can see that Seaton has tried to cover a very wide range. It is not clear why she has selected specific reports or why they are positioned in specific chapters. So the impression she can give is of a garbled account in need of an edit. But the suspicion is that if she had presented clearer introductions to her chapters then things might have followed more coherently. This makes it hard to be certain which readers she has positioned this book for. Thinking that through might have meant that her explanatory texts might have been more focussed. Possibly even doing something as basic as splitting her chapters down further might have improved the book. So regard this book as an “introduction to”, but do not expect much more.

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Childhood and Death in Victorian England by Sarah Seaton is a depressing book. The author tabulates childhood deaths from inquests during the Victorian era, materials that she found largely online. There is a wealth of data here, but it is mostly presented as anecdotes and lists. These are sorted into chapters based on types of deaths (industrial accidents, other accidents, disease, poverty, child abuse and neglect, etc.) Some of the anecdotes are cursory. Others are detailed and lurid. There isn’t any statistical analysis and the discussion, in general, is superficial. There is no presentation of what childhood was like for Victorian children who weren’t murdered, so it gives a rather biased view of life in Victorian England. Overall, I was disappointed with the book, expecting more from it than a catalogue of inquest findings. But the details that are presented are vivid, and the book serves to demonstrate that crimes against children are not only a modern day scourge.

A difficult subject well handled by another pen and sword author. It didn’t shy away from the terrible truth nor did it feel like it was trying to shock as entertainment. For the Victorian the death of a child was almost a certainty no matter what you social class. My own great great grandmother had 17 live births, only nine children grew to adulthood. Only two were boys and both died in World War One. How as mother she coped with the grief?

Interesting and informative but so dark. I really wish I skipped this one. It was so awful reading what was done to these poor little ones but I couldn't walk away from the book. Wish it flowed better, sometimes it read like a textbook

This book is dark and occasionally graphic in a very educational way. The Victorian era is frequently associated with large skirts and good manners, but the era was so much different than that. Conditions were generally poor, and children were frequently the victims of this era's less than lovely aspects. I appreciate that this book is not at all dry and consistently works in primary sources and photos. The descriptions are effective without pushing for shock value, and the stories help to reveal the actual conditions of life, and often death, for children living in the Victorian era.

Seaton does a good job in presenting one of the reasons why the Victorian era is synonymous with gothic trends. The book tells specific and individual stories about different children - it is a collection of mini biographies/death accounts. The accounts are detailed and the abuse and neglect suffered is sobering. If you have difficulty hearing about maltreatment of children then avoid reading this as Seaton's descriptions are very graphic. The flow of the book is very easy to follow.

As stated above, this book is an account of individual children and does not get into the sociological/psychological/economic aspects influencing the times. These are important because it does provide context to why children were placed in these situations to begin with. It also doesn't delve into why change started/why it was so slow in coming.

Read to be enjoyably horrified at the past. Thank you to Netgalley for the copy.

My thanks to NetGalley and Pen And Sword For a copy of “ Childhood And Death In Victorian England”.

Another wonderfully interesting and informative book from Pen And Sword Publishers.
Sarah Seaton isn’t an author I have read before but , although you can’t really enjoy a book with such a dark subject as this. I found it very useful. I also enjoyed her style of writing
Heart breaking to think how many lives could have been saved or improved had a child been born in more recent times..
I will find this really useful when compiling my family tree to give me an insight into the lives of my ancestors.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys history.

Thank you NetGalley. I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely love historic stories like this. The topic of death from this time span is so interesting.
The author did an amazing job writing this and keeping it interesting and easy to follow.
I was honestly impressed with this book and would gladly read others by this author.

The author is very upfront about the graphic nature of Childhood and Death in Victorian England, and they should be taken at their word. To be just as upfront, I’ll confess here and now I skimmed portions of the work due to that graphic nature. I normally wouldn’t review a book I skimmed, but I feel I can do a fair job here. But again, full disclosure.

I was somewhat disappointed here, as I was expecting more full general discussion of how and why children died and also how their bodies were treated afterward and how they were mourned. Some of that is present here, but the vast bulk of the book is made up of detailed singular accounts of death of particular children. I can’t fault the author’s research here; clearly this is heavily researched via primary source documents. And if you are looking for those sort of individual, detailed narratives of what happened to particular children—how they died in industrial accidents, or drowned or burned to death while unsupervised, or were murdered by their own mothers — this book certainly has you covered. And in impressive detail. Another strength of the book is its illustrations, which the author makes excellent use of.

But if you were looking for more than a few paragraphs examining the social aspects in broader terms, or more sociological/psychological exploration of the mourning process at the time, as well as its methods, this is not the book for you. Via a few scattered references the basic facts are here: the ages at which children were allowed to work in the mines or factories, the years particular laws were passed governing child labor, etc. But there is little depth or fullness of investigation into those matters.

As for the writing, it always clear and fluid, written for a lay audience, and always easy to follow. It’s well written, and as noted, makes excellent use of primary sources to provide individual narratives. If you can handle the content, it’s a good book for that purpose. If you’re squeamish or prefer to keep the detail of infanticide or child murders/abuse to a minimum, or you’re looking for a bigger picture, you’re better looking elsewhere.

Not for the squeamish, this book is a detailed and well researched account of life and death for children in Victorian England. A fascinating narrative covering a range of circumstances, the author respectfully and objectively reports the facts and gives the dead their names. Non-judgemental, she highlights the context of the tragic circumstances, noting the ignorance in relation to medical practices and the lack of support for new mothers. This is really interesting and I recommend it highly for people interested in social history.

Book Review for Childhood and Death in Victorian England
Full review for this title will be posted at: @cattleboobooks on Instagram!

As a writer and someone with an interest in researching my family tree, this book has a wealth of information that is relevant. I enjoy history but often find books expect a background in the topic. This doesn't making it easy to access and readable. It delves into the history of childhood and how things changed in the Victorian era which impacts our kids today and the different types of deaths there were. It is fascinating and one I know I will keep coming back too.

I have to say that this book was confronting reading, as I thought it would be. That cover should have given me the heads up! Disturbing, to say the least.

Victorian England was no place to be if you were a poor child, that's for sure. If the child labour didn't kill you, then the diseases of the time (no vaccines), questionable medical practices and sheer neglect would do it. I was absolutely appalled at some of the cases in this book, it has to be said, and the fact that so many of the killers of these children just walked away! I am very happy that the law is much stronger now and that people are held more accountable. I am also so happy that there are safety nets for people who are doing it tough - the poor, the single mothers. So many things that we take for granted now: vaccines, clean drinking water, no need for children to work, money if you are not working, a robust health system etc.

Wow, this book was confronting. Surprising in parts, mostly that children were so YOUNG when they were in the workforce, when they should have been at home playing with their toys. Some of the cases of children being killed really hurt my heart though, there were some truly uncaring people in this book. However, there are plenty more in the 21st century as well, some of whom are called to account but not all.....

An amazing bit of research from the author and a sobering read.

4.5 stars from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pen & Sword.

This is a very disturbing read, but one I couldn’t put down. I was shocked at how little children’s lives were valued and how rampant death was. The author did a great job of presenting upsetting information in an informational manner.

I recognize that this may be a preliminary version of the manuscript, although it did say that it had ben previously printed in England. I did not feel like this was actually a book. It was more a compilation of many very sad vignettes with a little material to tie some of the stories.. Primarily, however it was just a listing of stories with occasional pictures and some tables which were not at all useful. I was very disappointed.