The Victorian Era

Victorian Class and Society

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

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The Victorian class system was a hierarchical, multi-layered, and rapidly changing structure that defined the lives of the British people throughout the nineteenth century. The system inherited its broad shape from the eighteenth century, but the economic, social, and political changes of the Victorian period — the Industrial Revolution Impact, the growth of the Victorian Economy and Industrialization, the expansion of the British Empire in the Victorian Era, the How did Reform Acts change Britain?, and the slow extension of the franchise — transformed it. Between 1837 and 1901 the British population grew from some 17 million to 41 million, and a society that had been roughly three-quarters rural at the start of the period was three-quarters urban at the end. The Victorian period saw the rise of a great new middle class, the growth of a literate urban working class, the gradual reform of the old aristocratic monopoly, the development of the new suburban life, the establishment of the new public school system, the foundation of the new universities, the growth of the new professions, and the long decline of the old agricultural life.

This page examines the structure of the Victorian class system, the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the underclass, the relations between the classes, the changes in the class system over the period, the class geography of the Victorian city, and the class culture of the Victorian period. For the broader context of Victorian society, see Victorian Society, Class, and Daily Life, and for the parent overview, see The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

The Upper Class

The Victorian upper class was the apex of the class pyramid, a small, well-defined, and tightly bound group of perhaps 2 per cent of the population. The upper class was composed of the monarch, the royal family, the great aristocracy, the great landowners, the senior clergy, the senior judges, the senior civil servants, the senior military officers, the great bankers, the great merchants, the great industrialists, and the great lawyers. The upper class owned perhaps a quarter of the cultivated land of the United Kingdom (the 1861 Return of Owners of Land showed that some 1,500 families owned half of England), dominated the politics, the army, the church, the universities, the law, the high culture, and the high society of the period, and was the principal patron of the great Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the period.

The Victorian upper class lived in the great country houses, attended the great public schools of Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Rugby, studied at the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, served in the great regiments of the army, hunted with the Quorn, the Belvoir, the Cottesmore, and the other great hunts of the shires, holidayed in the great seaside resorts of Brighton, Bournemouth, and Cannes, and worshipped in the great parish churches and cathedrals. The peerage of 1837 numbered some 574 peers, and by 1901 it had grown to 596 peers (the second creation of the period, after the first, of 1707); the landed gentry, the untitled families with 1,000 acres or more, numbered some 6,000 in 1900. The story of the Who were the Victorian upper class? is one of the central stories of the period.

The Middle Class

The Victorian middle class was the great social innovation of the period, a class of perhaps 20 per cent of the population in 1851 (when the census first distinguished the middle classes from the working classes) that had grown to perhaps 25 per cent by 1900. The middle class was composed of the merchants, the manufacturers, the bankers, the lawyers, the doctors, the clergymen, the civil servants, the journalists, the teachers, the shopkeepers, the managers of the new industrial concerns, the officers of the army and the navy, and the lower ranks of the professions. The middle class was the principal beneficiary of the Victorian Economy and Industrialization, and it was the principal creator of the Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the suburban villa, the What is a Victorian parlor?, the What did Victorian women wear 1850s?, and the What was Victorian evening dress like? of the period. The story of the How did the middle class grow in the Victorian era? is one of the central stories of the period.

The Victorian middle class was divided into the upper middle class, the lower middle class, and the professional class. The upper middle class, the gentry, lived in the new Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the suburban villa, sent their children to the great public schools, and staffed the Victorian Political History of the period. The lower middle class, the shopkeepers, the small employers, the clerks, the schoolteachers, and the lower ranks of the professions, lived in the terraces and the semi-detached villas, sent their children to the grammar schools, and staffed the lower ranks of the Victorian Political History of the period. The professional class, the lawyers, the doctors, the clergy, the engineers, and the architects, lived in the suburbs, sent their children to the professional schools, and staffed the Victorian Daily Life and Society of the period.

The Working Class

The Victorian working class was the great majority of the population, perhaps 75 per cent of the total, and it was the labour force of the new industrial economy. The working class was divided into the skilled artisan, the unskilled labourer, the factory worker, the miner, the agricultural labourer, the domestic servant (the largest single category of female employment), and the pauper. The skilled artisan, the cabinetmaker, the silversmith, the watchmaker, the printer, and the engineer, was the aristocracy of the working class, and the “labour aristocracy” of the period was the basis of the new “social-imperial” politics of the late Victorian period, in the work of writers like Robert Blatchford and the new Independent Labour Party. The unskilled labourer, the dock labourer, the brick field labourer, the gas works labourer, and the general labourer, was the largest section of the working class, and the Victorian Workhouses was the destination of the very poorest.

