Sir Robert Peel served twice as Prime Minister of the UK in the 1840s. During this time, he oversaw important social reforms like the Factory Act to regulate child labor, the Mines Act to improve safety, and the Public Health Act. However, his repeal of the Corn Laws damaged his popularity. Ireland experienced the devastating Great Famine from 1845-1849, resulting in mass deaths and emigration. Peel continued enacting reforms but his sudden death in 1850 left a vacuum in Conservative leadership during a time of economic and social upheaval.

1. 1841-1850

2. Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet
 He was a British statesman of the Conservative Party who
served twice as Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom (1834–35 and 1841–46) and twice as Home
Secretary (1822–27 and 1828–30). He is regarded as the
father of modern British policing and as one of the founders
of the modern Conservative Party.
 The son of wealthy textile-manufacturer and politician Sir
Robert Peel, 1st Baronet
 In 1822 he became Home Secretary, after voluntarily
resigning his position in Ireland in 1817.
 As Home Secretary, he also created the Metropolitan Police
in 1829, leading to the nicknames of ‘bobby’ and ‘peeler’ for
London’s police officers.
 Mines Act of 1842,The Factory Act 1844, Repealed Corn
Laws

3. Social Reform
A. The Resources for
Governing
 Peel was broadly competent and thoroughly
professional.
 Held high executive posts almost continually from
1812 to 1830.
 Revamped much of the administrative and legal
structure of England and Ireland
 Prime minister in 1834-1835
 His lieutenants too were remarkably able.
 The House of Commons had reorganized its
clerical staff and was beginning to find ways
around the time-consuming business of private
bills for companies, railways, towns, or
Engraving showing the members of
Sir Robert Peel's government in 1844

4. Sir James Graham William Ewart Gladstone

5. B. The Chartist Revivals
 Feargus O’Connor was moving towards a kind of
reactionary radicalism, a rejection of all the works and ways
of the industrial world.
 Chartist Land Plan - . His objective was to raise money to
buy a large estate that would be divided into plots of three
and four acres. Subscribers would then draw lots and the
winners would obtain a cottage and some land. O'Connor
promised that his Land Scheme would "change the whole
face of society in twelve months" and would "make a
paradise of England in less than five years".
 Bronterre O’Brien criticized O’Connor’s abandonment of
political radicalism
 Thomas Cooper – O’Connor’s most valuable recruit of the
early forties.
 A Leicester shoemaker and poet
 After 1846 he turned his back on Chartism to become a
lecturer on free thought and still later, following a
sudden conversion
Feargus O’Connor
Thomas Cooper

6.  William Lovett – came out of prison in 1840 with a new
educational scheme, the National Association, by which he
hoped to make workingmen increasingly aware and
responsible; he was backed by a number of distinguished
middle-class patrons.
– He was supported by the old moral-force men.
 In 1842, a serious attempt was made to reconcile the
Chartists and the middle-class radicals.
 Joseph Sturge – took the lead in summoning a Complete
Suffrage convention.
– All they asked was that the name of the Charter to be
given up, because it was frightening to the middle
classes.
 “Plug Plot” – local name given to the strikes and protests
made by the Staffordshire miners against wage reductions
 Changes by the end of 1842:
 Improvement in business
 A sharp drop in food prices
William Lovett

7. C. Mines, Public Health, and
Education
 In 1840, the Whig government had appointed a royal
commission to examine the question of CHILD LABOR.
 Miners at the coal worked naked in the heat; small
children were confined for hours in total darkness,
expected to work the trapdoors controlling the
ventilation of the mines – and not expected to go to
sleep; women and children served as draft animals,
pulling coal carts through tunnels
 Lord Ashley – Evangelical factory reformer, introduced
and easily carried an act forbidding the employment
underground of children under ten and all women.
 H.S. Tremenheere was named inspector of the mining
areas, to see that the law was obeyed.

