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Best: Engineer -

Some of the greatest technological advances were achieved during the Victorian era, specifically the steamship, the railway, and the electric telegraph. To be an engineer involved in any one of these new communication technologies heaped kudos and prestige on the individual.

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Best: Nurse -

Nurses were highly regarded in Victorian society. The government of the time backed nurses and midwives and their extraordinary work in providing the population with world-class care. The world's most famous nurse, Florence Nightingale, was a product of the Victorian era.

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Best: Educator -

Throughout much of the Victorian period, receiving a decent education was the preserve of the wealthy. Teaching the lower classes was seen as a waste of time. Nonetheless, an educator was viewed as a worthwhile profession and the era yielded great developments in terms of education, with literacy rates among the population having increased dramatically by the turn of the 20th century.

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Best: Milliner -

Many women worked in factories during Victorian times. One of the more sedate and mildly creative jobs was hat making. Worked by hand, men's and women's hats were de rigueur, and milliners did a roaring trade.

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Best: Potter -

Pottery factories were divided into workshops in which a number of skilled adult workers would carry out one part of the making or decorating process. A more unsavory aspect of the trade was that children were often employed as clay carriers, transporting the raw material back and forth from unheated workshops to hot drying rooms.

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Best: Doctor -

Unlike surgeons, doctors and physicians rarely got their hands dirty. The medical field was advancing rapidly during the 19th century, and Victorians placed great value in studying the physiology of the body, its internal organs, and how they were connected to the whole body.

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Best: Clergyman -

In Victorian times, the church was the center of the community, as well as the focal point of community life. Religious leaders tended to be drawn from the gentry. Clergymen were usually granted a residence, as well as an annual stipend—a fixed regular sum paid as a salary or as expenses.

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Best: Shopkeeper -

Shopkeeping flourished during the era. Most stores were small and owned by one person, or a family. Those employed in shopkeeping were often nicknamed the "apron brigade" after their habit of always working in this protective garment.

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Best: Maidservant -

A maidservant or housemaid was responsible for keeping her employer's house clean and in order. Domestic servants working for mistresses were often 'rescued' from the local workhouse and in that sense had managed to take some steps up the social ladder. But only a few.

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Best: Accountant/clerk -

In the 1800s, London was the center of world banking and finance. Those with a head for numbers often chose to follow a career in accountancy. Even a lowly clerk could make a decent living. But innate prejudice against having women in the marketplace meant that 99% of these positions were filled by men.

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Best: Butler -

A butler was the top servant in Victorian times, in charge of a team of household help. A butler's responsibilities included waiting on the table at mealtimes, caring for the wine cellar, looking after the family silver, and locking up the house at night. To distinguish his position, a butler wore a black tie rather than a white one.

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Best: Footman -

A footman held a prized position as someone who represented the estate of a wealthy upper class family. Responsibilities included accompanying the lady of the house when she went out on shopping trips, and assisting the butler with his inhouse duties.

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Best: Politician -

Only those hailing from the upper classes were eligible to run for a place in Parliament, and certainly no women. It was a nice job if you could get it, but politicians were essentially members of the "Good Old Boys" club, where nepotism was the order of the day.

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Best: Seamstress -

During the Victorian period, sewing was seen as a feminine quality and a skill taken up by women of all classes. If she was fortunate and from a middle-class background, a seamstress could make a reasonable  living working privately for a well-to-do household. The unfortunate reality was that most women worked at home sewing ready-made clothing (also called "slop" and "slop-work") for very low piece rates.

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Best: Scientist -

The Victorian era was a period of serious scientific discovery and invention. The X-ray, electric lightbulb, and photography were among the inventions that transformed society. A successful scientist working in these times was regarded as a skilled visionary, although Victorian society's interest in religion often made people afraid of scientific experiments and what they could do to humanity.

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Worst: Surgeon -

Working as a surgeon in the Victorian era was often a thankless task. Operating theaters were known as "gateways of death," since half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive the experience. Surgeons were often ill-equipped for the job at hand, with many even lacking a university degree.

