English society comprises the
group behaviour of the
English people
The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language in England, English language, a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language, and share a common ancestry, history, and culture. The Engl ...
, and of collective social interactions, organisation and political attitudes in
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
. The social history of England evidences many social and societal changes over the
history of England
The territory today known as England became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago, as the discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk have indicated.; "Earliest footprints outside Africa discovered in Norfolk" (2014). BB ...
, from
Anglo-Saxon England
Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Empire, Roman imperial rule in Roman Britain, Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the ...
to the contemporary forces upon the
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and state (polity), states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also const ...
. These major social changes have occurred both internally and in its relationship with other nations. The themes of
social history
Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians.
Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...
include
demographic history,
labour history and the working class,
women's history
Women's history is the study of the role that Woman, women have played in history and Historiography, the methods required to do so. It includes the study of the history of the growth of woman's rights, women's rights throughout recorded history, ...
,
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
, the
history of education in England
The history of education in England is documented from Anglo-Saxons, Saxon settlement of England, and the setting up of the first cathedral schools in The King's School, Canterbury, 597 and King's School, Rochester, 604.
Education in England rema ...
,
rural and agricultural history,
urban history and
industrialisation
Industrialisation ( UK) or industrialization ( US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive reorganisation of an economy for th ...
.
Prehistoric society
The distant past does not offer much information on the structures of society. However, major changes in human behaviour make it likely that society must have changed dramatically. In common with much of
Europe
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
, the switch from the
hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...
lifestyle to
farming
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...
around 4000 BC must have heralded an enormous shift in all aspects of human life. Nobody knows what changes may have occurred, and recent evidence of permanent buildings and habitation from 3,000 years ago means that these may still have been gradual shifts. One of the most obvious symbols of change in prehistoric society is
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric Megalith, megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, to ...
. The building of such
stone circle
A stone circle is a ring of megalithic standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being ...
s,
burial mound
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
s and
monument
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical ...
s throughout the
British Isles
The British Isles are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner Hebrides, Inner and Outer Hebr ...
seems to have required a
division of labour
The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise ( specialisation). Individuals, organisations, and nations are endowed with or acquire specialised capabilities, a ...
. Builders would have needed to dedicate themselves to the task of monument construction to acquire the necessary skills. Not having time to hunt and farm would make them rely on others to such an extent that specialised farmers would emerge who provided not only for themselves but also for the monument builders. There are many changes in culture seen in prehistoric and later times such as the
Beaker people, the
Celt
The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...
s, the
Romans and the
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
.
Romans
The
Roman invasion of Britain in 54 BC probably did not alter society greatly at first, as it was simply a replacement of the ruling class, but numerous, at first minor, ideas would later gain footholds. Certainly, it would not have affected
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
in the slightest. It is from the Romans, and particularly
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...
, that we get the earliest detailed written records of Britain and its tribal society. We get fascinating glimpses of society in Britain before the Romans, although only briefly and disparagingly mentioned, particularly the importance of powerful women such as
Cartimandua
Cartimandua or Cartismandua (reigned ) was a 1st-century queen of the Brigantes, a Celtic people living in what is now northern England. She is known through the writings of Roman historian Tacitus.
She came to power during the time period that ...
and
Boudica
Boudica or Boudicca (, from Brittonic languages, Brythonic * 'victory, win' + * 'having' suffix, i.e. 'Victorious Woman', known in Latin chronicles as Boadicea or Boudicea, and in Welsh language, Welsh as , ) was a queen of the Iceni, ancient ...
. City dwelling was not new to pre-Roman Britain, but it was a lifestyle that the Romans preferred even though available to only a select few Romanised Britons. Romanisation was an important part of the Roman conquest strategy, and British rulers who willingly adopted Roman ways were rewarded as client kings; a good example of this is
Togidubnus and his ultramodern
Fishbourne Roman Palace
Fishbourne Roman Palace or Fishbourne Villa is in the village of Fishbourne, West Sussex, Fishbourne, near Chichester in West Sussex. The palace is the largest known Roman residence north of the Alps, and has an unusually early date of 75 A ...
. To subdue and control the country, the Romans built a major road network which not only was an important
civil engineering
Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...
project but formed the basis of the country's communication links. The Romans brought many other innovations and ideas such as writing and plumbing, but how many of these things were the preserve of the rich or were even lost and re-appropriated at a later date is uncertain.
Early medieval society
The collapse of the
Western Roman Empire
In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. ...
in the 5th century is thought to have brought general strife and anarchy to society, but the actual events are not well understood.
Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
certainly shows a reduction in the expensive goods found before, and the Roman cities began to be abandoned, but much of British society had never had such things. Certainly, numerous peoples took advantage of the absence of Roman power, but how they affected British society is far from clear. The hegemony of Roman rule gave way to a selection of splintered, often competing, societies, including later the
heptarchy
The Heptarchy was the division of Anglo-Saxon England between the sixth and eighth centuries into petty kingdoms, conventionally the seven kingdoms of East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex, and Wessex. The term originated wi ...
. Rather than think of themselves as a small part of a larger Roman empire, they reverted to smaller tribal allegiances.
