The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom and its overseas Empire spans the 63-year reign of

Queen Victoria (1837-1901). By this time, the role of the monarch was to reign, rather than
rule. Victoria served as figurehead for the nation. The period saw the British Empire grow to
become the first global industrial power, producing much of the world's coal, iron, steel and
textiles. The Victorian era saw revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, which
shaped the world as we know it today. These transformations led to many social changes with
the birth and spread of political movements, most notably socialism, liberalism and organised
feminism.
Victorian era, in British history, the period between approximately 1820 and 1914,
corresponding roughly but not exactly to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901)
and characterized by a class-based society, a growing number of people able to vote, a growing
state and economy, and Britain’s status as the most powerful empire in the world.
During the Victorian period, Britain was a powerful nation with a rich culture. It had a stable
government, a growing state, and an expanding franchise. It also controlled a large empire, and
it was wealthy, in part because of its degree of industrialization and its imperial holdings and in
spite of the fact that three-fourths or more of its population was working-class. Late in the
period, Britain began to decline as a global political and economic power relative to other
major powers, particularly the United States, but this decline was not acutely noticeable until
after World War II.
➢ Timeline of the Victorian Empire
24 May 1819 | Victoria is born
Born at Kensington Palace and christened Alexandrina Victoria, the baby princess took her
place as a potential heir to the throne.
1 August 1832 | Slavery abolished in the British Empire
While slavery was abolished in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, only children under the
age of six were freed immediately under the terms of the 1833 Emancipation Act. All other
former slaves were bound as 'apprentices,' where they continued to work without pay for their
former owners. When the apprenticeship period ended in 1838, over 700,000 slaves were
freed in the British Caribbean. Plantation owners received nearly £20 million in government
compensation for the loss of their slaves. The former slaves received nothing.
20 June 1837 | Victoria ascends to the throne
After the death of King William IV on 20 June 1837, his 18-year-old niece was given the title
the Queen of England. She became heir to the throne as her three uncles ahead of her in the
line of succession - George IV, Frederick Duke of York, and William IV - had no legitimate
children who survived. The coronation ceremony took place on the 28 June and was held in
Westminster Abbey after a procession through the streets from Buckingham Palace. It is
thought over 400,000 visitors arrived for the coronation.
1838|Anti-Corn Law League : Anti-Corn Law League, British organization founded in 1839,
devoted to fighting England’s Corn Laws, regulations governing the import and export of grain.
It was led by Richard Cobden, who saw the laws as both morally wrong and economically
damaging. The league mobilized the industrial middle classes against the landlords, and
Cobden won over the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846.
10 January 1840 | The 'penny post' implemented
Introduced by Rowland Hill, the Penny postal system revolutionised communications in the
UK. Before the Penny Post, letters were paid for by the recipient. The high costs were
sometimes as much as a day's wages, causing many recipients to refuse their messages.
The Penny postal system was simple. Anyone could send a letter to anywhere within the UK
for a penny. This new method was accessible for both the wealthy and the poor and
significantly improved the communication of Britain. In 1839, 76 million letters were posted in
the United Kingdom. By 1849, this amount had doubled to 347 million messages.
10 February 1840 | Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert
At the age of 21, Victoria married her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a German
Prince at the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace. Over the years of their marriage, Victoria had
nine children, many of who married into other royal families in Europe.
September 1845 | Irish potato famine begins/ Period of mass starvation
In 1845, Ireland's potato crop was destroyed by infestation with the fungal disease known as
potato blight. The disease rotted the potatoes in the ground, ruining the principal food source
for millions of people. The blight lasted for another four years, causing illness and mass
starvation across Ireland and killing a million people out of a population of eight million.
Many Irish labourers and farmers worked on estates owned by British landlords. Following the
blight, the tenants were expected to still pay rent despite having no income from their crops.
This prompted the eviction of over a quarter of a million people between 1845 and 1854 and
led to the mass migration of a million people, looking to start a new life abroad – many of
them in America. [ 25% of population died of starvation. Reason: not all terms with Ireland’s
was implemented]
July 1848 | Public health act passed
Following a severe cholera outbreak across the world, killing 13,000 people, social reformer
Edwin Chadwick was commissioned to find ways of improving disease prevention and sanitary
conditions in Britain. This study led to the creation of the Public Health Act of 1848,
legislation that placed the supply and treatment of water and waste under single local
authorities who could raise funds for improvements to tackle unsanitary conditions.
