The Victorian Era 1837 - 1901

1. The Victorian Era 1837 - 1901 Anders Dernback

2. In the strictest sense, the Victorian era covers the duration of Victoria's reign as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from her accession on 20 June 1837—after the death of her uncle, William IV—until her death on 22 January 1901, after which she was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII. Her reign lasted for 63 years and seven months, a longer period than any of her predecessors. The term 'Victorian' was in contemporaneous usage to describe the era. 1837 1901

3. Portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1843 Victoria at the age of four

4. Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 at age 18. Her long reign until 1901 saw Britain reach the zenith of its economic and political power. Exciting new technologies such as steam ships, railways, photography, and telegraphs appeared, making the world much faster-paced. Britain again remained mostly inactive in Continental politics, and it was not affected by the wave of revolutions in 1848. The Victorian era saw the fleshing out of the second British Empire. Scholars debate whether the Victorian period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians— actually begins with her coronation or the earlier passage of the Reform Act 1832. The era was preceded by the Regency era and succeeded by the Edwardian period.

5. On 20 June 1837, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom on the death of her uncle, William IV, just weeks after reaching the age of eighteen. Her government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne, to whom she was close. But within two years he had resigned, and the Tory politician Sir Robert Peel attempted to form a new ministry. Peel said he was willing to become prime minister provided the Queen replaced her Whig ladies-in-waiting with Tory ones. She refused and re-appointed Lord Melbourne, a decision criticised as unconstitutional. Britain sent Lord Durham to resolve the issue and his 1839 report opened the way for "responsible government" (that is, self- government)

6. Earliest known photograph of Victoria, here with her eldest daughter, c. 1845

7. Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Known as the Victorian era, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than any previous British monarch. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. 2 November 1767 – 23 January 1820) was the fourth son and fifth child of King George III. His only legitimate child became Queen Victoria. To the right: Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

8. The Duchess of Kent with her daughter, the future Queen Victoria, by Henry Bone c. 1824—1825 Princess Victoria of Saxe- Coburg-Saalfeld (17 August 1786 – 16 March 1861), later Princess of Leiningen and subsequently Duchess of Kent and Strathearn, was a German princess and the mother of Queen Victoria Victoria The Duchess of The Duchess of Kent by Sir George Kent by Sir George Hayter in 1835 Hayter in 1835

9. Albert 1819 - 1861

10. In the history of the United Kingdom, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the Belle Époque era of Continental Europe. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the Evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain's power and prosperity.

11. Marriage of Victoria and Albert, painted by George Hayter

12. Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and five of their children in 1846. Painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

13. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria and their nine children, 1857. Left to right: Alice, Arthur, Albert (Prince Consort), Albert Edward (Prince of Wales), Leopold, Louise, Queen Victoria with Beatrice, Alfred, Victoria and Helena

14. 1854 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

15. Queen Victoria, 1819–1901, by Bassano, 1882. Glass copy negative, half-plate.

16. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adoption of the germ theory of disease and pioneering research in epidemiology. Domestically, the political agenda was increasingly liberal, with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform, improved social reform, and the widening of the franchise. There were unprecedented demographic changes: the population of England and Wales almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901, and Scotland's population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901.

17. Thanks to educational reforms, the British population not only approached universal literacy towards the end of the era but also became increasingly well-educated; the market for reading materials of all kinds boomed Britain's relations with the other Great Powers were driven by antagonism with Russia, including the Crimean War and the Great Game. A Pax Britannica of peaceful trade was maintained by the country's naval and industrial supremacy. Britain embarked on global imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa, which made the British Empire the largest empire in history. National self-confidence peaked. Britain granted political autonomy to the more advanced colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Apart from the Crimean War, Britain was not involved in any armed conflict with another major power. The two main political parties during the era remained the Whigs/Liberals and the Conservatives; by its end, the Labour Party had formed as a distinct political entity. These parties were led by such prominent statesmen as Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury.

