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In the
history of the United Kingdom The history of the United Kingdom began in the early eighteenth century with the Treaty of Union and Acts of Union. The core of the United Kingdom as a unified state came into being in 1707 with the political union of the kingdoms of Engl ...
and the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts ...
, the Victorian era was the period of
Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...
's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the
Georgian period The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to , named after the Hanoverian Kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The definition of the Georgian era is often extended to include the relatively short reign of Wil ...
and preceded the
Edwardian period The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...
, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the ''
Belle Époque The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque (; French for "Beautiful Epoch") is a period of French and European history, usually considered to begin around 1871–1880 and to end with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era o ...
'' era of Continental Europe. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the established
Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church record ...
. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards
romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
and even
mysticism Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in u ...
in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain's power and prosperity. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adoption of the germ theory of disease and pioneering research in epidemiology. Domestically, the political agenda was increasingly liberal, with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform, improved social reform, and the widening of the franchise. There were unprecedented demographic changes: the population of England and
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901, and Scotland's population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901. However, Ireland's population decreased sharply, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to emigration and the Great Famine. Between 1837 and 1901 about 15 million emigrated from Great Britain, mostly to the United States, as well as to imperial outposts in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Thanks to educational reforms, the British population not only approached universal literacy towards the end of the era but also became increasingly well-educated; the market for reading materials of all kinds boomed. Britain's relations with the other
Great Powers A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power in ...
were driven by antagonism with Russia, including the
Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
and the
Great Game The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...
. A ''
Pax Britannica ''Pax Britannica'' (Latin for "British Peace", modelled after ''Pax Romana'') was the period of relative peace between the great powers during which the British Empire became the global hegemonic power and adopted the role of a " global poli ...
'' of peaceful trade was maintained by the country's naval and industrial supremacy. Britain embarked on global imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa, which made the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts ...
the largest empire in history. National self-confidence peaked. Britain granted political autonomy to the more advanced colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.E.A. Benians et al. eds. '' The Cambridge History of the British Empire Vol. iii: ''The Empire – Commonwealth 1870–1919' (1959) pp 1–16.
online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...
Apart from the Crimean War, Britain was not involved in any armed conflict with another major power.J. Holland Rose et al. eds. ''The Cambridge History of the British Empire Vol-ii: The Growth of the New Empire 1783–1870'' (1940) pp v–ix.
online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...
The two main political parties during the era remained the Whigs/Liberals and the
Conservatives Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
; by its end, the Labour Party had formed as a distinct political entity. These parties were led by such prominent statesmen as
Lord Melbourne William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, (15 March 177924 November 1848), in some sources called Henry William Lamb, was a British Whig politician who served as Home Secretary (1830–1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841). His first pr ...
,
Sir Robert Peel Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
, Lord Derby,
Lord Palmerston Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865) was a British statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century. Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the peri ...
,
Benjamin Disraeli Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a centr ...
, William Gladstone, and
Lord Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen y ...
. The unsolved problems relating to
Irish Home Rule The Irish Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for Devolution, self-government (or "home rule") for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1 ...
played a great part in politics in the later Victorian era, particularly in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political settlement in Ireland.


Terminology and periodisation

In the strictest sense, the Victorian era covers the duration of Victoria's reign as
Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland There have been 13 British monarchs since the political union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland on 1 May 1707. England and Scotland had been in personal union since 24 March 1603. On 1 January 1801, the Kingdom of Great Brit ...
, from her accession on 20 June 1837—after the death of her uncle,
William IV William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded h ...
—until her death on 22 January 1901, after which she was succeeded by her eldest son,
Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria an ...
. Her reign lasted for 63 years and seven months, a longer period than any of her predecessors. The term 'Victorian' was in contemporaneous usage to describe the era. The era has also been understood in a more extensive sense as a period that possessed sensibilities and characteristics distinct from the periods adjacent to it, in which case it is sometimes dated to begin before Victoria's accession—typically from the passage of or agitation for (during the 1830s) the
Reform Act 1832 The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the 1832 Reform Act, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45) that introduced major changes to the elect ...
, which introduced a wide-ranging change to the
electoral system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections m ...
of
England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is Eng ...
. Definitions that purport a distinct sensibility or politics to the era have also created scepticism about the worth of the label "Victorian", though there have also been defences of it. Michael Sadleir was insistent that "in truth, the Victorian period is three periods, and not one". He distinguished early Victorianism – the socially and politically unsettled period from 1837 to 1850 – and late Victorianism (from 1880 onwards), with its new waves of
aestheticism Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be p ...
and
imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
, from the Victorian heyday: mid-Victorianism, 1851 to 1879. He saw the latter period as characterized by a distinctive mixture of prosperity, domestic
prude A prude (Old French ''prude'' meaning honourable woman) is a person who is described as (or would describe themselves as) being concerned with decorum or propriety, significantly in excess of normal prevailing standards. They may be perceived as ...
ry, and complacency – what G. M. Trevelyan similarly called the "mid-Victorian decades of quiet politics and roaring prosperity".


Political and diplomatic history


Early

In 1832, after much political agitation, the Reform Act was passed on the third attempt. The Act abolished many borough seats and created others in their place, as well as expanding the franchise in England and Wales (a Scottish Reform Act and Irish Reform Act were passed separately). Minor reforms followed in 1835 and 1836. On 20 June 1837, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom on the death of her uncle,
William IV William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded h ...
, just weeks after reaching the age of eighteen. Her government was led by the Whig prime minister
Lord Melbourne William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, (15 March 177924 November 1848), in some sources called Henry William Lamb, was a British Whig politician who served as Home Secretary (1830–1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841). His first pr ...
, to whom she was close. But within two years he had resigned, and the
Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. Th ...
politician Sir
Robert Peel Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
attempted to form a new ministry. Peel said he was willing to become prime minister provided the Queen replaced her Whig ladies-in-waiting with Tory ones. She refused and re-appointed Lord Melbourne, a decision criticised as unconstitutional. Britain sent Lord Durham to resolve the issue and his 1839 report opened the way for "responsible government" (that is, self-government). In the same year, a seizure of British opium exports to China prompted the
First Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of th ...
against the
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
. British defense of India initiated the
First Anglo-Afghan War The First Anglo-Afghan War ( fa, جنگ اول افغان و انگلیس) was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Kabul from 1838 to 1842. The British initially successfully invaded the country taking sides in a succession di ...
—one of the first major conflicts of
the Great Game The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...
between Britain and Russia.Swisher, ed., ''Victorian England'', pp. 248–50. In South Africa, the Dutch
Boers Boers ( ; af, Boere ()) are the descendants of the Dutch-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled this are ...
made their "
Great Trek The Great Trek ( af, Die Groot Trek; nl, De Grote Trek) was a Northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyon ...
to found Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State, defeating the Zulus in the process, 1835–1838; Britain annexed Natal in 1843 but recognized the independence of the Transvaal in 1852 in the Orange Free State in 1854. In 1840, Queen Victoria married her German cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield. It proved a passionate marriage, whose children were much sought after by royal families across Europe. An astute diplomat, the Queen was only too willing to arrange such marriages. Indeed, she became the "Grandmother of Europe" thanks to the nine children she had with Prince Albert in just sixteen years despite suffering from postnatal depression and her dislike of childbirth. Unfortunately, she carried the gene for
haemophilia Haemophilia, or hemophilia (), is a mostly inherited genetic disorder that impairs the body's ability to make blood clots, a process needed to stop bleeding. This results in people bleeding for a longer time after an injury, easy bruising ...
, which affected ten of her male descendants, including the
heir apparent An heir apparent, often shortened to heir, is a person who is first in an order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person; a person who is first in the order of succession but can be displaced by the b ...
of
Tsar Nicholas II Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Pola ...
. In Australia, new provinces were founded with Victoria in 1835 and South Australia in 1842. The focus shifted from transportation of criminals to voluntary immigration. New Zealand became a British colony in 1839; in 1840 Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty to Britain in
Treaty of Waitangi The Treaty of Waitangi ( mi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi) is a document of central importance to the history, to the political constitution of the state, and to the national mythos of New Zealand. It has played a major role in the treatment of the ...
. In 1841 New Zealand became an autonomous colony. The signing of the
Treaty of Nanking The Treaty of Nanjing was the peace treaty which ended the First Opium War (1839–1842) between Great Britain and the Qing dynasty of China on 29 August 1842. It was the first of what the Chinese later termed the Unequal Treaties. In the w ...
in 1842 ended the First Opium War and gave Britain control over
Hong Kong Island Hong Kong Island is an island in the southern part of Hong Kong. Known colloquially and on road signs simply as Hong Kong, the island has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km2, . The island had a population of ...
. However, a disastrous retreat from Kabul in the same year led to the annihilation of a British army column in Afghanistan. In 1845, the Great Famine began to cause mass starvation, disease and death in Ireland, sparking large-scale emigration. To allow more cheap food into Ireland, the Peel government repealed the
Corn Laws The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word ''corn'' in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They we ...
. Peel was replaced by the Whig ministry of
Lord John Russell John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, (18 August 1792 – 28 May 1878), known by his courtesy title Lord John Russell before 1861, was a British Whig and Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1852 and ...
. In 1853, Britain fought alongside
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
in the
Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
against Russia. The goal was to ensure that Russia could not benefit from the declining status of the Ottoman Empire, a strategic consideration known as the Eastern Question. The conflict marked a rare breach in the ''
Pax Britannica ''Pax Britannica'' (Latin for "British Peace", modelled after ''Pax Romana'') was the period of relative peace between the great powers during which the British Empire became the global hegemonic power and adopted the role of a " global poli ...
'', the period of relative peace (1815–1914) that existed among the
Great Powers A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power in ...
of the time, and especially in Britain's interaction with them. On its conclusion in 1856 with the Treaty of Paris, Russia was prohibited from hosting a military presence in Crimea. In October of the same year, the
Second Opium War The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Sino War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a colonial war lasting from 1856 to 1860, which pitted the British Empire and the French Em ...
saw Britain overpower the Qing dynasty in China. Along with other major powers, Britain took steps in obtaining special trading and legal rights in a limited number of treaty ports. It was during the Crimean War that the Queen introduced the
Victoria Cross The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious award of the British honours system. It is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British Armed Forces and may be awarded posthumously. It was previously ...
, awarded on the basis of valour and merit regardless of rank. The first Crosses were handed out to 62 men in a ceremony at Hyde Park in 1857, the first time officers and men were decorated together. During 1857–58, an uprising by
sepoy ''Sepoy'' () was the Persian-derived designation originally given to a professional Indian infantryman, traditionally armed with a musket, in the armies of the Mughal Empire. In the 18th century, the French East India Company and its ot ...
s against the
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sout ...
was suppressed, an event that led to the end of Company rule in India and the transferral of administration to direct rule by the British government. The princely states were not affected and remained under British guidance. English was imposed as the medium of education.


Middle

In 1861, Prince Albert died. Queen Victoria went into mourning and withdrew from public life for ten years. Whilst the cabinet leaned toward recognition of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, public opinion was split. Confederate foreign policy planners had hoped that the value of their cotton exports would encourage European powers to intervene in their favour. It was not to be, and the British attitude might have been decisive. Being cut off from cotton did not affect the British economy as much as the Confederates had expected. A considerable supply was available to Great Britain when the American Civil War erupted and she was able to turn to India and Egypt as alternatives when that ran out. In the end, the government decided to remain neutral upon realising that war with the United States would be highly dangerous, for that country provided much of Britain's food supply (especially wheat) and its navy could sink much of the merchant fleet.Amanda Foreman, ''A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War'' (2012). U.S. ambassador to Britain
Charles Francis Adams Sr. Charles Francis Adams Sr. (August 18, 1807 – November 21, 1886) was an American historical editor, writer, politician, and diplomat. As United States Minister to the United Kingdom during the American Civil War, Adams was crucial to Union effor ...
succeeded in resolving thorny problems that could have driven the two powers into war. But once it was clear that the United States had the upper hand on the battlefield, the possibility of an Anglo-American war vanished.Her diary entries suggest the Queen had contemplated the possibility of a union of her North American colonies as early as February 1865. She wrote, "...we must struggle for it, and far the best it would be to let it go as an Independent Kingdom, under an English Prince!" She also mentioned how her late husband Prince Albert had hoped that one day, their sons would rule over the British colonies. In February 1867, the Queen received a copy of the British North America Act (also known as the Constitution Act 1867). A fortnight later she hosted delegates coming to discuss the question of confederation "under the name of Canada," including the future Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. On 29 March 1867, the Queen granted royal assent to the Act, which became effective on 1 July 1867. Canada maintained strong ties with the Queen. Victoria in British Columbia and Victoria County in Nova Scotia were named after her, Regina in Saskatchewan in her honour, Prince Edward Island her father, and Alberta her daughter. Her birthday, Victoria Day, is an official public holiday in Canada. In addition, her daughter Princess Louise was chatelaine of Rideau Hall from 1878 to 1883 and her son the Duke of Connaught served as Governor-General of Canada between 1911 and 1916. In 1867, the second Reform Act was passed, expanding the franchise. In 1871, just a year after the
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
expelled its emperor, republican sentiments grew in Britain. After Prince Edward recovered from typhoid, the Queen decided to give a public thanksgiving service and appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. This was the start of her return to public life.


Late

Key leaders included Conservatives
Benjamin Disraeli Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a centr ...
, and
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen ...
, and Liberals
William Ewart Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-con ...
, the Earl of Rosebery and William Harcourt. They introduced various reforms aimed at strengthening the political autonomy of large industrial cities and increasing British involvement in the international stage. Labour movements were recognised and integrated in order to combat extremism. Both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert favoured moderate improvements to conditions of workers. Queen Victoria found in Disraeli a trustworthy adviser. She approved of his policies which helped elevated Britain's status to global superpower. In her later years, her popularity soared as she became a symbol of the British Empire. The major new policies included rapid succession, the complete abolition of slavery in the African possessions, the end of transportation of convicts to Australia, loosening restrictions on colonial trade, and introducing responsible government.
David Livingstone David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of ...
led famous expeditions in central Africa, positioning Britain for favourable expansion of its colonial system in the
Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, or Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during a short period known as New Imperialism ...
during the 1880s. There were numerous revolts and violent conflicts in the British Empire, but there were no wars with other major nations. In South Africa tensions escalated, especially with the discovery of gold. The result was the
First Boer War The First Boer War ( af, Eerste Vryheidsoorlog, literally "First Freedom War"), 1880–1881, also known as the First Anglo–Boer War, the Transvaal War or the Transvaal Rebellion, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 betwee ...
in 1880–1881 and the intensely bitter
Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...
in 1899–1902. The British finally prevailed, but lost prestige at home and abroad. After weeks of illness, Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901. By her bedside were her son and heir
Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria an ...
and grandson
Kaiser Wilhelm II Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Empir ...
. Despite their difficult relations, Edward VII never severed ties with the Queen. Like her, he modernised the British monarchy and ensured its survival when so many European royal families collapsed as a result of the First World War.


Society and culture


Common culture

The rise of the middle class during the era had a formative effect on its character; the historian Walter E. Houghton reflects that "once the middle class attained political as well as financial eminence, their social influence became decisive. The Victorian frame of mind is largely composed of their characteristic modes of thought and feeling".Houghton, ''The Victorian Frame of Mind'', p. 1 Industrialisation brought with it a rapidly growing middle class whose increase in numbers had a significant effect on the social strata itself: cultural norms, lifestyle, values and morality. Identifiable characteristics came to define the middle-class home and lifestyle. Previously, in town and city, residential space was adjacent to or incorporated into the work site, virtually occupying the same geographical space. The difference between private life and commerce was a fluid one distinguished by an informal demarcation of function. In the Victorian era, English family life increasingly became compartmentalised, the home a self-contained structure housing a nuclear family extended according to need and circumstance to include blood relations. The concept of "privacy" became a hallmark of the middle-class life.


