Industrial Revolution and British Society

The most important development of the industrial period, which started in the late 18th century, was the increasingly intensive use of hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.

During the 18th century, the source of power was the most important factor in the location of industrial activity. The manipulation of water in oredr to drive water mills became very important in the UK. All over Britain, rivers were diverted; reservoirs were built in the hills to supply mills.

Development of water-power and its role in the rise of the factory system of production is very important in the history of the British environment. Yet it is secondary compared with the replacement of charcoal, a product from wood, by coal.

Coal mining and use of steam power generated from coal is without doubt the central, binding narrative of the 19th century. However, the trend was set and soon the environment felt the full impact of industrialisation in the form of air and water pollution:

 

Rivers that pass through urban areas became a receptacle for human waste products, both domestic and industral. Sewage was washed out into the streets where it found its way to the rivers with diastorous consequences.

In the first half of 18th century, both London and Paris, the largest cities in Europe with respectively 1 and 2.4 million inhabitants by 1850, experienced a series of recurring epidemics of cholera and typhoid. This was caused by increasing amounts of sewage dumped into the Thames in London and Seine river in Paris.

London was one of the first cities in the world to build a sewer system and improve the quality of its drinking water supply. Drinking water was significantly improved by the 1850s, yet the problem of the Thames hit daily by 260 tons of raw sewage by the late 1850s cause the most stir in parlament.

Joseph Bazalgette was the civil engineer responsible for a project that took about 16 years (1858-74) to complete. Cholera was by then a thing of the past and the general health of the population improved greatly.

Air pollution due to industrial and domestic smoke. London was infamous for its combinations of smoke and fog, combined with the word smog.  London was nicknamed "the BigSmoke". Air pollution caused death rates to rise. During a week of smog in 1873 killed over 700 people in London. However, the largest air pollution disaster in Britain was the Great London Smog of December 1952 which killed approximately 4,000 people.
Source: Environmental History Resources  eh-resources.org

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Whilst researching about the Victorian Era I came across this website. It is quite gory, I never knew that Victorians used to memorialized dead loved one in postmortem photography. It makes sense, since during the Victorian Era child mortality was extremely high, so postmortem photography maybe the only memory of the child that family ever had. So sad. Please check this link out:

http://www.thehorrorzine.com/Morbid/Victorian%20Post%20Mortem%20Photography.html
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This painting if from the Tate collection. By James Tissot, "Portsmouth Dockyard" (1877) Which is where Charles Dickens was born.

The drawing illustrate the cliche situation of a man trying to choose between two woman. The Sergeant turns away from the sulking-looking lady and looks at the woman speaking to him, suggesting he has made his choice. This painting was quite provocative for that time and it shocked the audience when it was presented at the Royal Academy in 1876, because of the high morals of the Victorian times, and these characters had confused sexual morals:

                        Child Labor

Child labor was very popular during the Victorian Era. In the early Victorian times some boys started to work as young as 5 or 6 years old.
In  1819 the government first passed an act that made it illegal for children under 9 to work in cotton mills. However, there were not factory inspectors to check the mills.
Later in the 1833 another act was introduced, but this time inspectors were appointed. Children aged 9 - 13 were not allowed to work more than 12 hours a day or a total of more than 48 hours a week. From 1880 it was the law that children had to go to school until they were 11 years old. Many children would still have started work at 12 or 13. what I found quite bad that the fact the government had introduced the law but the parents were demonstrating against this law, because the loss of money what their children brought home.

During the Industrial Revolution throughout Britain and the use of steam-powered machnes, led to a massive increase in the number of factories. Factories wanted to hire children, because children are small and cheap.
Children could easily crawl under the machinery and the fingers of children are rather supple and thin, so they were used to perform precision tasks. In the early years of this century one third of the workers were children between 7 and 13 years old.

Some children, mostly the boys, had to work in the coal mines. One of the jobs children had to do in the coal mines was the trap jobs. The so called "trappers" had to sit all day in a hole and wait for the coal wagons to come. But the work of the coal bearers was worse. These children had to carry big loads of coal on their back. Children who worked in these mines died at average of 25 or earlier.

Other children, mostly the girls, had to work in the cotton mills. Some owners of these mills took orphans to their working places. The orphans did not have anything, so for working very hard the employers gave them food and place to sleep.

Some children fell asleep while working and fell into the machine. Later they were found dead lying on the ground.

One of the most important pioneers who wanted to help the children of the industrialized Britain was Lord Shaftesbury. He was a leader of the movement for factory and coal mine reform and philantropist, particularly regarding children. He pushed the Factory Acts through the Houses of Parliament limiting working hours for children. He was a chairman of the Ragged Schools Union - an organisation that set up over a 100 schools for poor children.

The Legal Position of the XIV Century Women

In terms of law, unmarried women were the property of their father and married woman, the property of their husband.

Men could assert control over women's actions and lives.

Many women of this century fought for changes in the law which would make them more equal. In 1837, for example, Caroline Norton caused a great scandal when she attacked the law which prevented separated women from having access to their own children.

Later in the 1850's there was great demand for a married Women's Property Bill, which would give married women some economic independence. 

On the other hand, there were some happy married couples according to journalist Matthew Moore (Apr.2010). He discovered that while public morality frowned upon discussion of female sexuality, the records show that in private couples took a much more open approach. One woman respondent wrote: "The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us". Another described the act as "preforming the spiritual union".

Also, on a positive note some other historic dates in brief:

1839 - if marriage broke down, children under 7 should stay with their mother.
1857 - women could divorce their husbands who were cruel to them or who had left them.
1870 - woman were allowed to keep money they had earned.
1891 - women could not be forced to live with their husbands unless they wished to.

These, however, were good laws on paper. It would have been difficult for divorced women to keep herself and her children simply because the attitude of Victorian Britain was that women should stay at home. Therefore, few women were skilled in any obvious profession and there were few jobs that paid well for women during the XVI century.