The Victorian Era

How Did the Middle Class Grow in the Victorian Era

Article · Society & Daily Life · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Victorian middle class grew from a small fraction of the population in 1800 to a substantial portion of the British nation by 1900, transforming the class structure, the political life, the cultural life, and the material culture of the country. The 1851 census, the first to distinguish the middle classes from the working classes on a national scale, recorded that some 20 per cent of the occupied male population of England and Wales were in the “middle classes” — the merchants, the bankers, the lawyers, the doctors, the clergymen, the civil servants, the journalists, the teachers, the shopkeepers, the manufacturers, and the lower ranks of the professions. By 1901 the proportion was approaching 25 per cent, and the middle class had become a distinct sociological fact: the principal beneficiary of the Victorian Economy and Industrialization, the principal creator of the Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the suburban villa, and the principal audience of the Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word of the period.

The Industrial Revolution and the New Middle Class

The growth of the middle class was driven by the Industrial Revolution Impact of the period, the great transformation of the British economy from an agricultural economy into an industrial economy. The new industrial economy created a long list of new occupations that had no counterpart in the eighteenth century: the railway engineer, the civil engineer, the mechanical engineer, the electrical engineer, the chemist, the metallurgist, the accountant, the actuary, the banker, the broker, the insurer, the estate agent, the auctioneer, the surveyor, the architect, the journalist, the newspaper proprietor, the printer, the publisher, the photographer, the typist, the secretary, the telegraph operator, the telephone operator, the shopkeeper, the commercial traveller, the warehouseman, the pharmacist, the dentist, the solicitor, the barrister, the accountant, the bookkeeper, and the company director. The number of people in these new occupations grew from a few thousand in 1800 to several million by 1900, and they formed the core of the new middle class.

The new middle class was concentrated in the great industrial cities of the period, in What was Victorian Manchester like?, in How did Birmingham grow in the Victorian era?, in What was Victorian Edinburgh known for?, in the new industrial towns of Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands, the North East, South Wales, and the central belt of Scotland, in the great ports of Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol, and Southampton, in the great railway towns of Crewe, Swindon, Derby, and Doncaster, and in a long list of other new industrial centres. The new middle class was the principal beneficiary of the Railway Boom in Victorian Britain, of the Victorian Economy and Industrialization, of the Victorian ships, of the penny postage, of the telephone, of the typewriter, and of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The Growth of the Professions

The professions were a particularly important part of the new middle class. The 1851 census distinguished the professionals — the lawyers, the doctors, the clergymen, the civil servants, the engineers, the architects, the accountants, the teachers, and the journalists — as a distinct section of the middle class, and the period saw a rapid expansion of the number, the income, and the social standing of the professions.

The legal profession was reorganised by the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875, which fused the old courts of law and equity, and by the creation of the new centralised system of High Court judges and Circuit judges; the number of solicitors in England and Wales rose from 10,000 in 1851 to 25,000 in 1901. The medical profession was reorganised by the Medical Act of 1858, which established the General Medical Council and the new register of qualified practitioners, and by the Conjoint Examining Board established in 1884; the number of doctors in England and Wales rose from 15,000 in 1851 to 30,000 in 1901. The civil service was reformed by the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854, which introduced open competitive examination, the division of intellectual from routine work, and the new principle of permanent tenure; by 1900 the Home Civil Service numbered some 50,000 people, of whom a substantial proportion were in the upper-middle-class income bracket. The new universities — the University of London, the Victoria University of Manchester and Liverpool, the University of Durham, the University of Wales, and the new civic universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and Bristol — were founded or reorganised in the period, and the number of students at the British universities grew from a few thousand in 1850 to 30,000 by 1900.

The teaching profession was created, in its modern form, by the Education Act of 1870, which established the new School Boards and the new board schools, and by the Education Act of 1902, which reorganised the secondary schools; the number of certificated teachers in England and Wales grew from 30,000 in 1870 to 80,000 in 1900, and the profession became a major employer of the lower middle class. The railway employees — the clerks, the stationmasters, the accountants, the traffic managers, the locomotive superintendents — were a particular section of the new middle class; the railway companies were the largest single employers in the country, and the railway clerk at £100 to £300 a year was the archetype of the lower middle class.