Evangelicals, utilitarians, and reform

The central feature of Victorian-era politics is the search for reform and improvement, including both the individual personality and society. Three powerful forces were at work. First was the rapid rise of the middle class, in large part displacing the complete control long exercised by the aristocracy. Respectability was their code—a businessman had to be trusted and must avoid reckless gambling and heavy drinking. Second, the spiritual reform closely linked to
evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "born again", in which an individual experi ...
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism, monotheistic religion based on the Life of Jesus in the New Testament, life and Teachings of Jesus, teachings of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth. It is the Major religious groups, world's ...
, including both the Nonconformist sects, such as the Methodists, and especially the evangelical or Low Church element in the established Church of England, typified by Lord Shaftesbury (1801–1885). It imposed fresh moralistic values on society, such as Sabbath observance, responsibility, widespread charity, discipline in the home, and self-examination for the smallest faults and needs of improvement. Starting with the anti-slavery movement of the 1790s, the evangelical moralizers developed highly effective techniques of enhancing the moral sensibilities of all family members and reaching the public at large through intense, very well organized agitation and propaganda. They focused on exciting a personal revulsion against social evils and personal misbehaviour. Asa Briggs points out, "There were as many treatises on 'domestic economy' in mid-Victorian England as on political economy" The third effect came from the liberalism of philosophical utilitarians, led by intellectuals
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_February_1747.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.htm ...
(1748–1832),
James Mill James Mill (born James Milne; 6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote '' The History of Britis ...
(1773–1836) and his son
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
(1806–1873). They were not moralistic but scientific. Their movement, often called "Philosophic Radicalism," fashioned a formula for promoting the goal of "progress" using scientific rationality, and business-like efficiency, to identify, measure, and discover solutions to social problems. The formula was an inquiry, legislation, execution, inspection, and report. In public affairs, their leading exponent was
Edwin Chadwick Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB (24 January 18006 July 1890) was an English social reformer who is noted for his leadership in reforming the Poor Laws in England and instituting major reforms in urban sanitation and public health. A disciple of Ut ...
(1800–1890). Evangelicals and utilitarians shared a basic middle-class ethic of responsibility and formed a political alliance. The result was an irresistible force for reform. Social reforms focused on ending slavery, removing the slavery-like burdens on women and children, and reforming the police to prevent crime, rather than emphasizing the very harsh punishment of criminals. Even more important were political reforms, especially the lifting of disabilities on nonconformists and Roman Catholics, and above all, the reform of Parliament and elections to introduce democracy and replace the old system whereby senior aristocrats controlled dozens of seats in parliament. The long-term effect of the reform movements was to tightly link the nonconformist element with the Liberal party. The dissenters gave significant support to moralistic issues, such as temperance and sabbath enforcement. The nonconformist conscience, as it was called, was repeatedly called upon by Gladstone for support for his moralistic foreign policy. In election after election, Protestant ministers rallied their congregations to the Liberal ticket. In Scotland, the Presbyterians played a similar role to the Nonconformist Methodists, Baptists and other groups in England and Wales. The political strength of Dissent faded sharply after 1920 with the secularization of British society in the 20th century.


Religion

Religion was a battleground during this era, with the Nonconformists fighting bitterly against the established status of the Church of England, especially regarding education and access to universities and public office. Penalties on Roman Catholics were mostly removed. The Vatican restored the English Catholic bishoprics in 1850 and numbers grew through conversions and immigration from Ireland. The
Oxford Movement The Oxford Movement was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University o ...
was also occurring around this time, which would draw in new converts to the
Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
; among these was
John Henry Newman John Henry Newman (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890) was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardi ...
. Secularism and doubts about the accuracy of the Old Testament grew as the scientific outlooked rapidly gained ground among the better educated. This doubt made them receptive to
German idealism German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionar ...
, which was imported to England principally by
Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, D ...
and, before him though less successfully,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
. Coleridge resisted the empirical legacy of the
Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, while Carlyle, a Scotsman, critiqued
utilitarianism In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different chara ...
from within the tradition of Scottish metaphysics. Walter E. Houghton argues, "Perhaps the most important development in 19th-century intellectual history was the extension of scientific assumptions and methods from the physical world to the whole life of man." During the mid-nineteenth century, there were two distinct religious mentalities among British academics. The North British school was religiously conservative and commercially engaged thanks to the influence of Presbyterianism and Calvinism. Northern English and Scottish researchers played a key role in the development of thermodynamics, which was motivated by the desire to design ever more efficient engines. By contrast, in the South, mentalities of Anglicanism, agnosticism, and even atheism were more common. Academics such as the biologist Thomas Huxley promoted "scientific naturalism."


Status of Nonconformist churches

Nonconformist conscience describes the moral sensibility of the Nonconformist churches—those which dissent from the established
Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church record ...
—that influenced British politics in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1851 census of church attendance, non-conformists who went to chapel comprised half the attendance of Sunday services. Nonconformists were focused in the fast-growing urban middle class. The two categories of this group were in addition to the evangelicals or "Low Church" element in the Church of England: "Old Dissenters," dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, included
Baptists Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...
,
Congregationalists Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs i ...
,
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...
, Unitarians, and
Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their na ...
s outside Scotland; "New Dissenters" emerged in the 18th century and were mainly Methodists. The "Nonconformist conscience" of the Old group emphasized religious freedom and equality, the pursuit of justice, and opposition to discrimination, compulsion, and coercion. The New Dissenters (and also the Anglican evangelicals) stressed personal morality issues, including sexuality, temperance, family values, and
Sabbath In Abrahamic religions, the Sabbath () or Shabbat (from Hebrew ) is a day set aside for rest and worship. According to the Book of Exodus, the Sabbath is a day of rest on the seventh day, commanded by God to be kept as a holy day of rest, as G ...
-keeping. Both factions were politically active, but until the mid-19th century, the Old group supported mostly Whigs and Liberals in politics, while the New—like most Anglicans—generally supported Conservatives. In the late 19th century, the New Dissenters mostly switched to the Liberal Party. The result was a merging of the two groups, strengthening their great weight as a political pressure group. They joined on new issues especially regarding schools and temperance, with the latter of special interest to Methodists. By 1914 the linkage was weakening and by the 1920s it was virtually dead. Parliament had long imposed a series of political disabilities on Nonconformists outside Scotland. They could not hold most public offices, they had to pay local taxes to the Anglican church, be married by Anglican ministers, and be denied attendance at Oxford or degrees at Cambridge. Dissenters demanded the removal of political and civil disabilities that applied to them (especially those in the
Test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...
and Corporation Acts). The Anglican establishment strongly resisted until 1828. Dissenters organized into a political pressure group and succeeded in 1828 in the repeal of some restrictions. It was a major achievement for an outside group, but the Dissenters were not finished and the early Victorian period saw them even more active and successful in eliminating their grievances. Next on the agenda was the matter of church rates, which were local taxes at the parish level for the support of the parish church building in England and Wales. Only buildings of the established church received the tax money. Civil disobedience was attempted but was met with the seizure of personal property and even imprisonment. The compulsory factor was finally abolished in 1868 by
William Ewart Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-con ...
, and payment was made voluntary. While Gladstone was a moralistic evangelical inside the Church of England, he had strong support in the Nonconformist community. The Marriage Act 1836 allowed local government registrars to handle marriages. Nonconformist ministers in their chapels were allowed to marry couples if a registrar was present. Also in 1836, civil registration of births, deaths, and marriages was taken from the hands of local parish officials and given to local government registrars. Burial of the dead was a more troubling problem, for urban chapels had no graveyards, and Nonconformists sought to use the traditional graveyards controlled by the established church. The Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880 finally allowed that. Oxford University required students seeking admission to subscribe to the
39 Articles The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (commonly abbreviated as the Thirty-nine Articles or the XXXIX Articles) are the historically defining statements of doctrines and practices of the Church of England with respect to the controversies of th ...
of the Church of England. Cambridge required that for a diploma. The two ancient universities opposed giving a charter to the new
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree- ...
in the 1830s because it had no such restriction. The university, nevertheless, was established in 1837, and by the 1850s Oxford dropped its restrictions. In 1871 Gladstone sponsored the
Universities Tests Act 1871 The Universities Tests Act 1871 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It abolished religious "Tests" and allowed Roman Catholics, non-conformists and non-Christians to take up professorships, fellowships, studentships and other ...
that provided full access to degrees and fellowships. Nonconformists (especially Unitarians and Presbyterians) played major roles in founding new universities in the late 19th century at
Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
, as well as
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
,
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
and
Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...
.


Agnostics and freethinkers

The abstract theological or philosophical doctrine of agnosticism, whereby it is theoretically impossible to prove whether or not God exists, suddenly became a popular issue around 1869, when T. H. Huxley coined the term. It was much discussed for several decades, and had its journal edited by William Stewart Ross (1844–1906) the ''Agnostic Journal and Eclectic Review''. Interest petered out by the 1890s, and when Ross died the Journal soon closed. Ross championed agnosticism in opposition not so much to Christianity, but to atheism, as expounded by Charles Bradlaugh The term "atheism" never became popular.
Blasphemy Blasphemy is a speech crime and religious crime usually defined as an utterance that shows contempt, disrespects or insults a deity, an object considered sacred or something considered inviolable. Some religions regard blasphemy as a religiou ...
laws meant that promoting atheism could be a crime and was vigorously prosecuted.
Charles Southwell Charles Southwell (1814 – 7 August 1860) was a radical English journalist, freethinker and colonial advocate. Early life Charles Southwell was born in London, the youngest of 33 children in a poor family. His father, William, was a piano m ...
was among the editors of an explicitly atheistic periodical, '' Oracle of Reason, or Philosophy Vindicated'', who were imprisoned for blasphemy in the 1840s. Disbelievers called themselves "freethinkers" or "secularists". They included
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
,
George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wro ...
and
Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the celebrated headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, lit ...
. They were not necessarily hostile to Christianity, as Huxley repeatedly emphasized. The literary figures were caught in something of a trap – their business was writing and their theology said there was nothing for certain to write. They instead concentrated on the argument that it was not necessary to believe in God to behave in moral fashion. The scientists, on the other hand, paid less attention to theology and more attention to the exciting issues raised by Charles Darwin in terms of evolution. The proof of God's existence that said he had to exist to have a marvellously complex world was no longer satisfactory when biology demonstrated that complexity could arise through evolution. Because of these developments in science, the emergence of
higher criticism Historical criticism, also known as the historical-critical method or higher criticism, is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts in order to understand "the world behind the text". While often discussed in terms of ...
of the Bible, and the appeal of freethinkers, historians refer to a "Victorian Crisis of Faith" — a period of painful adjustment in family relationships and public morality resulting from shifting religious views.


Marriage and family

The centrality of the family was a dominant feature for all classes. Worriers repeatedly detected threats that had to be dealt with: working wives, overpaid youths, harsh factory conditions, bad housing, poor sanitation, excessive drinking, and religious decline. The licentiousness so characteristic of the upper class of the late 18th and early 19th centuries dissipated. The home became a refuge from the harsh world; middle-class wives sheltered their husbands from the tedium of domestic affairs. The number of children shrank, allowing much more attention to be paid to each child. Extended families were less common, as the nuclear family became both the ideal and the reality. In Great Britain, elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States, the notion that marriage should be based on
romantic love Romance or romantic love is a feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions. The ''Wiley Blackwell Ency ...
and companionship rather than convenience, money, or other strategic considerations grew in popularity during the Victorian period. Cheaper paper and printing technology made it easier for humans to attract mates this way, hence the birth of the Valentine card.


Status of Women

The emerging middle-class norm for women was
separate spheres Terms such as separate spheres and domestic–public dichotomy refer to a social phenomenon within modern societies that feature, to some degree, an empirical separation between a domestic or private sphere and a public or social sphere. This ...
, whereby women avoid the public sphere – the domain of politics, paid work, commerce, and public speaking. Instead, they should dominate in the realm of domestic life, focused on the care of the family, the husband, the children, the household, religion, and moral behaviour. Religiosity was in the female sphere, and the Nonconformist churches offered new roles that women eagerly entered. They taught in Sunday schools, visited the poor and sick, distributed tracts, engaged in fundraising, supported missionaries, led Methodist
class meeting The cell group is a form of church organization that is used in many Christian churches. Cell groups are generally intended to teach the Bible and personalize Christian fellowship. They are always used in cell churches, but also occur in para ...
s, prayed with other women, and a few were allowed to preach to mixed audiences. The long 1854 poem '' The Angel in the House'' by Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) exemplified the idealized Victorian woman who is angelically pure and devoted to her family and home. The poem was not a pure invention but reflected the emerging legal economic social, cultural, religious and moral values of the Victorian middle-class. Legally women had limited rights to their bodies, the family property, or their children. The recognized identities were those of daughter, wife, mother, and widow. Rapid growth and prosperity meant that fewer women had to find paid employment, and even when the husband owned a shop or small business, the wife's participation was less necessary. Meanwhile, the home sphere grew dramatically in size; women spent the money and decided on the furniture, clothing, food, schooling, and outward appearance the family would make. Patmore's model was widely copied – by Charles Dickens, for example. Literary critics of the time suggested that superior feminine qualities of delicacy, sensitivity, sympathy, and sharp observation gave women novelists a superior insight into stories about home family and love. This made their work highly attractive to the middle-class women who bought the novels and the serialized versions that appeared in many magazines. However, a few early feminists called for aspirations beyond the home. By the end of the century, the "New Woman" was riding a bicycle, wearing bloomers, signing petitions, supporting worldwide mission activities, and talking about the vote.


Status of children

Throughout much of the 19th century parents and guardians held almost unlimited authority over children. The rights of parents to raise their children as they wished as well as the ability of adult authority figures to establish obedience in their charges through corporal punishment was given priority over concerns about children's safety. As social reformer Whatley Cooke-Taylor wrote: Attitudes were shifting by the 1880s, beginning in 1883, local societies focused on child welfare began to be established across the country which had developed by the end of the decade into the
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a British child protection charity. History Victorian era On a trip to New York in 1881, Liverpudlian businessman Thomas Agnew was inspired by a visit to the New Yor ...
. The Children's Charter which came into law in 1889 gave the state the ability to intervene in the parent-child relationship in order to prevent mistreatment for the first time. The rights of children were again extended five years later.


Education and literacy


Mass Education

The Industrial Revolution incentivised people to think more scientifically and to become more educated and informed in order to solve novel problems. As a result, cognitive abilities were pushed to their genetic limits, making people more intelligent and innovative than their predecessors. Formal education thus became vital. According to intelligence researcher James R. Flynn, these changes echoed down to the twentieth century before leveling off in the early twenty-first. Enrollment at Sunday schools all of which taught children to read and some of which provided lessons in writing and arithmetic increased sharply during the first half of the 19th century from about 10% of five to eighteen-year-olds in 1800 to approximately 55% in 1851. 3/4 of working-class children were estimated to have attended Sunday school at some point in their childhood. Various religious organisations began to establish "voluntary" fulltime schools and a growing number of private schools developed including ones aimed at the working-classes. However, in the 1850s around half of children in England and Wales were not in school during the working week. The quality of provision varied significantly, and the average length of attendance was only three years. In England and Wales, the government began to provide state-funding to schools shortly before Victoria came to the throne which increased during the early decades of her reign, the degree of government oversight these schools were under also increased. The 1870 Elementary Education Act was intended to establish universal access to state-funded schools and the state began to run schools directly for the first time through a system of local governance. Education became compulsory for five- to ten-year-olds in 1880 and fees abolished in 1891. Compulsory education was expanded to deaf children, blind children and children up to the age of twelve in the 1890s. Scotland had a longer tradition of state-funded education dating back to the 17th century.. The system which made school provision the responsibility of parishes generally led to better outcomes than elsewhere in Great Britain but struggled to cope with the pressures of industrialisation and standards began to slipe. A similar kind of grant system to voluntary schools was used in Scotland as in England. The Education (Scotland) Act 1872 introduced many of the same kinds of reforms as were taking place in England and Wales during the later 19th century. Education was made compulsory for five to thirteen-year-olds, the structure of the system was simplified, and many new schools were built. As a consequence of various education reforms, literacy rates steadily rose. One way to determine the literacy rate is to count those who could sign their names on their marriage registers. Using this method, it was established that literacy in England and Wales reached roughly 90% by the late nineteenth century. Statistics of literacy from this era are likely underestimates because they were based on the number of people who could write, but throughout most of the nineteenth century, people were typically taught to read before they were taught to write. Literacy rates were higher in urban than rural areas. Rising literacy and urbanization provided an expanding market for printed materials, from cheap books to magazines. Literacy rates were generally higher in Scotland throughout much of the 19th century but the gap between the nations of Great Britain had closed by the century's end. By 1900, only around 3% of people in England and Wales were illiterate with a similar rate in Scotland.


