5HUM0325Peace, Power and Prosperity

Lecture 2: Victorian slums and the rural idyll

Structure of the lecture:

• Victorian cities and Victorian anxieties

• the suburb and the city

• the Slum

• rural idylls – paternalism, model industrial villages, garden cities, land reform.

Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil: or the Two Nations (1845), book II, chapter 5

• "Yes," resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval. "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws."

• "You speak of -- " said Egremont, hesitatingly.• "THE RICH AND THE POOR."

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1855), chapter XVII, ‘What is a Strike?’

• 'I know nought of your ways down South. I have heerd they're a pack of spiritless, down-trodden men; welly clemmed to death; too much dazed wi' clemming to know when they're put upon. Now, it's not so here. We known when we're put upon; and we'en too much blood in us to stand it. We just take our hands fro' our looms, and say, "Yo' may clem us, but yo'll not put upon us, my masters!" And be danged to 'em, they shan't this time!'

• 'I wish I lived down South,' said Bessy.

• 'There's a deal to bear there,' said Margaret. 'There are sorrows to bear everywhere. There is very hard bodily labour to be gone through, with very little food to give strength.'

• 'But it's out of doors,' said Bessy. 'And away from the endless, endless noise, and sickening heat.'

Frederick Engels, The Condition of the

Working-Class in England in 1844, p. 55 • To such an extent has the convenience of the

rich been considered in the planning of Manchester that these plutocrats can travel from their houses to their places of business in the centre of the town by the shortest routes, which run entirely through the working class districts, without even realising how close they are to the misery and filth which lie on both sides of the road. This is because the main streets which run from the Exchange in all directions out of town are occupied almost uninterruptedly on both sides by shops…

Charles Booth, map of poverty in London, 1898-9

extract – Camberwell-Kennington areas

Chartist Land Plan, 1846-50O’Connorville, Hertfordshire

New Lanark, Lanarkshire (1799-1829) and Saltaire, West Riding of Yorkshire (1850-63)

Port Sunlight, Merseyside (1890s) and Bournville, near Birmingham (1898-1905)

Letchworth Garden City, Herts (1903)