19th-century London

History of London

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19th century London

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This article covers the history of London in the 19th century.

Overview

Part of Charles Booth's poverty map showing the Old Nichol, a slum in the East End of London. Published 1889 in Life and Labour of the People in London. The red areas are "middle class, well-to-do", light blue areas are “poor, 18s to 21s a week for a moderate family”, dark blue areas are “very poor, casual, chronic want”, and black areas are the "lowest class...occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals".

During the 19th century, London was transformed into the world's largest city and capital of the British Empire. Its population expanded from 1 million in 1800 to 6.7 million a century later (1.9% average annual growth). During this period, London became a global political, financial, and trading capital. In this position, it was largely unrivaled until the latter part of the century, when Paris and New York City began to threaten its dominance.

While the city grew wealthy as Britain's holdings expanded, 19th century London was also a city of poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums. Life for the poor was immortalized by Charles Dickens in such novels as Oliver Twist.

One of the most famous events of 19th-century London was the Great Exhibition of 1851. Held at The Crystal Palace, the fair attracted visitors from across the world and displayed Britain at the height of its Imperial dominance.

As the capital of a massive empire, London became a magnet for immigrants from the colonies and poorer parts of Europe. A large Irish population settled in the city during the Victorian era, with many of the newcomers refugees from the Great Famine (1845-1849). At one point, Irish immigrants made up about 20% of London's population. London also became home to a sizable Jewish community, and small communities of Chinese and South Asians settled in the city

Railway Map of London, 1899, from The Pocket Atlas and Guide to London

Coming of the railway

19th century London was transformed by the coming of the railways. A new network of metropolitan railways allowed for the development of suburbs in neighbouring counties from which middle-class and wealthy people could commute to the centre. While this spurred the massive outward growth of the city, the growth of greater London also exacerbated the class divide, as the wealthier classes emigrated to the suburbs, leaving the poor to inhabit the inner city areas.

The first railway to be built in London was the London and Greenwich Railway a short line from London Bridge to Greenwich, which opened in 1836. This was soon followed by the opening of great rail termini which linked London to every corner of Britain. These included Euston station (1837), Paddington station (1838), Fenchurch Street station (1841), Waterloo station (1848), King's Cross station (1850), and St Pancras station (1863). From 1863, the first lines of the London Underground were constructed.

Government

In 1829 the prime minister Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police as a police force covering the entire urban area. The force gained the nickname of "bobbies" or "peelers" named after Robert Peel.

London's urbanised area continued to grow rapidly, spreading into Islington, Paddington, Belgravia, Holborn, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Southwark and Lambeth. With London's rapid growth, towards the middle of the century, there became an urgent need to reform London's system of local government.

Outside of the City of London which resisted any attempts to expand its boundaries to encompass the wider urban area, London had a chaotic local government system consisting of ancient parishes and vestries, working alongside a vast array of single purpose boards and authorities, few of which co-operated with each other. In an attempt to solve this problem, in 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was created to provide London with adequate infrastructure to cope with its growth. The MBW was London's first metropolitan government body.

The Crystal Palace in 1851.

One of its first tasks was addressing London's sanitation problems. At the time, raw sewage was pumped straight into the River Thames. This culminated in The Great Stink of 1858. The polluted drinking water (sourced from the Thames) also brought disease and epidemics to London's populace.

Parliament finally gave consent for the MBW to construct a massive system of sewers. The engineer put in charge of building the new system was Joseph Bazalgette. In what was one of the largest civil engineering projects of the 19th century, he oversaw construction of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes under London to take away sewage and provide clean drinking water. When the London sewerage system was completed, the death toll in London dropped dramatically, and epidemics of cholera and other diseases were curtailed. Bazalgette's system is still in use today.

The Metropolitan Board of Works was not a directly elected body, which made it unpopular with Londoners. In 1888 it was wound up, and replaced with the London County Council (LCC). This was the first elected London-wide administrative body. The LCC covered the same area as the MBW had done, but this area was designated as the County of London. In 1900, the county was sub-divided into 28 metropolitan boroughs, which formed a more local tier of administration than the county council.

The Houses of Parliament from old Westminster Bridge in the early 1890s

Famous buildings and landmarks

Many famous buildings and landmarks of London were constructed during the 19th century including:

• Trafalgar Square
• Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament
• The Royal Albert Hall
• The Victoria and Albert Museum
• Tower Bridge

References

• Inwood, Stephen. A History of London (1998) ISBN 0-333-67153-8

Further reading

Published in the 1810s-1840s

• John Lockie (1810), Lockie's Topography of London, London: Sold by G. and W. Nicol, OCLC 10590310 

• John Wallis (1814), London: being a complete guide to the British capital (4th ed.), London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, OCLC 35294736 

• Leigh's New Picture of London, Printed for Samuel Leigh, 1830 

• Cruchley's Picture of London, London: G. F. Cruchley, 1831 

• Abraham Booth (1839), Stranger's Intellectual Guide to London for 1839-40, London: H. Hooper 

• Charles Knight, ed. (1841), London, London: C. Knight & Co. 

• Robson's London Directory ... for 1842 (23rd ed.), London: Robson, 1842 

Published in the 1850s

• Hogben's Strangers' Guide to London, London: John Hogben, 1850 

• William Gaspey (1851), Tallis's Illustrated London, London and New York: J. Tallis and Company, OCLC 1350917 

• Pictorial Handbook of London, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854 

Published in the 1860s-1870s

• John Camden Hotten (1860), A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words, used at the present day in the streets of London (2nd ed.), London: J. C. Hotten 

• London and its Environs, Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1862, OCLC 1995082 

• Peter Cunningham (1863), London as it is, London: John Murray, OCLC 9520918 

• John Timbs (1867), Curiosities of London (2nd ed.), London: J. C. Hotten, OCLC 12878129 

• Collins' Illustrated Guide to London & Neighbourhood, William Collins, Sons, & Co., 1873, OCLC 65849744 

Published in the 1880s

• Herbert Fry (1880), London in 1880, London: David Bogue 

• Charles Dickens (1882), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1882 (fourth year), London: Macmillan & Co., Bedford Street, Strand 

• London and Its Environs (6th ed.), Leipsic: Karl Baedeker, 1887 

External links

• Circa 1896 Late 19th Century London then and now
• The Twilight City An exploration of vagrancy and streetwalkers in late Victorian London
• Dictionary of Victorian London A resource for anyone interested in how life was lived in Victorian London.