Elite Education

During the first half of the 19th century, formal schooling became the norm for boys from wealthier families seen as necessary for future businessmen and increasingly professionals. Some were tutored at home or sent to endowed grammar schools but the growing number of private schools were increasingly popular with middle class parents. Expensive public schools which had previously been the preserve of landowning families and associated with poor morality also became popular with social-climbing families. The era saw a reform and renaissance of public schools, inspired by
Thomas Arnold Thomas Arnold (13 June 1795 – 12 June 1842) was an English educator and historian. He was an early supporter of the Broad Church Anglican movement. As headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841, he introduced several reforms that were wid ...
at Rugby. The public school became a model for gentlemen and public service. Many of the boys who attended these schools went on to enter senior positions in government and civil society. Most girls from wealthier families were educated by governesses or at private schools. There was a steady trend to a more academic curriculum at private girls' schools. In the 1850s, the
North London Collegiate School North London Collegiate School (NLCS) is an independent school with a day school for girls in England. Founded in Camden Town, it is now located in Edgware, in the London Borough of Harrow. Associate schools are located in South Korea, Jeju ...
and
Cheltenham Ladies' College Cheltenham Ladies' College is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Consistently ranked as one of the top all-girls' schools nationally, the school was established in 1853 to pr ...
were founded. Grammar schools for girls were founded beginning in the 1870s. By the turn of the century, some girls schools were even aiming to prepare their students for university. A key component of the curriculum at Cambridge since the mid-eighteenth century had been the " Mathematical Tripos," providing not just intensive training for mathematicians and scientists but also general education for future civil servants, colonial administrators, lawyers, and clergymen. Named after the three-legged stool students had been sitting on since the fifteenth century, the Tripos included extremely challenging and highly prestigious exams whose most successful candidate for a given year was called the "
Senior Wrangler The Senior Frog Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who ...
." Below the Senior and Second Wranglers were the Optimes. The exams concerned not just pure but also "mixed" or applied mathematics. Starting from the 1830s, under the influence of Master of Trinity College
William Whewell William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved ...
, the "mixed" portion included only branches of applied mathematics deemed stable, such as mechanics and optics, rather those amenable to mathematical analysis but remained unfinished at the time, such as electricity and magnetism. Following recommendations from the Royal Commission of 1850–51, science education at Oxford and Cambridge underwent significant reforms. In 1851, a new Tripos was introduced, providing a broader and less mathematical program in "natural philosophy," or what science was still commonly called back then. By 1890, the Tripos had evolved into a rigorous test of not just mathematical ingenuity but also mental stamina. Topics ranged widely, from number theory to mathematical physics. Candidates needed to have a firm grasp of the works of Sir Isaac Newton and Euclid of Alexandria, trigonometric identities, conic sections, compounded interest, eclipses and more. They usually sat for five and a half hours each day for eight days for a total of a dozen papers featuring increasingly difficult questions. In general, while the first colleges for women opened in the 1870s, it was not until the 1890s that they started to be permitted to study side by side with men and to sit for the same exams as men. The first college for women at the University of Cambridge, Girton, opened in 1873. However, women were only allowed to take exams; it was not until 1948 that they were able to receive degrees. They were marked and scored separately, however, and the results of female candidates were enunciated in comparison to men's, for instance, "between the 20th and 21st Optimes." Exam results from the 1860s onward suggested that women broadly did as well as men, though with the notable exception of mathematics. At that time, it was commonly thought that women were emotional creatures lacking the mental faculty to master mathematics. Thus it was big news when
Philippa Fawcett Philippa Garrett Fawcett (4 April 1868 – 10 June 1948) was an English mathematician and educationalist. She was the first woman to obtain the top score in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams. She taught at Newnham College, Cambridge, and ...
was ranked "above the Senior Wranger" in 1890, scoring thirteen percent higher than the top male that year,
Geoffrey Thomas Bennett Geoffrey Thomas Bennett (1868–1943) was an English mathematician, professor at the University of Cambridge. Life and work Born in London, he began his secondary studies at the University College School, under Robert Tucker. After one ye ...
. She was the first, and last, woman to score the highest on the Tripos. While women were not welcomed in the world of medicine, this was not the case in nursing. In fact, nursing became even more respected after the brilliant exploits of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War. Her nursing school at
St Thomas' Hospital St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS teaching hospital in Central London, England. It is one of the institutions that compose the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Administratively part of the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Fo ...
became a model for others. Consequently, for many middle-class young women, the prospects of being a nurse, one of the few career options open to them at the time, became much more appealing.


Reading culture

During the nineteenth century, the publishing industry found itself catching up with the momentous changes to society brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It benefited from the introduction of electrical power, rail transport, and telegraphy. Sales of books and periodicals were fuelled by the seemingly insatiable demand for knowledge, self-improvement, and entertainment from the rapidly growing middle-class. Initially, while book prices were too high for the average reader, they were sufficient to cover the costs of the publisher and to pay reasonable amounts to the authors. But as free-to-use libraries sprang up all around the country, people started flocking to them. Authors and publishers looked for ways to cut prices and increase sales. Serialisation in periodicals, especially literary magazines though not newspapers, became popular. Quality illustrations were commissioned from the reputable artists of the time as an incentive to purchase. Income from writing increased for some writers, and many became professional novelists. In the early 1800s, the market for children's literature was dominated by religious groups. Stories from this period often included strong a moral message. But it showed signs of growth and some writers decided to seize the opportunity. By the middle of the century, commercial publishers came to recognise the great potential of this market and signed deals with gifted authors to provide a plethora of reading materials to children. They also took advantage of innovations such as those that enable the printing of coloured illustrations. As the middle class boomed, people had more money to spend on entertaining their children. Moral messaging was de-emphasised in favor of fun. Classics like the tales of the
Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among t ...
and the fairy tales of
Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consist ...
made their way to the printing press. But it was ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
'' (1865) by
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
that proved to be the most popular, alongside the works of
William Makepeace Thackeray William Makepeace Thackeray (; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel '' Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and t ...
,
Charles Kingsley Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the worki ...
, Jean Ingelow, and
George Macdonald George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet and Christian Congregational minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll ...
. By the 1880s, juvenile fiction packed with action and adventure became commonplace. Fantasy did not have a monopoly on the market for children's literature, however. '' Tom Brown's School Days'' (1857) by
Thomas Hughes Thomas Hughes (20 October 182222 March 1896) was an English lawyer, judge, politician and author. He is most famous for his novel '' Tom Brown's School Days'' (1857), a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended ...
was a noteworthy example of realistic writing and school stories while '' Black Beauty'' (1877) by Anna Sewell was the start of the blooming of animal tales. As a matter of fact, the market grew so large that most of the top writers of the era wrote at least one book for children. Children's magazines and poetry for children (especially the nonsensical variety) blossomed during the Victorian age. In
prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where th ...
, the novel rose from a position of relative neglect during the 1830s to become the leading
literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided ...
by the end of the era. In the 1830s and 1840s, the
social novel The social novel, also known as the social problem (or social protest) novel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". More ...
(also "Condition-of-England novels") addressed the
Condition-of-England question The Condition-of-England question was a debate in the Victorian era over the issue of the English working-class during the Industrial Revolution. It was first proposed by Thomas Carlyle in his essay ''Chartism'' (1839). After assessing Chartis ...
, which was raised by Carlyle in ''Chartism'' (1839), ''Past and Present'' (1843) and ''
Latter-Day Pamphlets ''Latter-Day Pamphlets'' was a series of "pamphlets" published by Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle in 1850,Carlyle, Thomas (1850)''Latter-Day Pamphlets.''London: Chapman & Hall. in vehement denunciation of what he ...
'' (1850) to address the social, political and economic upheavals associated with industrialisation. Though it remained influential throughout the period, there was a notable resurgence of
Gothic fiction Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of ea ...
in the ''
fin de siècle () is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context ...
'', such as in
Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as '' Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...
's novella ''
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'' is a 1886 Gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his o ...
'' (1886) and
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
's ''
The Picture of Dorian Gray ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine''.''The Picture of Dorian Gr ...
'' (1891). Following the bicentenary of
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
in 1769, the popularity of his works steadily grew, reaching a peak in the nineteenth century. Charles and Mary Lamb appeared to have anticipated this with their '' Tales from Shakespeare'' (1807). Intended as an introduction for apprentice readers to the works of the great playwright, the book became one of the best-selling titles in literature of the century, being republished multiple times. As early as 1830, astronomer
John Herschel Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (; 7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical ...
had already recognised the need for the genre of popular science. In a letter to philosopher William Whewell, he wrote that the general public needed "digests of what is actually known in each particular branch of science... to give a connected view of what has been done, and what remains to be accomplished." Indeed, as the British population became not just increasingly literate but also well-educated, there was growing demand for science titles.
Mary Somerville Mary Somerville (; , formerly Greig; 26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872) was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorary ...
became an early and highly successful science writer of the nineteenth century. Her '' On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences'' (1834), intended for the mass audience, sold quite well. Arguably one of the first books in the genre of popular science, it contained few diagrams and very little mathematics. It had ten editions and was translated to multiple languages. As its name suggests, it offered readers a broad overview of the physical sciences at a time when these studies were becoming increasingly distinct and specialised. It was the most popular science title from the publisher John Murray until Charles Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species'' (1859). Although Somerville's rendition of Pierre-Simon de Laplace's masterpiece '' Mécanique Céleste'', ''The Mechanism of the Heavens'' (1831), was intended to inform the masses of the latest advances in Newtonian mechanics and gravitation, it was also used as a textbook for students at the University of Cambridge till the 1880s. The abolition of the newspaper stamp duty in 1855 and the advertising tax in 1858 paved the way for not only cheaper magazines but also those catering to a variety of interests. During the final three decades of the Victorian era, women's newspapers and magazines flourished and increasingly covered topics other than domestic issues, reflecting the trend among women at the time. The professional police force dedicated to not just the prevention but also the investigation of crime took shape during the mid-nineteenth century. This development inspired Charles Dickens to write the crime novel ''
Bleak House ''Bleak House'' is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, an ...
'' (1852–3), creating the first fictional detective, Mr. Bucket, based on a real-life character by the name of Charles Field. But it was Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...
who proved to be the most popular fictional detective of the Victorian age, and indeed, of all times. By the 1860s, there was strong demand for adventure, detective, sensational, and science-fiction novels. Indeed, the late nineteenth century saw a tremendous amount of technological progress, which inspired authors to write in the genre of science fiction.
H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''
The Time Machine ''The Time Machine'' is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively for ...
'' (1895) was a commercial success; in it, he introduced the notion of time travel. In some instances, science fiction inspired new technology and scientific research. Explorer
Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of ...
acknowledged that the novel ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'' by Jules Verne was an inspiration. As reading became more pronounced in the 19th century with public notes, broadsides, catchpennies and printed songs becoming common street literature, it informed and entertained the public before newspapers became readily available in the later 19th century. Advertisements and local news, such as offers of rewards for catching criminals or for the return of stolen goods, appeared on public notices and handbills, while cheaply printed sheets – broadsheets and ballads – covered political or criminal news such murders, trials, executions, disasters and rescues.
Chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookl ...
s would also be common place, these were simple reading matter that were small, cheap forms of literature for children and adults that were sold on the streets, their subjects included fiction writing to disaster updates. Their readership would have been largely among the poor, and among children of the middle class. A 2015 study investigated the frequency at which difficult vocabulary from the WORDSUM test were employed in about 5.9 million English-language texts published between 1850 and 2005. The researchers found that the more difficult of words were in declining usage and that there was a negative correlation between the use of such words and completed fertility. On the other hand, simpler words entered increasingly common use, an effect of rising literacy. In another study, from 2017, researchers employed Google's Ngram Viewer, an enormous archive of scanned books, periodicals, and other printed materials dating back to the sixteenth century. They found that the use of difficult vocabulary increased substantially between the mid-1700s and mid-1800s before declining steadily till the present day.


Entertainment

Popular forms of entertainment varied by social class. Victorian Britain, like the periods before it, was interested in literature, theatre and
the arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...
(see
Aesthetic movement Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings spec ...
and
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Jam ...
), and music, drama, and opera were widely attended. Michael Balfe was the most popular British
grand opera Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on o ...
composer of the period, while the most popular musical theatre was a series of fourteen comic operas by
Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ''H.M.S. Pin ...
, although there was also musical burlesque and the beginning of
Edwardian musical comedy Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions, beginning in the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the Ame ...
in the 1890s. Drama ranged from
low comedy Low comedy, also known as lowbrow humor, in association to comedy, is a dramatic or literary form of popular entertainment without any primary purpose other than to create laughter through boasting, boisterous jokes, drunkenness, scolding, fi ...
to
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
(see
Henry Irving Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ...
).
Melodrama A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exce ...
—literally 'musical drama'—was introduced in Revolutionary France and reached Great Britain from there during the Victorian era. It was a particularly widespread and influential theatrical genre thanks to its appeal to the working-class and artisans. However, its popularity decline in the late nineteenth century. Even so, it continued to influence the novels of the era. Gentlemen went to dining clubs, like the
Beefsteak Club Beefsteak Club is the name or nickname of several 18th- and 19th-century male dining clubs in Britain and Australia that celebrated the beefsteak as a symbol of patriotic and often Whig concepts of liberty and prosperity. The first beefsteak clu ...
or the
Savage Club The Savage Club, founded in 1857, is a gentlemen's club in London, named after the poet, Richard Savage. Members are drawn from the fields of art, drama, law, literature, music or science. History The founding meeting of the Savage Club took ...
. Gambling at cards in establishments popularly called
casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...
s was wildly popular during the period: so much so that evangelical and reform movements specifically targeted such establishments in their efforts to stop gambling, drinking, and prostitution. Brass bands and 'The
Bandstand A bandstand (sometimes music kiosk) is a circular, semicircular or polygonal structure set in a park, garden, pier, or indoor space, designed to accommodate musical bands performing concerts. A simple construction, it both creates an orna ...
' became popular in the Victorian era. The bandstand was a simple construction that not only created an ornamental focal point but also served acoustic requirements whilst providing shelter from the changeable British weather. It was common to hear the sound of a brass band whilst strolling through parklands. At this time musical recording was still very much a novelty. The Victorian era marked the golden age of the British circus. Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth,
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, featuring equestrian acts in a 42-foot wide circus ring, was the center of the 19th-century circus. The permanent structure sustained three fires but as an institution lasted a full century, with Andrew Ducrow and William Batty managing the theatre in the middle part of the century. William Batty would also build his 14,000-person arena, known commonly as Batty's Hippodrome, in Kensington Gardens, and draw crowds from the
Crystal Palace Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took pl ...
. Traveling circuses, like
Pablo Fanque Pablo Fanque (born William Darby; 30 March 1810 – 4 May 1871) was a British equestrian performer and circus proprietor, becoming the first recorded Black circus owner in Britain. His circus was popular in Victorian Britain for 30 years, a pe ...
's, dominated the British provinces, Scotland, and Ireland (Fanque would enjoy fame again in the 20th century when John Lennon would buy an 1843 poster advertising his circus and adapt the lyrics for
The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
song, '' Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!''). Fanque also stands out as a black man who achieved great success and enjoyed great admiration among the British public only a few decades after Britain had abolished slavery. Another form of entertainment involved "spectacles" where paranormal events, such as mesmerism, communication with the dead (by way of
mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spi ...
or channeling),
ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to r ...
conjuring and the like, were carried out to the delight of crowds and participants. Such activities were more popular at this time than in other periods of recent Western history. Natural history became increasingly an "amateur" activity. Particularly in Britain and the United States, this grew into specialist hobbies such as the study of birds, butterflies, seashells (
malacology Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...
/
conchology Conchology () is the study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of molluscs; however, malacology is the study of molluscs as whole organisms, whereas conchology is confined to the study of their shells. It incl ...
), beetles and wildflowers. Amateur collectors and natural history entrepreneurs played an important role in building the large natural history collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Middle-class Victorians used the train services to visit the seaside, helped by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871, which created many fixed holidays. Large numbers traveling to quiet fishing villages such as
Worthing Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...
,
Morecambe Morecambe ( ) is a seaside town and civil parish in the City of Lancaster district in Lancashire, England. It is in Morecambe Bay on the Irish Sea. Name The first use of the name was by John Whitaker in his ''History of Manchester'' (1771), ...
and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and people like
Thomas Cook Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) was an English businessman. He is best known for founding the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son. He was also one of the initial developers of the "package tour" including travel, accommodation ...
saw tourism and even overseas travel as viable businesses.


Sports

The Victorian era saw the introduction and development of many modern sports. Often originating in the public schools, they exemplified new ideals of manliness.
Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by s ...
, cycling,
croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the Wo ...
, horse-riding, and many water activities are examples of some of the popular sports in the Victorian era. The modern game of tennis originated in Birmingham, England, between 1859 and 1865. The world's oldest tennis tournament, the
Wimbledon championships The Wimbledon Championships, commonly known simply as Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London, since 1877 and is pl ...
, was first played in London in 1877. Britain was an active competitor in all the
Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...
starting in 1896.


