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It's early May, 1851, in Hyde Park, London. A man in his mid-twenties stands turning a
shilling over and over between his fingers. He is torn. This coin could buy food for his
family or replace the worn boots on his feet. But it is also the gateway to a once in a lifetime
spectacular that is open right here on his doorstep. With a sigh, he pockets the money and joins
the animated crowd, all walking in the same direction drawn towards the same thing. Up ahead,
the specially made glass and eye and structure, the crystal palace stretches high into the sky.
Glittering in the sunlight, its footprint is the size of ten football pitches, the biggest
enclosed space ever to be built. Now it houses the wonders of the world in one place, the
great exhibition. The buzz of eager voices rising around him, after the man parts with his
shilling, he passes into the entrance hall. Here he is buffeted by the crowd, his mouth
hanging open in slack-jawed wonder. A cacophony of steam whistles, clanking gears and automated
clicks assaults his ears as he is carried inside by the impatient throng. He passes a mechanical
loom, its rapid movement fascinating, the threads flowing through it faster than he can blink.
Now he pauses to watch as a telegraph ticks away in its glass case, sending messages between
distant places with a tap of a key. Stepping closer, he listens to the machine, wondering
what it would be like to get a message from the other side of the world. Across the aisle,
a steam-powered printing press churns, pushing sheets of printed newspaper through its giant
rollers at an impressive speed. His smiles shaking his head in disbelief.
The room's house inventions designed to make people's lives easier, better, more productive.
All of them as alien to him as the last, but no less fascinating. He pauses in front of
one curious-looking machine. A large wooden frame with iron handles turning in a circular
motion. It looks like a barrel, but with a purpose he can't quite understand.
Hearing at the sign, he discovers it is a washing machine, designed to take the back breaking
work out of scrubbing clothes. His wife would give her IT for a contraption like that.
Hall after hall is filled with marvels from around the world, 13,000 exhibits in all.
As well as machines, instruments from the scientific to the musical, even flushing toilets one
can pay a penny to use. There are exotic fabrics, glassware, spices, the rarest of jewels,
and all of it gathered from Britain's growing empire. Excited voices rise around him as
people crowd the exhibits, pointing, discussing, laughing. Here, at the great exhibition, they stand
on the threshold of a new world. And for the first time, he feels like he's part of it.
In the early 19th century, a young, queen Victoria ascended to the throne of a rapidly changing
empire. But while her reign would mark an era that became synonymous with progress and
prosperity, it was also a time of great moral and social contradictions.
Over the course of her 63 years as sovereign, Britain transformed into the world's foremost
industrial and imperial power. The Victorians built railways that spanned continents, invented
life-changing technologies, and expanded a vast realm that stretched from the Caribbean
to India. Yet, for all their achievements, they grappled with social unrest, stark inequality
that is between the rich and poor, and the dark side of imperialism.
So how did the Victorians justify their colonial project while they tolerated such inequality
at home? How did their moral values shape the way they treated those at the fringes of their
rigid society? And how do the Victorians struggles with industrialization, governance, and poverty
echo in the modern world? I'm John Hopkins. From the noise and network, this is part one
of a special two-part short history of the Victorians.
The Victorian era is traditionally defined as the period covering the reign of Queen Victoria,
beginning as she ascends to the throne in 1837. Aged just 18, she is an untested monarch,
inheriting a nation exhausted by years of war and conflict. Yet beneath this weariness lies
a country full of untapped potential on the brink of a transformative age, one that has been
building for decades, long before her coronation. Dr. Amy Milt Smith is professor of history at
Wilfred-Loria University in Ontario, Canada. So the Victorian period can be defined in a number
of ways. Obviously, Queen Victoria is how we get the name, but most historians usually
will stretch it back a little bit. Really, it's after the Napoleonic Wars, where society
fundamentally changes from before and after that moment. And you get the beginning of what is
going to define the Victorian era starting in the late teens, in the 20s, in the 1830s, as they
develop into this kind of long Victorian era that it ends, again, not with her death in 1901,
but with the First World War. Though the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, they leave an
indelible mark on Britain, reshaping its political and economic landscape. By the time Victoria takes
the reins, Britain has already established colonies in India, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa,
as well as key territories in North America and the Pacific. These colonies are not just economic
assets, they form the backbone of Britain's imperial power, and they shape the way the British view
themselves and the world. Dr. Onyeka Nubia is a British historian, writer and presenter.
