The Victorian Era

Victorian Cities, Transport, and Entertainment

Complete guide · Cities & Entertainment · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Victorian cities, transport systems, and entertainments together defined the urban experience of the period. Between the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 and her death in 1901, the population of England and Wales transformed from a largely rural population — only 45 per cent of it living in towns in 1831 — to a largely urban one, with 78 per cent in towns by 1901. The new cities demanded new transport systems, and the new transport systems in turn produced new suburbs and a new popular culture of music halls, public houses, seaside resorts, parks, libraries, and museums. The whole of this story belongs to Victorian Daily Life and Society and to the wider history of the period set out in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

The Growth of the Victorian City

The Victorian city was the most rapid and most concentrated urban growth in British history. The great industrial cities of the Midlands and the North — What was Victorian Manchester like?, How did Birmingham grow in the Victorian era?, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Liverpool, and Glasgow — together with the East End and the suburbs of London, took the bulk of the migration from the countryside and the immigration from Ireland and the continent. The story of the growth of the capital is told in How did London’s population grow?, and the size of the city at the close of the reign is set out in How big was Victorian London?.

The Victorian city was sharply segregated by class. The wealthy lived in the new west-end suburbs — Mayfair, Belgravia, Kensington, and Bayswater — in the great terraced and detached houses of the new fashion. The middle classes lived in the southern and western suburbs — Clapham, Camberwell, Brixton, Dulwich, and the new garden suburbs of Hampstead and Blackheath — in the terraces and semi-detached villas that were the characteristic building type of the period. The working classes lived in the inner suburbs of the east and the south, in the slums of Whitechapel, in the courts and cellars of St Giles, in the back-to-back houses of Manchester, and in the riverside tenements of the great port cities.

The city was a place of squalor, disease, and death, and the What was the Great Stink of London? of 1858 was the most spectacular crisis of the Victorian urbanisation. The crisis was addressed by the How was the London sewer system built?, by the public health acts of 1848, 1872, and 1875, by the new factory and housing legislation, by the new board schools of the 1870s and 1880s, and by the medical reforms associated with How did Florence Nightingale change nursing? and How did germ theory change medicine?.

The Transport Revolution

The Victorian period saw a transport revolution that transformed the British landscape, economy, and society. The railway came first: the Liverpool and Manchester Railway of 1830 opened the passenger age; the network of Great Britain grew to over 15,000 miles of track by 1870; and the railway companies built the great termini — St Pancras, King’s Cross, Paddington, Waterloo, and Victoria — that are still the entry points to London. At sea, the British merchant fleet became the largest in the world by 1900, and the great shipping lines carried the trade of the empire.

Within the cities, the When were London’s first omnibuses? dates the first London omnibus service to 1829; the What was the London Underground like in Victorian times? describes the world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan, opened in 1863; the How did hansom cabs work? explains the cab that became a symbol of the Victorian street; and the horse-drawn tram, introduced to Birkenhead in 1860 and to London in 1870, became the principal vehicle of the working-class suburb. The story of the urban transport of the period is told in Urban Transport in the Victorian Era.

The Entertainments of the People

The Victorian period saw a revolution in the leisure time of the British people. The railway and the tram carried the crowds to the new pleasures; the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 — establishing Easter Monday, Whit Monday, and Boxing Day as bank holidays, and the August Bank Holiday added in the same year — gave them time off; and the popular press and the popular entertainments gave them something to do with it. The principal entertainments of the period are examined in Victorian Entertainment and Leisure.

The What were Victorian music halls? was the central popular entertainment of the working class. The What was a Victorian pub like? was the central social institution. The How did the seaside become popular? — Brighton, Blackpool, Scarborough, Bournemouth, and the rest — was the central popular holiday. The new public parks — Victoria Park in the East End, the People’s Palace in Mile End, the great municipal parks of Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Liverpool — gave the working class open space in the heart of the cities; the public libraries, established under the Museums Act of 1845 and the Public Libraries Act of 1850, gave them books; the public museums and galleries — the South Kensington Museum, the Bethnal Green Museum, the National Gallery, the British Museum — gave them access to art and to learning. The new sports — cricket, football, rugby, tennis, cycling, and the rest — gave the people organised games of their own, and the new popular press gave them a daily paper.

The New Suburbs

The Victorian transport revolution made possible the new suburbs. The new working man’s train and the new tram carried the working classes to the outer terraces of Tottenham, Camberwell, and Stockport; the underground and the suburban railway carried the middle classes to the new villas of Hampstead, Blackheath, and Bromley; and the omnibus and the cab carried the well-to-do about the West End. The suburban house had its What is a Victorian parlor?, its drawing room, its garden, and its kitchen; its rituals of afternoon tea and Sunday dinner; and its quiet evenings at home with the family.