The
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
' arrival is the most hotly disputed of events, and the extent to which they killed, displaced, or integrated with the existing society is still questioned. What is clear is that a separate Anglo-Saxon society, which would eventually become
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
with a more
Germanic feel, was set up in the south east of the island. These new arrivals had not been conquered by the Romans, but their society was perhaps similar to that of Britain. The main difference was their
pagan
Paganism (, later 'civilian') is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the ...
religion, which the surviving northern areas of non-Saxon rule sought to convert to Christianity. During the 7th century these northern areas, particularly
Northumbria
Northumbria () was an early medieval Heptarchy, kingdom in what is now Northern England and Scottish Lowlands, South Scotland.
The name derives from the Old English meaning "the people or province north of the Humber", as opposed to the Sout ...
, became important sites of learning, with
monasteries
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which m ...
acting like early schools and intellectuals such as
Bede
Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...
being influential. In the 9th century
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great ( ; – 26 October 899) was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who both died when Alfr ...
worked to promote a literate, educated people and did much to promote the
English language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
, even writing books himself. Alfred and his successors unified and brought stability to most of the south of Britain that would eventually become England.
Late medieval society

After the
Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, French people, French, Flemish people, Flemish, and Bretons, Breton troops, all led by the Du ...
of England in 1066, society seemed fixed and unchanging for several centuries, but gradual and significant changes were still taking place, the exact nature of which would not be appreciated until much later. The Norman lords spoke
Norman French
Norman or Norman French (, , Guernésiais: , Jèrriais: ) is a '' langue d'oïl'' spoken in the historical and cultural region of Normandy.
The name "Norman French" is sometimes also used to describe the administrative languages of '' Angl ...
, and in order to work for them or gain advantage, the English had to use the
Anglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman (; ), also known as Anglo-Norman French, was a dialect of Old Norman that was used in Kingdom of England, England and, to a lesser extent, other places in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Normans, Anglo-Norman period.
Ori ...
that developed in England. This became a necessary administrative and literary language (see
Anglo-Norman literature
Anglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language and developed during the period of 1066–1204, as the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of England were united in the Anglo-Norman realm.
Introduction
The Norman langu ...
), but despite this the English language was not supplanted, and after gaining much in grammar and vocabulary began in turn to replace the language of the rulers. At the same time the population of England more than doubled between Domesday and the end of the 13th century, and this growth was not checked by the almost continual foreign warfare, crusades and occasional civil anarchy.
Feudalism
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...
, although historians debate the term, is often used to describe medieval society. Basically stated, a lord owns land or a
fief
A fief (; ) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal alle ...
which he allows
vassal
A vassal or liege subject is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, the dominant party is called a suzerain ...
s to work in return for their military service. The vast majority of the people were
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...
s who would work on the vassal's fiefs. This or a similar system was the basis of later medieval society. It probably existed in some form in England before the Norman conquest, but the
Normans
The Normans (Norman language, Norman: ''Normaunds''; ; ) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norsemen, Norse Viking settlers and locals of West Francia. The Norse settlements in West Franc ...
did much to institute it, either replacing existing lords or by becoming 'overlords' above now-demoted lords. A wealth of information on these social structures can be drawn from the best early surveys of its type, the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...
.
Church
The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...
are one measure of the ever-increasing power of the church in medieval life, with some estimates suggesting that as many as 40,000 clergy were ordained during the 13th century. This is also shown by the spate of
cathedral
A cathedral is a church (building), church that contains the of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, Annual conferences within Methodism, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually s ...
building, common throughout Europe, at the time. These great buildings would often take several generations to complete, spawning whole communities of artisans and craftsmen and offering them jobs for life. A quarter of the land was owned by the Church. Its monasteries owned large tracts of land farmed by peasants.
Prosperity and population growth
The two centuries from 1200 to 1400 (when the plague hit) were prosperous. The population grew rapidly, from about 2 million to about 5 million. England remained a mainly rural society, and many agricultural changes, such as
crop rotation
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons. This practice reduces the reliance of crops on one set of nutrients, pest and weed pressure, along with the pro ...
, kept the countryside profitable. Most people lived by farming, although there were wide variations in patterns of land ownership and the status of peasants. To meet the needs of the growing population more land had to be cultivated. Waste land was exploited and major incursions were made into forests, fen and marsh lands. "High farming" was increasingly practised, whereby the landowner took personal control of his land using hired hands rather than leasing it out. Treatises appeared on the best practices, but the growth of per-acre productivity was small. On good land one acre might produce 17 bushels of wheat (compared to 73 bushels an acre in the 1960s), or 26 of barley or 22 of oats.
After 1300 prosperity was more tenuous owing to a combination of over-population, land shortages and depleted soils. The loss of life in the
Great Famine of 1315–1317
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315–1322) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck parts of Europe early in the 14th century. Most of Europe (extending east to Poland and south to the Alps) was affected ...
shook the English economy severely, and population growth ceased. The first outbreak of the
Black Death
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the list of epidemics, most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. ...
in 1348 then killed around half the English population, but left plenty of land for the survivors. The agricultural sector shrank, with higher wages, lower prices and shrinking profits leading to the final demise of the old
demesne
A demesne ( ) or domain was all the land retained and managed by a lord of the manor under the feudal system for his own use, occupation, or support. This distinguished it from land subinfeudation, sub-enfeoffed by him to others as sub-tenants. ...
system and the advent of the modern farming system of cash rents for lands. Wat Tyler's
Peasants' Revolt
The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black ...
of 1381 shook the older feudal order and limited the levels of royal taxation considerably for a century to come.
