# A Short History of Social Life in England/Chapter 25

CHAPTER XXV
Circa 1820—1837
PROGRESS
"Progress is The law of life—man's self is not yet man, Nor shall I deem his object served, his end Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, While only here and there a star dispels
The darkness, here and there a towering mind O'erlooks its prostrate fellows."
Browning.
GEORGE III. died in 1820, but he had ceased to reign for the past ten years. "All the world knows the story of his malady; history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his Palace, addressing imaginary Parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly Courts." Sightless, deaf, imbecile, yet still dignified with a long snowy beard, ​his purple gown ornamented with the star of his famous Order, he was still a King, and his worthless son had been Regent for ten years before death released the old monarch and the Regent became King of England. It was fortunate for the country that the Sovereign no longer possessed the personal influences of former days. Though the new King rivalled his predecessor Charles II. in wanton and riotous living, yet the social conditions of the age continued unchanged under the new régime. Indeed, "the last night of the Regency passed into the first morning of the reign of George IV. as an event that would be scarcely marked as an epoch in English history." But the new King was an expensive luxury to the nation. His coronation alone cost £243,000, though his unhappy wife was refused admission to the Abbey, and took no part in the proceedings. She mercifully died a few weeks later. Besides receiving a large annual income, he required his debts to be constantly paid, and large sums of money mysteriously disappeared. "If he had been a manufacturing town or a populous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he could not have cost more," reflected Thackeray.
​Court life was lessening its hold on the country. It did not attract the poets, the scholars, the architects, the journalists, the inventors, or those men who were busy in maintaining the greatness of their country. The Court life of earlier times had passed away.
Next to the Court came an exclusive society, to which either a man belonged or he did not. There was little overlapping of class with class at this time: no tradesman could belong to this society; doctors, bankers, and men with such-like professions, were outside the pale. Indeed, one writer tells us that there were but six hundred folk "in society" at this time. The test was admission into Almack's Club; this was the "Royal Academy of Society," and many were the heart-burnings of those left outside. It was governed by a Committee of six English ladies, who decided who should be admitted to the charmed circle and who should not. Pedigrees and family connections were carefully weighed, and tickets for the famous balls at Willis's Rooms were judiciously dispensed. Dancing began at eleven. With the disappearance of the powdered head and hoop petticoat, the minuet and picturesque old country dance ​had vanished. The new dances were the waltz and quadrille, introduced in 1813, and the galop, or the "sprightly galopade" as it was called, while the modern lancers developed from the quadrille. Fashion dominated this exclusive club of Almack's. Trousers for men were making their way in, but as yet they were looked on as not quite correct for evening dress, and one evening, when the Duke of Wellington presented himself thus attired, his entrance was barred by an official, who explained politely, "Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers." The Duke bowed to the supreme decree and quietly walked away. By 1830, however, trousers had become universal. A few years before this, the frock coat appeared, brass buttons went out, and black cravats came in. Indeed, dark colours for men's dress were introduced by George IV. himself, who wore a dark blue frock coat. A great deal of attention was still bestowed on waistcoats, and we recall the account of Joseph Sedley in "Vanity Fair," going to London in a waistcoat of "crimson satin embroidered with gold butterflies." Pumps, or shoes, were worn by this exclusive society, and a book of etiquette about this time quaintly ​advises: "Never permit the sanctity of a drawing-room to be violated by a boot." The women of the period never wore boots, but light high-heeled shoes. Suitability of dress had not occurred to our great-grandmothers. They went out in November fogs and bleak January days clad in light delicate muslins and cambrics. Even the universal pelisse which was necessary for warmth was often made of azure blue sarcenet or flame coloured silk, while large Leghorn straw bonnets with blue ribbon bows and white feathers surmounted all. These bonnets grew steadily in size, till in 1827 they were as large as umbrellas.