1848 | The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party , is a political
pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by
the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848, the Manifesto remains
one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach
to class struggle and criticizes capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, without
attempting to predict communism's potential future forms.
The Communist Manifesto summarises Marx and Engels' theories concerning the nature of
society and politics, namely that in their own words "[t]he history of all hitherto existing society
is the history of class struggles". It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society
of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism. In the last paragraph of the Manifesto,
the authors call for a "forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions", which served as a call
for communist revolutions around the world.
1849| Encumbered Estates' Court
The Encumbered Estates' Court was established by an Act of the British Parliament in 1849,
to facilitate the sale of Irish estates whose owners, because of the Great Famine, were unable to
meet their obligations. It was given authority to sell estates on application from either the
owner or an encumbrancer (somebody who had a claim on it) and, after the sale, distribute the
proceeds among the creditors, granting clear title to the new owners.
Frequently over-mortgaged land belonged to trustees holding it for the benefit of one or more
occupiers, with the last in line holding an "entail" that stopped the land being sold. The 1849
Act allowed this Court to order sales of the land by ignoring entails. The economic need for
the Court was caused by the impoverishment of many Irish tenant farmers during the 1840s
famine, that made it impossible for them to pay their rents as agreed to a landlord, and in turn
he could not make his mortgage payments. Until this Court was established, the lending bank
could not get a court order to sell the mortgaged land because of the entail.
28 March 1854 | Crimean war begins
The Crimean War was a conflict between the Russian Empire and an alliance of French,
British, Ottoman (or the Turkish Empire) and Sardinian troops. The war broke out in the
autumn of 1853 with Britain and France declaring war on Russia in 1854.
The main intention of the British, French and Ottoman alliance was to hinder Russian
expansion into the Turkish empire. Religious tensions also played a part with Russia taking
issue that the holiest sites in Christianity, such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem, remained under
Turkish Muslim control.
The war came to a conclusion in February 1856 with the Treaty of Paris with the part-
surrender of Russia. The war resulted in a massive death toll on both sides. A total of 1.5
million total soldiers fought in the Crimea War with over 367,000 dying.
10 May 1857 | Outbreak of mutiny in India
In 1857, Bengal Light Cavalry soldiers rebelled against their British commanders. The news of
the mutiny spread across India and over the course of the year, caused a series of similar
outbreaks across the subcontinent.
Many Indians rose against the British; however, many others also fought for the British, and
the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule. The rebellion continued until a
rebel defeat in June 1858 at the city of Gwalior and the signing of a peace treaty in July.
However, after the peace treaty, there were repercussions as British forces brutally suppressed
any further attempts at revolt.
The uprising was the largest threat to Britain's colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent. This
violent struggle led to the dismantling of the East India Company, placing India under the rule
of the British government. Communications also improved with government and legislative
councils now containing an Indian-nominated element. For many Indians, the mutiny marked
the beginning of their long struggle for independence.
The India Act places India under the direct control of the British government, ending the rule
of the East India Company.
24 November 1859 | On the Origin of Species published
The foundation of evolutionary theory, On the Origin of Species, was published by Charles
Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882), a leading British biologist and naturalist. On
publication, the book sold out immediately. The book became an international best-seller, but
opinion on the arguments for evolution and natural selection remained fiercely divided
throughout Darwin's life.
9 January 1863 | Opening of the London Underground
The world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway opened in London running 6
km between Paddington Station and Farringdon Street. Within the first year, 9.5 million
passengers were carried, in the second year, this increased to 12 million. It took another 21
years (from 1863 to 1884) to complete the Inner Circle of tube lines in central London. The
railway system was operated by steam trains until its electrification in 1890.
1865| Formation of the American Equal Rights Association
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association,
an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal
suffrage. They petition Congress for “universal suffrage.”
15 August 1867 | Second Reform Act doubles the electorate
This Reform Act was passed by a minority Conservative government led by Frederick, Earl of
Derby. Its orchestrator was Benjamin Disraeli, who permitted larger extensions to the
franchise than the Liberals would have countenanced. It virtually doubled the electorate,
enabling one-third of adult males in Britain and one-sixth in Ireland to vote in parliamentary
elections. In a few urban constituencies, working men were an electoral majority. A separate
act for Scotland was passed in 1868.