Towns
The increase in population led not only to denser rural areas but also to more and larger towns. Many new towns appeared but most were small. Major cities such as
Lincoln,
Norwich
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...
and
Thetford
Thetford is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Breckland District of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road (England), A11 road between Norwich and London, just east of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, coverin ...
had 4,000–5,000 population, while London grew from 10,000 to nearly 40,000 population and York approached 10,000.
The 13th century experienced a mini-industrial revolution, with the increased use of
wind power
Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity ge ...
and changes in the
wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have some properties similar to animal w ...
industry. Wool, always important to the British economy, was traditionally exported to be processed, but it was now frequently processed in England, creating a variety of extra jobs. The export of cloth continued to increase from the 14th century onwards, and after the closing of the port of
Calais
Calais ( , , traditionally , ) is a French port city in the Pas-de-Calais department, of which it is a subprefecture. Calais is the largest city in Pas-de-Calais. The population of the city proper is 67,544; that of the urban area is 144,6 ...
(which consumed much of the raw wool) by
the Spanish in the late 16th century, cloth became the primary type of wool exported. Many people were finding different roles and responsibilities within English society too, with the growth of
common law
Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...
giving people greater access to the law and the "commons" starting to have a place in the Parliament during
Edward I of England
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (Latin: Malleus Scotorum), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 ...
's time.
Black Death and population decline
After many years of growth and gradual change, there was one seismic event which changed British society dramatically. The
Black Death
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the list of epidemics, most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. ...
in the middle of the 14th century almost halved the population. Whole villages were wiped out by the plague, but rather than destroying society it managed to reinvigorate it. Before the plague there was a large, probably excessive, workforce with not enough productive work available. Overpopulation meant that before the Black Death too many people were competing for scarce resources. Afterwards, the drop in population meant that labourers were in short supply and were paid better. Peasants who had once been confined to a landowner's estate now had an incentive to travel to areas without workers. This social mobility was combined with the fact that peasants could charge much more for their services, and this began a switch from
indentured labourer to
wage
A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work (human activity), work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include wiktionary:compensatory, compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailin ...
earner, which signalled the decline of the feudal system.
The peasants' new-found freedoms were very worrying to the authorities, who passed laws specifying the maximum that a peasant should be paid, but this had little effect on wages. The first of several
sumptuary law
Sumptuary laws (from Latin ) are laws that regulate consumption. '' Black's Law Dictionary'' defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furnitu ...
s were also made, dictating exactly how people at every level of society should dress and what they could own, in an effort to enforce social distinctions. These new laws, plus a newly levied
poll tax
A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. ''Poll'' is an archaic term for "head" or "top of the head". The sen ...
which had been calculated on pre-plague population figures, led directly to the
Peasants' Revolt
The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black ...
. Although quickly put down, the revolt was an early popular reform movement—a precursor to later, more successful uprisings.
Chaucer's vision
Geofrey Chaucer's ''
Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse (poetry), verse, as part of a fictional storytellin ...
'' give an illuminating picture of many of the different people who made up medieval society, although these portraits are limited mainly to the middle classes. The
Wife of Bath is one particularly vibrant character within the Tales, and a few years later a real-world equivalent,
Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe ( – after 1438) was an English Catholic mystic, known for writing through dictation '' The Book of Margery Kempe'', a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. Her book chronicles her domes ...
, showed in her autobiography that women had an important part in medieval society.
Tudor society
In general terms, the
Tudor dynasty
The House of Tudor ( ) was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of Eng ...
period was seen as relatively stable compared to the previous years of almost constant warfare. However, the
Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...
caused internal and external social conflict, with a considerable impact on social structure and personality.
Before they were broken up and sold by
Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is known for his Wives of Henry VIII, six marriages and his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. ...
,
monasteries
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which m ...
had been one of the important parts of social welfare, giving
alms
Alms (, ) are money, food, or other material goods donated to people living in poverty. Providing alms is often considered an act of Charity (practice), charity. The act of providing alms is called almsgiving.
Etymology
The word ''alms'' come ...
and looking after the destitute, and their disappearance meant that the state would have to adopt this role, which culminated in the
Poor Law
In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of hel ...
of 1601. The monasteries were decrepit and no longer were the major educational or economic establishments in the country. After they had gone, many new
grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...
s were founded and these, along with the earlier introduction of the printing press, helped to improve
literacy
Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...
.
Food and agriculture
The agricultural reforms which had begun in the 13th century accelerated in the 16th century, with
enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land", enclosing it, and by doing so depriving commoners of their traditional rights of access and usage. Agreements to enc ...
altering the
open-field system
The open-field system was the prevalent Agriculture in the Middle Ages, agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each Manorialism, manor or village had two or thre ...
and denying many of the poor access to land. Large areas of land which had once been ''common'', and whose usage had been shared between many people, were now being ''enclosed'' by the wealthy mainly for extremely profitable sheep farming.