The necessity for suitable dress had not yet arrived. No woman in this society was called upon to work, and she had no independence. Marriage was the one and only career open to the lady of the early nineteenth century. "Women regarded themselves and spoke of themselves as inferior to men in understanding as they were in bodily strength." They considered independence unfeminine; they were conscious of their dependence on others and grateful for support. "Women," says a female writer of the period, "are something like ​children—the more they show their need of support, the more engaging they are; in everything that women attempt they should show their consciousness of dependence." "Never ask a lady any questions about anything whatever," says the book of etiquette. "Familiarity is the greatest vice of society."
But times were changing every day, and the barrier between class and class was breaking down at every stage. To marry fortune was the dominating idea of every well-born household, and these fortunes were now being acquired by the middle classes of England. Here, too, we find the artistic, literary, and musical circles. From this great class sprang the novelists, the poets, the journalists, the writers that adorned the nineteenth century. Dickens, Thackeray, Keats, Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Lamb, Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau, Jane Austen, these did not belong to the exclusive circle chosen by the famous Committee of Six. They knew better than to apply. In the provincial towns and in the suburbs of London resided the middle class. Merchants and shopkeepers often lived in the City, but there were short stage carriages to such places as Islington, ​Clapham, Camberwell, Highgate, &c., for those who could not afford their own carriage or horse. Every one in this set dined in the middle of the day. There were sociable evenings with sit-down tea, cakes, muffins, homemade bread and home-made jam. No pipes were smoked in this community—only workingmen smoked pipes; but tobacco was still taken in the form of snuff by men and women alike. They had not many amusements. They had no lawn tennis, no croquet, no amateur photography. There were a few quiet archery parties, and punctilious calls at stated intervals on neighbours, when decanters of port and sherry, with biscuits, were put on the table. In provincial towns there was the annual interest of the county ball, when folk of the highest rank and fashion danced the newest step in the newest clothes, to the admiration of the local society. But, like "a Hindu caste," each class kept strictly to themselves. But when all is said and done, the most remarkable development of society during the nineteenth century has been in connection with the People. So far they had played no part in the government of the country, which was still wholly in the hands ​of the wealthy and powerful, while they, the workers—those who toiled with their hands, who gave their lives, courage, patience, skill, endurance, obedience; who suffered and died, striving not ignobly—had no share, nor was it possible for them to rise in the social scale. Truly this was impossible, as they had no knowledge and little or no education, while excessive gin-drinking was sapping away their very manhood. Nevertheless, it was from the people that arose the man who, by his own industry and inventive genius, changed the face of England by the railway system, which completely revolutionised the country. Born of parents too poor to pay for his schooling, living one of eight in a single room, Stephenson worked perseveringly at the improvement of the locomotive engine. Since the days of Watt, steam had made great progress. In 1819 the first steamer had crossed the Atlantic, and steamboats were plying on the Thames, but there were many who shared the hopes of one when he said: "This is a new experiment for the temptation of tourists … It was certainly very strange and striking to hear and see it hissing and roaring, foaming and spouting like an angry whale; but on the ​whole I think it rather vulgarises the scene too much, and I am glad that it is found not to answer, and is to be dropped next year." Well-known, indeed, is the opposition that had to be overcome with regard to acceleration of speed. Men contended that even if a speed of fifteen miles an hour were attained, the dangers of bursting boilers and broken wheels would be so great that "people would suffer themselves to be fired off upon a rocket, sooner than trust themselves to the mercy of a machine going at such a prodigious rate." While "as to those persons who speculate on making railways general throughout the kingdom, and superseding all the wagons, mail, stage coaches, and post chaises—we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice."
"Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
 Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace."