The first thing is that they had a very, very different concept of Britishness to what we have
right now. Their idea of Britishness was an international idea, so the concept that was sold
to the colonies to the territories is that they were part of Britain, but they were part of the British
Empire. So a Canadian person would have regarded themselves not as a Canadian, but as a British subject.
Jan Victoria then finds herself as monarch not just of a small island, but of a sprawling family
of nations brought together under a single citizenship. Yet, before she can settle into her
era defining reign, she must first overcome public doubts in her ability to lead and her own fears
about her aptitude for the role. Victoria's early reign is often overlooked by what she would become.
We think of Victoria as the great matriarch, as the grandmother of Europe, as this force of stability,
but really when she comes to the throne as still a very young woman who's been very isolated and
sheltered, they don't know what the future holds. It's a much rockier moment.
While her subjects looked to her to uphold the strong moral ideal of women at the time,
to be the embodiment of domestic virtue, they also expected to be a strong figurehead.
Though the country is governed by the Prime Minister and cabinet, with decisions largely in their
hands, Victoria still wields significant authority as the symbolic leader of the empire.
She offers advice on matters of state and exercises her influence on diplomatic affairs
through the personal relationships she establishes with key political figures both at home and abroad.
But in these early years of her reign, Victoria faces several challenges.
A scandal erupts when, after she backs, false claims that a lady in waiting is pregnant
out of wedlock, it transpires that the young woman is in fact suffering from an aggressive ovarian cancer.
Meanwhile, a dispute over the appointment of chambermaids further complicates matters as Victoria
tries to assert her independence from her mother's influence and the expectations of the government.
This struggle over household control threatens to tarnish her reputation as she grapples with the weight
of her new role. There is good will towards her certainly, but she makes a series of blunders in the
first years of her reign which perhaps demonstrate her naivete, perhaps demonstrate her age, or perhaps
even you could argue reflect an old way of being a monarch that is just not going to be acceptable
in the 19th century.
She quickly forms a close alliance with Prime Minister Lord Melbourne who will become both a trusted
advisor and a long-standing friend. With her confidence now growing, the young queen is encouraged
to seek a suitable husband to join her on the journey.
It doesn't take long to settle on her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxcoberg and Gotha,
despite some reservations from her family and advisors. He will become not just her husband,
but also a central figure in her reign, though his secondary role in their relationship takes
some getting used to. Prince Albert, certainly when he came into power, felt that he was the spared
monarch. Here, Queen Victoria is, as monarch, without his justification to support her state.
So this was an unusual position from male and one of their patriarchal society.
Albert, however, is keen to support his new wife, and Victoria is determined that his role will
complement her while not undermining her authority. I think in terms of education, he was much better
educated to be a world leader. He was much more worldly, he had a philosophical nature, he was
interested in science, and was very pragmatic, and she, when she was young at least, was much more
emotional, she had been far more constrained. But it is interesting because, of course, she is still
the queen and she was very aware of that. She seeks out roles for him that take advantage of his
education and interests, particularly in science and the arts, but which don't place him ahead of
her in the hierarchy of leadership. What this enabled him to do was to carve out a new space,
and part of carving out that new space was to promote technology, to promote things like the
Great Exhibition, to create and sponsor scientific geographical society, to make Britain the home for the
intellectual revolution. One of the key projects he champions is the Great Exhibition, a grand
display of the world's finest achievements housed in an extraordinary glass and iron building known
as the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. It's estimated that six million people visit, around a third
of the total population of Britain at the time. The Great Exhibition wasn't just attended by the
Hyde Classy, it was also attended by the lower class who felt that these innovations were there,
they were British innovations, even though those innovations came from all over the world,
and it was created by the peoples who all over the world. They had the stamp of Britishness placed
upon them. The Exhibition shows the public what it is to be British at this time of spectacular
global influence, instilling an inflated sense of national pride and superiority in even the poorest
worker. And at the same time, it heralds a new phase of industrialisation, which is about to grip
the nation and change the lives of almost everyone in it.
