Victorian London

Victorian London Year 8 History

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 filth of the street is visible by the dark colour of the gutter. The upper class were spared walking through the street because they could afford carriages, while the lower classes had to walk through the street.

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 Thames River.

John Nash This was George IV's favourite designer, John Nash. Nash designed the broad avenues of Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Carlton House Terrace, and Oxford Circus

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" after their founder

The early part of the 19th century was the golden age of steam. The first railway in London was built from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1836, and a great railway boom followed. Major stations were built at Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848), and King's Cross (1850).

The clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, known erroneously as Big Ben, was built in 1859. The origin of the name Big Ben is in some dispute, but there is no argument that the moniker refers to the bells of the tower, NOT to the large clock itself.

The Great Exhibition • Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria was largely responsible for one of the defining moments of the era that bears his wife's name; the Great Exhibition of 1851.

This was the first great world's fair, a showcase of technology and manufacturing from countries all over the world. The Exhibition was held in Hyde Park, and the centrepiece was Joseph Paxton's revolutionary iron and glass hall, dubbed the "Crystal Palace".

The exhibition was an immense success, with over 200,000 attendees. After the event, the Crystal Palace was moved to Sydenham, in South London, where it stayed until it burned to the ground in 1936. The proceeds from the Great Exhibition went towards the founding of two new permanent displays, which became the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Paddington Station The year 1863 saw the completion of the very first underground railway in London, from Paddington to Farringdon Road. The project was so successful that other lines soon followed.

But the expansion of transport was not limited to dry land. As the hub of the British Empire, the Thames was clogged with ships from all over the world, and London had more shipyards than anyplace on the globe.

For all the economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions among London's poor were appalling. Children as young as 5 were often set to work begging or sweeping chimneys. Campaigners like Charles Dickens did much to make the plight of the poor in London known to the literate classes with his novels, notably Oliver Twist. In 1870 those efforts bore some fruit with the passage of laws providing compulsory education for children between the ages of 5 and 12. But more about that another day. Poverty

Campaigners like Charles Dickens did much to make the plight of the poor in London known to the literate classes with his novels, notably Oliver Twist. In 1870 those efforts bore some fruit with the passage of laws providing compulsory education for children between the ages of 5 and 12.

The dirty side of London The Thames, Cholera and the Big Stink

In mid-19th century London, out of the 70,000 houses in the city, 17,000 had their own wells, while the rest relied on standpipes- one for every 20 to 30 houses- which supplied water for one hour only, three days a week. • Few houses had bathrooms and even when Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace in 1838, she found no bathrooms. • Indeed, as late as 1908, Downing Street had no bathrooms. • Public bathhouses were popular. • A series of cholera outbreaks in the 1840s and 1850s and the Big Stink all lead the way to improvements being made – here are some of the things being written about and said at the time:

The River Thames

By 1858, thousands of new WCs all over London were flushing waste into the River Thames. In June a heatwave cooked the foul mess into “the Great Stink”. • “Gentility of speech is at an end - it stinks; and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it,” the City Press newspaper spluttered. • There was no escape for the newly built House of Commons. Sheets soaked in chloride of lime were hung from windows to try to blot out the smell, and plans were made to move the House out of London. • Luckily heavy thunderstorms came along shortly afterwards and washed away the cause – nontheless, very quickly • The Times June 17, 2008 on 150th anniversary

Joseph Bazalgette 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.

The Embankment

A cartoon drawn in the 1850s at the height of a cholera epidemic (from Punch Magazine) What does it show? What is the message of the picture? Skeletons don’t ‘dispense’ water. Therefore the source is useless to a historian of mid 1800s city life. Do you agree?

Taken from the internet site ‘Victorian Web’; 2002 During the first decades of Victoria's reign, baths were virtually unknown in the poorer districts and uncommon anywhere. Most households of all economic classes still used "privy-pails"; water closets (flush toilets) were rare. Sewers had flat bottoms, and because drains were made out of stone, seepage was considerable. If, as was often the case in towns, streets were unpaved, they might remain ankle-deep in mud for weeks. Give three threats to health mentioned in the source

1850s cartoon; ‘A Court for King Cholera’ (From Punch Magazine) How can you tell that this ‘court’ is a very unhealthy place? Do you think this cartoon is likely to be reliable? Explain your answer.

Source Four: Henry Mayhew, ‘Jouneys through London’; 1849 We then journeyed on to London Street, down which the tidal ditch continues its course. In No. 1 of this street the cholera first appeared seventeen years ago, and spread up it with fearful speed; but this year it appeared at the opposite end, and ran down it with like severity. As we passed along the reeking banks of the sewer the sun shone upon a narrow slip of the water. In the bright light it appeared the colour of strong green tea, and positively looked as solid as black marble in the shadow - indeed it was more like watery mud than muddy water; and yet we were assured this was the only water the wretched inhabitants had to drink. As we gazed in horror at it, we saw drains and sewers emptying their filthy Do Henry Mayhew’s comments back up the views of the cartoonist in source three?

For homework • You have another cartoon to look at and see what it tells you • Just one thing – what is the difference between a primary and a secondary source?

Victorian London