The condition of children during the 18th and 19th centuries are:- . Large number of children were pushed into low-paid work, often by their parents. . A child was forced into crimes as it was thought that he could earn more from stealing than by making matchboxes a week. . It was only after the Compulsory Elementary Education Act, in 1870 and Factory Acts, in 1902 that children were kept out of industrial work.