High culture

Gothic Revival architecture Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
became increasingly significant during the period, leading to the Battle of the Styles between Gothic and Classical ideals.
Charles Barry Sir Charles Barry (23 May 1795 – 12 May 1860) was a British architect, best known for his role in the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (also known as the Houses of Parliament) in London during the mid-19th century, but also responsi ...
's architecture for the new
Palace of Westminster The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...
, which had been badly damaged in an 1834 fire, was built in the medieval style of
Westminster Hall The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parli ...
, the surviving part of the building. It constructed a narrative of cultural continuity, set in opposition to the violent disjunctions of
Revolutionary France The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are consider ...
, a comparison common to the period, as expressed in Carlyle's '' The French Revolution: A History'' (1837) and
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
' ''
A Tale of Two Cities ''A Tale of Two Cities'' is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in ...
'' (1859) and ''
Great Expectations ''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (Great Expectations), Pip (the book is a ''bildungsroman''; a coming-of-age story). It ...
'' (1861). Gothic was also supported by critic
John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany a ...
, who argued that it epitomised communal and inclusive social values, as opposed to Classicism, which he considered to epitomise mechanical standardisation. The middle of the 19th century saw
The Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took p ...
of 1851, the first
World's Fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
, which showcased the greatest innovations of the century. At its centre was
the Crystal Palace The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibitors from around th ...
, a modular glass and iron structure – the first of its kind. It was condemned by Ruskin as the very model of mechanical dehumanisation in design but later came to be presented as the prototype of
Modern architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that for ...
. The emergence of photography, showcased at the Great Exhibition, resulted in significant changes in Victorian art with Queen Victoria being the first British monarch to be photographed. In general, various styles of painting were popular during the Victorian period, Classicism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, and Post-impressionism. In 1848, Dante Rossetti and William Holman Hunt created the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Jam ...
whose stated aim was to produce paintings of photographic quality, taking inspiration from a variety of sources, from the works of William Shakespeare to Mother Nature herself. The growing popularity of romantic love spilled over into literature and fine arts.


Gallery of selected Victorian paintings

File:Henry Boddington - Norfolk Hamlet 1840.jpg, ''Norfolk Hamlet'' (1840) by
Henry John Boddington Henry John Boddington (1811 – 11 April 1865) was an English landscape painter during the Victorian era, and a member of the Williams family of painters. Biography Henry John Boddington was born Henry John Williams on 14 October 1811 in ...
File:William Holman Hunt 001.jpg, '' The Hireling Shepherd'' (1851) by William Holman Hunt File:Monarch of the Glen, Edwin Landseer, 1851.jpg, ''Monarch of the Glen'' (1851) by Edwin Landseer File:Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Proserpine.JPG, ''Proserpine'' (1874) by Dante Rossetti File:Miranda - John William Waterhouse.jpg, ''Miranda'' (1875) by
John William Waterhouse John William Waterhouse (6 April 184910 February 1917) was an English painter known for working first in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. His artworks were known for their de ...
File:Frederick Leighton - Biondina.jpg, ''Biondina'' (1879) by Frederick Leighton File:Frank Bramley - A Hopeless Dawn 1888.jpg, ''A Hopeless Dawn'' (1888) by
Frank Bramley Frank Bramley RA (6 May 1857 – 9 August 1915) was an English post-impressionist genre painter of the Newlyn School. Personal life Bramley was born in Sibsey, near Boston, in Lincolnshire to Charles Bramley from Fiskerton also in Linco ...
File:John Simmons - Titania sleeping in the moonlight protected by her fairies.jpg, ''Titania Sleeping in the Moonlight Protected by Her Fairies'' by John Simmons, inspired by Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. File:Leighton-God Speed!.jpg, ''God Speed!'' (1900) by
Edmund Leighton Edmund Blair Leighton (21 September 18521 September 1922) was an English painter of historical genre scenes, specialising in Regency and medieval subjects. His art is associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement of the mid-to-late nineteenth ...


Journalism

In 1817, Thomas Barnes became general editor of ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its s ...
''; he was a political radical, a sharp critic of parliamentary hypocrisy and a champion of freedom of the press. Under Barnes and his successor in 1841,
John Thadeus Delane John Thadeus Delane (11 October 1817 – 22 November 1879), editor of ''The Times'' (London), was born in London. He was the second son of W.F.A. Delane, a barrister, of an old Irish family, who about 1832 was appointed by ''Times'' publis ...
, the influence of ''The Times'' rose to great heights, especially in politics and in the financial district (the
City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...
). It spoke of reform. ''The Times'' originated the practice of sending war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H. Russell wrote immensely influential dispatches on the
Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
of 1853–1856; for the first time, the public could read about the reality of warfare. Russell wrote one dispatch that highlighted the surgeons' "inhumane barbarity" and the lack of ambulance care for wounded troops. Shocked and outraged, the public reacted in a backlash that led to major reforms especially in the provision of nursing, led by
Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, ...
. The '' Manchester Guardian'' was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of non-conformist businessmen. Its most famous editor, Charles Prestwich Scott, made the ''Guardian'' into a world-famous newspaper in the 1890s. ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...
'' in 1856 became the first penny newspaper in London. It was funded by advertising revenue based on a large audience.


Leisure

At mid-century, the idea of a large amphitheatre for musical performances and conferences for the learned captured the imagination of not just Henry Cole, Secretary of the Science and Art Department, but also Prince Albert. By 1857, Cole planned to build one with "due regard to the principles of sound." After the Prince's death in 1861, this project had the additional goal of commemorating him. The
Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...
opened on 29 March 1871. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Scott, R.E., who managed the construction, estimated there was enough space for 7,165 people plus 1,200 performers; the theoretical limit was 10,000. As desired by the Prince, it did not rely on public funds but was purely privately funded. Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to decline. In urban areas the nine-hour workday became increasingly the norm; the Factory Act 1874 limited the working week to 56.5 hours, encouraging the movement towards an eventual eight-hour workday. Furthermore, a system of routine annual holidays came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class. Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fares, widespread bank holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays. By the late Victorian era the leisure industry had emerged in all cities. It provided scheduled entertainment of suitable length at convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These included sporting events, music halls, and popular theatre. By 1880 football was no longer the preserve of the social elite, as it attracted large working-class audiences. Average attendance was 5000 in 1905, rising to 23,000 in 1913. That amounted to 6 million paying customers with a weekly turnover of £400,000. Sports by 1900 generated some three percent of the total gross national product. Professional sports were the norm, although some new activities reached an upscale amateur audience, such as lawn tennis and golf. Women were now allowed in some sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics.


Demographics


Demographic transition

Britain had the lead in rapid economic and population growth. At the time,
Thomas Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book ''An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Malt ...
believed this lack of growth outside Britain was due the carrying capacity of their local environments. That is, the tendency of a population to expand geometrically while resources grew more slowly, reaching a crisis (such as famine, war, or epidemic) which would reduce the population to a more sustainable size."Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population: Library of Economics" Great Britain escaped the ' Malthusian trap' because the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution dramatically improved living standards, reducing mortality and increasing longevity. The Victorian era was a time of unprecedented population growth in Britain. The population rose from 13.9 million in 1831 to 32.5 million in 1901. Two major contributory factors were fertility rates and mortality rates. Britain was the first country to undergo the
demographic transition In demography, demographic transition is a phenomenon and theory which refers to the historical shift from high birth rates and high death rates in societies with minimal technology, education (especially of women) and economic development, to l ...
and the
Agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...
and
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
s. Economist
Gary Becker Gary Stanley Becker (; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader o ...
argued that at first, falling fertility is due to urbanisation and lower infant mortality rates, which diminished the benefits and increased the costs of raising children. In other words, it became more economically sensible to invest more in fewer children. This is known as the first demographic transition. This trend continued till around 1950. (The second demographic transition occurred due to the significant cultural shifts of the 1960s, leading to the decline in the desire for children.)


Fertility rates and mortality rates

The demographic transition is when a population shifts from being one of high child mortality rates and high fertility rates to one that is low in both. Western nations completed this transition by the early 1900s. It occurred in two stages. Initially, child mortality rates dropped significantly due to improved healthcare and sanitation and better nutrition, yet fertility rates remained high, leading to a population boom. Gradually, fertility rates fell as people became more affluent and had better access to contraception. By 1900, the infant mortality rate in England was 10 percent, down from an estimated 25 percent in the Middle Ages. There was no catastrophic epidemic or famine in England or Scotland in the nineteenth century—it was the first century in which a major epidemic did not occur throughout the whole country, and deaths per 1000 of population per year in England and Wales fell from 21.9 from 1848 to 1854 to 17 in 1901 (cf, for instance, 5.4 in 1971). Social class had a significant effect on mortality rates: the upper classes had a lower rate of premature death early in the nineteenth century than poorer classes did. In the Victorian era,
fertility rate The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if: # she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through her lifetime # she were t ...
s increased in every decade until 1901, when the rates started evening out. There were several reasons for this. One is biological: with improving living standards, a higher proportion of women were biologically able to have children. Another possible explanation is social. In the 19th century, the marriage rate increased, and people were getting married at a very young age until the end of the century, when the average age of marriage started to increase again slowly. The reasons why people got married younger and more frequently are uncertain. One theory is that greater prosperity allowed people to finance marriage and new households earlier than previously possible. With more births within marriage, it seems inevitable that marriage rates and birth rates would rise together. Birth rates were originally measured by the '
crude birth rate The birth rate for a given period is the total number of live human births per 1,000 population divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registration system for births; populati ...
' – births per year divided by total population. This is indeed a crude measure, as key groups and their fertility rates are not clear. It is likely to be affected mainly by changes in the age distribution of the population. The Net Reproduction Rate was then introduced as an alternative measure: it measures the average fertility rate of women of child-bearing ages. High rates of birth also occurred because of a lack of
birth control Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...
. Mainly because women lacked knowledge of birth control methods and the practice was seen as unrespectable. The evening out of fertility rates at the beginning of the 20th century was mainly the result of a few big changes: availability of forms of birth control, and changes in people's attitude towards sex. In the olden days, people typically had had as many children as they could afford in order to ensure at least a few of them would survive to adulthood and have children of their own due to high child mortality rates. Moreover, it was the poor who had had an incentive to curb their fertility whereas the rich had lacked such a need due to greater wealth and lower child mortality rates. This changed due to the Industrial Revolution. Standards of living improved and mortality rates fell. People no longer needed to have as many children as before to ensure the propagation of their genes. The link between poverty and child mortality weakened. In addition, societal attitude towards contraception warmed, leading to the negative correlation between intelligence and fertility. Factors linked to general intelligence, such as socioeconomic status and educational attainment, were also found to be negatively correlated with fertility starting from the nineteenth century. Environmental and health standards rose throughout the Victorian era. Improvements in nutrition may also have played a role, though its importance is still debated.


Economy, industry, and trade


Progress

Life in the late 1700s had been little different from life in the late Middle Ages. But the nineteenth century saw dramatic technological development. Someone alive in 1804 would know about the electric telegraph, the steam ship, the circular saw, the bicycle, and the steam-powered locomotive. If this person lived to 1870, he or she would have heard of the invention of the electric light bulb, the typewriter, the calculator, the rubber tyre, the washing machine, the internal combustion engine, plastic, and dynamite. Engineering prowess, especially in communication and transportation, made Great Britain the leading industrial powerhouse and trading nation of the world at that time. According to historians David Brandon and Alan Brooke, the new system of railways after 1830 brought into being our modern world: :They stimulated demand for building materials, coal, iron and, later, steel. Excelling in the bulk movement of coal, they provided the fuel for the furnaces of industry and for domestic fireplaces. Millions of people were able to travel who had scarcely ever travelled before. Railways enabled mail, newspapers, periodicals and cheap literature to be distributed easily, quickly and cheaply allowing a much wider and faster dissemination of ideas and information. They had a significant impact on improving diet.... nd enableda proportionately smaller agricultural industry was able to feed a much larger urban population....They employed huge quantities of labour both directly and indirectly. They helped Britain to become the ‘Workshop of the World’ by reducing transport costs not only of raw materials but of finished goods, large amounts of which were exported.... day’s global corporations originated with the great limited liability railway companies....By the third quarter of the nineteenth century, there was scarcely any person living in Britain whose life had not been altered in some way by the coming of the railways. Railways contributed to the transformation of Britain from a rural to a predominantly urban society. Historians have characterised the mid-Victorian era (1850–1870) as Britain's "Golden Years". It was not till the two to three decades following the Second World War that substantial economic growth was seen again. In the long-term view, the mid-Victorian boom was one upswing in the
Kondratiev cycle In economics, Kondratiev waves (also called supercycles, great surges, long waves, K-waves or the long economic cycle) are hypothesized cycle-like phenomena in the modern world economy. The phenomenon is closely connected with the technology l ...
(see figure). There was prosperity, as the national income per person grew by half. Much of the prosperity was due to the increasing industrialisation, especially in textiles and machinery, as well as to the worldwide network of exports that produced profits for British merchants. British entrepreneurs built railways in India and many independent nations. There was peace abroad (apart from the short Crimean War, 1854–56), and social peace at home. Opposition to the new order melted away, says Porter. The Chartist movement peaked as a democratic movement among the working class in 1848; its leaders moved to other pursuits, such as trade unions and cooperative societies. The working class ignored foreign agitators like Karl Marx in their midst, and joined in celebrating the new prosperity. Employers typically were paternalistic and generally recognised the trade unions. Companies provided their employees with welfare services ranging from housing, schools and churches, to libraries, baths, and gymnasia. Middle-class reformers did their best to assist the working classes' aspirations to middle-class norms of "respectability". There was a spirit of libertarianism, says Porter, as people felt they were free. Taxes were very low, and government restrictions were minimal. There were still problem areas, such as occasional riots, especially those motivated by anti-Catholicism. Society was still ruled by the aristocracy and the gentry, who controlled high government offices, both houses of Parliament, the church, and the military. Becoming a rich businessman was not as prestigious as inheriting a title and owning a landed estate. Literature was doing well, but the fine arts languished as the Great Exhibition of 1851 showcased Britain's industrial prowess rather than its sculpture, painting or music. The educational system was mediocre; the main universities (outside Scotland) were likewise mediocre. Historian Llewellyn Woodward has concluded: : For leisure or work, for getting or for spending, England was a better country in 1879 than in 1815. The scales were less weighted against the weak, against women and children, and against the poor. There was greater movement, and less of the fatalism of an earlier age. The public conscience was more instructed, and the content of liberty was being widened to include something more than freedom from political constraint ... Yet England in 1871 was by no means an earthly paradise. The housing and conditions of life of the working class in town & country were still a disgrace to an age of plenty. In December 1844, Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers founded what is considered the first
cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...
in the world. The founding members were a group of 28, around half of which were weavers, who decided to band together to open a store owned and managed democratically by the members, selling food items they could not otherwise afford. Ten years later, the British co-operative movement had grown to nearly 1,000 co-operatives. The movement also spread across the world, with the first cooperative financial institution founded in 1850 in Germany. File:From 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith- (6960859488).jpg, From ''Street Life in London'', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith. "...the inhabitants of Church Lane were nearly all what I may term “street folks” – living, buying, selling, transacting all their business in the open street. It was a celebrated resort for tramps and costers of every description." File:The Sellers of Shell-fish (6924988264).jpg, A street stall in London during the 1870s File:Kemna Lokomotiven.jpg, Many European companies, such as steam-machine producer J. Kemna, modeled themselves on English industry.


Housing

The very rapid growth in population in the 19th century in the cities included the new industrial and manufacturing cities, as well as service centres such as Edinburgh and London. The critical factor was financing, which was handled by building societies that dealt directly with large contracting firms. Private renting from housing landlords was the dominant tenure. P. Kemp says this was usually of advantage to tenants. People moved in so rapidly that there was not enough capital to build adequate housing for everyone, so low income newcomers squeezed into increasingly overcrowded slums. Clean water, sanitation, and public health facilities were inadequate; the death rate was high, especially infant mortality, and tuberculosis among young adults.
Cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium '' Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting a ...
from polluted water and typhoid were endemic. Unlike rural areas, there were no famines such as the one which devastated Ireland in the 1840s.


Poverty

19th-century Britain saw a huge population increase accompanied by rapid urbanisation stimulated by the
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
. Wage rates improved steadily; real wages (after taking inflation into account) were 65 percent higher in 1901, compared to 1871. Much of the money was saved, as the number of depositors in savings banks rose from 430,000 in 1831, to 5.2 million in 1887, and their deposits from £14 million to over £90 million. People flooded into industrial areas and commercial cities faster than housing could be built, resulting in overcrowding and lagging sanitation facilities such as fresh water and sewage. These problems were magnified in London, where the population grew at record rates. Large houses were turned into flats and tenements, and as landlords failed to maintain these dwellings,
slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...
housing developed. Kellow Chesney described the situation as follows: "Hideous slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up a substantial part of the metropolis... In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a single room."Barbara Daniels
Poverty and Families in the Victorian Era
Significant changes happened in the British
Poor Law In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of he ...
system in
England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is Eng ...
,
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
, and
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...
. These included a large expansion in
workhouses In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' ...
(or poorhouses in Scotland), although with changing populations during the era.