18. Common Common culture culture The rise of the middle class during the era had a formative effect on its character; the historian Walter E. Houghton reflects that "once the middle class attained political as well as financial eminence, their social influence became decisive. The Victorian frame of mind is largely composed of their characteristic modes of thought and feeling". Industrialisation brought with it a rapidly growing middle class whose increase in numbers had a significant effect on the social strata itself: cultural norms, lifestyle, values and morality. Identifiable characteristics came to define the middle-class home and lifestyle. Previously, in town and city, residential space was adjacent to or incorporated into the work site, virtually occupying the same geographical space. The difference between private life and commerce was a fluid one distinguished by an informal demarcation of function. In the Victorian era, English family life increasingly became compartmentalised, the home a self-contained structure housing a nuclear family extended according to need and circumstance to include blood relations. The concept of "privacy" became a hallmark of the middle-class life.

19. Social reforms focused on ending slavery, removing the slavery-like burdens on women and children, and reforming the police to prevent crime, rather than emphasizing the very harsh punishment of criminals. Even more important were political reforms, especially the lifting of disabilities on nonconformists and Roman Catholics, and above all, the reform of Parliament and elections to introduce democracy and replace the old system whereby senior aristocrats controlled dozens of seats in parliament. The centrality of the family was a dominant feature for all classes. Worriers repeatedly detected threats that had to be dealt with: working wives, overpaid youths, harsh factory conditions, bad housing, poor sanitation, excessive drinking, and religious decline. The licentiousness so characteristic of the upper class of the late 18th and early 19th centuries dissipated. The home became a refuge from the harsh world; middle-class wives sheltered their husbands from the tedium of domestic affairs. The number of children shrank, allowing much more attention to be paid to each child. Extended families were less common, as the nuclear family became both the ideal and the reality.

20. The emerging middle-class norm for women was separate spheres, whereby women avoid the public sphere – the domain of politics, paid work, commerce, and public speaking. Instead, they should dominate in the realm of domestic life, focused on the care of the family, the husband, the children, the household, religion, and moral behaviour. Religiosity was in the female sphere, and the Nonconformist churches offered new roles that women eagerly entered. They taught in Sunday schools, visited the poor and sick, distributed tracts, engaged in fundraising, supported missionaries, led Methodist class meetings, prayed with other women, and a few were allowed to preach to mixed audiences. In Great Britain, elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States, the notion that marriage should be based on romantic love and companionship rather than convenience, money, or other strategic considerations grew in popularity during the Victorian period. Cheaper paper and printing technology made it easier for humans to attract mates this way, hence the birth of the Valentine card.

21. Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, through later folk traditions, has become a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world.

22. An 1884 cartoon from the humorous British magazine Punch lampooning a romance between a former Cambridge University Senior Wrangler and a former Girton College student

23. Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury.

24. In 1832, after much political agitation, the Reform Act was passed on the third attempt. The Act abolished many borough seats and created others in their place, as well as expanding the franchise in England and Wales (a Scottish Reform Act and Irish Reform Act were passed separately). Minor reforms followed in 1835 and 1836.

25. Michael Sadleir was insistent that "in truth, the Victorian period is three periods, and not one". He distinguished early Victorianism – the socially and politically unsettled period from 1837 to 1850 and late Victorianism (from 1880 onwards), with its new waves of aestheticism and imperialism, from the Victorian heyday: mid-Victorianism, 1851 to 1879. He saw the latter period as characterized by a distinctive mixture of prosperity, domestic prudery, and complacency what G. M. Trevelyan similarly called the "mid-Victorian decades of quiet politics and roaring prosperity.

26. However, Ireland's population decreased sharply, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to emigration and the Great Famine. Between 1837 and 1901 about 15 million emigrated from Great Britain, mostly to the United States, as well as to imperial outposts in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia.

28. The Great Famine or the Great Hunger, was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1849. With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as An Drochshaol, loosely translated as the "hard times" (or literally, "The Bad Life"). The worst year of the period was 1847, known as "Black '47". During the famine, about one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.

29. Map of Ireland's counties with names, Northern Ireland counties colored tan

30. The event is sometimes referred to as the Irish Potato Famine, mostly outside Ireland. The proximate cause of the famine was a natural event, a potato blight, which infected potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, also causing some 100,000 deaths outside Ireland and influencing much of the unrest in the widespread European Revolutions of 1848. From 1846, the impact of the blight was exacerbated by the Whig government's economic policy of laissez-faire capitalismLonger-term causes include the system of absentee landlordismand single- crop dependence.