17 November 1869 | The Suez Canal Opens
The Suez Canal, a 100-mile waterway in Egypt that connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas
was opened to improve trade links with India, South East Asia and the Far East. Constructed
by the French business, the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, the canal opened
initially under French control, which was then shared with the British.
17 February 1870 | New law introduces secular school boards
This bill, introduced by the Liberal member of parliament WE Forster, was to extend
opportunities for education available to the children of the poor. The act permitted new
school boards to be set up where existing education provision in 'voluntary schools', controlled
by the churches, was inadequate. A substantial growth in school building resulted, particularly
in urban areas. The act did not make schooling compulsory.
9 August 1870 |Women obtain limited rights to retain their property after marriage
This act changed the previous legal situation, in which all property automatically transferred to
the control of a husband on marriage. It granted some limited separate protection to a married
woman's property and also permitted women to retain up to £200 of their own wages or
earnings. Similar changes did not take effect in Scotland until 1877.
1 May 1876 | Victoria is declared empress of India
India came under direct British government control in 1858, when the remaining authority of
the East India Company was dissolved. The Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli,
suggested to the queen that she should be proclaimed empress. His motive seems mainly to
have been flattery. Despite objections from the Liberal opposition, who were not consulted,
the title was endorsed and Victoria used it officially from 1877.
16 August 1881 | Second Land Act Reforms Irish property law
The second Land Act created a Land Commission for Ireland which could decide the level of
'fair rents'. The act also granted free sale of land and security of tenure. William Gladstone's
Liberal government hoped, optimistically, that this legislation would take the sting out of
violent agitation in Ireland.
1 January 1883|Married women obtain the right to acquire their own property
The 1870 Married Women's Property Act had been widely criticised for failing to provide
sufficient safeguards for married women. A further act provided something approaching
equality for women since it allowed women to acquire and retain any property deemed
separate from that of their husband's. They also received the same legal protection as
husbands if they needed to defend their right to property.
December 1884 | Third Reform Act stops short of creating a male democracy
The third Reform Act created a uniform franchise qualification based on the Reform Acts of
1867 and 1868. As a consequence, roughly two-thirds of adult males in England and Wales,
three-fifths in Scotland and half in Ireland were entitled to vote in parliamentary elections.
Large numbers of adult males, such as servants, most members of the armed forces and
children living in their parents' houses remained disenfranchised. This act, therefore, stopped
some way short of creating a male democracy.
25 July 1889 | Founding of the Women's Franchise League
Emmeline Pankhurst, the British women's rights activist, founded the Women's Franchise
League, a political organisation that campaigned to allow women the right to vote in local
elections. The success of mobilising this campaign group led to the creation of the Women's
Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903 and the rise of the suffragette movement.
The first organised activity in support of votes for women dates from the 1860s, but pressure
grew rapidly in the late 1880s. A turning point was the merger of the National Central Society
for Women's Suffrage and the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage into the National
Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. The NUWSS co-ordinated a range of regional
activities. Its president, Millicent Fawcett, opposed violence and promoted her organisation as
law-abiding and above party politics.
22 January 1901 | Victoria dies and is succeeded by Edward VII
Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight at the age of 81. As queen-empress she
had ruled over almost a quarter of the world's population. Although wilful and narrow-minded
in some respects, she established firm precedents for a hard-working 'constitutional monarch',
operating as a head of state above the fray of party politics. Her death, coming so soon after
the end of the 19th century, was truly the end of an era.
➢ The Victorian stereotype and double standard
Today “Victorian” connotes a prudish refusal to admit the existence of sex, hypocritically
combined with constant discussions of sex, thinly veiled as a series of warnings. There is some
truth to both sides of this stereotype. Some few educated Victorians did write a lot about sex,
including pornography, medical treatises, and psychological studies. Most others never talked
about sex; respectable middle-class women in particular were proud of how little they knew
about their own bodies and childbirth. In addition, Victorians lived with a sexual double
standard that few ever questioned before the end of the period. According to that double
standard, men wanted and needed sex, and women were free of sexual desire and submitted to
sex only to please their husbands. These standards did not mesh with the reality of a society
that featured prostitution, venereal disease, women with sexual desires, and men and women
who felt same-sex desire, but they were important nonetheless.