Child labour

The early Victorian era before the reforms of the 1840s became notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines and as
chimney sweep A chimney sweep is a person who clears soot and creosote from chimneys. The chimney uses the pressure difference caused by a hot column of gas to create a draught and draw air over the hot coals or wood enabling continued combustion. Chimneys ...
s. Child labour played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset: novelist
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
, for example, worked at the age of 12 in a blacking factory, with his family in a
debtors' prison A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Until the mid-19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe.Cory, Lucinda"A Histori ...
. Reformers wanted the children in school: in 1840 only about 20 percent of the children in London had any schooling. By 1860 about half of the children between 5 and 15 were in school (including
Sunday school A Sunday school is an educational institution, usually (but not always) Christian in character. Other religions including Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism have also organised Sunday schools in their temples and mosques, particularly in the West. Su ...
).Child Labor
David Cody, Hartwick College
The children of the poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long hours in dangerous jobs for low wages. Agile boys were employed by the chimney sweeps; small children were employed to scramble under machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins; and children were also employed to work in coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and low for adults. Children also worked as errand boys,
crossing sweeper A crossing sweeper was a person working as a street sweeper who would sweep a path ahead of people crossing dirty urban streets in exchange for a gratuity. This practice was an informal occupation among the urban poor, primarily during the 19th ...
s, shoe blacks, or sold matches, flowers, and other cheap goods. Some children undertook work as apprentices to respectable trades, such as building, or as
domestic servants A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
(there were over 120,000 domestic servants in London in the mid 19th century). Working hours were long: builders might work 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants were theoretically on duty 80-hours a week.
Mother bides at home, she is troubled with bad breath, and is sair weak in her body from early labour. I am wrought with sister and brother, it is very sore work; cannot say how many rakes or journeys I make from pit's bottom to wall face and back, thinks about 30 or 25 on the average; the distance varies from 100 to 250 fathom. I carry about 1 cwt. and a quarter on my back; have to stoop much and creep through water, which is frequently up to the calves of my legs. :— Isabella Read, 12 years old, coal-bearer, testimony gathered by Ashley's Mines Commission 1842
As early as 1802 and 1819,
Factory Acts The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate the conditions of industrial employment. The early Acts concentrated on regulating the hours of work and moral welfare of young children employed ...
were passed to limit the working hours of children in factories and
cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were dri ...
s to 12 hours per day. These acts were largely ineffective and after radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time Committees" in 1831, a Royal Commission recommended in 1833 that children aged 11–18 should work a maximum of 12 hours per day, children aged 9–11 a maximum of eight hours, and children under the age of nine should no longer be permitted to work. This act, however, only applied to the
textile industry The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry. Industry process Cotton manufactu ...
, and further agitation led to another act in 1847 limiting both adults and children to 10-hour working days.


Mathematics, science, technology, and engineering


Professionalisation of science

Founded in 1799 with the stated purpose of "diffusing the Knowledge, and facilitating the general Introduction, of Useful Mechanical Inventions and Improvements; and for teaching, by Courses of Philosophical Lectures and Experiments, the application of Science to the common Purposes of Life," the
Royal Institution The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, in ...
was a proper scientific institution with laboratories, a lecture hall, libraries, and offices. In its first years, the Institution was dedicated to the improvement of agriculture using chemistry, prompted by trade restrictions with Europe. Such practical concerns continued through the next two centuries. However, it soon became apparent that additional funding was required in order for the Institution to continue. Some well-known experts were hired as lecturers and researchers. The most successful of them all was Sir
Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for t ...
, whose lectures concerned a myriad of topics and were so popular that the original practical purpose of the Institution faded away. It became increasingly dominated by research in basic science. The professionalisation of science began in the aftermath of the French Revolution and soon spread to other parts of the Continent, including the German lands. It was slow to reach Britain, however. Master of Trinity College
William Whewell William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved ...
coined the term ''scientist'' in 1833 to describe the new professional breed specialists and experts studying what was still commonly known as ''natural philosophy''. In 1840, Whewell wrote, "We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist." The new term signalled the recognition of the importance of empiricism and inductive reasoning. But this term was slow to catch on. As biologist Thomas Huxley indicated in 1852, the prospect of earning a decent living as a scientist remained remote despite the prestige of the occupation. It was possible for a scientist to "earn praise but not pudding," he wrote. Since its birth, the
Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
of London had been a club of gentlemanly amateurs, though some of whom were the very best in their fields, people like Charles Darwin and James Prescott Joule. But the Society reformed itself in the 1830s and 1840s. By 1847, it only admitted the new breed of professionals. The Victorians were impressed by science and progress and felt that they could improve society in the same way as they were improving technology. Britain was the leading world centre for advanced engineering and technology. Its engineering firms were in worldwide demand for designing and constructing railways.


Ease of discovery and rate of progress

A necessary part of understanding scientific progress is the ease of scientific discovery. In many cases, from planetary science to mammalian biology, the ease of discovery since the 1700s and 1800s can be fitted to an exponentially decaying curve. But the rate of progress is also dependent on other factors, such as the number of researchers, the level of funding, and advances in technology. Thus the number of new species of mammals discovered between the late 1700s and late 1800s followed grew exponentially before leveling off in the 1900s; the general shape is known as the logistic curve. In other cases, a branch of study reached the point of saturation. For instance, the last major internal human organ, the paraythyroid gland, was discovered in 1880 by Ivar Viktor Sandström. This does not mean that basic science was coming an end. Despite the despondency of many Victorian-era scientists, who thought that all that remained was measuring quantities to the next decimal place and that new discoveries would not change the contemporary scientific paradigm, as the nineteenth century became the twentieth, science witnessed truly revolutionary discoveries, such as radioactivity, and basic science continued its advance, though a number of twentieth-century scientists shared the same pessimism as their late-Victorian counterparts.


Mathematics and statistics

In the field of statistics, the nineteenth century saw significant innovations in data visualisation.
William Playfair William Playfair (22 September 1759 – 11 February 1823), a Scottish engineer and political economist, served as a secret agent on behalf of Great Britain during its war with France. The founder of graphical methods of statistics, Playfa ...
, who created charts of all sorts, justified it thus, "a man who has carefully investigated a printed table, finds, when done, that he has only a very faint and partial idea of what he has read; and that like a figure imprinted on sand, is soon totally erased and defaced." For example, in a chart showing the relationship between population and government revenue of some European nations, he used the areas of circles to represent the geographical sizes of those nations. In the same graph he used the slopes of lines to indicate the tax burden of a given population. While serving as nurse during the Crimean War,
Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, ...
drew the first pie charts representing the monthly fatality rates of the conflict, distinguishing deaths due to battle wounds (innermost section), those due to infectious disease (outer section), and to other causes (middle section). (See figure.) Her charts clearly showed that most deaths resulted from disease, which led the general public to demand improved sanitation at field hospitals. Although bar charts representing frequencies were first used by the Frenchman A. M. Guerry in 1833, it was the statistician
Karl Pearson Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university st ...
who gave them the name ''
histogram A histogram is an approximate representation of the distribution of numerical data. The term was first introduced by Karl Pearson. To construct a histogram, the first step is to " bin" (or "bucket") the range of values—that is, divide the en ...
s''. Pearson used them in an 1895 article mathematically analyzing biological evolution. One such histogram showed that buttercups with large numbers of petals were rarer. Normal distributions, expressible in the form y = A e^, arose in various works on probability and the theory of errors. Belgian sociologist and statistician
Adolphe Quetelet Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet FRSF or FRSE (; 22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist who founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introd ...
discovered that its extremely wide applicability in his analysis of vast amounts of statistics of human physical characteristics such as height and other traits such as criminality and alcoholism. Quetelet derived the concept of the "average man" from his studies. Sir
Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- ...
employed Quetelet's ideas in his research on mathematical biology. In his experiments with sweet peas in the 1870s, Galton discovered that the spread of the distributions of a particular trait did not change over the generations. He invented what he called the "
quincunx A quincunx () is a geometric pattern consisting of five points arranged in a cross, with four of them forming a square or rectangle and a fifth at its center. The same pattern has other names, including "in saltire" or "in cross" in heraldry (dep ...
" to demonstrate why mixtures of normal distributions were normal. Galton noticed that the means of a particular trait in the offspring generation differed from those of the parent generation, a phenomenon now known as
regression to the mean In statistics, regression toward the mean (also called reversion to the mean, and reversion to mediocrity) is the fact that if one sample of a random variable is extreme, the next sampling of the same random variable is likely to be closer to ...
. He found that the slopes of the regression lines of two given variables were the same if the two data sets were scaled by units of probable error and introduced the notion of the correlation coefficient, but noted that
correlation does not imply causation The phrase "correlation does not imply causation" refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them. The id ...
. During the late nineteenth century, British statisticians introduced a number of methods to relate and draw conclusions from statistical quantities.
Francis Edgeworth Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (8 February 1845 – 13 February 1926) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and political economist who made significant contributions to the methods of statistics during the 1880s. From 1891 onward, he was appointed th ...
developed a test for
statistical significance In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the p ...
that estimated the "fluctuations"—twice the variance in modern language—from two given means. By modern standards, however, he was extremely conservative when it comes to drawing conclusions about the significance of an observation. For Edgeworth, an observation was significant if it was at the level of 0.005, which is much stricter than the requirement of 0.05 to 0.01 commonly used today. Pearson defined the
standard deviation In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, w ...
and introduced the \chi^2-statistic ( chi-squared). Pearson's student, George Udney Yule, demonstrated that one could compute the regression equation of a given data set using the
method of least squares The method of least squares is a standard approach in regression analysis to approximate the solution of overdetermined systems (sets of equations in which there are more equations than unknowns) by minimizing the sum of the squares of the re ...
. In 1828, miller and autodidactic mathematician George Green published ''
An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism ''An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism'' is a fundamental publication by George Green in 1828, where he extends previous work of Siméon Denis Poisson on electricity and magnetism. The ...
'', making use of the mathematics of potential theory developed by Continental mathematicians. But this paper fell on deaf ears until William Thomson read it, realised its significance, and had it re-printed in 1850. Green's work became a source of inspiration for the Cambridge school of mathematical physicists, which included Thomson himself, George Gabriel Stokes, and James Clerk Maxwell. Green's ''Essay'' contained what became known as
Green's theorem In vector calculus, Green's theorem relates a line integral around a simple closed curve to a double integral over the plane region bounded by . It is the two-dimensional special case of Stokes' theorem. Theorem Let be a positively oriente ...
, a basic result in vector calculus, Green's identities, and the notion of
Green's function In mathematics, a Green's function is the impulse response of an inhomogeneous linear differential operator defined on a domain with specified initial conditions or boundary conditions. This means that if \operatorname is the linear differentia ...
s, which appears in the study of differential equations. Thomson went on to prove
Stokes' theorem Stokes's theorem, also known as the Kelvin–Stokes theorem Nagayoshi Iwahori, et al.:"Bi-Bun-Seki-Bun-Gaku" Sho-Ka-Bou(jp) 1983/12Written in Japanese)Atsuo Fujimoto;"Vector-Kai-Seki Gendai su-gaku rekucha zu. C(1)" :ja:培風館, Bai-Fu-Kan( ...
, which earned that name after Stokes asked students to prove in the
Smith's Prize The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the ...
exam in 1854. Stokes learned it from Thomson in a letter in 1850. Stokes' theorem generalises Green's theorem, which itself is a higher-dimensional version of the
Fundamental Theorem of Calculus The fundamental theorem of calculus is a theorem that links the concept of differentiating a function (calculating its slopes, or rate of change at each time) with the concept of integrating a function (calculating the area under its graph, or ...
. Research in physics—in particular elasticity, heat conduction, hydrodynamics, and electromagnetism—motivated the development of vector calculus in the nineteenth century.
Arthur Cayley Arthur Cayley (; 16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was a prolific British mathematician who worked mostly on algebra. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics. As a child, Cayley enjoyed solving complex maths problems ...
is credited with the creation of the theory of
matrices Matrix most commonly refers to: * ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise ** '' The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film ** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchi ...
—rectangular arrays of numbers—as distinct objects from
determinant In mathematics, the determinant is a scalar value that is a function of the entries of a square matrix. It characterizes some properties of the matrix and the linear map represented by the matrix. In particular, the determinant is nonzero if an ...
s, studied since the mid-eighteenth century. The term ''matrix'' was coined by
James Joseph Sylvester James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership r ...
, a major contributor to the theory of determinants. It is difficult to overestimate the value of matrix theory to modern theoretical physics. Peter Tait wrote, prophetically, that Cayley was "forging the weapons for future generations of physicists."


Theoretical mechanics and optics

Early contributions study of elasticity—how objects behave under stresses, pressures, and loads— employed ''ad hoc'' hypotheses to solve specific problems. It was during the nineteenth century that scientists began to work out a thorough theory. In 1821, using an analogy with elastic bodies, French professor of mechanics
Claude-Louis Navier Claude-Louis Navier (born Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier; ; 10 February 1785 – 21 August 1836) was a French mechanical engineer, affiliated with the French government, and a physicist who specialized in continuum mechanics. The Navier–Sto ...
arrived at the basic equations of motion for viscous fluids. George Gabriel Stokes re-derived them in 1845 using continuum mechanics in a paper titled "On the Theories of Internal Friction of Fluids in Motion." In it, Stokes sought to develop a mathematical description for all known fluids that take into account
viscosity The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the in ...
, or internal friction. These are now referred to as the
Navier–Stokes equations In physics, the Navier–Stokes equations ( ) are partial differential equations which describe the motion of viscous fluid substances, named after French engineer and physicist Claude-Louis Navier and Anglo-Irish physicist and mathematician Ge ...
. In 1852, Stokes showed that light polarisation can be described in terms of what are now known as the Stokes parameters. The Stokes parameters for a given wave may be viewed as a vector. Founded in the eighteenth century, the
calculus of variations The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...
grew into a much favored mathematical tool among physicists. Scientific problems thus became the impetus for the development of the subject.
William Rowan Hamilton Sir William Rowan Hamilton LL.D, DCL, MRIA, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Irel ...
advanced it in his course to construct a deductive framework for
optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...
; he then applied the same ideas to
mechanics Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects r ...
. With an appropriate
variational principle In science and especially in mathematical studies, a variational principle is one that enables a problem to be solved using calculus of variations, which concerns finding functions that optimize the values of quantities that depend on those funct ...
, one could deduce the equations of motion for a given mechanical or optical system. Soon, scientists worked out the variational principles for the theory of elasticity, electromagnetism, and fluid mechanics (and, in the future, relativity and quantum theory). Whilst variational principles did not necessarily provide a simpler way to solve problems, they were of interest for philosophical or aesthetic reasons, though scientists at this time were not as motivated by religion in their work as their predecessors. Hamilton's work in physics was great achievement; he was able to provide a unifying mathematical framework for wave propagation and particle motion. In light of this description, it becomes clear why the wave and corpuscle theories of light were equally able to account for the phenomena of reflection and refraction. Hamilton's equations also proved useful in calculating planetary orbits. In 1845, John James Waterson submitted to the Royal Society a paper on the
kinetic theory of gases Kinetic (Ancient Greek: κίνησις “kinesis”, movement or to move) may refer to: * Kinetic theory, describing a gas as particles in random motion * Kinetic energy, the energy of an object that it possesses due to its motion Art and ent ...
that included a statement of the
equipartition theorem In classical statistical mechanics, the equipartition theorem relates the temperature of a system to its average energies. The equipartition theorem is also known as the law of equipartition, equipartition of energy, or simply equipartition. ...
and a calculation of the ratio of the specific heats of gases. Although the paper was read before the Society and its abstract published, Waterson's paper faced antipathy. At this time, the kinetic theory of gases was considered highly speculative as it was based on the then not-accepted atomic hypothesis. But by the mid-1850s, interest was revived. In the 1860s, James Clerk Maxwell published a series of papers on the subject. Unlike those of his predecessors, who were only using averages, Maxwell's papers were explicitly statistical in nature. He proposed that the speeds of molecules in a gas followed a distribution. Although the speeds would cluster around the average, some molecules were moving faster or slower than this average. He showed that this distribution is a function of temperature and mathematically described various properties of gases, such as diffusion and viscosity. He predicted, surprisingly, that the viscosity of a gas is independent of its density. This was verified at once by a series of experiments Maxwell conducted with his wife, Katherine. Experimental verification of the
Maxwell distribution Maxwell may refer to: People * Maxwell (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** James Clerk Maxwell, mathematician and physicist * Justice Maxwell (disambiguation) * Maxwell baronets, in the Baronetage o ...
was not obtained till 60 years later, however. In the meantime, the Austrian
Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodyn ...
developed Maxwell's statistics further and proved, in 1872, using the "H-function," that the Maxwellian distribution is stable and any non-Maxwellian distribution would morph into it. In his ''Dynamics of Rigid Bodies'' (1877),
Edward John Routh Edward John Routh (; 20 January 18317 June 1907), was an English mathematician, noted as the outstanding coach of students preparing for the Mathematical Tripos examination of the University of Cambridge in its heyday in the middle of the nine ...
noted the importance of what he called "absent coordinates," also known as cyclic coordinates or ignorable coordinates (following the terminology of E. T. Whittaker). Such coordinates are associated with conserved momenta and as such are useful in problem solving. Routh also devised a new method for solving problems in mechanics. Although Routh's procedure does not add any new insights, it allows for more systematic and convenient analysis, especially in problems with many degrees of freedom and at least some cyclic coordinates. In 1899, at the request the British Association for the Advancement of Science from the year before,
Edmund Taylor Whittaker Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathema ...
submitted his ''Report on the Progress of Solution to the Problem of Three Bodies''. At that time, classical mechanics in general and the
three-body problem In physics and classical mechanics, the three-body problem is the problem of taking the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses and solving for their subsequent motion according to Newton's laws of motion and Newton' ...
in particular captured the imagination of many talented mathematicians, whose contributions Whittaker covered in his ''Report''. Whittaker later incorporated the ''Report'' into his textbook titled '' Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies'' (first edition 1907). It helped provide the scientific basis for the aerospace industry in the twentieth century. Despite its age, it remains in print in the early twenty-first century.


