Here is a VERY broad overview of economic disparity in Victorian England.

1. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Social change and domestic policy in victorian
England (grossly simplified)

2. “Vicious Class”
“very poor”
“lower
middle
class”
“poor”
“Mixed”
“Middle
Class”
“Wealthy”
Charles
Booth’s Map
of London
Poverty

3. Streets apart…worlds away

4. The Good

5. The power of Steam
• Burn coal to create steam
• Steam powers machines
• Machines augment human labor
• Manufacturing becomes more efficient
and much faster
• More products=more money
• Improved Infrastructure
• Steam=“horsepower”
• Machines to dig up iron ore
• Steam-driven (coal-driven) factories
to smelt iron and fashion it to make
stronger structures, railroads, bridges,
etc.

6. The power of Steam
• The Railroad
• Greater mobility and
communication among
various areas of England
• More efficient printing presses
(mechanized)
• Higher literacy rates
• Standardization of
manufacturing processes
• Greater access to education
via circulating libraries

7. The middle (Managing) class
• Entrepreneurs
• Manufacturers
• Professionals (Lawyers, doctors,
bankers, etc.)
• Better quality of life for more people
• Society no longer divided among
the “Lords” and “peasants”
• Middle class was a new population
that could acquire wealth by
various means and live comfortably
without having to acquire a title

8. Leisure Time
• Managing classes
engaged in “brain
work”
• Not as tired at the
end of the work
day
• Engaged in leisure
activities, such as
reading, attending
the theater and
sporting events,
etc.

9. Economic expansion
• Middle-class became
producers and
consumers
• Exports increased
• Creation of a legitimate
stock market in 1801
allowed middle-class to
invest in corporations
• Corporations benefited
from investments by
increasing output, scope
of influence in trade, and
hiring more workers

10. The Bad

11. Separation of Market and State
• Laissez-faire economic
policies
• The “laws” of economy will
regulate the market, not the
laws of the state
• Let the ends (the bottom
line) justify the means
• What is good for the market
is good for the state
• Humans are essentially
good and will not harm
others

12. General enclosure act
(1801)
• Any village could divide
up and enclose land for
private farming if 3/4 of
the landowners agreed to
it
• Codified what was already
happening

13. General enclosure act
(1801)
• The Good
• Less land neglected=more crops
• Agricultural machinery=more crops
• Experimentation with planting
practices (e.g., crop rotation)=more
crops
• Decreased spread of diseases
among animals=more meat, milk,
eggs, and cheese (glorious cheese)
• Less labor needed to farm
land=more profit for landowner

14. General enclosure act
(1801)
• The Bad
• Eviction for the following
• Farmers who could not claim any
legal right to land even though
their family had farmed it for
generations
• Farmers who raised animals or
farmed on “commons” (what was
assumed to be “public” land)
• Farmers with small plots of land
who could not compete with those
who owned more land

15. Social Effects of these laws and
attitudes
• Created a high demand for unskilled
workers
• Astronomical growth of city
populations
• Privatized farming on a massive
scale emerged to meet demands for
food in the cities
• Vicious cycle emerges: country
dwellers cannot live on farming
anymore, move to cities, creates
more demand for corporate
agriculture, more land devoted to
that purpose, more country dwellers
move to city, so on and so forth

16. Corn Laws
• Regulated import and export of grain
• Served to benefit the aristocracy (land
owners)
• Land owners dictated what crops would
be planted on their land
• Refused to plant more wheat
• Bad harvests and the Napoleonic Wars
(ban on importation of French grains)
caused the price of bread to skyrocket
• Crises resulting from these laws arose
from 1791 to 1846, when the laws were
finally repealed

17. Corn Laws and Crises
• Aristocracy started “redistricting” to create
unequal representation
• Rural areas given more representation
than urban areas
• 1795: Bad harvest and corn laws resulted in
a “food riot”
• Series of bad harvests in combination with
Napoleonic Wars perpetuated the high price
of bread and the crises this created from
1799-1846
• 1815: attempt to fix the price of grains failed
due to redistricting mentioned above
• Corn laws finally repealed in 1846 with
pressure from manufacturers (middle-class)

