GCSE Presentation for Speaking and Listening Context for Sign of the Four

1. Victorian Era
By Emma Christie, Rebecca Pain and Adele Craven.

2. Queen Victoria and a Timeline.
Queen Victoria-
Born: 24 May 1819, Kensington
Palace, London
Died: 22 January 1901, Osborne
House, East Cowes
Height: 1.52 m
Children: Edward VII, Princess
Alice of the United Kingdom,
MORE
Parents: Princess Victoria of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Prince
Edward, Duke of Kent and
Strathearn
Crowned at the age of 18 on
thursday 28 June 1838,
She was the longest reigning
monarch until Elizabeth II, SHE
reigned for 63 years.

3. Industrial Progress. 1850-1870
 Historians have characterised the mid-Victorian era (1850–1870) as Britain's "Golden Years". 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 trade and engineering that produced profits for British merchants, and exports from across the globe.
 There was peace abroad (apart from the short Crimean war, 1854–56), and social peace at home.
 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. 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". 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 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.
 The housing and conditions of life of the working class in town & country were still a disgrace to an age of plenty.

4. Railways.
 One of the great achievements of the Industrial Revolution in Britain was the introduction and advancement of railway systems, not only in the United Kingdom and the British Empire but across
the world. British engineers and financiers designed, built and funded many major systems. 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 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 ½ 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.
 Railways are still used nowdays. They have become more powerful and faster.

5. Health and Medicine.
 Medicine progressed during Queen Victoria's reign. Although nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, had been proposed as an
anaesthetic as far back as 1799 by Humphry Davy, it wasn't until 1846 when an American dentist named William Morton
started using either on his patients. 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 either, 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 narcosis
performed in the UK and German-speaking countries.
 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. T
 his 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.
 Medicine also benefited from the introduction of antiseptics by 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.

6. Victorian London.
 The Victorian city of London was a city of startling contrasts. New building and affluent development went hand in hand
with horribly overcrowded slums where people lived in the worst conditions imaginable.
 The population surged during the 19th century, from about 1 million in 1800 to over 6 million a century later. This
growth far exceeded London's ability to look after the basic needs of its citizens.
 A combination of coal-fired stoves and poor sanitation made the air heavy and foul-smelling. Immense amounts of raw
sewage was dumped straight into the River Thames. Even royals were not immune from the stench of London - when
Queen Victoria occupied Buckingham Palace her apartments were ventilated through the common sewers, a fact that
was not disclosed until some 40 years later.
 Upon this scene entered an unlikely hero, an engineer named Joseph Bazalgette. Bazalgette was responsible for the
building of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes to divert sewage outside the city. This made a drastic impact on the
death rate, and outbreaks of cholera dropped dramatically after Bazlgette's work was finished.
 For an encore, Bazalgette also was responsible for the design of the Embankment, and the Battersea, Hammersmith,
and Albert Bridges. Before the engineering triumphs of Bazalgette came the architectural triumphs of George IV's
favorite designer, John Nash.
 Nash designed the broad avenues of Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Carlton House Terrace, and Oxford Circus, as well
as the ongoing creation of Buckingham transformation of Buckingham House into a palace worthy of a monarch.
 In 1829 Sir Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police to handle law and order in areas outside the City proper. These
police became known as "Bobbies“ and “Peelers” after their founder.