Thermodynamics, heat engines, and refrigerators

During the 1830s and 1840s, traditional caloric theory of heat began losing favour to "dynamical" alternatives, which posit that heat is a kind of motion. Brewer and amateur scientist
James Prescott Joule James Prescott Joule (; 24 December 1818 11 October 1889) was an English physicist, mathematician and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work (see energy). T ...
was one of the proponents of the latter. Joule's intricate experiments—the most successful of which involved heating water with paddle wheels—making full use of his skill in temperature control as a brewer, demonstrated decisively the reality of the "mechanical equivalent of heat." What would later become known as the "conservation of energy" was pursued by many other workers approaching the subject from a variety of backgrounds, from medicine and physiology to physics and engineering. Another notable contributor to this development was the German researcher
Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association ...
, who gave an essentially Newtonian, that is, mechanical, account. William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) received the works of Joule and Helmholtz positively, embracing them as providing support for the emerging "science of energy." In the late 1840s to the 1850s, Kelvin, his friend
William John Macquorn Rankine William John Macquorn Rankine (; 5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mechanical engineer who also contributed to civil engineering, physics and mathematics. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson ...
, and the German Rudolf Clausius published a steady stream of papers concerning heat engines and an absolute temperature scale. Indeed, the commercial value of new science had already become apparent by this time; some businessmen were quite willing to offer generous financial support for researchers. Rankine spoke confidently of the new science of ''thermodynamics'', a term Kelvin coined in 1854, whose fundamental principles came to be known as the
First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
and Second Laws and whose core concepts were "energy" and "entropy." Kelvin and
Peter Guthrie Tait Peter Guthrie Tait FRSE (28 April 1831 – 4 July 1901) was a Scottish mathematical physicist and early pioneer in thermodynamics. He is best known for the mathematical physics textbook '' Treatise on Natural Philosophy'', which he co-wrote ...
's '' Treatise on Natural Philosophy'' (1867) was an attempt to reformulate physics in terms of energy. Here, Kelvin and Tait introduced the phrase ''
kinetic energy In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its accele ...
'' (instead of 'actual'), now in standard usage. The phrase ''
potential energy In physics, potential energy is the energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors. Common types of potential energy include the gravitational potent ...
'' was promoted by Rankine. On the practical side, the food-preserving effect of low temperatures had long been recognised. Natural ice was vigorously traded in the early nineteenth century, but it was inevitably in short supply, especially in Australia. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was considerable commercial incentive to develop ever more effective
refrigerator A refrigerator, colloquially fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so t ...
s thanks to the expansion of agriculture in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand and rapid urbanization in Western Europe. From the 1830s onward, refrigerators relied on the expansion of compressed air or the evaporation of a volatile liquid; evaporation became the basis of all modern refrigerator designs. Long-distance shipping of perishable foods, such as meat, boomed in the late 1800s. On the theoretical side, new refrigeration techniques were also of great value. From his absolute temperature scale, Lord Kelvin deduced the existence of absolute zero occurring at −273.15 °C. Scientists began trying to reach ever lower temperatures and to liquefy every gas they encountered. This paved the way for the development of
low-temperature physics In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “ ...
and the
Third Law of Thermodynamics The third law of thermodynamics states, regarding the properties of closed systems in thermodynamic equilibrium: This constant value cannot depend on any other parameters characterizing the closed system, such as pressure or applied magnetic fiel ...
.


Natural history

This study of natural history was most powerfully advanced by
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended f ...
and his theory of
evolution Evolution is change in the heredity, heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the Gene expression, expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to ...
first published in his book ''
On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'' in 1859. Research in geology and evolutionary biology naturally led to the question of how old the Earth was. Indeed, between the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s, this was the topic of increasingly sophisticated intellectual discussions. With the advent of thermodynamics, it became clear that the Earth and the Sun must have an old but finite age. Whatever the energy source of the Sun, it must be finite, and since it is constantly dissipating, there must be a day when the Sun runs out of energy. Lord Kelvin wrote in 1852, "...within a finite period of time past the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come the earth must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on are subject." In the 1860s, Kelvin employed a mathematical model by von Helmholtz suggesting that the energy of the Sun is released via gravitational collapse to calculate the age of the Sun to be between 50 and 500 million years. He reached comparable figures for the Earth. The missing ingredient here was radioactivity, which was not known to science till the end of the nineteenth century.


Electricity, magnetism, and electrification

After the Dane
Hans Christian Ørsted Hans Christian Ørsted ( , ; often rendered Oersted in English; 14 August 17779 March 1851) was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, which was the first connection found between electrici ...
demonstrated that it was possible to deflect a magnetic needle by closing or opening an electric circuit nearby, a deluge of papers attempting explain the phenomenon was published.
Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, ...
set himself to the task of clarifying the nature of electricity and magnetism by experiments. In doing so, he devised what could be described as the first
electric motor An electric motor is an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a wire winding to generate force ...
(though it does not resemble a modern one), a
transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's ...
(now used to step up the voltage and step down the current or vice versa), and a
dynamo "Dynamo Electric Machine" (end view, partly section, ) A dynamo is an electrical generator that creates direct current using a commutator. Dynamos were the first electrical generators capable of delivering power for industry, and the foundat ...
(which contains the basics of all electric turbine generators). The practical value of Faraday's research on electricity and magnetism was nothing short of revolutionary. A dynamo converts mechanical energy into an electrical current whilst a motor does the reverse. The world's first power plants entered service in 1883, and by the following year, people realized the possibility of using electricity to power a variety of household appliances. Inventors and engineers soon raced to develop such items, starting with affordable and durable incandescent light bulbs, perhaps the most important of the early applications of electricity. As the foremost expert on electricity and magnetism at the time, Lord Kelvin oversaw the laying of the trans-Atlantic telegraphic cable, which became successful in 1866. Drawing on the work of his predecessors, especially the experimental research of Michael Faraday, the analogy with heat flow by Lord Kelvin, and the mathematical analysis of George Green,
James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...
synthesized all that was known about electricity and magnetism into a single mathematical framework,
Maxwell's equations Maxwell's equations, or Maxwell–Heaviside equations, are a set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, and electric circuits. ...
. Maxwell used his equations to predict the existence of electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light. In other words, light is but one kind of electromagnetic wave. Maxwell's theory predicted there ought to be other types, with different frequencies. After some ingenious experiments, Maxwell's prediction was confirmed by German physicist
Heinrich Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The unit o ...
. In the process, Hertz generated and detected what are now called radio waves and built crude radio antennas and the predecessors of satellite dishes. Dutch physicist
Hendrik Lorentz Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (; 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the Lorent ...
derived, using suitable boundary conditions,
Fresnel's equations The Fresnel equations (or Fresnel coefficients) describe the reflection and transmission of light (or electromagnetic radiation in general) when incident on an interface between different optical media. They were deduced by Augustin-Jean Fre ...
for the reflection and transmission of light in different media from Maxwell's equations. He also showed that Maxwell's theory succeeded in illuminating the phenomenon of light dispersion where other models failed.
John William Strutt John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Amo ...
(Lord Rayleigh) and the American
Josiah Willard Gibbs Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in ...
then proved that the optical equations derived from Maxwell's theory are the only self-consistent description of the reflection, refraction, and dispersion of light consistent with experimental results. Optics thus found a new foundation in electromagnetism. But it was
Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside FRS (; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vec ...
, an enthusiastic supporter of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, who deserves most of the credit for shaping how people understood and applied Maxwell's work for decades to come. Maxwell originally wrote down a grand total of 20 equations for the electromagnetic field, which he later reduced to eight. Heaviside rewrote them in the form commonly used today, just four expressions. In addition, Heaviside was responsible for considerable progress in electrical telegraphy, telephony, and the study of the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Independent of Gibbs, Heaviside assembled a set of mathematical tools known as
vector calculus Vector calculus, or vector analysis, is concerned with differentiation and integration of vector fields, primarily in 3-dimensional Euclidean space \mathbb^3. The term "vector calculus" is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader subje ...
to replace the
quaternion In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a qua ...
s, which were in vogue at the time but which Heaviside dismissed as "antiphysical and unnatural." Faraday also investigated how electrical currents affected chemical solutions. His experiments led him to the two laws of
electrochemistry Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference, as a measurable and quantitative phenomenon, and identifiable chemical change, with the potential difference as an outc ...
. Together with Whewell, Faraday introduced the basic vocabulary for the subject, the words ''electrode'', ''anode'', ''cathode'', ''electrolysis'', ''electrolyte'', ''ion'', ''anion'', and ''cation''. They remain in standard usage. But Faraday's work was of value to more than just chemists. In his Faraday Memorial Lecture in 1881, the German Hermann von Helmholtz asserted that Faraday's laws of electrochemistry hinted at the atomic structure of matter. If the chemical elements were distinguishable from one another by simple ratios of mass, and if the same amounts of electricity deposited amounts of these elements upon the poles in ratios, then electricity must also come in as discrete units, later named electrons. In the late nineteenth century, the nature of the energy emitted by the discharge between high-voltage electrodes inside an evacuated tube—
cathode ray Cathode rays or electron beam (e-beam) are streams of electrons observed in discharge tubes. If an evacuated glass tube is equipped with two electrodes and a voltage is applied, glass behind the positive electrode is observed to glow, due to ele ...
s—attracted the attention of many physicists. While the Germans thought cathode rays were waves, the British and the French believed they were particles. Working at the
Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is name ...
, established by Maxwell,
J. J. Thomson Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered. In 1897, Thomson showed that ...
directed a dedicate experiment demonstrating that cathode rays were in fact negatively charged particles, now called electrons. The experiment enabled Thompson to calculate the ratio between the magnitude of the charge and the mass of the particle (q/m). In addition, because the ratio was the same regardless of the metal used, Thompson concluded that electrons must be a constituent of all atoms. Although the atoms of each chemical elements have different numbers of electrons, all electrons are identical.


Computer science and logic

Inspired by the explorations in abstract algebra of George Peacock and Augustus de Morgan,
George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ire ...
published a book titled ''An Investigation of the Laws of Thought'' (1854), in which he brought the study of logic from philosophy and metaphysics to mathematics. His stated goal was to "investigate the fundamental laws of those operations of the mind by which reasoning is performed; to give expression to them in the symbolical language of a Calculus, and upon this foundation to establish the science of logical and construct its methods." Although ignored at first,
Boolean algebra In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denoted 1 and 0, whereas i ...
, as it is now known, became central to the design of circuits and computers in the following century. The desire to construct calculating machines is not new. In fact, it can be traced all the way back to the Hellenistic Civilization. While people have devised such machines over the centuries, mathematicians continued to perform calculations by hand, as machines offered little advantage in speed. For complicated calculations, they employed tables, especially of logarithmic and trigonometric functions, which were computed by hand. But right in the middle of the Industrial Revolution in England,
Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...
thought of using the all-important steam engine to power a mechanical computer, the Difference Engine. Unfortunately, whilst Babbage managed to secure government funds for the construction of the machine, the government subsequently lost interest and Babbage faced considerable troubles developing the necessary machine components. He abandoned the project to pursue a new one, his Analytical Engine. By 1838, he had worked out the basic design. Like a modern computer, it consisted of two basic parts, one that stores the numbers to be processed (the store), and one that performed the operations (the mill). Babbage adopted the concept of punch cards from the French engineer Joseph Jacquard, who had used it to automate the textile industry in France, to control the operations of his Analytical Engine. Unfortunately, he again lacked the financial resources to build it, and so it remained a theoretical construct. But he did leave behind detailed notes and engineering drawings, from which modern experts conclude that the technology of the time was advanced enough to actually build it, even if he never had enough money to do so. In 1840, Babbage went to Turin to give lectures on his work designing the Analytical Engine to Italian scientists.
Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the An ...
translated the notes published by one of the attendees into English and heavily annotated it. She wrote down the very first computer program, in her case one for computing the Bernoulli numbers. She employed what modern computer programmers would recognise as Loop (computing), loops and decision steps, and gave a detailed diagram, possibly the first flowchart ever created. She noted that a calculating machine could perform not just arithmetic operations but also symbolic manipulations. On the limitations and implications of the computer, she wrote,


Communication and transportation


Steam ships

Steam ships were one of the keys to Britain's prosperity in the nineteenth century. This technology, which predates the Victorian era, had a long a rich history. Starting in the late 1700s, people had begun building steam-powered ships with ever increasing size, operational range, and speed, first to cross the English Channel and then the Atlantic and finally to reach places as far away as India and Australia without having to refuel mid-route. International trade and travel boosted demand, and there was intense competition among the shipping companies. Steam ships such as the SS Great Britain, SS ''Great Britain'' and SS Great Western, SS ''Great Western'' made international travel more common but also advanced trade, so that in Britain it was not just the luxury goods of earlier times that were imported into the country but essentials and raw materials such as corn and cotton from the United States and meat and wool from Australia. At 693 feet long, 120 feet wide and weighing over 18,900 tons, the SS Great Eastern, SS ''Great Eastern'' was the largest ship built at the time, capable of transporting 4,000 passengers from Britain to Australia without having to refuel along the way. Even when she was finally broken up for scraps in 1888, she was still the largest ship in the world. Her record was not broken till the Edwardian era with super liners like the ''Lusitania'' in 1907, the ''Titanic'' in 1912. Yet despite being a remarkable feat of engineering, the ''Great Eastern'' became more and more of a white elephant as smaller and faster ships were in greater demand. Nevertheless, she gained a new lease of life when she was chartered to lay telegraphic cables across the Atlantic, and then to India. Her size and range made her ideally suited for the task. The British government had long realised that national prosperity depended on trade. For that reason, it deployed the Royal Navy to protect maritime trade routes and financed the construction of many steam ships.


Telegraphy, telephony, the wireless, and photography

File:James Pollard - The Louth-London Royal Mail Travelling by Train from Peterborough East, Northamptonshire - Google Art Project.jpg, ''The Louth-London Royal Mail Travelling by Train from Peterborough East, Northamptonshire'' (1845) by James Pollard. File:All Red Line.jpg, The British Empire's All Red Line, submarine telegraphic cable network eventually connected all of its major possessions. Although the idea of transmitting messages via electrical signals dated back to the eighteenth century, it was not until the 1820s that advances in the study of electricity and magnetism made that a practical reality. In 1837, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone invented a telegraphic system that used electrical currents to deflect magnetic needles, thus transmitting coded messages. This Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, design soon made its way all across Britain, appearing in every town and post office. By the mid-1800s, a telegraphic cable was laid across the English Channel, the Irish Sea, and the North Sea. In 1866, the SS ''Great Eastern'' successfully laid the Transatlantic telegraph cable, transatlantic telegraphic cable. A global network boomed towards the end of the century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Like the telegraph, the telephone enabled rapid personal communication. A little over a decade later, 26,000 telephones were in service in Britain (and 150,000 in America). Multiple switchboards were installed in every major town and city. Hertz's experimental work in electromagnetism stimulated interest in the possibility of wireless communication, which did not require long and expensive cables and was faster than even the telegraph. Receiving little support in his native Italy, Guglielmo Marconi moved to England and adapted Hertz's equipment for this purpose in the 1890s. He achieved the first international wireless transmission between England and France in 1900 and by the following year, he succeeded in sending messages in Morse code across the Atlantic. Seeing its value, the shipping industry adopted this technology at once. Radio broadcasting became extremely popular in the twentieth century and remains in common use in the early twenty-first. In fact, the global communications network of the twenty-first century has its roots in the Victorian era. Photography was realised in 1839 by Louis Daguerre in France and William Fox Talbot in Britain. By 1889, hand-held cameras were available. Another important innovation in communications was the Penny Black, the first postage stamp, which standardised postage to a flat price regardless of distance sent.