England's food supply was plentiful throughout most of the era; there were no famines. Bad harvests caused distress, but they were usually localised. The most widespread came in 1555–57 and 1596–98. In the towns the price of
staples was fixed by law; in hard times the size of the loaf of bread sold by the baker was smaller.
The poor consumed a diet largely of bread, cheese, milk, and beer, with small portions of meat, fish and vegetables, and occasionally some fruit. Potatoes were just arriving at the end of the period, and became increasingly important. The typical poor farmer sold his best products on the market, keeping the cheap food for the family. Stale bread could be used to make
bread pudding
Bread pudding is a popular bread-based United Kingdom, British dessert. It is made with stale bread and milk or cream, generally containing egg (food), eggs, a form of fat such as oil, butter or suet and, depending on whether the pudding is swe ...
s, and bread crumbs served to thicken soups, stews, and sauces. At a somewhat higher social level, families ate an enormous variety of meats, especially beef, mutton, veal, lamb, and pork, as well as chickens and ducks. The holiday goose was a special treat. Many rural folk and some townspeople tended a small garden which produced vegetables such as asparagus, cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, beans, cabbage, carrots, leeks, and peas, as well as medicinal and flavoring herbs. Some raised their own apricots, grapes, berries, apples, pears, plums, currants, and cherries. Families without a garden could trade with their neighbours to obtain vegetables and fruits at low cost.
The people discovered new foods (such as the
potato
The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...
and
tomato
The tomato (, ), ''Solanum lycopersicum'', is a plant whose fruit is an edible Berry (botany), berry that is eaten as a vegetable. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family that includes tobacco, potato, and chili peppers. It originate ...
imported from the
Americas
The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...
), and developed new tastes during the era. The more prosperous enjoyed a wide variety of food and drink, including exotic new drinks such as coffee and chocolate. French and Italian chefs appeared in the country houses and palaces, bringing new standards of food preparation and taste. For example, the English developed a taste for acidic foods—such as oranges for the upper class—and started to use
vinegar
Vinegar () is an aqueous solution of diluted acetic acid and trace compounds that may include flavorings. Vinegar typically contains from 5% to 18% acetic acid by volume. Usually, the acetic acid is produced by a double fermentation, converting ...
heavily. The gentry paid increasing attention to their gardens, with new fruits, vegetables and herbs; pasta, pastries, and dried mustard balls first appeared on the table. The
apricot
An apricot (, ) is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus ''Prunus''.
Usually an apricot is from the species '' P. armeniaca'', but the fruits of the other species in ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca'' are also ...
was a special treat at fancy banquets. Roast beef remained a staple for those who could afford it. The rest ate a great deal of bread and fish. Every class had a taste for beer and rum.
At the rich end of the scale the manor houses and palaces were awash with large, elaborately prepared meals, usually for many people and often accompanied by entertainment. Often they celebrated religious festivals, weddings, alliances and the whims of her majesty.
17th century
England was wracked by civil war over religious issues. Prosperity generally continued in both rural areas and the growing towns, as well as the great metropolis of London.
The
English Civil War
The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...
was far from just a conflict between two religious faiths, and indeed it had much more to do with divisions within the one
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
religion. The austere, fundamentalist
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...
ism on the one side was opposed to what it saw as the crypto-Catholic decadence of the
Anglican church
Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
on the other. Divisions also formed along the lines of the common people and the gentry, and between the country and city dwellers. It was a conflict that was bound to disturb all parts of society, and a frequent slogan of the time was "the world turned upside down".
In 1660 the
Restoration was a quick transition back to the high-church
Stuarts. Public opinion reacted against the puritanism of the Puritans, such as the banning of traditional pastimes of gambling, cockfights, the theatre and even Christmas celebrations. The arrival of
Charles II—The Merry Monarch—brought a relief from the warlike and then strict society that people had lived in for several years. The theatre returned, along with expensive fashions such as the
periwig and even more expensive commodities from overseas. The
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...
grew rapidly after 1600, and along with wealth returning to the country, expensive luxury items were also appearing. Sugar and coffee from the
East Indies
The East Indies (or simply the Indies) is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The ''Indies'' broadly referred to various lands in Eastern world, the East or the Eastern Hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainl ...
, tea from India and slaves (brought from Africa to the sugar colonies, along with some enslaved servants in England itself) formed the backbone of imperial trade.
One in nine Englishmen lived in London near the end of the Stuart period. However, plagues were even more deadly in a crowded city—the only remedy was to move to isolated rural areas, as
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...
of
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
did in 1664–66 as the
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague of London, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the most recent major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second plague pandemic, Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent buboni ...
killed as many as 100,000 Londoners. The fast-growing metropolis was the centre of politics, high society and business. As a major port and hub of trade, goods from all over were for sale.
Coffee houses were becoming the centres of business and social life, and it has also been suggested that tea might have played its own part in making Britain powerful, as the
antiseptic
An antiseptic ( and ) is an antimicrobial substance or compound that is applied to living tissue to reduce the possibility of sepsis, infection, or putrefaction. Antiseptics are generally distinguished from ''antibiotics'' by the latter's abil ...
qualities of tea allowed people to live closer together, protecting them from germs, and making the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
possible. These products can be considered as beginning the
consumer society which promoted trade and brought development and riches to society.
Newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...
s were new and soon became important tools of social discourse, and the diarists of the time such as
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys ( ; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English writer and Tories (British political party), Tory politician. He served as an official in the Navy Board and Member of Parliament (England), Member of Parliament, but is most r ...
and
John Evelyn
John Evelyn (31 October 162027 February 1706) was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diary, diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society.
John Evelyn's Diary, ...
are some of the best sources we have of everyday life in
Restoration England. Coffee houses grew numerous and were places for middle-class men to meet, read the papers, look over new books and gossip and share opinions. Thomas Garway operated a coffee house in London from 1657 to 1722. He sold tea, tobacco, snuff, and sandwiches. Businessmen met there informally; the first furs from the
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...
were auctioned there.
The diet of the poor in the 1660–1750 era was largely bread, cheese, milk, and beer, with small quantities of meat and vegetables. The more prosperous enjoyed a wide variety of food and drink, including tea, coffee, and chocolate.
Crime and punishment
Historians examining the period 1300–1800 have detected a high level of continuity in their studies of crime and punishment. They have used local records, as well as literary sources, to explore how crime was defined and detected, the changes in the court system, the central importance of elite attitudes toward the poor and dangerous classes, professional criminals, and the amateur and community element in law enforcement before the establishment of police forces in the 19th century. The
Black Act 1723, sponsored by
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (; 26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whigs (British political party), Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prim ...
, strengthened the criminal code. It specified over 200
capital crimes, many with intensified punishment.
Arson
Arson is the act of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercr ...
, for example, was expanded to include burning or the threat of burning haystacks. The legal rights of defendants were strictly limited. For example, suspects who refused to surrender within 40 days could be summarily judged guilty and sentenced to execution if apprehended. Local villages were punished if they failed to find, prosecute and convict alleged criminals.
From the left, historians such as
E. P. Thompson have emphasized that crime and disorder were characteristic responses of the working and lower classes to the oppressions imposed upon them. Thompson argues that crime was defined and punished primarily as an activity that threatened the status, property and interests of the elites. England's lower classes were kept under control by large-scale execution, transportation to the colonies, and imprisonment in horrible hulks of old warships. There was no interest in reformation, the goal being to deter through extremely harsh punishment.
Georgian society: 1714–1837
Agriculture
Major advances in farming made agriculture more productive and freed up people to work in industry. The
British Agricultural Revolution
The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain arising from increases in labor and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricu ...
included innovations in technology such as
Jethro Tull's
seed drill
file:7263 Canterbury Agricultural College farm.jpg, Filling a feed-box of a seed drill, Lincoln University (New Zealand), Canterbury Agricultural College farm, 1948
A seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sowing, sows seeds for crops by ...
which allowed greater yields, while the process of enclosure, which had been altering rural society since the Middle Ages, became unstoppable. The new mechanisation needed much larger fields – the layout of the British countryside with the patchwork of fields divided by
hedgerows that we see today.
Industrial Revolution
Historians typically date the coming of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
to Britain in the mid-18th century. Not only did existing cities grow but small market towns such as
Manchester
Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...
,
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...
and
Leeds
Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...
became cities simply by weight of population.
Middle class and stability
The
middle class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...
grew rapidly in the 18th century, especially in the cities. At the top of the scale, the legal profession succeeded first, establishing specialist training and associations, and was soon followed by the medical profession. The merchant class prospered with imperial trade. Wahrman (1992) argues that the new urban elites included two types: the gentlemanly capitalist, who participated in the national society, and the independent bourgeois, who was oriented toward the local community. By the 1790s a self-proclaimed middle class, with a particular sociocultural self-perception, had emerged.
Thanks to increasing national wealth, upward mobility into the middle class, urbanisation, and civic stability, Britain was relatively calm and stable, certainly compared with the revolutions and wars which were convulsing the American colonies, France and other nations at the time. The politics of the
French Revolution did not translate directly into British society to spark an equally seismic revolution, nor did the loss of the
American Colonies dramatically weaken or disrupt Great Britain.
Religion
Historians have emphasized the importance of religion, including the domination of the Anglican establishment. The
Act of Toleration 1689 granted rights of free religious worship to the non-conformist Protestant sects which had emerged during the Civil War.
Baptists
Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...
,
Congregationalists
Congregationalism (also Congregational Churches or Congregationalist Churches) is a Reformed Christian (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice congregational government. Each congregation independently a ...
,
Methodists, and
Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...
were all allowed to pray freely. These groups took the opportunity of the expanding empire and set up in the
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America.
The Thirteen C ...
, where they expanded rapidly after the
First Great Awakening
The First Great Awakening, sometimes Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival, was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Pro ...
.
In response to the religious and moral apathy of the common people, Methodist preachers set up societies divided into ''classes''—intimate meetings where individuals were encouraged to confess their sins to one another and to build each other up. They also took part in
love feasts which allowed for the sharing of testimony and mutual surveillance of moral behavior. The success of
Methodist revivals in reaching the poor and working classes concentrated their attention on spiritual goals rather than political grievances.
