THE RISE OF THE VICTORIAN
MIDDLE CLASS
An ideal family
Music-making became a widely
practiced activity as public concerts
were more frequent and musical
scores could be printed more easily
and at a lower price.
The house is decorated with
paintings. Many Victorian interiors
were decorated with numberless
machine-made objects. Victorian
taste is characterized by ecclectism
and the richness of ornamentation.
Housemaids and servants
A new domestic happiness
Tea-time
A middle-class
Christmas
dinner
Table manners were very
important and tableware was a
sign of wealth.
Entertaining guests became
fashionable.
Difference of
view
By the seaside, 1864
A seaside resort – recreational activities – piers with restaurants and ballrooms
Social classes
Income: high vs. Low income families
Earn one’s living
Live below the bread / poverty line
Climb up the social / career ladder
Set up a business
A clerk / an employee
A decent standard of living
Purchasing power
Rich – wealthy – affluent – well-off
The land-owning aristocracy – land-owners
The lower / upper middle-class
Civilized urban life
Recreational activities – leisure
Keep servants – have housemaids
A new political power: the 1832
Reform Act
Between 1770 and 1830, the Tories were the dominant force in the House of
Commons. The Tories were strongly opposed to increasing the number of
people who could vote.
In November, 1830, Earl Grey a WhIg, became Prime Minister. Grey explained
to William IV that he wanted to introduce proposals that would get rid of
some of the rotten boroughs.
A "rotten" borough was a parliamentary borough or constituency that had a very
small electorate and could be used by a patron to gain unrepresentative
influence within Parliament.
In April 1831 Grey asked William IV to dissolve Parliament so that the Whigs
could secure a larger majority in the House of Commons. William agreed.
After Lord Grey's election victory, he tried again to introduce parliamentary
reform. On 22nd September 1831, the House of Commons passed the
Reform Bill. However, the Tories still dominated the House of Lords, and after
a long debate the bill was defeated. When people heard the news, Reform
Riots took place in several British towns.
The Bristol Riots
In Bristol the magistrate, Sir Charles
Weatherall, a notorious opponent of reform
arrived in the city and decided to celebrate
the defeat of the reform bill with the Bishop
and other notaries.
A protest by pro-reformists was joined by an
angry mob who then attacked the Mansion
house where Weatherall tried to take
shelter after his carriage was stoned. After
a cavalry charge by the Light Dragoons
cleared the crowd from Queen's Square the
wealthy merchants thought the unrest was
over.
The next day the mob returned with greater
numbers and with a determination to burn,
loot and destroy those institutions that they
despised, the prisons, the houses of the
rich and the houses of the corrupt (the
Bishop's Palace, the Cathedral).
Some middle class pro-reformists attempted to
halt the actions of the crowd. This wasn't
about parliamentary reform any more this
was an explosion of class anger.
The Bristol Riots
On 7th May 1832, Grey and Henry Brougham met the
king and asked him to create a large number of Whig
peers in order to get the Reform Bill passed in the
House of Lords but William refused.
Lord Grey's government resigned and William IV now
asked the leader of the Tories, the Duke of Wellington
to form a new government but some Tories were
unwilling to join a cabinet that was in opposition to the
views of the vast majority of the people: there was a
strong danger of a civil war in Britain.
William was forced to ask Grey to return to office.
William agreed to create a large number of
new Whig peers. When the Lords heard the news, they
agreed to pass the Reform Act.
The Reform Act
Many people were disappointed with the 1832 Reform Bill. Voting in the
boroughs was restricted to men who occupied homes with an annual value of
£10. There were also property qualifications for people living in rural areas. As a
result, only one in seven adult males had the vote. Nor were the constituencies of
equal size. Whereas 35 constituencies had less than 300 electors, Liverpool had a
constituency of over 11,000.
Listen to a BBC conference on the
Reform Act
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Thu, 27 Nov 2008, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Great Reform Act of 1832. The Act redrew the
map of British politics in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and is a landmark in
British political history.
“We must get the suffrage, we must get votes, that we may send the men to
Parliament who will do our work for us; …and we must have the country divided so
that the little kings of the counties can't do as they like, but must be shaken up in
one bag with us.”
So declares a working class reformist in George Eliot’s novel Felix Holt: the Radical. It is
set in 1832, the year of the so-called “Great Reform Act” which extended the vote
and gave industrial cities such as Manchester and Birmingham political
representation for the first time.
But to what extent was Britain’s political system transformed by the Great Reform Act?
What were the causes of reform in the first place and was the Act designed to
encourage democracy in Britain or to head it off?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00flwh9/In_Our_Time_The_Great_Reform_A
ct
• Many children in early
Victorian England never
went to school at all and
more than half of them
grew up unable even to
read or write. Although
some did go to Sunday
schools which were run by
churches.
• Children from rich families
were luckier than poor
children. Nannies looked
after them, and they had
toys and books. A governess
would teach the children at
home. Then, when the boys
were old enough, they were
sent away to a public
school.
The daughters were kept at home and
taught singing, piano playing and sewing.
Slowly, things changed for poorer children
too.
By the end of the Victorian age all
children under 12 had to go to school.
Now everybody could learn how to read
and write, and how to count properly.
Education Reform
• 1833: first Education grant. The grant
of £20,000 for the provision of schools
was the first time that the goverment
had involved itself in education in any
way.
• 1870 Education Act. This Act was
intended only to 'plug the gaps' in the
educational provision that existed. The
two religious organisations that ran
schools were given grants and the Act
provided for the establishment of socalled 'Board Schools'. After 1870, all
children from five to thirteen had to
attend school by law.
Urbanization
Upper-middle class housing
Public transports
Middle-class values
• Self-reliance and individualism
• Belief in social promotion for the deserving
ones.
• Thrift
• Prudence, responsibility and rationality
• Hard work, industriousness, perseverance
• High religious morality