31. The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland, which from 1801 to 1922 was ruled directly by Westminster as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The famine and its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political, and cultural landscape, producing an estimated two million refugees and spurring a century-long population decline For both the native Irish and those in the diaspora, the famine entered folk memory. The strained relations between many Irish and their government soured further because of the famine, heightening ethnic and sectarian tensions and boosting Irish nationalism and republicanism in Ireland and among Irish emigrants in the United States and elsewhere.

32. The potato blight returned to Europe in 1879, but by that point the Land War, described as one of the largest agrarian movements to take place in 19th-century Europe, had begun in Ireland. The movement, organized by the Land League, continued the political campaign for the Three Fs, issued in 1850 by the Tenant Right League during the Great Famine. When the potato blight returned in the 1879 famine the League boycotted "notorious landlords" and its members physically blocked evictions of farmers; the consequent reduction in homelessness and house demolition resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of deaths.

33. Causes and contributing factors Since the Acts of Union in January 1801, Ireland had been part of the United Kingdom. Executive power lay in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Chief Secretary for Ireland, who were appointed by the British government. Ireland sent 105 members of parliament to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and Irish representative peers elected 28 of their own number to sit for life in the House of Lords. Between 1832 and 1859, 70% of Irish representatives were landowners or the sons of landowners.

34. In the 40 years that followed the union, successive British governments grappled with the problems of governing a country which had, as Benjamin Disraeli put it in 1844, "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien established Protestant church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. One historian calculated that, between 1801 and 1845, there had been 114 commissions and 61 special committees enquiring into the state of Ireland, and that "without exception their findings prophesied disaster; Ireland was on the verge of starvation, her population rapidly increasing, three- quarters of her labourersunemployed, housing conditions appalling and the standard of living unbelievably low. Lectures printed in 1847 by John Hughes, Bishop of New York, are a contemporary exploration into the antecedent causes, particularly the political climate, in which the Irish famine occurred

35. Landlords and tenants During the 18th century, the "middleman system" for managing landed property was introduced. Rent collection was left in the hands of the landlords' agents, or middlemen. This assured the landlord of a regular income, and relieved them of direct responsibility, while leaving tenants open to exploitation by the middlemen. Catholics, the bulk of whom lived in conditions of poverty and insecurity despite Catholic emancipation in 1829, made up 80% of the population. At the top of the "social pyramid" was the "ascendancy class", the English and Anglo-Irish families who owned most of the land and held more or less unchecked power over their tenants. Some of their estates were vast; for example, the Earl of Lucan owned more than 60,000 acres (240 km2). Many of these absentee landlords lived in England.

36. Rioters in Dungarvan attempt to break into a bakery; the poor could not afford to buy what food was available. (The Pictorial Times, 1846).

37. The rent revenue—collected from "impoverished tenants" who were paid minimal wages to raise crops and livestock for export— was mostly sent to England. In 1843, the British Government considered that the land question in Ireland was the root cause of disaffection in the country. They established a Royal Commission, chaired by the Earl of Devon, to enquire into the laws regarding the occupation of land. Daniel O'Connell described this commission as "perfectly one-sided", being composed of landlords, with no tenant representation. In February 1845, Devon reported: It would be impossible adequately to describe the privations which they [the Irish labourerand his family] habitually and silently endure ... in many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage water ... their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather ... a bed or a blanket is a rare luxury ... and nearly in all their pig and a manure heap constitute their only property.

38. The middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents, which they sublet as they saw fit. They would split a holding into smaller and smaller parcels so as to increase the amount of rent they could obtain. Tenants could be evicted for reasons such as non- payment of rents (which were high), or a landlord's decision to raise sheep instead of grain crops. A cottier paid his rent by working for the landlord. As any improvement made on a holding by a tenant became the property of the landlord when the lease expired or was terminated, the incentive to make improvements was limited. Most tenants had no security of tenure on the land; as tenants "at will", they could be turned out whenever the landlord chose.

39. Tenants, subdivisions, and bankruptcy In 1845, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4–2 hectares (1–5 acres) in size, while 40% were of 2–6 hectares (5–15 acres). Holdings were so small that no crop other than potatoes would suffice to feed a family. Shortly before the famine, the British government reported that poverty was so widespread that one-third of all Irish small holdings could not support the tenant families after rent was paid; the families survived only by earnings as seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland. Following the famine, reforms were implemented making it illegal to further divide land holdings

40. The 1841 census showed a population of just over eight million. Two-thirds of those depended on agriculture for their survival, but they rarely received a working wage. They had to work for their landlords in return for the patch of land they needed to grow enough food for their own families. This was the system which forced Ireland and its peasantry into monoculture, since only the potato could be grown in sufficient quantity. The rights to a plot of land in Ireland could mean the difference between life and death in the early 19th century.

