ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns one segment of the population of children, namely performers, who in contrast to their peers in the textile and mining industries affected by the Factory Acts of the 1830s and 1840s, remained untouched by legal controls. It considers child acts in the ring and how spectators wrote about them within the context of periodicals and newspapers. The chapter examines how a growing combination of social pressures provoked debate in Parliament over the legitimacy of controlling the acrobatic trade, leading to a heated response from the performance community. It argues that the mid-Victorian period was crucial for the escalation of moral panic surrounding child acrobats, which led eventually to legal discipline over them. Like many other urban explorers interested in revealing the 'frank brutalities' of working-class life, Shaftesbury's unnamed friend moved within an 'unchecked' underworld, crafting sensational stories about urban dangers and obscenities which reinforced existing stereotypes about performing children.