Cultural history
Scholars have recently been moving toward cultural history rather than social history. The language and self images of people are the chief targets of cultural studies. Of special importance is the concept of an emerging consumer society. Studies of middle- and upper-class manners, tastes, and fashions have proliferated, along with studies of gender, national, and racial identities.
Victorian era: 1837–1901

The social changes during the Victorian era were wide-ranging and fundamental, leaving their mark not only upon the United Kingdom but upon much of the world which was under Britain's influence during the 19th century. It can even be argued that these changes eclipsed the massive shifts in society during the 20th century; certainly many of the developments of the 20th century have their roots in the 19th. The technology of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
had a great impact on society. Inventions not only introduced new industries for employment, but the products and services produced also altered society.
Culturally there was a transition away from the
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to ot ...
of the Georgian period and toward
romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...
and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and the arts. The era is popularly associated with the
"Victorian" values of social and sexual restraint.
Population growth and improved health
The
population of England
The demography of England has since 1801 been measured by the census in the United Kingdom, decennial national census, and is marked by centuries of population growth and urbanization. Due to the lack of authoritative contemporary sources, e ...
almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901. Scotland's population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901. Ireland's population decreased rapidly, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to the
Great Famine. At the same time, around 15 million
emigrants
Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...
left the United Kingdom in the Victorian era and settled mostly in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Not only did the rapidly expanding
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...
attract immigrants, it also attracted temporary administrators, soldiers, missionaries and businessmen who on their return talked up the Empire as a part of greater Britain.
Environmental and health standards rose throughout the Victorian era; improvements in nutrition may also have played a role, although the importance of this is debated.
[ ] Sewage works were improved as was the quality of drinking water. With a healthier environment, diseases were caught less easily and did not spread as much. Technology was also improving because the population had more money to spend on medical technology (for example, techniques to prevent death in childbirth so more women and children survived), which also led to a greater number of cures for diseases. However, a
cholera
Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...
epidemic took place in London in 1848–49 killing 14,137, and subsequently in 1853 killing 10,738. This anomaly was attributed to the closure and replacement of
cesspit
Cesspit, cesspool and soak pit in some contexts are terms with various meanings: they are used to describe either an underground holding tank (sealed at the bottom) or a Dry well, soak pit (not sealed at the bottom). A cesspit can be used for ...
s by the modern sewerage systems.
Class identity and conflicts
The status of the poor is one area in which huge changes occurred. A good illustration of the differences between life in the Georgian and Victorian eras are the writings of two of England's greatest authors,
Jane Austen
Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...
and
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
. Both writers held a fascination for people, society and the details of everyday life but in Austen the poor are almost absent, mainly because they were still the rural poor, remote and almost absent from the minds of the middle classes. For Dickens, only a few years later, the poor were his main subject, as he had partly suffered their fate. The poor now were an unavoidable part of urban society and their existence and plight could not be ignored. Industrialisation made large profits for the entrepreneurs of the times, and their success was in contrast not only to the farm workers who were in competition with imported produce but also to the aristocracy whose landowning wealth was now becoming less significant than business wealth. The British class system created an intricate hierarchy of people which contrasted the new and old rich, the skilled and unskilled, the rural and urban and many more.
Some of the first attacks on industrialisation were the
Luddites' destruction of machines, but this had less to do with factory conditions and more to do with machines mass-producing linen much quicker and cheaper than the handmade products of skilled labourers. The army was called to the areas of Luddite activity such as
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...
and
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...
and for a time there were more British soldiers controlling the Luddites than fighting Napoleon in Spain. The squalid, dangerous and oppressive conditions of many of the new Victorian factories and the surrounding communities which rose to service them became important issues of discontent, and the workers began to form
trade union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
s to get their working conditions addressed.
The first trade unions were feared and distrusted by management, and ways were devised to ban them. The most widely known case was that of the
Tolpuddle Martyrs
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six agricultural labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, England, who were arrested and tried in 1834 for swearing a secret oath as members of a friendly society. Led by George Loveless, the group had ...
of 1834, an early attempt at a union whose members were tried on a spurious charge, found guilty and
transported
''Transported'' is an Australian convict melodrama film directed by W. J. Lincoln.
It is considered a lost film.
Plot
In England, Jessie Grey is about to marry Leonard Lincoln but the evil Harold Hawk tries to force her to marry him and she ...
to Australia. The sentence was challenged and they were released shortly afterwards, but unions were still threatened. It was not until the formation of the
TUC in 1868 and the passing of the
Trade Union Act 1871 that union membership became reasonably legitimate. Many pieces of legislation were passed to improve working conditions, including the
Ten Hours Act 1847 to reduce working hours, and these culminated in the
Factory Act 1901.
Rural hardship
Many of these acts resulted from the blight of
Britain's agricultural depression. Beginning in 1873 and lasting until 1896, many farmers and rural workers were hard-pressed for a stable income. With the decline in wheat prices and land productivity many countrymen were left looking for any hope of prosperity. Although the British parliament gave substantial aid to farmers and labourers, many still complained that rents were too high, wages too low, and the hours labourers were required to work were too long for their income. As a result, many workers turned to unions to have their concerns heard and, with the acts listed above as proof, were able to achieve some success.