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Keep social change. Disrupting traditional ways of life.
Just a few decades before Victoria, the Luddite uprising marked an early violent protest against
industrialization. The term Luddite originates with Ned Ludd, who destroyed a loom in protest,
making his name synonymous with those opposing the rise of industrial machinery.
In 1811, fearing the loss of their craftsmanship and livelihoods, the Luddites targeted the
contraptions that were displacing skilled artisans, smashing factories and destroying weaving and knitting
machines. I think it's a shame the term Luddite now means this kind of unthinking rejection of
technology. It wasn't about the technology. It was about what the technology represented.
I think it was a very thoughtful understanding of the long-term effects of these new machines
coming in and replacing workers and changing how work was done.
While their movement was ultimately subdued by the state, their grievances and concerns
are far from silenced. And now, as the machines march on, the social divide between the wealthy
factory owners and the workers made redundant, only deepens.
People's individual lives could absolutely be crushed by industrialization. If you are
somebody who was a master river one day and then new machinery comes in and the boss spires you
and you have no job, or he offers you a new job where you're going to make a third of the pay
you once did. And it's not that you can go to the next town and find your old
profession intact. That job is just gone. And that protection of your skill is gone. And that
respect of your skill is gone. At the heart of this rapid industrialization is the steam engine.
Perfected by James Wat in the late 1700s but really coming into its own now, steam power is crucial.
Not just to factories but also the machines, trains and ships underpinning this revolution.
Suddenly, both the mass production and mass movement of goods is possible.
The textile industry is one of the first to feel the impact. Factories driven by steam machines
spring up across Manchester leads and other urban centres. Manchester is the first industrial city
going from a small market town in the late 18th century to what was dubbed "Cottonopolis"
by the mid 19th century with the advent of the spinning journey and industrial as spinning and weaving.
That would have transformed all elements of people's lives. Not just from where you work but how
you work, what a work day looks like, what your home life looks like, all of that. Change it.
The cotton mills of Manchester turnout fabric at unprecedented speeds,
making clothing and textiles more affordable and accessible.
As factories boom in the cities, the British economy flourishes, capitalising on the products,
people and labour at home and in the colonies. These were large industrial cities certainly doing
victorious era where they were forced to work for poor wages and poor salary. These wages and
this whole industrial complex was supported by empire. Cotton is keen but cotton wasn't grown here
in Britain. Tea isn't grown here. Coffee doesn't grow here. It had to be wrought from elsewhere.
So many of the things that we associate with the industrial revolution, so many of the things
the products that we associate with the industrial revolution came from the British empire.
And thanks to the growing railways, cities join the vast interconnected network of the realm.
Goods are transported direct to major port towns from where they can be sent out to the colonies
for trade just as more raw materials are shipped back to feed the machines.
The system keeps the wheels of industry turning and fuels the empire.
Soon the cities begin to swell, bringing in workers from the countryside.
At the start of the 19th century, rural areas were home to around 80% of the population,
drawn by the promise of steady wages in factories and far from the seasonal unpredictability of farmwork
by 1850, around half of the British population lives in cities.
Yet, while factory owners are mass fortunes, the workers are left behind,
toiling in unsafe conditions with long hours poor ventilation and unsafe machinery.
Children, often no older than four or five are also put to work in these dangerous conditions.
Their small hands are a perfect fit for the narrow gaps in factory machines,
and they are tiny enough to crawl under the giant cotton looms to free trapped threads or jammed gears.
It's a perilous existence, often resulting in awful life-changing injuries and early deaths.
But for many, it's the only option available.
And it's not just the conditions in the factories that cause problems.
Life outside of work is equally challenging.
These huge numbers of people who began to arrive in the middle of the 19th century
in the place like Macklefield, Sheppield, Leeds, Manchester.