➢ Gender and class in Victorian society
Victorian society was organized hierarchically. While race, religion, region, and occupation
were all meaningful aspects of identity and status, the main organizing principles of Victorian
society were gender and class. As is suggested by the sexual double standard, gender was
considered to be biologically based and to be determinative of almost every aspect of an
individual’s potential and character. Victorian gender ideology was premised on the “doctrine
of separate spheres.” This stated that men and women were different and meant for different
things. Men were physically strong, while women were weak. For men sex was central, and for
women reproduction was central. Men were independent, while women were dependent. Men
belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the private sphere. Men were meant
to participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to run households and
raise families. Women were also thought to be naturally more religious and morally finer than
men (who were distracted by sexual passions by which women supposedly were untroubled).
While most working-class families could not live out the doctrine of separate spheres, because
they could not survive on a single male wage, the ideology was influential across all classes.
Class was both economic and cultural and encompassed income, occupation, education,
family structure, sexual behaviour, politics, and leisure activities. The working class, about 70
to 80 percent of the population, got its income from wages, with family incomes usually under
£100 per annum. Many middle-class observers thought that working-class people imitated
middle-class people as much as they could, but they were mistaken; working-
class cultures (which varied by locality and other factors) were strong, specific, and premised
on their own values. The middle class, which got its income (of £100 to £1,000 per annum)
from salaries and profit, grew rapidly during the 19th century, from 15 to over 25 percent of
the population. During the 19th century, members of the middle class were the moral leaders
of society (they also achieved some political power). The very small and very wealthy upper
class got its income (of £1,000 per annum or often much more) from property, rent, and
interest. The upper class had titles, wealth, land, or all three; owned most of the land in
Britain; and controlled local, national, and imperial politics.
➢ Religion and science in the Victorian era
Most Victorian Britons were Christian. The Anglican churches of England, Wales,
and Ireland were the state churches (of which the monarch was the nominal head) and
dominated the religious landscape (even though the majority of Welsh and Irish people were
members of other churches). The Church of Scotland was Presbyterian. There was some
religious diversity, as Britain also was home to other non-Anglican Protestants
(notably Methodists), Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others (at the end of the
period there were even a few atheists).
Alongside their faith, Victorians made and appreciated developments in science. The best-
known Victorian scientific development is that of the theory of evolution. It is typically credited
to Charles Darwin, but versions of it were developed by earlier thinkers as well, and the
pseudoscience of eugenics was an ugly outgrowth of Victorian evolutionary theory. Victorians
were also fascinated by the emerging discipline of psychology and by the physics of energy.
Government and politics in the Victorian era
The formal political system was a constitutional monarchy. It was in practice dominated by
aristocratic men. The British constitution was (and is) unwritten and consists of a combination
of written laws and unwritten conventions. At the national level, government consisted of the
monarch and the two houses of Parliament, the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
The monarchs during this period were Queen Victoria (1837–1901), preceded by King
George IV (1820–30) and King William IV (1830–37) and followed by King Edward
VII (1901–10) and King George V (1910–36). During the Victorian period, the House of
Commons became the centre of government, the House of Lords lost power (though it
remained influential until the Parliament Act of 1911), and the monarchy transformed into a
symbol of the nation. The House of Commons consisted of about 600 men called members of
Parliament (MPs), who were elected to represent the counties and boroughs
of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. England had many more representatives than the
other three nations, by virtue of its status as first among these four equals, the product of
tradition as well as its greater political power and wealth. The upper house, the House of
Lords, was populated principally by several hundred noblemen who had life tenures.
Members of both houses were wealthy men. Formal national politics was dominated by two
major parties, the Liberal Party and the Conservative (or Tory) Party.
At the start of the period, MPs were elected by the half-million property-owning men (in a
population of 21 million) who had the vote. In 1829 the vote was granted to Catholic men and
in 1832, to most middle-class men; in 1867 and 1884 the franchise was extended to working-
class men. Most women over age 30 got the right to vote in 1918. Full adult suffrage, with no
property requirement, was achieved with the second Representation of the People Act (1928).
This story of the expansion of the national electorate is important, but there is more to
political participation than voting at the national level. Local politics were also important. And
being denied a voice and access to institutions certainly did not render non-voters indifferent to
politics or to how power was wielded; they made their opinions on these known via
demonstrations, petitions, and pamphlets.