41. Potato dependency The potato was introduced to Ireland as a garden crop of the gentry. The potato was not popular at first; however, after an unusual promotion campaign that was supported by landowners and members of royalty, who wanted their tenants to plant and eat the crop, it rose in popularity. By the late 17th century, it had become widespread as a supplementary rather than a principal food; the main diet was still based on butter, milk, and grain products. By 1800 to 1820, the potato became a staple of the poor, especially in winter. Furthermore, a disproportionate share of the potatoes grown in Ireland were of a single variety, the Irish Lumper

42. With the expansion of the economy between 1760 and 1815, the potato was increasingly adopted by the people and became a staple food year round for farmers. The widespread dependency on this single crop, and the lack of genetic variability among the potato plants in Ireland and Europe (a monoculture), were two of the reasons why the emergence of Phytophthora infestans had such devastating effects in Ireland and in similar areas of Europe. Potatoes were essential to the development of the cottier system; they supported an extremely cheap workforce, but at the cost of lower living standards. For the labourer, "a potato wage" shaped the expanding agrarian economy.

43. The expansion of tillage led to an inevitable expansion of the potato acreage and an expansion of the number of peasant farmers. By 1841, there were over half a million peasant farmers, with 1.75 million dependants. The principal beneficiary of this system was the English consumer who increased their consumption of beef raised in Ireland. The potato was also used extensively as a fodder crop for livestock immediately prior to the famine. Approximately 33% of production, amounting to 5,000,000 short tons (4,500,000 t), was normally used in this way.

44. Prior to the arrival in Ireland of the disease Phytophthora infestans, commonly known as "blight", only two main potato plant diseases had been identified. One was called "dry rot" or "taint", and the other was a virus known popularly as "curl. Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete (a variety of parasitic, non-photosynthetic algae, and not a fungus). Suggested paths of migration and diversification of P. infestans lineages HERB-1 and US-1

45. On 8 December 1845, Daniel O'Connell, head of the Repeal Association, proposed several remedies to the pending disaster. One of the first things he suggested was the introduction of "Tenant-Right" as practised in Ulster, giving the landlord a fair rent for his land, but giving the tenant compensation for any money he might have laid out on the land in permanent improvements. O'Connell noted actions taken by the Belgian legislature during the same season, as they had been hit by blight, too: shutting their ports against the export of provisions, and opening them to imports. He suggested that, if Ireland had a domestic Parliament, the ports would be thrown open and the abundant crops raised in Ireland would be kept for the people of Ireland, as the Dublin parliament had done during the food shortages of the 1780s.

46. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#/media/File:Population_of_Ireland_and_Europe_1750_to_2005.svghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#/media/File:Population_of_Ireland_and_Europe_1750_to_2005.svg

47. In March, Peel set up a programmeof public works in Ireland, but the famine situation worsened during 1846, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in that year did little to help the starving Irish; the measure split the Conservative Party, leading to the fall of Peel's ministry. On 25 June, the second reading of the government's Irish Coercion Bill was defeated by 73 votes in the House of Commons by a combination of Whigs, Radicals, Irish Repealers, and protectionist Conservatives. Peel was forced to resign as prime minister on 29 June, and the Whig leader, Lord John Russell, became prime minister

48. Estates were auctioned off at low prices In 1849 the Encumbered Estates Act allowed landlord estates to be auctioned off upon the petition of creditors. Estates with debts were then auctioned off at low prices. Wealthy British speculators purchased the lands and "took a harsh view" to the tenant farmers who continued renting. The rents were raised and tenants evicted to create large cattle grazing pastures. Between 1849 and 1854, some 50,000 families were evicted.

49. Many Irish tenant farmers during the 1840s famine, that made it impossible for them to pay their rents as agreed to a landlord, and in turn he could not make his mortgage payments. Until this Court was established, the lending bank could not get a court order to sell the mortgaged land because of the entail.

50. Irish food exports during Famine Records show that Irish lands exported food even during the worst years of the Famine. When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782– 83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but government in the 1780s overrode their protests. No such export ban happened in the 1840s. Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and related diseases.