These people were not planned for.
There was an extraordinary lack of planning in terms of sanitation, in terms of housing.
So whilst there was a desire for them to come and give their labour,
there was very little being done about when that labour is finished, where do they go back to?
Where do they live? There was the construction of what became known as back-to-back housing.
This was sub-standard or housing, with often no sanitation.
Inside these back-to-back houses, just two small rooms are nestled one above the other.
They usually shared by multiple families, with little more than a single window for ventilation,
and no kitchen to speak of. And as the name suggests, the houses are tightly packed,
backing onto each other in cramped rows.
Houses crowded with each other, in tenements, and in the states where the people are suffering from
poverty and economic deprivation.
In these slum estates, outhouses are shared between many.
Human waste is dumped in pits that commonly overflow onto the streets.
The lack of clean water leads to rampant disease,
and many thousands die in a series of cholera outbreaks.
Life here is grueling, with little to no support for those who fall ill or lose their jobs.
But even amid this stark inequality, reforms to public health are eventually triggered.
When you take a bird's eye view of the industrial revolution,
everybody's life did get better from the bird's eye view.
Life expectancy increases, sanitation is improved,
people's food is more nutritious, death rates, infant mortality comes down.
But that is looking from a hundred years away and from a hundred yards away.
Yet at the other end of the economic spectrum, the improvements are clear.
With the rise of factories and entrepreneurialism, a new elite social group emerges,
the industrialists.
This new class is distinct from the traditional landed gentry,
but they're equally wealthy and increasingly influential.
Having amassed their fortunes through trade,
manufacturing and industry, they form the core of a growing middle class,
which starts challenging deeply entrenched ideas of status and heritage.
Suddenly, the class you are born into no longer entirely defines who you are.
Where you live, how you work, or what your future may hold.
I think what's interesting about the class structure of the 19th century
is that we now are in a moment where the old forms of the class structure that it was built on,
paternalism, that's gone, really.
The newly acquired wealth of this burgeoning middle class
now allows them to claim many of the social privileges once reserved for the aristocracy.
And by the mid-Victorian period, they become a force to be reckoned with,
both economically and politically.
They can send their children to school, acquire fine houses,
and enjoy leisure activities that were previously denied.
As the wealth of Britain expanded,
it was a wealth retained by the upper class of them, the middle class.
But what is interesting about this process is that many of the middle class
it became extraordinarily rich and extraordinarily famous,
and some working class people made good became a household name.
So people like his and my kingdom were now.
These are the quite simple math who became the face of British industrialisation.
Even so, while the industrial revolution creates opportunities for some to rise from the ranks
of the poor, these breaks are still rare.
Instead, it's the colonial empire with its immense exploitable wealth
that provides the best routes for faster social advancement.
Young men from middle class families can now become merchants,
military officers and businessmen, heading out to make their fortunes in the colonies.
Whether they're off to run plantations in Jamaica or India,
or to manage gold mining operations in Africa,
the path to fortune is already well beaten.
When you arrived there, you would an explorer
entering a brave new world.
You were someone arriving at a place that had already been subjuned,
that had already been turned into a part of the empire,
where the people spoke English.
You could negotiate your position and your status very quickly.
You could make wealth after a few years and you could return home
and improve the status of your family.
And that is what people there.
Additionally, the army offers another avenue for advancement.
Soldiers can rise through the ranks based on merit rather than birth,
providing opportunities for lower class men to achieve a higher social status.
But this surge of social mobility soon begins to challenge the old hierarchical order,
leading to demands for more representation and rights for the working class.
During the middle part of the 19th century,
a growing number of working class movements developed
from trade union movements to a combination movement.
And friendly societies which had a strong ideological path to play.
But most of all groups like the Charters,
the Charters wanted ordinary people to have the vote.
So we must remember that at this time, ordinary people could not vote.
So we had the introduction of the reformer in the 19th century.
The Charters are a group of political reformers
who emerge in the 1830s and 40s.
In their so-called People's Charter,
they push to extend voting rights to all men,
not just the property-owning classes.
