The Decade of Reform

• 1832 Reform bill
• 1833 Irish Church Act
• 1833 Factory Act
• 1834 Poor Law Reform
• 1835 Municipal Corporations act
• 1836 Ecclesiastical Commission
• 1837 Civil Marriages/Births
• 1833/1838 Slavery abolished in British Empire

Whig Reform and the Working Class

• Ten Hours Movement
• Cross-cutting Allegiances
  • Whigs/Benthamites
  • Tories property
  • Radicals/left Whigs
  • 'Tory Radicals' paternalist
• Children in Mills
• Women in mills: reproduction
• Factory Act of 1833. 12 hrs 13-18; 9 under 13

Poor Law Amendment Act 1834

• Reduce "out-relief'
• Universal Workhouses
• Remove unwed father's financial obligation
• Conform to markets
• Central administration
• "less eligibility"

Anatomy Act of 1832

• Burke and Hare
• Corpsehouses

Abolition of Slavery 1833, 1838

• Evangelicals
• William Wilberforce
• Abolition of Slave Trade 1807
• Baptists in Jamaica
• William Knibb 1803-1845
• Slavery in Yorkshire?

Queen Victoria 1837-1901

• The Triumph of Reform
• Place of Working Class?

Hungry Forties: depression

• Profits squeeze
• Sluggish markets
• Subsistence
• Iron Law of Wages
• Bad harvests

The Irish Famine

Landlord-tenant relations

• Cultural differences
• Absenteeism
• Value of improvements
• Security of tenure

Population Growth

• The potato
• Sub-division of property (cf . enclosure)
• Poverty
• Eviction

Famine

Robert Peel PM 1841-46

• Local relief
• Public works
• Corn depots
• Repeal of Corn Laws

Whigs 1846-

Lord John Russell PM

Soup Kitchens

• Alexis Soyer

Hospitals

Workhouses

1848

• Immigration
• Death
• Quakers

Memory of the famine

Great Britain: Chartism

London Working Men's Association 1836

The People's Charter 1837

• Manhood suffrage
• Secret ballot
• Payment of MPs
• Abolition of property qualification
• Equal constituencies
• Annual parliamentary elections
• (Woman's suffrage?)

1839

• Convention of the Industrious Classes
• General Strike
• John Frost
•  Moral force or physical force?

1840-1842

• National Charter Association
• Complete Suffrage Union
• Plug Riots

Anti-Corn Law League 1838

Benefits of repeal:

• Prosperity in manufacturing
• Relieve the suffering poor
• More efficient agriculture
• World peace

John Bright

• Quaker moralism

Revolutions of 1848 in Europe

Chartist petition

• Kennington Common

Repeal of the Corn Laws 1846

Economic Recovery

• Great Exhibition of 1851
  • Crystal Palace

Memories of Hard Times

Charles Dickens

• Oliver Twist 1837-39
  • The Poor Law

  Hard Times 1845

  • Factory Owners
  • Utilitarian education theories
  • McChoakumchild

Irish memory: Hard Times