Railways

A central development during the Victorian era was the rise of rail transport. The new railways all allowed goods, raw materials, and people to be moved about, rapidly facilitating trade and industry. The financing of railways became an important specialty of London's financiers. They retained an ownership share even while turning over management to locals; that ownership was largely liquidated in 1914–1916 to pay for the World War. Railroads originated in England because industrialists had already discovered the need for inexpensive transportation to haul coal for the new steam engines, to supply parts to specialized factories, and to take products to market. The existing system of canals was inexpensive but was too slow and too limited in geography. The railway system led to a reorganisation of society more generally, with "railway time" being the standard by which clocks were set throughout Britain; the complex railway system setting the standard for technological advances and efficiency. The engineers and businessmen needed to create and finance a railway system were available; they knew how to invent, to build, and to finance a large complex system. The first quarter of the 19th century involved numerous experiments with locomotives and rail technology. By 1825 railways were commercially feasible, as demonstrated by George Stephenson (1791–1848) when he built the Stockton and Darlington. On his first run, his locomotive pulled 38 freight and passenger cars at speeds as high as 12 miles per hour. Stephenson went on to design many more railways and is best known for standardizing designs, such as the "standard gauge" of rail spacing, at 4 feet 8 inches. Thomas Brassey (1805–70) was even more prominent, operating construction crews that at one point in the 1840s totalled 75,000 men throughout Europe, the British Empire, and Latin America. Brassey took thousands of British engineers and mechanics across the globe to build new lines. They invented and improved thousands of mechanical devices, and developed the science of civil engineering to build roadways, tunnels and bridges. Britain had a superior financial system based in London that funded both the railways in Britain and also in many other parts of the world, including the United States, up until 1914. The boom years were 1836 and 1845–47 when Parliament authorised 8,000 miles of lines at a projected cost of £200 million, which was about the same value as the country's annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at that time. A new railway needed a charter, which typically cost over £200,000 (about $1 million) to obtain from Parliament, but opposition could effectively prevent its construction. The canal companies, unable or unwilling to upgrade their facilities to compete with railways, used political power to try to stop them. The railways responded by purchasing about a fourth of the canal system, in part to get the right of way, and in part to buy off critics. Once a charter was obtained, there was little government regulation, as laissez-faire and private ownership had become accepted practices. The different lines typically had exclusive territory, but given the compact size of Britain, this meant that multiple competing lines could provide service between major cities. George Hudson (1800–1871) became the "railway king" of Britain. He merged various independent lines and set up a "Clearing House" in 1842 which rationalized interconnections by establishing uniform paperwork and standard methods for transferring passengers and freight between lines, and rates when one system used freight cars owned by another. By 1850, rates had fallen to a penny a ton mile for coal, at speeds of up to fifty miles an hour. Britain now had had the model for the world in a well integrated, well-engineered system that allowed fast, cheap movement of freight and people, and which could be replicated in other major nations. The railways directly or indirectly employed tens of thousands of engineers, mechanics, repairmen and technicians, as well as statisticians and financial planners. They developed new and more efficient and less expensive techniques. Most important, they created a mindset of how technology could be used in many different forms of business. Railways had a major impact on industrialization. By lowering transportation costs, they reduced costs for all industries moving supplies and finished goods, and they increased demand for the production of all the inputs needed for the railroad system itself. By 1880, there were 13,500 locomotives which each carried 97,800 passengers a year, or 31,500 tons of freight. Member of Parliament and Solicitor to the City of London Charles Pearson campaigned for an underground rail service in London. Parts of the first such railway, the Metropolitan line, Metropolitan Line, opened to the public in 1863, thereby becoming the first subway line in the world. Trains were originally steam-powered, but in 1890, the first electric trains entered service. That same year, the whole system became officially known as the Tube after the shape of the rail tunnels. (It was not until 1908 that the name London Underground was introduced.) India provides an example of the London-based financiers pouring money and expertise into a very well built system designed for military reasons (after the Mutiny of 1857), and with the hope that it would stimulate industry. The system was overbuilt and much too elaborate and expensive for the small amount of freight traffic it carried. However, it did capture the imagination of the Indians, who saw their railways as the symbol of an industrial modernity—but one that was not realised until a century or so later.


Public safety, health and medicine

A Coal gas, gas Cross-link, network for Gas lighting, lighting and Gas heater, heating was introduced in the 1880s.Anthony S. Wohl, ''Endangered lives: public health in Victorian Britain'' (JM Dent and Sons, 1983) The model town of Saltaire was founded, along with others, as a planned environment with good sanitation and many civic, educational and recreational facilities, although it lacked a pub, which was regarded as a focus of dissent. Although initially developed in the early years of the 19th century, gas lighting became widespread during the Victorian era in industry, homes, public buildings and the Street light, streets. The invention of the Incandescence, incandescent gas mantle in the 1890s greatly improved light output and ensured its survival as late as the 1960s. Hundreds of gasworks were constructed in cities and towns across the country. In 1882, incandescent electric lights were introduced to London streets, although it took many years before they were installed everywhere. Medicine progressed during Queen Victoria's reign. In fact, medicine at the start of the nineteenth century was little different from that in the medieval era whereas by the end of the century, it became a lot closer to twenty-first century practice thanks to advances in science, especially microbiology, paving the way for the germ theory of disease. This was during the height of the Industrial Revolution, and urbanisation occurred at a frantic pace. As the population density of the cities grew, epidemics of cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, and typhus were commonplace. After studying previous outbreaks, physician John Snow drew the conclusion that cholera was a water-borne disease. When the 1854 broke out, Snow mapped the locations of the cases in Soho, London, and found that they centered around a well he deemed contaminated. He asked that the pump's handle be replaced, after which the epidemic petered out. Snow also discovered that households whose water supplies came from companies that used the Thames downstream, after many sewers had flown into the river, were fourteen times more likely to die from cholera. He thus recommended boiling water before use. Sanitation reforms, prompted by the Public Health Acts Public Health Act 1848, 1848 and 1869, were made in the crowded, dirty streets of the existing cities, and soap was the main product shown in the relatively new phenomenon of advertising. A great engineering feat in the Victorian Era was the London sewerage system, sewage system in London. It was designed by Joseph Bazalgette in 1858. He proposed to build of sewer system linked with over of street sewers. Many problems were encountered but the sewers were completed. After this, Bazalgette designed the Thames Embankment which housed sewers, water pipes and the London Underground. During the same period, London's water supply network was expanded and improved. John Simon (pathologist), John Simon, as chief medical officer of the General Board of Health, secured funds for research into various common infectious diseases at the time, including cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, and typhus. Using his political influence, he garnered support for the Public Health Act 1875, Public Health Act of 1875, which focused on preventative measures in housing, the water supply, sewage and drainage, providing Britain with an extensive public health system. By mid-century, the stethoscope became an oft-used device and designs of the microscope had advanced enough for scientists to closely examine pathogens. The pioneering work of French microbiologist Louis Pasteur from the 1850s earned widespread acceptance for the germ theory of disease. It led to the introduction antiseptics by Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, Joseph Lister in 1867 in the form of carbolic acid (phenol). He instructed the hospital staff to wear gloves and wash their hands, instruments, and dressings with a phenol solution and in 1869, he invented a machine that would spray carbolic acid in the operating theatre during surgery. Infection-related deaths fell noticeably as a result. As the British Empire expanded, Britons found themselves facing novel climates and contagions; there was active research into tropical diseases. In 1898, Ronald Ross proved that the mosquito was responsible for spreading malaria. Although nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, had been proposed as an anaesthetic as far back as 1799 by
Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for t ...
, it was not until 1846 when an American dentist named William T.G. Morton, William Morton started using diethyl ether, ether on his patients that anaesthetics became common in the medical profession. In 1847 chloroform was introduced as an anaesthetic by James Young Simpson. Chloroform was favoured by doctors and hospital staff because it is much less flammable than ether, but critics complained that it could cause the patient to have a heart attack. Chloroform gained in popularity in England and Germany after John Snow gave Queen Victoria chloroform for the birth of her eighth child (Prince Leopold). By 1920, chloroform was used in 80 to 95% of all narcoses performed in the UK and German-speaking countries. A combination of antiseptics and anaesthetics helped surgeons operate more carefully and comfortably on their patients. Anaesthetics made painless dentistry possible. At the same time sugar consumption in the British diet increased, greatly increasing instances of tooth decay. As a result, more and more people were having teeth extracted and needing dentures. This gave rise to "Waterloo Teeth", which were real human teeth set into hand-carved pieces of ivory from hippopotamus or walrus jaws. The teeth were obtained from executed criminals, victims of battlefields, from grave-robbers, and were even bought directly from the desperately impoverished. The increase in tooth decay also brought the first prominent recommendation for fluoride as a nutrient, particularly in pregnancy and childhood, in 1892. News of the discovery of X-rays in 1895 spread like wildfire. Its medical value was realised immediately, and within a year, doctors were prescribing X-rays for diagnosis, in particular to locate bone fractures and foreign objects inside the patient's body. Radioactivity was discovered 1896, and was later to used to treat cancer. During the second half of the nineteenth century, British medical doctors became increasingly specialised, following the footsteps of their German counterparts, and more hospitals were built. Surgeons began wearing gowns in the operating room and doctors white coats and stethoscopes, sights that are common in the early twenty-first century. Yet despite all the aforementioned medical advances, the mortality rate fell only marginally, from 20.8 per thousand in 1850 to 18.2 by the end of the century. Urbanisation aided the spread of diseases and squalid living conditions in many places exacerbated the problem. Moreover, while some diseases, such as cholera, were being driven out, others, such as Sexually transmitted infection, sexually transmitted diseases, made themselves felt.


Moral standards

Victorian morality was a surprising new reality. The changes in moral standards and actual behaviour across the British were profound. Historian Harold Perkin wrote:
Between 1780 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical.
Historians continue to debate the various causes of this dramatic change. Asa Briggs emphasizes the strong reaction against the French Revolution, and the need to focus British efforts on its defeat and not be diverged by pleasurable sins. Briggs also stresses the powerful role of the evangelical movement among the Nonconformists, as well as the evangelical faction inside the established Church of England. The religious and political reformers set up organizations that monitored behaviour, and pushed for government action. Among the higher social classes, there was a marked decline in gambling, horse races, and obscene theatres; there was much less heavy gambling or patronage of upscale houses of prostitution. The highly visible debauchery characteristic of aristocratic England in the early 19th century simply disappeared. Historians agree that the middle classes not only professed high personal moral standards, but actually followed them. There is a debate whether the working classes followed suit. Moralists in the late 19th century such as Henry Mayhew decried the slums for their supposed high levels of cohabitation without marriage and illegitimate births. However new research using computerized matching of data files shows that the rates of cohabitation were quite low—under 5%—for the working class and the poor. By contrast, in 21st-century Britain nearly half of all children are born outside marriage, and nine in ten newlyweds have been cohabitating.


Crime, police and prisons

Crime was getting exponentially worse. There were 4,065 arrests for criminal offenses in 1805, tripling to 14,437 in 1835 and doubling to 31,309 in 1842 in England and Wales. 18th-century British criminology had emphasized severe punishment. Slowly capital punishment was replaced by transportation, first to the American colonies and then to Australia, and, especially, by long-term incarceration in newly built prisons. As one historian points out, "Public and violent punishment which attacked the body by branding, whipping, and hanging was giving way to reformation of the mind of the criminal by breaking his spirit, and encouraging him to reflect on his shame, before labour and religion transformed his character." Crime rates went up, leading to calls for harsher measures to stop the 'flood of criminals' released under the penal servitude system. The reaction from the committee set up under the commissioner of prisons, Colonel Edmund Frederick du Cane, was to increase minimum sentences for many offences with deterrent principles of 'hard labour, hard fare, and a hard bed'. As the prisons grew more numerous, they became more depraved. Historian S. G. Checkland says, "It was sunk in promiscuity and squalor, jailers' tyranny and greed, and administrative confusion." In 1877 du Cane encouraged Benjamin Disraeli, Disraeli's government to remove all prisons from local government; he held a firm grip on the prison system till his forced retirement in 1895. By the 1890s, the prison population was over 20,000. By the Victorian era, penal transportation to Australia was falling out of use since it did not reduce crime rates. The British penal system underwent a transition from harsh punishment to reform, education, and training for post-prison livelihoods. The reforms were controversial and contested. In 1877–1914 era a series of major legislative reforms enabled significant improvement in the penal system. In 1877, the previously localized prisons were nationalized in the Home Office under a Prison Commission. The Prison Act of 1898 enabled the Home Secretary to impose multiple reforms on his own initiative, without going through the politicized process of Parliament. The Probation of Offenders Act of 1907 introduced a new probation system that drastically cut down the prison population, while providing a mechanism for transition back to normal life. The Criminal Justice Administration Act of 1914 required courts to allow a reasonable time before imprisonment was ordered for people who did not pay their fines. Previously tens of thousands of prisoners had been sentenced solely for that reason. The Borstal system after 1908 was organized to reclaim young offenders, and the Children Act of 1908 prohibited imprisonment under age 14, and strictly limited that of ages 14 to 16. The principal reformer was Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, the chair of the Prison Commission. The infamous Whitechapel murders, purportedly composed by serial killer Jack the Ripper, were committed in London in 1888, during the mid-to-late chapter of the Victorian era.


Prostitution

During Victorian England, prostitution was seen as a "great social evil" by clergymen and major news organizations, but many feminists viewed prostitution as a means of economic independence for women. Estimates of the number of prostitutes in London in the 1850s vary widely, but in his landmark study, ''Prostitution'', William Acton (doctor), William Acton reported an estimation of 8,600 prostitutes in London alone in 1857. The differing views on prostitution have made it difficult to understand its history. Judith Walkowitz has multiple works focusing on the feminist point of view on the topic of prostitution. Many sources blame economic disparities as leading factors in the rise of prostitution, and Walkowitz writes that the demographic within prostitution varied greatly. However, women who struggled financially were much more likely to be prostitutes than those with a secure source of income. Orphaned or half-orphaned women were more likely to turn to prostitution as a means of income. While overcrowding in urban cities and the amount of job opportunities for females were limited, Walkowitz argues that there were other variables that lead women to prostitution. Walkowitz acknowledges that prostitution allowed for women to feel a sense of independence and self-respect. Although many assume that pimps controlled and exploited these prostitutes, some women managed their own clientele and pricing. It is evident that women were exploited by this system, yet Walkowitz says that prostitution was often their opportunity to gain social and economic independence. Prostitution at this time was regarded by women in the profession to be a short-term position, and once they earned enough money, there were hopes that they would move on to a different profession. As previously stated, the arguments for and against prostitution varied greatly from it being perceived as a mortal sin or desperate decision to an independent choice. While there were plenty of people publicly denouncing prostitution in England, there were also others who took opposition to them. One event that sparked a lot of controversy was the implementation of the Contagious Diseases Acts. This was a series of three acts in 1864, 1866 and 1869 that allowed police officers to stop women whom they believed to be prostitutes and force them to be examined. If the suspected woman was found with a venereal disease, they placed the woman into a Lock Hospital. Arguments made against the acts claimed that the regulations were unconstitutional and that they only targeted women. In 1869, a National Association in opposition of the acts was created. Because women were excluded from the first National Association, the Ladies National Association was formed. The leader of that organization was Josephine Butler. Butler was an outspoken feminist during this time who fought for many social reforms. Her book ''Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade'' describes her oppositions to the C.D. acts. Along with the publication of her book, she also went on tours condemning the C.D. acts throughout the 1870s. Other supporters of reforming the acts included Quakers, Methodists and many doctors. Eventually the acts were fully repealed in 1886. The book ''Prostitution-Action'' by Dr. William Acton (doctor), William Acton included detailed reports on his observations of prostitutes and the hospitals they would be placed in if they were found with a venereal disease. Acton believed that prostitution was a poor institution but it is a result of the supply and demand for it. He wrote that men had sexual desires and they sought to relieve them, and for many, prostitution was the way to do it. While he referred to prostitutes as wretched women, he did note how the acts unfairly criminalized women and ignored the men involved.


