The Victorian Era

Victorian Society, Class, and Daily Life

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

❦

The British people in the Victorian period lived in a society that was at once deeply hierarchical and rapidly changing, in which the social habits of the eighteenth century were being adapted to the conditions of the new industrial, urban, and imperial world. Between the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 and her death in 1901 the population of the United Kingdom grew from some 26 million to 41 million, the population of London grew from 2 million to 6.5 million, the volume of British exports grew fourfold, the length of the railway network grew from 1,500 miles to 18,000, and the acreage of the new suburbs grew beyond all precedent. The Victorian period saw the rise of a great new middle class, the growth of a literate urban working class, the gradual extension of the franchise, the reform of the Victorian Education, and the development of the new popular press, the new popular literature, the new mass entertainment, and the new consumer economy that defined the modern British world.

This page is the entry point to a broader examination of Victorian society, class, and daily life. It sketches the principal social structures of the period, the principal classes, the principal institutions, the principal forms of work, and the principal changes of the period. For deeper coverage of any single subject, follow the contextual links throughout the text, or browse the related pages at the end of the article. For the broader historical context, see The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

The Structure of Victorian Society

Victorian society was a pyramid. At the apex were the monarch, the royal family, the great aristocracy, and the great landowners — a class that owned perhaps a quarter of the cultivated land of the United Kingdom and dominated the politics, the army, the church, the universities, the law, and the high culture of the period. The Who were the Victorian upper class? was a small, well-defined, and tightly bound group, and the great houses, the great estates, the great collections of art, and the great shooting and deer forests of the period were the material expression of the class. The Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the country house, the Victorian Furniture and Decorative Arts of the drawing room, the What did Victorian gentlemen wear? of the gentleman, and the Women’s Victorian Fashion of the lady were the visible marks of the class.

Below the aristocracy was the gentry — the country squires, the urban professionals, the clergymen, the military officers, the senior civil servants, the bankers, the lawyers, the doctors, and the managers of the new industrial concerns. The gentry was a class of perhaps five per cent of the population, and it was the backbone of the political, social, and cultural life of the country. The Victorian Family and the Home, with its emphasis on the patriarchal father, the dutiful mother, the well-brought-up children, and the well-run household, was the central institution of the gentry, and the What was a Victorian wedding like? was the central rite of the gentry. The gentry sent its sons to the public schools of Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Rugby, and to the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and it staffed the Victorian Political History of the period.

Below the gentry was the great new middle class, the How did the middle class grow in the Victorian era?, which grew from a small fraction of the population in 1800 to perhaps 25 per cent of the population by 1900. The middle class was the great social innovation of the Victorian period, a class of merchants, manufacturers, bankers, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, civil servants, journalists, teachers, and shopkeepers, who owed their position not to the ownership of land but to the new industrial economy, to the new professions, and to the new service economy. 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.

Below the middle class was the working class, perhaps 75 per cent of the population, which was itself divided into the skilled artisan, the unskilled labourer, the factory worker, the miner, the agricultural labourer, the domestic servant, and the pauper. The working class was the labour force of the new industrial economy, and the Victorian Workhouses, the Life for Victorian Children, the What was life like for Victorian servants?, and the What did Victorians eat for dinner? were the central features of the working-class life.

The Victorian Family

The Victorian family was the central institution of the period, the basic unit of the social, the economic, the moral, and the emotional life of the British people. The ideal of the Victorian family, as it was held up in the literature, the sermons, the manuals of conduct, and the conduct books of the period, was a patriarchal household with a father at the head, a mother as the Angel in the House (Coventry Patmore’s phrase, 1854–62), and a brood of well-brought-up children. The family was a central concern of the Victorian Novel, the Victorian Poetry, the Victorian Theatre and Drama, and the Children’s Literature in the Victorian Era. The family was also the central institution of the Victorian Morality and Social Reform of the period.

The Victorian family was, in practice, a more diverse institution than the ideal suggested. The patriarchal father, the dutiful mother, and the well-brought-up children were the ideal of the middle and upper classes, but the working-class family was often characterised by the early marriage, the large number of children, the limited resources, the working wife, and the absence of the husband in the factory, the mine, or the workhouse. The What was life like for a Victorian wife? was a life of domestic labour, of child-rearing, of household management, of religious observance, and of the constant struggle against the limited resources of the working-class household. The How were Victorian marriages arranged? is a story of family alliances, of property settlements, of the legal disabilities of the married woman, and of the slow growth of the idea of the companionate marriage.

Class and the Victorian City

The Victorian period saw the most rapid urbanisation in British history. The growth of the London population of the early nineteenth century, the growth of the great industrial cities of the Midlands and the North, the development of the great ports of Liverpool, Glasgow, and Southampton, and the growth of the great provincial cities of What was Victorian Manchester like?, How did Birmingham grow in the Victorian era?, and What was Victorian Edinburgh known for? transformed the British population from a largely rural population (70 per cent in 1800) to a largely urban population (75 per cent by 1900).

The Victorian city was a place of class segregation. The wealthy lived in the new suburbs of the west end, in Kensington, in Belgravia, in Mayfair, in Bloomsbury, in the Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the suburban villa. The middle classes lived in the new suburbs of the south and the west, in Clapham, in Camberwell, in Brixton, in the terraces and the semi-detached villas that were the Victorian Architectural Styles 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 What was Victorian Manchester like?, in the tenements of the great industrial cities.