They also demand secret ballots to ensure that voters could cast their votes in private,
without fear of intimidation or coercion.
In addition, they advocate relaxation of the qualifications needed to become an MP,
to enable working class men without land or property to stand for parliament.
The Charters are not just concerned with voting rights,
but also with the wider conditions of democracy and representation in Britain.
At the heart of their movement is the belief that the working class
deserve a voice in a society where the wealthy and aristocratic elite wield all of the power.
Naturally, many in the upper classes don't quite agree.
Chartists leaders are arrested, imprisoned, and even transported to Australia.
But over time, the movement sparks the beginning of a wider debate about democracy
and the role of the working class in society.
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A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant,
especially these days, eight different settings, adjustable intensity,
plus it's heated, and it just feels so good.
Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant,
but when it can come with a car.
Suddenly, it seems quite practical.
The all-new 2025 Volkswagen Tiguan, packed with premium features,
like available massaging front seats, that only feels extravagant.
The first reform act, passed in 1832, expands the electorate by giving voting rights to more men,
specifically those who own property or land valued at a certain amount.
It's a step in the right direction,
where the changes are still restricted along financial and gender lines.
While the act marks the beginning of political reform,
full suffrage, even for working-class men, let alone women, remains a distant goal.
In fact, despite the emergence of social mobility,
Victorian society still places a strong emphasis on knowing one's place and sticking to it.
Victorian morality, though, also was not just about self-help in the sense of social climbing.
It was more this idea of knowing your place and doing the best version of that lifestyle.
So working-class people shouldn't try to be rich.
Working-class people should work hard, they should abstain from the pub,
they should come home and spend time with family, and if they do,
they will be successful and not end up in the workhouse because, of course, poverty is a moral problem.
At the very bottom of the social order are the destitute,
who live in abject, squalor, often in overcrowded slums.
And their desperation sees them labeled as immoral or even criminal.
Most Victorians thought that poverty was an individual moral failure.
It was the result of improvidence, it was the result of drink,
it was the result of laziness.
This belief is entrenched not just in social attitudes but in Victorian law.
The poor law of 1834 discourages reliance on so-called poor relief
by imposing harsh conditions on those asking for financial assistance.
It reinforces the notion that only those who are seen as worthy should receive help.
The idea that you were responsible for your own poverty was endemic.
And even philanthropic efforts to help the poor were very cognizant of not wanting to disrupt
patterns and to help out what they would call the unworthy poor.
This is a very Victorian concept, you have the deserving and the undeserving poor.
Before the introduction of the poor law, someone who's fallen on hard times
can ask the parish for short term financial support.
This piecemeal assistance known as outdoor relief allows recipients to remain in their homes
while they try to improve their situation.
For the Victorian mindset and this starts in 1832 with this new law,
the theory was that is terrible, you are encouraging improvidence.
In this family, he lost his job he needs to find a new one tomorrow.
And if you give him six months worth of funds, he will spend six months in the pub not looking for work.
And so they really thought that if people just buckle down and worked harder and tried harder,
that was the solution to poverty.
Now, for those who find they can't support themselves or their families,
Victorian society provides another far bleaker option, the Workhouse.
It's late November 1837 in London.
The door of the Workhouse canteen swings open with a loud creek and a woman steps in,
a child hiding behind her skirts.
They're wrapped in ill-fitting layers of anything they can find
to stop the November cold biting at their skin, but still their shiver.
The room is already full of women and children, sitting at long tables, scraping thin,
spoonfuls of gruel into their hungry mouths.
Their faces are hollowed, their eyes sunken into skin stretched tight.
There's no time for talk, but then there is nothing left to talk about.
The woman clutches a metal plate in her hand as does her young daughter at her heels.
The yeasty smell of the gruel on offer barely masks the stench of sweat, decay and effluent.
Her boots scrape across the worn wooden floor as she joins the food line,
shuffling forward towards the great cast iron pan of the front.
It's been a week since she stepped into this place and already the empty pit in her stomach has
become a constant companion. From what she's heard though, over in the men's wing, it's even worse.