Events

;1832: Passage of the first Reform Act.Swisher, Clarice, ed. ''Victorian England''. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. pp. 248–250 ;1833: The first Tract for the Times is written by
John Henry Newman John Henry Newman (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890) was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardi ...
, starting the Oxford Movement in the Church of England. ;1837: Ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne. ;1838: Publication of The People's Charter, a working-class manifesto, launches the Chartism movement for political reform. The Treaty of Balta Liman (Great Britain trade alliance with the Ottoman Empire). ;1839:
First Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of th ...
(1839–42) fought between Britain and China. ;1840:
Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...
marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield. He had been naturalisation, naturalised and granted the British style of ''Royal Highness'' beforehand. For the next 17 years, he was known as ''HRH'' Prince Albert. ;1840: New Zealand becomes a British colony, through the
Treaty of Waitangi The Treaty of Waitangi ( mi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi) is a document of central importance to the history, to the political constitution of the state, and to the national mythos of New Zealand. It has played a major role in the treatment of the ...
and no longer part of New South Wales ;1842: Chartism reaches a second climax with the presentation of 3 million signatures on its second Petition; Chartism launches a general strike across the northern and midland industrial districts. The
Treaty of Nanking The Treaty of Nanjing was the peace treaty which ended the First Opium War (1839–1842) between Great Britain and the Qing dynasty of China on 29 August 1842. It was the first of what the Chinese later termed the Unequal Treaties. In the w ...
gives British traders dominance in Chinese port cities. The Massacre of Elphinstone's Army by the Afghans results in the death or incarceration of 16,500 soldiers and civilians. The Mines Act of 1842 banned women/children from working in coal, iron, lead and tin mining. ''The Illustrated London News'' was first published. ;1845: The Great Famine (Ireland), Irish famine begins. Within five years it would become the UK's List of disasters of the United Kingdom and preceding states, worst human disaster, with starvation and emigration reducing the population of Ireland itself by over 50%. The famine permanently changed Ireland's and Scotland's demographics and became a rallying point for nationalist sentiment that pervaded British politics for much of the following century. ;1846: Repeal of the
Corn Laws The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word ''corn'' in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They we ...
opens era of free trade. ;1848: Death of 2,000 people a week in a cholera epidemic. ;1850: Restoration of the Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom, Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. (Scotland Restoration of the Scottish hierarchy, followed in 1878.) ;1851:
The Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took p ...
(the first World's Fair) is held at the Crystal Palace, with great success and international attention. The Victorian gold rush. In ten years the Australian population nearly tripled. ;1854:
Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
: Britain, France and Turkey declare limited war on Russia. Russia loses, but very high British casualties makes the work of the nurses led by
Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, ...
famous. ;1857: The Indian Rebellion of 1857, Indian Mutiny, a concentrated revolt in northern India against the rule of East India Company, the privately owned British East India Company, is sparked by ''
sepoy ''Sepoy'' () was the Persian-derived designation originally given to a professional Indian infantryman, traditionally armed with a musket, in the armies of the Mughal Empire. In the 18th century, the French East India Company and its ot ...
s'' (native Indian soldiers) in the company's army. The rebellion, involving not just sepoys but many sectors of the Indian population as well, is largely quashed within a year. The East India Company is replaced by the British government beginning the period of the British Raj. ;1858: The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, responds to the Orsini affair, Orsini plot against French Emperor Napoleon III of France, Napoleon III, the bombs for which were purchased in Birmingham, by attempting to make such acts a felony; the resulting uproar forces him to resign. ;1859:
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended f ...
publishes ''
On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'', which leads to Reaction to Darwin's theory, various reactions. Victoria and Albert's first grandchild, Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, is born – he later became William II, German Emperor.
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
publishes ''On Liberty'', a defence of the famous harm principle. ;1861: Death of Albert, Prince Consort, Prince Albert; Queen Victoria refuses to go out in public for many years, and when she did she wore a widow's Bonnet (headgear), bonnet instead of the crown. ;1865:
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
'' is published. ;1866: An angry crowd in London, protesting against John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, John Russell's resignation as Prime Minister, is barred from Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park by the Law enforcement in the United Kingdom, police; they tear down iron guard rail, railings and trample on garden, flower beds. Disturbances like this convince Derby and Disraeli of the need for further parliamentary reform. ;1867: The Constitution Act, 1867 passes and British North America becomes Dominion of Canada. ;1870-1899: A series of educational reforms leads to the introduction of compulsory education for 5- to 12-year-olds (13-year-olds in Scotland) and universal access to free State school, state primary education in Great Britain. ;1875: Britain purchased Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal as the African nation was forced to raise money to pay off its Isma'il Pasha#Suez Canal, debts. ;1876: Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone. ;1878: Treaty of Berlin (1878), Treaty of Berlin. Cyprus becomes a Crown colony. ;1879: The Battle of Isandlwana is the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War. ;1881: The British suffer defeat at the Battle of Majuba Hill, leading to the signing of a peace treaty and later the Pretoria Convention, between the British and the reinstated South African Republic, ending the
First Boer War The First Boer War ( af, Eerste Vryheidsoorlog, literally "First Freedom War"), 1880–1881, also known as the First Anglo–Boer War, the Transvaal War or the Transvaal Rebellion, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 betwee ...
. Sometimes claimed to mark the beginning of the decline of the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts ...
. ;1882: British Army, British troops begin the British occupation of Egypt, occupation of Egypt by taking the Suez Canal, to secure the vital trade route and passage to India, and the country becomes a protectorate. ;1884: The Fabian Society is founded in London by a group of middle-class intellectuals, including Religious Society of Friends, Quaker Edward R. Pease, Havelock Ellis and E. Nesbit, to promote socialism. Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany dies. ;1885: Blackpool Electric Tramway Company starts the first electric tram service in the United Kingdom. ;1886: Prime Minister
William Ewart Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-con ...
and the Liberal Party tries passing the First Irish Home Rule Bill, but the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons rejects it. ;1888: The serial killer known as Jack the Ripper murders and mutilates five (and possibly more) women on the streets of London. ;1889: Emily Williamson founds the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. ;1889-1890: Russian flu Pandemic. ;1898: British and Egyptian troops led by Horatio Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, Horatio Kitchener defeat the Mahdist forces at the battle of Omdurman, thus establishing British dominance in the Sudan. Winston Churchill takes part in the British cavalry charge at Omdurman. ;1899: The
Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...
is fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer Republics, Boer republics. The Boers finally surrendered and the British annexed the Boer republics. ;1901: The death of Victoria sees the end of this era. The ascension of her eldest son, Edward, begins the Edwardian era.


See also


Citations


Further reading


General

* Adams, James Eli, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era'' (4 Vol. 2004), short essays on a wide range of topics by experts * Bailey, Peter. ''Leisure and class in Victorian England: Rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830–1885'' (Routledge, 2014). * Best, Geoffrey. ''Mid-Victorian Britain, 1851-1875'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971) * Bourne, Kenneth. ''The foreign policy of Victorian England, 1830-1902'' (1970
online
survey plus primary documents * Briggs, Asa. ''The Age of Improvement 1783–1867'' (1979), Wide-ranging older survey emphasizing the reforms
online
* Cevasco, G. A. ed. ''The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture'' (1993) 736pp; short articles by experts * Chadwick, Owen. ''The Victorian Church'' (2 vol 1966), covers all denomination
online
* Clark, G. Kitson ''The making of Victorian England'' (1963)
online
* Ensor, R. C. K. ''England, 1870–1914'' (1936) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.49856 online] influential scholarly survey * Gregg, Pauline. ''A Social and Economic History of Britain: 1760–1950'' (1950
online
* Harrison, J.F.C. ''Early Victorian Britain 1832–1851'' (Fontana, 1979). * Harrison, J.F.C. ''Late Victorian Britain 1875–1901'' (Routledge, 2013). * Heffer, Simon. ''High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain'' (2014), survey to 1880. * Heffer, Simon. ''The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914'' (2017), wide-ranging scholarly survey. * Heilmann, Ann, and Mark Llewellyn, eds. ''Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999–2009'' (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 323 pages; looks at recent literary & cinematic, interest in the Victorian era, including magic, sexuality, theme parks, and the postcolonial * Hilton, Boyd. ''A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783–1846'' (New Oxford History of England. 2006); in-depth scholarly survey, 784pp. * * McCord, Norman and Bill Purdue. ''British History, 1815–1914'' (2nd ed. 2007), 612 p
online
university textbook * Paul, Herbert. ''History of Modern England'', 1904-6 (5 vols
online free
* Perkin, Harold. ''The Origins of Modern English Society: 1780–1880'' (1969
online
* Hoppen, K. Theodore. ''The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846–1886'' (New Oxford History of England) (2000), comprehensive scholarly histor
excerpt and text search
* Roberts, Clayton and David F. Roberts. ''A History of England, Volume 2: 1688 to the present'' (2013) university textbook; iarchive:historyofengland00robe, 1985 edition online * Somervell, D. C. ''English thought in the nineteenth century'' (1929) iarchive:englishthoughtin030312mbp, online * Steinbach, Susie L. ''Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain'' (2012
excerpt and text search
* Swisher, Clarice, ed. ''Victorian England'' (2000) 20 excerpts from leading primary and secondary sources regarding literary, cultural, technical, political, and social themes. iarchive:victorianengland00swis, online free


Daily life and culture

* Aston, Jennifer, Amanda Capern, and Briony McDonagh. "More than bricks and mortar: female property ownership as economic strategy in mid-nineteenth-century urban England." Urban History 46.4 (2019): 695–721
online
* Flanders, Judith. ''Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England''. W.W. Norton & Company: 2004. . * * Mitchell, Sally. ''Daily Life in Victorian England''. Greenwood Press: 1996. . * O'Gorman, Francis, ed. ''The Cambridge companion to Victorian culture'' (2010) * Roberts, Adam Charles, ed. ''Victorian culture and society: the essential glossary'' (2003). * Thompson, F. M. L. '' Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900 (1988) Strong on family, marriage, childhood, houses, and play.'' * Weiler, Peter. ''The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914'' (Routledge, 2016). *A. N. Wilson, Wilson, A. N. ''The Victorians''. Arrow Books: 2002. * Young, Gerard Mackworth, ed. ''Early Victorian England 1830-1865'' (2 vol 1934) scholarly surveys of cultural history
vol 2 online


Literature

* Richard Altick, Altick, Richard Daniel. ''Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature''. (1974) iarchive:victorianpeoplei00alti, online free * Felluga, Dino Franco, et al. ''The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature'' (2015). * Flint, Kay. ''The Cambridge History of Victorian Literature'' (2014). * Horsman, Alan. ''The Victorian Novel'' (Oxford History of English Literature, 1991)


Politics

* Aydelotte, William O. “Parties and Issues in Early Victorian England.” ''Journal of British Studies,'' 5#2 1966, pp. 95–114
online
* Bourne, Kenneth. ''The foreign policy of Victorian England, 1830–1902'' (Oxford UP, 1970), contains a short narrative history and 147 "Selected documents" on pp 195–504. * Boyd, Kelly and Rohan McWilliam, eds. ''The Victorian Studies Reader'' (2007) 467pp; articles and excerpts by scholar
excerpts and text search
* Bright, J. Franck. ''A History of England. Period 4: Growth of Democracy: Victoria 1837–1880'' (1902
online
608pp; highly detailed older political narrative **''A History of England: Period V. Imperial Reaction, Victoria, 1880‒1901'' (1904) iarchive:historyofengland05brig/page/n5, online * Brock, M. G. "Politics at the Accession of Queen Victoria" ''History Today'' (1953) 3#5 pp 329–338 online. * Brown, David, Robert Crowcroft, and Gordon Pentland, eds. ''The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800–2000'' (2018
excerpt
*Antoinette Burton, Burton, Antoinette, ed. ''Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain: A Reader''. Palgrave Macmillan: 2001. *Marriott, J. A. R. ''England Since Waterloo'' (1913); focus on politics and diplomacy
online
* Martin, Howard.''Britain in the 19th Century'' (Challenging History series, 2000) 409pp; textbook; emphasizing politics, diplomacy and use of primary sources * Trevelyan, G. M. ''British History in the Nineteenth Century and After (1782–1901)'' (1922). iarchive:in.ernet.dli.2015.226562, online very well written scholarly survey * Walpole, Spencer. ''A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815'' (6 vol. 1878–86), very well written political narrative to 1855
online
**Walpole, Spencer. ''History of Twenty-Five Years'' (4 vol. 1904–1908) covers 1856–1880
online
* Woodward, E. L. ''The Age of Reform: 1815–1870'' (1954) comprehensive survey iarchive:in.ernet.dli.2015.179823, online * Young, G. M. "Mid-Victorianism" ''History Today'' (1951) 1#1 pp 11–17, online.


Crime and punishment

* * Bailey, Victor. ''Policing and punishment in nineteenth century Britain'' (2015). * Churchill, David. ''Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City'' (Oxford UP, 2018) * Emsley, Clive. ''Crime and society in England: 1750–1900'' (2013). * Emsley, Clive. "Crime in 19th Century Britain." ''History Today'' 38 (1988): 40+ * Emsley, Clive. ''The English Police: A Political and Social History'' (2nd ed. 1996) also published as ''The Great British Bobby: A History of British Policing from the 18th Century to the Present'' (201
excerpt
* * Gatrell, V. A. C. "Crime, authority and the policeman-state." in E.M.L. Thompson, ed., ''The Cambridge social history of Britain 1750-1950: Volume 3'' (1990). 3:243-310 * Hay, Douglas. "Crime and justice in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century England." ''Crime and Justice'' 2 (1980): 45–84
online
* Kilday, Anne-Marie. "Women and crime." ''Women's History, Britain 1700–1850'' ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, (Routledge, 2004) pp. 186–205. * May, Margaret. "Innocence and experience: the evolution of the concept of juvenile delinquency in the mid-nineteenth century." ''Victorian Studies'' 17.1 (1973): 7–29
online
* Radzinowicz, Leon. '' A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750'' (5 vol. 1948–1976) * Radzinowicz, Leon and Roger Hood ''The Emergence of Penal Policy in Victorian and Edwardian England'' (1990) * * Shore, Heather. "Crime, policing and punishment." in Chris Williams, ed., ''A companion to nineteenth-century Britain'' (2007): 381–395
excerpt
* * * Tobias, J. J. ''Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century'' (1967) . * Tobias, J.J. ed, ''Nineteenth-century crime: prevention and punishment'' (1972) primary sources. * Taylor, Howard. "Rationing crime: the political economy of criminal statistics since the 1850s." ''Economic history review'' (1998) 51#3 569–590
online


Historiography

* * Elton, G. R. ''Modern Historians on British History 1485–1945: A Critical Bibliography 1945–1969'' (1969), annotated guide to 1000 history books on every major topic, plus book reviews and major scholarly articles
online
* * * Homans, Margaret, and Adrienne Munich, eds. ''Remaking Queen Victoria'' (Cambridge University Press, 1997) * * * Moore, D. C. "In Search of a New Past: 1820 – 1870," in Richard Schlatter, ed., ''Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966'' (Rutgers UP, 1984), pp 255–298 * * * Stansky, Peter. "British History: 1870 – 1914," in Richard Schlatter, ed., ''Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966'' (Rutgers UP, 1984), pp. 299–326 * * * Webb, R. K. ''Modern England: from the 18th century to the present'' (1968) online widely recommended university textbook


Primary sources

* Black, E.C. ed. ''British politics in the nineteenth century'' (1969
online
* Bourne, Kenneth. ''The foreign policy of Victorian England, 1830–1902'' (Oxford UP, 1970.) pp 195–504 are 147 selected documents * Hicks, Geoff, et al. eds. ''Documents on Conservative Foreign Policy, 1852–1878'' (2013), 550 document
excerpt
* Temperley, Harold and L.M. Penson, eds. ''Foundations of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902)'' (1938), 608pp of primary source
online


External links


Free online books on the Victorian eraVictorians
British Library website exploring the Victorian period.
Victorians.co.uk
Victorian Era History Guide.
Mostly-Victorian.com
A collection of primary-source documents drawn from Victorian periodicals.
The Victorian DictionaryThe Victorian Web
British Library history resources about the Victorian era, featuring collection material and text by Liza Picard.
Timelines: Sources from history – British Library interactiveCollection: "Victorian Studies" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art"What Happened During the Victorian Era?" resources from the Royal Museums GreenwichVictorian mate choice
by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller (psychologist), Geoffrey Miller {{DEFAULTSORT:Victorian Era Victorian era, Historical eras History of the United Kingdom by period History of England by period 19th century in England 19th century in the United Kingdom, .