Abstract

This thesis is a cross-sectional study with some longitudinal elements using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to describe, compare and contrast the lives of working-class children in the municipal wards of St-Laurent, St-Louis, St-Jacques and Ste. Marie in the City of Montréal between 1880 and 1890. The research involved conducting an investigation of a select group of children aged 10 to 16 years through the use of contemporary census, demographic and pedagogical data. The pure research was used to better understand the roles that age, gender, parental occupational status, ethnicity and religion play in the work and educational life trajectories of children in Montréal's East-End wards in the late nineteenth century. Research findings include that adolescent children (14-16 years) of fathers in unskilled occupations were the most likely to be working and the least likely to be in school. Boys and girls residing in female-headed households were generally more likely to be working than their counterparts in male-headed households. Children whose parents held professional/white collar occupations were more likely to be in school than their counterparts whose parents held skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled occupations. A critical shift in activity status occurs for girls around the age of 13 years and for boys around the age of 14 years. Irish Catholic and English Protestant children were more likely to be in school than their French Catholic counterparts