Some have been reduced to eating the very bones they're supposed to be crushing into fertilizer.
She can only hope things don't become so desperate for her or her daughter.
Reaching the front of the line, she encourages the child to raise her plate,
and watches in disney as the thin, watery slop slides after ladle and into the bowl.
The girl waits, arms still raised, hoping for more, but the guardian behind the pan grunts her away.
With their bowls as full as they'll get today, they squeeze into a spot on the end of a bench or
one of the long tables, not even acknowledging the woman beside them. The mother angles her shoulder
over her bowl and begins her paltry meal, shielding her daughter from her neighbor's covetous gaze.
There is no friendship here. They may all be in the same boat, but they are not in this together.
It's every woman for herself.
The Workhouse, introduced under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834,
is presented as a place of relief for the needy. The belief is that providing aid in exchange for
labour will stop people falling further into moral decay and encourage them to become self-sufficient
again. In theory, it's a system that punishes laziness while offering a means to escape
destitution through hard work. In practice, however, it is the lowest that a person can sink.
Entering the Workhouse is not a choice, but something that those who can no longer support
themselves or their families are forced into as the only option for survival.
Presipitated by anything from loss of job to disability to simple poverty in old age,
for many, it becomes the final refuge. But it's one that takes with it all dignity,
offering only the most basic subsistence in exchange for hard degrading labour in notoriously harsh
conditions. Even if a family enters the Workhouse together, they are torn apart, with women and
children separated from the men, apart from brief moments together on Sundays.
For the rest of the week, the work is endless. Children, in particular, are used as cheap labour,
working with dangerous machinery, breaking stone, or carrying out mind-nummingly repetitive
tasks for hours on end. For most inmates, the Workhouse is worse than the streets,
but despite the brutal reality of life inside, the system is seen by the broader public as a great
symbol of philanthropy. For many Victorians, it's the perfect way for the poor to redeem themselves
through hard work and self-discipline. This view is starkly reflected in literature of the time,
perhaps most notably in the work of Charles Dickens.
We know here Ebenezer's Scrooge, and that discussion he has before he has reformed,
where he explains poverty has been solved by are there not work houses? This is the solution we have
created in the Victorian society, and if people don't want to go to work houses, and that they will die,
the response is not that is terrible, we should come up with a new system, the response is,
good, it will decrease the surplus population. Ebenezer's Scrooge was a character, but he wasn't
necessarily a caricature. Dickens was not speaking the normative values of his time. He was
trying to get people to change their minds about poverty because Charles Dickens experienced poverty.
In his other works like Oliver Twist, Dickens directly criticizes the way work houses treat the
impoverished, particularly children. And he's not alone. Contemporaries like the Brontis sisters,
George Elliott and Thomas Hardy also explore themes of social injustice, morality, and the complexities
of human nature. The growing genre of detective fiction, exemplified by the works of Arthur Conan
Doyle and others mirrors growing public anxiety about the breakdown of order. Other famous
faces have first-hand experience of the struggle to break free of the work houses once entered.
Perhaps the most famous workhouse inmate is Charlie Chaplin, who as a child, his mother had to put
himself and his brother in a workhouse. And she, one time, checked them out of the workhouse
just for the day so they could spend day together and go to the park. And then in the evening,
she had to check them all back in again because, of course, nothing in her life had changed.
She was still destitute. She'd been abandoned by a partner. She couldn't all of a sudden turn
things around, but that experience must have been so heartbreaking for families. The decision to go
into a workhouse was not taken lightly. With the workhouses acting as a means of punishment,
society's most vulnerable, orphans, the elderly, and the sick or disabled are victimized by the system
that dehumanizes rather than helps them. To avoid entering the workhouses in the first place,
some turn to more desperate measures to survive. Crime increase because people were denied the basic
requirements for human habitation, and when jobs were available, people were laid on.
