Victorian Church and Society

This Blog Post will give some background to the Assize Sermon preached in the University Church by John Keble in July 1833. The first stage in this is to set out the issue of Catholic Emancipation. The bill for the emancipation of Roman Catholics from civil disabilities was passed in April 1829. Some people thought that George IV would veto it, but he did not and the Government was expecting Civil War in Ireland unless it conceded to some of the Roman Catholic claims. There were various securities to uphold the protestants: The coronation oath ensured that a protestant monarch could not marry anyone other than another protestant and the number of Roman Catholic Members of Parliament from Ireland was restricted. Many offices of state could not be held by a Roman Catholic such as the King and Lord Chancellor and no Roman Catholic Bishop could take the same title as one in the established protestant church. A Roman Catholic judge or mayor could not go out in public in robes of of...

In all the chapters of Emma Griffin’s Breadwinner Book it would seem that material progress did not reduce poverty, rather such progress created poverty.   Henry George made this observation in the 1870s and with all the progress of the twenty first century it would still appear to be the case.   Edwardian England had food for all but children had to resort to picking it out of the gutter.   Our country today has sufficient food for all, yet many rely on food banks. An initial glance at autobiographies and material associated with them suggests that their natural place would be in the sphere of social and cultural history.   Is it viable to link them to economic history?   What would be the links?   How was household income affected by the mood and values of the time?   A problem with income becomes apparent when a household lacks the father either through death, desertion or alcoholism.   An increase in individualism in the nineteenth and e...

If men had greater spending power than women (this was most usually the case) then this brought more opportunity to develop interests outside the household.   In the autobiographies men often sought to trumpet their journeys away from working class origins.   For example one autobiography in Emma Griffin’s “Breadwinner” written by a man was entitled “From workshop to War Cabinet”.   Social mobility and possible political activity for women could only follow the interest of the husband and the income derived from his employment.   Even those women who succeeded in entering more middle class professions, such as secretarial work or teaching, were rarely able to aspire to further career progression or political activism. In Emma Griffin’s study one quarter of the male autobiography writers reported engagement in some sort of political activity whereas only thirteen per cent of women did likewise.   The working class education of children was poor so for any a...

Family life was not easy in the nineteenth and easy twentieth century.   In Emma Griffin’s “Bread Winner” she describes how (among her sample) thirty four percent of children had gone hungry.   By the 1880s this figure had dipped to twelve percent but hunger was reported among children and adolescents into the twentieth century.   Hunger was often associated with shortage of money, especially in rural areas where the diet could be restricted to vegetables, flour, barley, meal and rice.   The Irish potato famine also had an effect.   By the 1850s hunger disappeared from rural areas due to wage improvements for agricultural workers but the fare could be meagre (eating bread and dripping or lard, for example).   Dinners might contain some meat and the Sunday Roast would involve meat as this kept the family looking respectable to their neighbours.   For the women the focus would be on feeding the husbands as the author writes “always look after the wag...

Before 1914 44% of the autobiography writers in Emma Griffin’s book “Breadwinner” indicated that their mothers had worked whilst they (the writers) were children.   In urban areas mothers who were married to a male who provided well for his family were less likely to work.    The pattern of women withdrawing from the workplace at the point of marriage continued even in the mill districts where other women could get good wages.    There was an absence of child care in factory districts.   Fathers never got involved even when the mothers worked outside the home. In some cases such as shops women would work alongside their husbands in a shared business.   They would work from within the home undertaking tasks like needlework, cookery and laundry.   The legal requirements to send children to school were disregarded. Working in the home or outside of it, ran alongside the need for household domestic work.   The latter was not replaced when w...