The Victorian Sunday

The Victorians took the Ten Commandments in the Bible very seriously. This included the things they would and would not do on a Sunday.

'The seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any kind of work.'

The Ten Commandments in The Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 14.

The Victorian Sunday was a day set aside for church going and rest. All the shops were closed and even games of sport could be frowned upon. Middle class families could be very strict about what their children were, and were not, allowed to do.

Mary Hughes describes what Sundays were like in her book 'A London Child in the 1870's':

'The afternoons hung heavy. It seemed to be always 3 o'clock. All amusements, as well as work, were forbidden. It was a real privation not to be allowed to draw and paint. However, an exception was made in favour of illuminated texts and we rivalled the old monks in our zeal for copying Scripture, with the same kind of worldly decorations that they devised.

Naturally our main stand-by was reading, but here again our field was limited by mother's notions of what was appropriate for Sunday. Tom Brown, Robinson Crusoe, Hans Andersen's Tales, and Pilgrim's Progress were permitted, but not the Arabian Nights, or Walter Scott, or indeed any novel. We had to fall back on bound volumes of Good Words for the Young, which were not so bad as the title suggests and contained plenty of stories.

We all liked certain parts of a three-volume story called 'Henry Milner', which purported to be an account of the up-bringing of a Christian gentleman. I believe he never did anything wrong, but his schoolfellows did, and all their gay activities shone like misdeeds in a pious world.

The Bible proved often more entertaining than the 'good' books. One day when my brother was desperate for a new story I recommended Esther as being as good as the Arabian Nights. He hung back, however, until I urged the point that God was not mentioned in it. 'No, really?' he cried, seized the Bible, and soon became absorbed in the plot.

'(Taken from 'A London Child of the 1870's' by MV Hughes, chapter 7, 'Sunday'. Used by permission of Oxford University Press)