As the population swells, crime becomes endemic, particularly in urban areas where poverty and
overcrowding create fertile ground for theft, violence, and other nefarious activities. Yet, rather than
understand crime as a consequence of these social conditions, the Victorian approach is grounded
in the belief that deterrence is the key. The harsh of the punishment, the less likely it is that
others will commit the same offenses. For the Victorians, punishment is not meant to rehabilitate,
but to instill fear. And the penalties meted out are often extreme. A person caught stealing a
loaf of bread, a crime committed out of sheer desperation could face flogging, imprisonment,
transportation to the colonies, or even public hanging. But since the system reinforces the belief
that the poor are responsible for their own suffering, the law doesn't differentiate between
crimes of necessity and those of malice. So a simple act of survival, like stealing food or coal,
is punished as harshly as murder.
Pride was something that happened throughout all classes in society, but the law was focused
on the working class, and the law was focused on protecting the rights on the middle and the upper
class from the working class. So the development of the police service by people like Robert Peel,
their crime concern was about protecting private property, protecting the means of production,
protecting the wealthy and the rich from the crimes that could be committed by the poor.
This view permeates the entire justice system and leads to an imbalance of penalties levied
against the poor, with wealthier individuals rarely held to the same standards.
The rise in crime, especially in the cities, creates a sudden need for organized policing.
In London, Sir Robert Peel establishes the first modern police force in the world. His officers
are known informally as Bobby's or Peelers, both derivatives of his name, and they take on the work
previously conducted by parish constables, watchmen, or volunteers. Soon they become an organized crime
prevention unit, patrolling the streets, maintaining order, and investigating misdeeds.
By the 1830s, the idea of organized police forces has spread to other large cities like Liverpool
and Manchester, with more and more people hauled up in front of the ballooning justice system.
The number of executions reaches its peak around this point, with well over 100 a year taking place,
nearly double the figure of the early 1800s. Meanwhile, transportation sentences see thousands
of people sent to the colonies each year, often for very petty crimes like pickpocketing or vagrancy.
Yet as the years pass, the gruesome spectacle of public executions begins to have the opposite effect
of its intended purpose. It had the effect of increasing sympathy and off spreading lawlessness,
because people would say, well, if I'm going to be executed if I'm caught, then I will exert
extraordinary violence in pursuit of my action, because if I'm arrested, then it's over.
So, the increasing violence by members of the state produced increasing violence on the part
of the criminal groups and gangs. At the same time though, a broader wave of discontent begins to stir.
The masses, once spectators in this brutal theatre, now see the system as stacked against them.
As the working class grows restless, the cries for political and social reform grow louder.
What starts as discontent with unfair punishment turns into a broader questioning of the whole
Victorian system itself. While those at the top continue to enforce strict societal control,
working class movements start to gain momentum, driven by anger at the treatment of the poor
and the lack of political representation. When a group of farm labourers known as the
'tole-puddle martyrs' are sent to Australia for trying to form a trade union,
the backlash is swift and widespread. Thousands of workers across the country
rally in support, protesting, demonstrating and petitioning until the authorities are
finally forced to pardon the men and allow them to come home.
But the touch paper has been lit on the idea of political reform, and it's not just for the workers
or the poor. This is especially the case in Ireland by now having been under colonial rule for
centuries. The great famine, a devastating period of mass starvation triggered by a potato
blight but exacerbated by enforced exports to Britain, and the ongoing relentless emigration
see arise in nationalism and it is eye for an independent Irish republic.
The Femian Brotherhood is an Irish nationalist group that seeks to end British rule in Ireland
through any means necessary. They believe that by targeting British institutions and symbols
of imperial power they can force the government to address the issue of Irish independence.
The violent tactics of these revolutionary groups are aimed at empire itself,
challenging British control not only in Ireland but across the colonies.
When a gang of these nationalists carry out a bombing in Clarkonwell in 1867 intended
to free Irish inmates from the local prison, the explosion kills 12 innocent civilians and
injures over a hundred, all in an area that had previously been sympathetic to the Irish cause.
The authorities respond swiftly, drafting in 65,000 Londoners from a city of around 3 million
people to act as special constables to avert any further attacks. And they bring with them
the full weight of the law.
It is May 26, 1868, outside Newgate Prison, London.