The class segregation of the Victorian city was reinforced by the new forms of transport. The London Underground opened in 1863, the London omnibuses had been running since 1829, the hansom cabs of the 1830s became the symbol of the Victorian cab, the Victorian pub was the working man’s club, the Victorian music halls was the working man’s theatre, the seaside holiday was the working man’s holiday. The story of the Victorian transport is told in Transport in the Victorian Era, and the story of the Victorian entertainment is told in Victorian Entertainment and Leisure.

Work, Workers, and the Labour Movement

The Victorian economy was built on the labour of millions of working men, working women, and working children. In the textile mills, in the coal mines, in the iron foundries, in the engineering shops, in the brick fields, in the docks, in the construction industry, in the domestic service industry, and in the agricultural industry, working people laboured long hours for low pay. The hours were gradually reduced by legislation: the Factory Act of 1833 had limited the working hours of children in textile mills, the Ten Hours Act of 1847 had limited the working day of women and children to 10 hours, the Mines Act of 1842 had restricted the employment of women and children underground, and a long series of later acts had gradually extended regulation to other industries (the Factory Acts of 1850, 1867, and 1878; the Workshops Act of 1867; the Coal Mines Act of 1887; and the Factory and Workshop Act of 1901). The Victorian Workhouses was the institution to which the very poor could be sent under the New Poor Law of 1834, and it became a byword for the cruelty of the system.

The labour movement grew during the period. The trade unions, which had been illegal under the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, were legalised by the repeal of those acts in 1824 and 1825. The model union of the period was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, founded in 1851, which established the principles of collective bargaining, mutual insurance, and friendly society benefit that would be copied across the labour movement. The Trades Union Congress was founded in 1868, and the first attempts to form a working-class political party began in the 1890s. The Independent Labour Party was founded in 1893, and the Labour Representation Committee, the forerunner of the modern Labour Party, was founded in 1900.

Food, Dining, and the Victorian Home

Food, dining, and the Victorian home were the central features of the daily life of the period. The Victorian period saw a revolution in the British diet, with the introduction of new foods from the empire, with the development of the new industrial food industries, and with the gradual improvement of the working-class diet. The story of the Victorian diet is told in Victorian Food and Dining, the dinner is examined in What did Victorians eat for dinner?, the tea in How did afternoon tea become a tradition?, and the working room in What was a Victorian kitchen like?.

The Victorian home was the central institution of the Victorian family, the place of the family life, the place of the domestic labour, the place of the child-rearing, the place of the religious observance, and the place of the social life. The What is a Victorian parlor? was the formal room of the middle-class home, the Victorian Furniture and Decorative Arts of the drawing room was the focus of the family’s social life, the What is a Victorian Chesterfield sofa? was the centre of the drawing room, and the What defines a Victorian color palette? was the colour scheme of the period.

Morality, Reform, and the Victorian Conscience

The Victorian period was an age of moral reform, an age in which the great social problems of the period, the Victorian Workhouses, the Life for Victorian Children, the What was the temperance movement?, the What was the Contagious Diseases Act?, the How did Victorians treat the poor?, the What was the Chartist movement?, and the How did Reform Acts change Britain? were addressed by a long series of legislative reforms, social movements, and philanthropic campaigns. The Victorian period was an age of evangelism, of the great preaching of the established church, of the nonconformist conscience, of the Salvation Army (1865), of the temperance movement, of the anti-slavery movement, of the anti-corn-law league, of the factory reform movement, of the sanitary reform movement, of the women’s suffrage movement, and of the prison reform movement. The story of the Victorian moral reform is told in Victorian Morality and Social Reform.

The Victorian moral reform was intimately connected to the great religious revivals of the period. The Evangelical Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s, the growth of the nonconformist chapels, and the establishment of the Salvation Army in 1865 all contributed to the moral energy of the period.

Death, Mourning, and the Victorian Cemetery

Death and mourning were the central features of the Victorian experience, and the period saw the development of an elaborate system of mourning customs, of mourning dress, of mourning jewellery, of mourning stationery, of mourning food, of mourning rituals, and of mourning architecture. The story of death and mourning is told in Death and Mourning in the Victorian Era. The Victorian death rate was high, the average life expectancy at birth was less than 50, and the typical Victorian family could expect to lose several children in infancy and at least one parent before the children reached maturity. The What were Victorian funeral customs?, the Why was mourning fashion so elaborate?, the What were Victorian mourning brooches?, and the What is the Victorian cemetery movement? were the central features of the Victorian experience of death.

The Victorian cemetery was a new institution. The overcrowded churchyards of the old cities had become a public health problem, and the new Victorian cemetery movement of the 1830s and 1840s saw the establishment of the great garden cemeteries of London (the Magnificent Seven), of Paris (Père Lachaise), of Liverpool, of Manchester, of Glasgow, and of Edinburgh. The new cemeteries were the Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the period, and they were the great Victorian Buildings and Landmarks of the period.

Leisure, Entertainment, and the Victorian Saturday

The Victorian period saw a revolution in the leisure time of the British people, and the story of the Victorian leisure is told in Victorian Leisure Time. The new railways made possible the seaside holiday, the new music halls were the Victorian music halls, the new public houses were the Victorian pub, the new public parks were the central features of the urban life, the new Victorian Entertainment and Leisure was the great growth industry of the late Victorian period, the new popular press was the central medium of the period, and the new Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word was the central cultural achievement of the period.

The Victorian Saturday afternoon was a new institution, the half-day holiday that had been won by the trade unions and the factory reform movement, and it was the occasion for a great range of activities, from the music hall to the public house, from the football match to the cricket match, from the public park to the seaside resort, from the museum to the gallery, from the lecture to the concert.