18. Poor Laws
• Elizabethan Poor Laws (1597-
1598)
• Enacted through parishes to
provide relief for the following:
• the elderly
• the disabled
• infants
• the ill
• Provided work for the able-bodied,
yet unemployed, in
workhouses

19. Poor Laws
• Speenhamland System (1795)
• Response to a proposed fixed
minimum wage
• Parishes would augment worker’s
wages up to an agreed-upon amount
that would ensure a “level of
subsistence” to be defined as
enough money to afford the following
for oneself and one’s family for one
week:
• 3 “gallon loaves” of bread for
oneself
• 1 1/2 “gallon loaves” for one’s
wife and each child

20. Poor Laws
• Poor Law Amendment (1834)
• Response to the abuses of the
Speenhamland system by
employers who lowered worker’s
wages with the knowledge the
state would cover the difference
and “workers” who didn’t want to
work
• Poverty now considered a “moral
failing”
• No relief for able-bodied
individuals except the
workhouse, which was akin to
working on a chain gang

21. Electoral Reform Act of 1832
(Expansion of Suffrage)
• Denied representation to 56
boroughs (England’s equivalent to
counties) in England and Wales
and left 31 with only one
representative
• Created 67 new constituencies
• Revised property qualification for
voting to include small farmers,
tenant farmers, and shopkeepers
• Gave the vote to all
“householders” who paid ten
Pounds or more in rent, which
also applied to some lodgers

22. The Ugly

23. Coal and Steam
• Coal was used to heat the water to create
steam
• Industrial areas surrounded by slums, so the
poor could be within walking distance to work
(see slide 24)
• Thus, they were working and living in conditions
created by smokestacks from factories, mills,
and refineries burning coal; the air was filled
with soot and unfit to breathe
• The demand for coal was enormous not only for
the creation of steam, but of coke (a solid fuel
created by heating coal in an vacuum; for
effects on environment, see Dickens’ first
chapter of Hard Times: “Coketown”)
• Owners of coal mines met the demand while
keeping a wide profit margin by employing
children

24. Slaves to the Machine
• Due to mechanization,
unskilled laborers were
expected to keep pace with
the machines they operated
to produce as much as
possible
• Working days as long as 16
hours
• No such thing as weekends
for the poor

25. Slums
• Haphazard and ultimately
dangerous structures were built to
house those flooding into the cities
for work
• Overcrowding unimaginable,
allowing for little light to penetrate
the cluster of buildings, usually built
back-to-back with a “common area”
between
• Open sewage (cesspools) were
often located in these common
areas
• Very little in the way of ensuring that
sewage did not mix with drinking
water
• Structures built with wood, creating
an increased fire hazard when
combined with the use of candles or
kerosene lamps

26. contagious diseases
• 1831-1833
• Two major outbreaks of influenza
• First cholera epidemic (1831)
• 52,000 across England died of cholera in 1831
• 1836-1842
• Influenza
• Typhus (1837-1838)
• resulted in an average of 16, 000 deaths per year
• Typhoid
• Cholera
• 1838-1840
• Tuberculosis
• a quarter of all deaths during this period were
attributed to TB.

27. Corn laws and the Peterloo Massacre
• 16 August 1819
• St. Peter’s Field
• Manchester, England
• 60,000 people
assembled to protest the
Corn Laws and
redistricting
• Met with armed
authorities who injured
over 500 and killed
eleven

28. the chartists
• Sought to expand the vote to include all
men over a certain age
• When threatening a general strike after
the denial of their 1839 petition in the
House of Commons, the leaders of the
movement were arrested
• When followers marched on prison at
Newport, Monmouthshire, to demand
the release of their leaders,
• Armed troops opened fire
• 24 were killed
• 40 were injured

29. Economic Disparities
Matters of Life and Death

30. Life
Expectancy:
45 years
Life
Expectancy:
23 years
Queen Victoria (1819-
1901)
Age at Death: 89 years

31. Infant Mortality Rates
“No reliable statistics on class
differences exist for the country
as a whole, but several studies
of individual communities
showed that children of the poor
might die at twice the rate of
children from the middle and
upper classes.”
Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell
Millward, Robert and Frances Bell. “Infant Mortality in
Victorian Britain: An economic and social analysis.
University of Manchester: Working Papers in Economic
and Social History. No. 41.