But although here and there some genius arose from out the working classes, they were as yet no power in the land. At Queen Victoria's accession 40 per cent of the men and 65 per cent of the women could not sign their names. Their wages were deplorable, and their employers could work them just as long as they dared. Any combined attempt at remonstrance was put down by force, until the murmur of discontent grew louder and louder, and the Act forbidding working men to combine was repealed. Nor was this the only step taken to ameliorate the lot of the working classes of England at this time. A more merciful condition prevailed in our prisons. Men were no longer hanged for such trivial offences as heretofore. In 1832, the death sentence for sheep-stealing and forgery was abolished, and executions diminished steadily, until in 1841 capital punishment was enforced for murder only—"a life for a life was all the law could exact." Nevertheless, executions were still performed in public, and ​thousands still flocked to watch the spectacle, to "gloat over the sufferings of a dying fellow-creature"; the bodies of criminals were left hanging on the gallows in public view, and it was not till 1868 that this publicity was stopped. The old barbarous punishments were disappearing. Hanging in chains was abolished in 1834, the pillory followed a few years later, stocks were superseded by the treadmill, and the ducking-stool was no longer used. Still reform moved slowly, and it was only thanks to philanthropic individuals that it moved at all. Prisoners of both sexes, innocent children and the vilest offenders, were locked up together awaiting trial. Overcrowding was so great that often the unhappy inmates had not room to lay down their weary bodies. For the first time now in our country's history it occurred to Englishmen that even the criminal had rights, and in 1824 new Gaol Acts were passed, by which every prisoner had a cot to himself; cleanliness was insisted on, and chaplains, matrons, and schoolmasters were appointed. Pentonville Prison was built with its tiers of cells, and the horrors of Newgate, so often graphically depicted, were at an end. Transportation to Australia was still at its height, and ​in the year 1834 no less than 4,920 convicts were shipped off for life.
The philanthropy of the time and the individual effort that preceded legislation had first secured the abolition of the slave trade, and then slavery itself in the English Colonies, a proof of the growing interest taken in the oppressed and afflicted by those in positions of power. But the most important step of all, in the light of modern events with regard to the rise of Democracy, was the passing of the Reform Bill, the salient points of which it will be well to repeat. Through the hot nights of July, 1832, the Commons debated on this far-reaching measure, which secured to the middle classes a voice in the government of their country. Perhaps none saw the future of the British working man more clearly than Macaulay: "Your great objection to this Bill," he said, "is that it will not be final. I ask you whether you think that any Reform Bill which you can frame will be final. I believe that it will last during that time for which alone we ought at present to think of legislating. Another generation may find in the new representative system faults such as we find in the old ​representative system. Civilisation will proceed. Wealth will increase. Industry and trade will find out new seats. … For our children we do not pretend to legislate. All that we can do for them is to leave to them a memorable example of the manner in which great reforms ought to be made."
The Bill passed the Commons, to be thrown out by the Lords, and intense excitement prevailed throughout the country. For the moment strong historical tradition triumphed over the desires of the growing middle class and the unexpressed rights and liberties of the people. But it was only for a moment. Sydney Smith summed up the position in one of his humorous speeches at Taunton. "The attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of Reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm at Sidmouth, and the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion," he said. "In the winter of 1 824 there set in a great flood upon that town; the tide rose to an incredible height, the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm. Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with ​mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused, Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest Gentlemen, be at your ease and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington."
He had prophesied right. The Lords passed the Reform Bill the following year, by which all the newly developed towns were represented, and the middle class of England secured a voice in the government of the country. True, the people themselves secured nothing, but they were hardly ready yet A few years later and their turn came. "Give us," cried the Chartists, who represented the aspirations of the people, "give us, not government by the rich, but government by the people; not protection, but political rights. Give us our Charter, and then will this dread interval of darkness an anguish pass away; then will that dawn come for which we have watched so long, and justice, love, and plenty inhabit this land and there abide."
​"The people were right. Democracy, so giant-like and threatening, which with rude strength severs sacred ties and stamps out ancient landmarks—Democracy, though in ways undreamt of, did bring deliverance. For Democracy is sudden like the sea and grows dark with storms, and sweeps away many precious things; but, like the sea, it reflects the light of the wide heavens and cleanses the shores of human life."