Important political events during this period included the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire; the expansions of the franchise; working-class political activism, most
notably Chartism; the rise of liberalism as the dominant political ideology, especially of the
middle class; and the nationalization of Conservative and Liberal parties (and the emergence
of the British Labour Party in 1906). The growth of the state and state intervention were seen
in major acts that limited hours for factory workers and miners, in public health acts, and in
the provision of elementary education by the state. Political conflicts between Ireland and
Britain and the rise of Irish nationalism were also hallmarks of the era, as were women’s rights
activism, which resulted in the Married Women’s Property Acts, the repeal of
the Contagious Diseases Acts, and the growth of education and employment options for
women.
➢ The Victorian British Empire
The Victorian British Empire dominated the globe, though its forms of rule and influence
were uneven and diverse. The traffic of people and goods between Britain and its colonies was
constant, complex, and multidirectional. Britain shaped the empire, the empire shaped
Britain, and colonies shaped one another. British jobs abroad included civil and military
service, missionary work, and infrastructure development. People from various imperial
locations travelled to, studied in, and settled in Britain. Money, too, flowed both ways—the
empire was a source of profit, and emigrants sent money home to Britain—as did goods such
as jute, calico cotton cloth, and tea.
Dramatic expansion of the empire meant that such goods came to Britain from all over the
world. Between 1820 and 1870 the empire grew, shifted its orientation eastward, and increased
the number of non-white people over whom it exerted control. Much of this expansion
involved violence, including the Indian Mutiny (1857–59), the Morant Bay Rebellion (1865) in
Jamaica, the Opium Wars (1839–42, 1856–60) in China, and the Taranaki War (1860–61) in
New Zealand. India became central to imperial status and wealth. There was significant
migration to the settler colonies of Australia and New Zealand and later to Canada and South
Africa. From 1870 until 1914 continued aggressive expansion (including Britain’s participation
in the so-called Scramble for Africa) was assisted by new technologies,
including railways and telegraphy. Britain took control of large parts of Africa
(including Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya), which together were home to about 30 percent of the
African population. The same period also saw the start of anticolonial movements that
demanded freedom from British domination in India and elsewhere. These would ultimately
lead to decolonization after World War II.
The Victorian British economy
Britain’s status as a world political power was bolstered by a strong economy, which grew
rapidly between 1820 and 1873. This half-century of growth was followed by an
economic depression and from 1896 until 1914 by a modest recovery. With the earliest phases
of industrialization over by about 1840, the British economy expanded. Britain became the
richest country in the world, but many people worked long hours in harsh conditions. Yet,
overall, standards of living were rising. While the 1840s were a bad time for workers and the
poor—they were dubbed “the hungry forties”—overall the trend was toward a less precarious
life. Most families not only had a home and enough to eat but also had something leftover
for alcohol, tobacco, and even vacations to the countryside or the seaside. Of course, some
decades were times of plenty, others of want. Relative prosperity meant that Britain was a
nation not only of shopkeepers but of shoppers (with the rise of the department store from
mid-century transforming the shopping experience). Increased wealth, including higher real
wages from the 1870s, meant that even working-class people could purchase discretionary
items. Mass production meant that clothes, souvenirs, newspapers, and more were affordable
to almost everyone.
➢ Victorian culture and art
More access made British cultural products more important. Not only did they reveal much
about the society from which they emerged, but during the Victorian period Britain was the
cultural capital of the English-speaking world (including the United States, Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand). Victorian performance and print culture were rich and varied, a blend of
melodrama, spectacle, and morality.
Theatre thrived. Melodrama—which featured evil villains, virtuous heroines, and intricate
plots—was the most important and most popular genre early on; later, sensation drama became
popular. Even more popular were music halls, which featured varied programs of singing,
dancing, sketches, and more; these emerged in the 1850s, and by the 1870s there were
hundreds across Britain, some seating thousands of people. Music halls attracted people of all
classes.
Print culture was also large and diverse, aided by relatively high literacy rates. There were
hundreds of magazines and newspapers available at ever cheaper prices. The 1880s saw the
emergence of “the New Journalism,” which drew in readers with pieces on violent crimes and
scandals in high society. Novels were another key feature of Victorian print culture. By mid-
century, Britons of all classes could afford and read novels. Some were aimed at highly
educated and well-off people, others at less-educated readers looking for appealing and
exciting stories. Penny dreadfuls and sensation novels, seen at their best in the work of Wilkie
Collins, thrilled their readers. Victorian novels were often quite long, with complicated plots
(often centred on marriages) and many characters. Many, especially those by Charles Dickens,
are still read today.