The working class lived in the inner suburbs of the great cities, in the slums of Whitechapel, in the courts and cellars of St Giles, in the back-to-back houses of What was Victorian Manchester like?, in the tenements of the great industrial cities, and in the rural slums of the agricultural counties. The working class was fed on the What did Victorians eat for dinner? of the period, drank in the What was a Victorian pub like? of the period, was entertained by the What were Victorian music halls? of the period, holidayed in the How did the seaside become popular? of the period, and was buried in the What is the Victorian cemetery movement? of the period. The working class was the great social problem of the Victorian period, and the story of the working class is told in How did Victorians treat the poor?, in What was the temperance movement?, in What was the Chartist movement?, and in How did Reform Acts change Britain?.

The Servants and the Underclass

The Victorian period saw the growth of a great class of domestic servants, the army of maids, cooks, footmen, butlers, valets, ladies’ maids, governesses, and nannies who staffed the households of the upper and middle classes. By 1851 the census recorded 1,250,000 domestic servants in England and Wales; by 1901 the figure had reached 2,000,000, and at the peak of the period domestic service was the largest single category of female employment, accounting for some 40 per cent of the women in paid work outside agriculture. The What was life like for Victorian servants? is one of the central stories of the period, and the great houses of the upper class often employed dozens of servants, from the butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the lady’s maid, the valet, the footman, the groom of the chambers, the page, the kitchen maid, the scullery maid, the dairy maid, the laundry maid, the governess, the nanny, the tutor, the chauffeur, and the gardener.

Below the working class was the underclass, the very poor, the pauper, the vagrant, the beggar, the prostitute, the criminal, the lunatic, the orphan, the destitute widow, and the unemployable. The chronic poor, the “residuum” of the social investigators of the period, was a small but persistent section of the population, perhaps 1 to 2 per cent; Charles Booth estimated the residuum of London at some 2 per cent of the population in 1889, and Seebohm Rowntree estimated that 9.91 per cent of the working-class population of York in 1901 was in “primary” poverty. The underclass was the object of the great Victorian Workhouses and the new poor law of 1834, of the lunatic asylums and reformatories of the period, of the new charitable institutions, and of the wider campaigns of Victorian Morality and Social Reform.

The Class System in Practice

The Victorian class system was reinforced by a long series of social institutions. The great public schools of Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Rugby, the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the great Inns of Court, the great medical schools, the great hospitals, the great Victorian Buildings and Landmarks of the period, the great clubs of Pall Mall and St James’s, the great regimental messes, the great livery companies of the City, the great cathedrals, the great parish churches, the great Nonconformist chapels, the great Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the country house, the great What is a Victorian parlor? of the middle-class home, the great Victorian Furniture and Decorative Arts of the drawing room, all contributed to the maintenance of the class system. The class system was also reinforced by the Victorian Fashion and Dress, by the Women’s Victorian Fashion, by the Men’s Victorian Fashion, by the Victorian Hair and Beauty, and by the elaborate Victorian Etiquette of the period.

The Victorian class system was not, however, a closed system. The Victorian period saw a constant movement between the classes, with successful manufacturers, merchants, and professionals moving up into the middle class, with successful middle-class families moving up into the upper class, with the new middle class sending its sons to the public schools and the ancient universities, and with the new working class sending its daughters into the new service economy. The class system was also gradually reformed by the How did Reform Acts change Britain?, by the What was the Chartist movement?, by the How did Victorian education change?, and by the long series of Victorian Morality and Social Reform of the period. The great Education Act of 1870, the great Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, the great Trade Union legislation of 1871 and 1875, the great Public Health Acts of 1848, 1872, and 1875, the great Factory Acts of 1833, 1844, 1847, 1850, and 1878, and the great Housing Acts of 1875 and 1890 — all these and the new Liberal reforms of the 1900s (the Education Act of 1902, the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the National Insurance Act of 1911) — together constituted a slow, partial, and contested transformation of the British class system from a society of orders to a society of classes.