The banking and insurance industries were another great source of new middle-class employment. The joint-stock banks — the London and Westminster Bank (1836), the London Joint Stock Bank (1836), the Union Bank of London (1839), the London and County Banking Company (1839), the National Provincial Bank of England (1833) — grew rapidly through the period, and the number of bank employees in England and Wales grew from 10,000 in 1851 to 60,000 in 1901. The insurance companies — the Prudential (1848), the Liverpool Victoria (1843), the Royal Liver (1850), the Refuge (1858), the Pearl (1864), the British Mutual (1866) — grew in parallel, and the actuary and the insurance clerk became a feature of the new professional middle class.

The Shop Assistant and the Clerical Worker

The new service economy produced a vast army of shop assistants, clerks, and office workers. The department stores — Whiteley’s of Westbourne Grove (1863), Harrods of Knightsbridge (1849, moved to the present site in 1881), Selfridges (1909, just after the period), the Civil Service Supply Association (1865), the Army and Navy Co-operative Society (1871) — were the great new institutions of the late Victorian period; the number of shop assistants in England and Wales grew from 100,000 in 1851 to 600,000 in 1901, of whom a substantial proportion were women. The “upper shop girl,” the young woman earning £30 to £100 a year at the counter of a fashionable West End shop, was a particular figure of the late Victorian period, and the Shop Hours Act of 1886 and the Early Closing Association movement of the 1880s and 1890s were the first attempts to regulate the conditions of her work.

The typist, the secretary, the telegraph clerk, the telephone operator, the bank clerk, and the railway clerk were the new clerical occupations of the period. The typewriter, the telephone, the dictaphone, the adding machine, the cash register, the filing cabinet, and the new system of business correspondence in standardised formats were the technological basis of the new clerical workforce, and the typewriter girl, the female shorthand writer, and the female office worker became a feature of the new commercial middle class. The number of clerks in England and Wales grew from 60,000 in 1851 to 600,000 in 1901, and the late Victorian period saw the emergence of the new “black-coated” middle class of the office.

The Suburbanisation of the Middle Class

The growth of the middle class was accompanied by the suburbanisation of the British city, as new suburbs of terraces, semi-detached villas, and detached villas spread around every major town. The suburban home became the showcase of middle-class life, with its Victorian Architecture and Interior Design, its What is a Victorian parlor?, its Victorian Furniture and Decorative Arts in the drawing room, its What is a Victorian Chesterfield sofa?, its What is a Victorian color palette?, its Victorian wallpapers, and its What was a Victorian kitchen like?, while the rituals of Victorian Food and Dining, of What did Victorians eat for dinner?, and of How did afternoon tea become a tradition? structured its domestic day.

The new suburbs were concentrated in particular parts of London — Clapham, Camberwell, Brixton, Dulwich, Hampstead, Highgate, Stoke Newington, Hackney, Walthamstow, Leyton, and Tottenham in the north and east; Richmond, Putney, Wimbledon, and Clapham in the south-west; Ealing, Chiswick, and Brentford in the west. The expansion of the new suburbs was made possible by the development of the new railway network (the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, the South Eastern Railway, the London and South Western Railway, the Metropolitan Railway, and the new electric tramways of the period), the new London Underground (1863 onwards), the London omnibuses (1829 onwards), the hansom cabs, and the new municipal trams, and the suburban commuter was the characteristic figure of the late Victorian city. The suburbanisation of the middle class was a major change in the Victorian Daily Life and Society, and it had a profound effect on the Victorian Fashion and Dress, on the What did Victorian women wear 1850s?, on the crinoline, on the bustle, and on a long list of other features of the period.

The Politics of the Middle Class

The growth of the middle class was accompanied by the development of a new politics, a new set of political demands, a new set of political organisations, a new set of political leaders, and a new style of political life. The new middle class was the principal beneficiary of the How did Reform Acts change Britain?, of the What was the Chartist movement?, of the Victorian Political History, of the new Liberal Party of 1859, the new Conservative Party of 1867, the new Liberal Unionist Party of 1886, the new Labour Representation Committee of 1900, and the new Liberal reforms of the Edwardian period (the Education Act of 1902, the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the National Insurance Act of 1911).

The new middle class was the principal supporter of the Liberal and Conservative parties, of the new co-operative societies, friendly societies, building societies, and savings banks, of the new professional associations, and of the philanthropic, educational, religious, and moral reform organisations of the period, including the Victorian Morality and Social Reform campaigns, the What was the temperance movement?, the How did Victorians treat the poor? campaign, and the agitation surrounding the What was the Contagious Diseases Act?.