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Worst: Coal miner -

Although mining was hard work and dangerous, compared with other manual jobs toiling underground was relatively well paid. But a decent pay packet was cold comfort to those exposed to frequent flooding, dangerous gases, and collapsing tunnels. And if you survived all this, then the chances later in life of succumbing to respiratory disease or cancer were very real.

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Worst: Shipyard worker -

Shipbuilding was big business in the 1800s. But slips and falls, fires, exposure to toxic gases, and machinery hazards all conspired to make the Victorian shipyard one of the most dangerous building sites of the era.

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Worst: Matchstick maker -

In Victorian times, matches were made by hand. A workforce of women and girls would cut wood into thin slivers, and then coat the ends with white phosphorous—an extremely dangerous and toxic chemical. Many succumbed to phossy jaw, a horrific industrial disease where victims suffered toothache, abscesses, swollen gums, and ultimately facial disfigurement and sometimes fatal brain damage. The famous matchgirls' strike of July 1888 went some way to improving working conditions and increasing pay.

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Worst: Laundress -

A solid backbone and strong arm muscles were required to undertake laundry duties in Victorian times. Washing clothes in the 1800s was a laborious process. And after wringing out wet washing using a mangle, a laundress would then have to iron and fold items into a neat pile.

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Worst: Knocker-upper -

Knocker-uppers were employed to wake up workers in Industrial Britain. Effectively human alarm clocks, knocker-uppers used long poles to tap on people's windows in an effort to wake up the occupants (early morning workers such as doctors, market traders, and drivers). The practice declined in the early 20th century as alarm clocks became more widely available.

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Worst: Rat catcher -

A rat catcher did exactly that: stalk and trap vermin. While a very necessary service, which helped rid warehouses, barns, or houses of infestations, a rat catcher's responsibilities also took him into the dark, smelly depths of city sewers and all the nasty diseases lurking there.

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Worst: Tosher -

And still underground, people who made their living by sorting through the mounds of raw sewage in sewers, looking for anything valuable they might clean up and take to the local pawn shops, a piece of silver cutlery for example, or the odd coin, were known as toshers.

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Worst: Chimney sweep -

It was common to see a chimney sweep at work during the Victorian era, more common still to see a child undertaking this dirty and dangerous job. Injuries included broken or twisted bones, while diseases of the eyes and lungs were an occupational hazard.

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Worst: Pure finder -

Don't be misled by the innocuous sounding job description. A pure finder was someone whose job was to scour the streets of large towns and cities, searching for and collecting dog excrement that was used in the older formulations for making leather in the tanning industry. Leather was in great demand in Victorian times, and the more canine poo collected, the greater the chance of earning a living.

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Worst: Mudlark -

In Victorian times, mudlark was a rather affectionate term to describe a child who'd sift through river mud at low tide to salvage anything of worth to sell, things like rags, driftwood, coins, and other items of potential value.

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Worst: Leech finder -

Another undesirable job undertaken in Victorian times was collecting leeches. A leech finder would wade into dirty ponds on the lookout for the parasitic worms, which were used by the medical profession as a method of bloodletting. The industry grew to the point where leech farms (pictured) were established.

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Worst: Crossing sweeper -

A derogatory profession if ever there was one, a crossing sweeper was a person working as a street sweeper who'd brush a path ahead of people nipping over dirty urban streets in exchange for a gratuity. Children most often took up the broom, but adults too felt compelled to undertake the task after falling on hard times.

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Worst: Docker -

Low wages and long hours characterized the Victorian dock and wharf laborers' lot. Dockers worked in some of the worst conditions in the industrial sphere, where large numbers were employed as casual labor.

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Worst: Piercers -

Piercers were children who worked in textile mills as "piercers," responsible for quickly tying broken threads together inside the machines. It was a dangerous and precarious occupation. A wrong move could easily result in a lost limb.  

Sources: (FamilySearch) (Royal College of Surgeons)

See also: The shocking history of child labor

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