Communications and travel
Communication improved rapidly. Stage coaches, canal boats, steam ships and most notably the railways all speeded up the movement of people, goods and ideas. New communication methods were very fast if not instantaneous, including the telegraph, the telephone and the trans-oceanic cable.
Trains opened up leisure destinations, especially seaside resorts. The
Bank Holidays Act 1871 created a number of fixed holidays which the middle class could enjoy. Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as
Worthing
Worthing ( ) is a seaside town and borough in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 113,094 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Br ...
,
Brighton
Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London.
Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...
,
Morecambe
Morecambe ( ) is a seaside town and civil parish in the City of Lancaster district of Lancashire, England, on Morecambe Bay, part of the Irish Sea. In 2011 the parish had a population of 34,768.
Name
The first use of the name was by John Whit ...
and
Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to:
People
* Scarborough (surname)
* Earl of Scarbrough
Places Australia
* Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth
* Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong
* Scarborough, Queensland, sub ...
began turning them into major tourist centres, and people like
Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) was the founder of the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son. He was born into a poor family in Derbyshire and left school at the age of ten to start work as a gardener's boy. He served an appren ...
saw arranging for domestic and foreign tourism as a viable business model. Steam ships such as the
SS Great Britain and
SS Great Western made international travel more common but also advanced trade, so that in Britain it was not just the luxury goods of earlier times that were imported into the country but essentials such as grain and meat from North America and Australia. One more important innovation in communications was the
Penny Black, the first
postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the f ...
, which standardised postage to a flat price regardless of distance sent.
Science and sanitation
The Victorians were impressed by science and progress, and felt that they could improve society in the same way as they were improving technology. The model town of
Saltaire
Saltaire is a Victorian model village near Shipley, West Yorkshire, England, situated between the River Aire, the railway, and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Salts Mill and the houses were built by Titus Salt between 1851 and 1871 to allo ...
was founded in the 1850s, was one of several created as a planned environment with good sanitation, civic, educational and recreational facilities. It deliberately lacked a pub. Similar sanitation reforms were prompted by the Public Health Acts
1848 and 1869. Progress was made in the crowded, dirty streets of the existing cities. Soap was the main product shown in the relatively new phenomenon of advertising.
Victorians strove to improve society through many charities and relief organisations such as the
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army (TSA) is a Protestantism, Protestant Christian church and an international charitable organisation headquartered in London, England. It is aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. The organisation reports a worldwide m ...
, the
RSPCA and the
NSPCC
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a British child protection charity founded as the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (LSPCC) by Thomas Agnew on 19 April 1883. The NSPCC lobbies t ...
. At the same time there were many people who used
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during th ...
as a model in working to reform sanitary areas of public life.
Women and the family
Reformers organised many movements to obtain greater rights for women; voting rights did not come until the next century. The
Married Women's Property Act 1882
The Married Women's Property Act 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 75) was an Act of Parliament (United Kingdom), act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly altered English law regarding the property rights of married women, which besid ...
meant that women did not lose their right to their own property when they got married and could divorce without fear of poverty, although divorce was frowned upon and very rare during the 19th century. It is too much to claim that the Victorians "invented childhood," but they deemed it the most significant phase of life. The trend was towards smaller families, probably because of the rise of modern inner-directed families, coupled with lower infant mortality rates and longer life spans. Legislation reduced the working hours of children while raising the minimum working age, and the passing of the
Elementary Education Act 1870 set the basis for universal primary education.
In
local government elections, unmarried women
ratepayers received the right to vote in the
Municipal Franchise Act 1869. This right was confirmed in the
Local Government Act 1894
The Local Government Act 1894 ( 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The act followed the reforms carried out at county leve ...
and extended to include some married women.
By 1900, more than 1 million women were registered to vote in local government elections in England.
Divorce
In Britain before 1857 wives were under the economic and legal control of their husbands, and divorce was almost impossible. It required a very expensive private act of Parliament costing perhaps £200, of the sort only the richest could possibly afford. It was very difficult to secure divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty. The first key legislative victory came with the
Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, which passed over the strenuous opposition of the highly traditional Church of England. The new law made divorce a civil affair of the courts, rather than a Church matter, with a new civil court in London handling all cases. The process was still quite expensive, at about £40, but now became feasible for the middle class. A woman who obtained a judicial separation took the status of a ''feme sole,'' with full control of her own civil rights. Additional amendments came in 1878, which allowed for separations handled by local justices of the peace. The Church of England blocked further reforms until the final breakthrough came with the
Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
Religion
Church of England expanded roles
During the 19th century, the established Church of England expanded greatly at home and abroad. It enrolled about half the population, especially in rural areas where the local gentry dominated religious affairs. However it was much weaker in the fast-growing industrial cities. It lost its established status in Ireland. Its funding came largely from voluntary contributions. In England and Wales it doubled the number of active clergyman, and built or enlarged several thousand churches. Around mid-century it was consecrating seven new or rebuilt churches every month. It proudly took primary responsibility for a rapid expansion of elementary education, with parish-based schools, and diocesan-based colleges to train the necessary teachers. In the 1870s, the national government assume part of the funding; in 1880 the Church was educating 73% of all students. In addition there was a vigorous home mission, with many clergy, scripture readers, visitors, deaconesses and Anglican sisters in the rapidly growing cities. Overseas the Church kept up with the expanding Empire. It sponsored extensive missionary work, supporting 90 new bishoprics and thousands of missionaries across the globe.