It's just after dawn and the crowd while the prison is filling out as more people take up their
places at the barricades. Those in the prime spots at the front have been here since last night.
Eager to secure a good view for the macabre spectacle to come.
A man in his mid-30s, an iron monger wearing a threadbare coat and a faded cap,
stands amid the growing mass of humanity. His eyes, tired but alert, scan the crowd, fearful
that among them sympathizers of the condemned man may be planning trouble.
He looks up as the "deal" frame, the platform that forms the base of the gallows is wheeled into place.
The sight of it sends a wave of excited murmurs through those assembled.
A few cheer as the blackened frame is locked in place, but the iron monger doesn't join in.
He, like many here, is not fully convinced of Michael Barrett's part and the Clark and Will bombing.
But though Barrett produced witnesses, claiming he was in Scotland at the time of the explosion,
the authorities needed a scapegoat. So, guilty or not, his fate is sealed and he's to hang here today.
By about 7 a.m., the crowd is immense and police, with swords raised, form a further barricade to
keep the space around the gallows clear. Eventually, their catch sight of the condemned man
as he is led from a darkened gate in the prison wall into the harsh daylight.
With a shout, the crowd surges forward, carrying the iron monger with it,
pressing him tight to the bodies around him. He watches as Barrett is led towards the gallows.
He's dressed in the same shorts, clarrot-colored coat and gray striped trousers that he wore during his trial.
His face now, though, is ghostly pale.
The bell begins to toll in the crowdfall silent. Despite his hands and legs being shackled,
Barrett climbs the ladder to the scaffold with firm, deliberate movements.
As he reaches the top, a small cheer goes up from those keen to show their support for him and his
cause in these final moments. Behind monger's straightens, vigilant for any signs of disruption
to the events at hand, despite his ambivalence. But the cheering is soon drowned out by furious hissing
as other onlookers show their contempt. Barely has the noose been lowered,
then the trapdoor opens with a sudden crack and the body falls. A collective breath is held,
then released, neither a cheer nor a scream. And then, from somewhere at the back,
a chorus of rural Britannia strikes up as the body is lowered and the noose removed.
The crowd disperses, some jostling for a view of the pronouncement of death,
some already turning to leave. The iron mongolingers, watching as the sheriff and his deputies
carry the body away. Their faces solemn and holler. It is over.
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The execution of Michael Barrett is the last public hanging in Britain.
Fearing that the public spectacle is making heroes of criminals and actually encouraging
worse crimes to be committed by those sure they'll be hanged for less, the decision is made to
remove them from the public gaze. From this moment on, for the next almost 100 years, hangings will
take place inside prison walls. But the growing social, political and ideological fractures that
Barrett and other outspoken protesters symbolize continue to widen.
Beneath the surface of industrial progress and empire, the widespread poverty,
labour exploitation, high crime rates and simmering discontent with the rigid class system
are only getting worse. The key thing about empire is that even though it may have its
protestations of equality and justice, it is primarily built on inequality and those aspects
of inequality will rise to the surfing without authority. People will begin to question,
why can't I not now use those same mechanism to remove myself from your authority and power?
Add to develop my own, why can't I have my own place in the sun?
Growing demands for women's rights challenge the very foundations of Victorian gender norms.
Meanwhile, discontent in the colonies swells and control becomes harder to maintain,
leading to increasing violence and resistance. Technological advancements will continue to transform
society, but those in the scientific fields shift how people view the world and their place in it,
challenging religious order and the faith of the nation. And even as Victoria attempts to unite
Europe through her family ties, the balance of power on the continent begins to crack,
heralding a new era of political and global unrest. But that's in part two where we continue exploring
what the Victorian era brought us and why it lingers in the modern mind.
I think the appeal of the Victorians is they are the germ of the ideas that we live with now,
and a lot of the debates that we have now, you can find an earlier incarnation in the 19th century.
But they're also just different enough to be fascinating with their corsets and their funny
gloves and hats and veils and rules about everything and anything. So I think a lot of people
see them as modern enough to be relatable, but also strange enough to have a nostalgia for.
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