8.  In 1843, Sir James Graham introduced a new factory bill, reducing the hours of labor of the
children between the ages of eight and thirteen from eight to six and a half per day, and
requiring attendance to school.
 In 1850, an act was introduced requiring underground inspection
 Edwin Chadwick – primarily focused to the conditions of public health and to the state of the
rapidly growing and wretchedly unsanitary towns.
 Medical knowledge was defective.
 In education, the Peel government suffered a severe defeat.
 Conservatives were trying to preserve social order
 Churchmen and Dissenters were more interested in teaching children to read the Bible and
to be good Christians of the right kind
 Anglicans’ National Society & Non-conformist and Foreign School Society
 Lord President became the parliamentary spokesman on educational matters.

9.  Dr. James Phillips Kay (later Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth)
 Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education.
 A physician who made a nationwide reputation for his
work among the poor in Manchester.
 System of national education.
 The Committee of Council’s Minute of 1846
 They began to subsidize teachers’ salaries.
 They set up a system of apprenticeship, training colleges,
and retirement pensions
 Teachers were given economic position, a new social
status, and professional pride. Dr. James Phillips Kay

10. A. Banking
 Bank Charter Act (1844) divided the Bank into two strictly separated
parts.
- the banking department took care of the ordinary commercial
business of the Bank
- The issue department was solely concerned with the supply of
banknotes
- A Bank monopoly of note issue
 In 1847 the Bank’s reserves again fell dangerously
 The was that economic knowledge was simply insufficient.
The Economy

11. B. RAILWAYS
 Railway age begun in 1830, when the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway opened.
 Formidable technical problems to be solved; enormous
expenses, intense opposition of canal companies and
coaching interests
 Many ordinary Fiery, noisy engines frightened horses and they
thought it might kill cows and sheep grazing beside the line.
 Speed was too great, accidents were too awful.

12. Early map of Liverpool and
Manchester Railwaw
Revised Map

13. Railway construction employed huge numbers of workmen, and the
vast expenditures created booms in those industries, notably iron and
engineering, that supplied the materials.
Goods were transported more rapidly
Canals and coaching lines declined
New industries flourished
A new unity was given to the country
Cuts, embankments, bridges, and tunnels changed the landscape
everywhere
 Railway boom – 1835-1837
 Railway Mania – 1844 railway boom
 Two possible directions for policy in a country that decided to build
its railways without a plan or foresight:
 AMALGAMATION and STATE INTERVENTION
 Railway Act of 1844

14. Company Organization
 In 1844 all companies except banks were permitted to incorporate
simply by registering with the Board of Trade
 Limited liability was denied in 1844
 In 1856 limited liability was permitted for all companies, except
banks, provided they proclaimed their intention by putting the
abbreviation “Ltd.” after their names; banks obtained the privilege
in 1856; and in 1862 a great consolidating statue summed up the
innovations of twenty-five years in company laws.

15. Free Trade
 Anti-Corn Law League – formed in 1839, a
transmutation of an Anti-Corn Law Association
founded the year before by a group of
Manchester radicals.
 Free trade was clearly attractive to radicals
whose hopes of further measures of political
reform had been dashed by 1837
 A newspaper, The League, began to appear in
1843 and was supplemented by an enormous
output of propagandistic tracts, circulars,
handbill, almanacs, and so on
 Feb. 1846, a further comprehensive installment
of tariff reform.

16. The Turning Points
The Irish Famine
■ Summer of 1846 - Food reserves were wiped out
■ The Irish had flocked to the public works
■ Longer-range Government Solutions:
– A revised Irish Poor Law – a right to relief
– Legislation to encourage or even force landlords to
improve their land and to open wasteland to agriculture
– Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, to make it possible for
new capital to come into Ireland to buy debt-ridden
estates with a clear title.
■ To get relief, many peasants had to sell their lands; many
more were evicted for nonpayment rent.
■ Some emigrated to England, Australia, Canada and the United
States.

17. 1848
■ In late 1846, the government had to face economic problems at home, and had become
serious by 1847.
– Arising partly from the harvest failures and partly form the Continental depression
■ Ten-hours Bill was passed into law in 1847
■ In 1848, a public health act was passed
■ In 1849, the Navigation Laws were repealed
■ Riots and rally happened
■ Peer was thrown from his horse and died on July 2
■ After 1846 as before, he had been the one tower of strength in English politics.