The Great Exhibition of 1851, the brain child of the Prince Consort, was held in London. It demonstrated the vast wealth of the British empire created due to its industrial development. May 1st, 1851, was an exciting day for many people in Britain. The streets of London were unusually busy the morning of that day. […]
The history of England in the reign of Queen Victoria is “political history”, with fewer major wars, international complications, or startling public events, and a greater concentration upon a sequence of legislative acts which profoundly influenced the life of the nation.
The shameful practice of child labour played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset. The displaced working classes, from the seventeenth century on, took it for granted that a family would not be able to support itself if the children were not employed. The children of the poor were forced by economic […]
In the earliest stages of the Industrial Revolution, when machinery was crude, soon obsolete and worked by the uncertain and irregular power of water, factory owners were determined to get the fullest possible use out of this machinery in the shortest possible time. Hours of work rose to sixteen and even eighteen a day. In […]
The modern police force in England was founded between the years 1829 and 1839. This development was the direct result of the upsurge of a militant working class movement in the first decades of the 19th century. The old system of corrupt and incapable parish constables was clearly inadequate to protect the property of rich […]
The Chartist Movement was a powerful protest organization that urged the immediate adoption of the “People’s Charter”, which would have transformed Britain into a political democracy. It was also expected to improve living standards.
The object of the Corn Laws of 1815 was to keep the price of wheat at the famine level it had reached during the Napoleonic Wars, when supplies from Poland and France were prevented from reaching England. All wheat imports were forbidden when the price fell below 50 s. the quarter.
By the 19th century, Britain had become an industrial nation. The population of the country increased, as well as the number of poor people. For a generation the hand weavers and petty craftsmen had fought desperately to escape the factories. Year by year their incomes had fallen till a man could not hope to earn […]
By 1830 Britain had been struck by a severe economic crisis. Factories were closing down, unemployment increased rapidly, and the wages of workers fell. The revolution which took place in Paris in July and in Belgium in August helped to increase the tensions of the atmosphere.
In Britain, the general rejoicings that followed the victory over Napoleon were not well founded. The British had assumed that the ending of war would open a vast market for their goods and had piled up stocks accordingly. Instead, there was an immediate fall in the demand for them. Europe was still too disturbed and […]