In addition to local endowments and pew rentals, Church financing came from a few government grants, and especially from voluntary contributions. The result was that some old rural parishes were well funded, and most of the rapidly growing urban parishes were underfunded.
Evangelican and Nonconformist Protestantism
The start of the 19th century saw an increase in
missionary
A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...
work and many of the major missionary societies were founded around this time (see
Timeline of Christian missions). Both the Evangelical and
high church
A ''high church'' is a Christian Church whose beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, Christian liturgy, liturgy, and Christian theology, theology emphasize "ritual, priestly authority, ndsacraments," and a standard liturgy. Although ...
movements sponsored missionaries.

In addition to stressing the traditional Wesleyan combination of "Bible, cross, conversion, and activism", the revivalist movement sought a universal appeal, designed to reach rich and poor, urban and rural, and men and women. They added work to keep the children their parents brought and to generate literature to spread God's message. The first evangelical megachurch, the
Metropolitan Tabernacle
The Metropolitan Tabernacle is a Reformed Baptist, Reformed Independent Baptist, Independent Baptist Church in the Elephant and Castle area in London. It was the largest Nonconformist (Protestantism), non-conformist church of its day in 1861. ...
with its 6000-seat auditorium, was launched in 1861 in London by
Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist.
"Christian conscience" was the target chosen by the British Evangelical movement to promote social activism. Evangelicals believed activism in government and the social sphere was an essential method in reaching the goal of eliminating sin in a world drenched in wickedness. The Evangelicals in the
Clapham Sect
The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were a group of social reformers associated with Holy Trinity Clapham in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Despite the label "sect", most members remained in the Established Church, established (and do ...
included figures such as
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780 ...
who successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery.
John Nelson Darby
John Nelson Darby (18 November 1800 – 29 April 1882) was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, one of the influential figures among the original Plymouth Brethren and the founder of the Exclusive Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern ...
(1800–1882) of the
Plymouth Brethren
The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and Nonconformist (Protestantism), Nonconformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where it originated from Anglica ...
was an Irish Anglican minister who devised modern
dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is a Christian theology, theological framework for Biblical hermeneutics, interpreting the Bible which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages called "dispensations" in which God the Father, God interacts with h ...
, an innovative Protestant theological interpretation of the Bible that was incorporated in the development of modern Evangelicalism. According to scholar Mark S. Sweetnam, dispensationalism can be defined in terms of its Evangelicalism, its insistence on the literal interpretation of Scripture, its recognition of stages in God's dealings with humanity, its expectation of the imminent return of Christ to rapture His saints, and its focus on both apocalypticism and
premillennialism.
Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholic attitudes persisted throughout the 19th century, particularly following the sudden massive Irish Catholic migration to England during the
Great Famine.
The forces of anti-Catholicism were defeated by the unexpected mass mobilization of Catholic activists in Ireland, led by
Daniel O'Connell
Daniel(I) O’Connell (; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Irelan ...
. The Catholics had long been passive but now there was a clear threat of insurrection that troubled Prime Minister
Wellington
Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...
and his aide
Robert Peel. The passage of
Catholic emancipation in 1829, which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament, opened the way for a large Irish Catholic contingent.
Lord Shaftesbury (1801–1885), a prominent philanthropist, was a pre-millennial evangelical Anglican who believed in the imminent second coming of Christ, and became a leader in anti-Catholicism. He strongly opposed the
Oxford movement
The Oxford Movement was a theological movement of high-church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the Un ...
in the Church of England, fearful of its
high church
A ''high church'' is a Christian Church whose beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, Christian liturgy, liturgy, and Christian theology, theology emphasize "ritual, priestly authority, ndsacraments," and a standard liturgy. Although ...
Catholics features. In 1845, he denounced the
Maynooth Grant which funded the Catholic seminary in Ireland that would train many priests.
The re-establishment of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy in England in 1850 by Pope
Pius IX
Pope Pius IX (; born Giovanni Maria Battista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of nearly 32 years is the longest verified of any pope in hist ...
, was followed by a frenzy of anti-Catholic feeling, often stoked by newspapers. Examples include an effigy of
Cardinal Wiseman, the new head of the restored hierarchy, being paraded through the streets and burned on
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End of London, East End. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the common la ...
, and
graffiti
Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...
proclaiming 'No popery!' being chalked on walls. Charles Kingsley wrote a vigorously Anti-Catholicism, anti-Catholic book ''Hypatia (novel), Hypatia'' (1853).
[Uffelman, Larry K. (Jun. 1986), "Kingsley's Hypatia: Revisions in Context". ''Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 41, No. 1'', pp. 87–96, University of California Pres]
/ref> The novel was mainly aimed at the embattled Roman Catholic Church, Catholic minority group, minority in England, who had recently emerged from a half-illegal status.
New Catholic episcopates, which ran parallel to the established Anglican episcopates, and a Catholic conversion drive awakened fears of 'papal aggression' and relations between the Catholic Church and the establishment remained frosty. At the end of the nineteenth century one contemporary wrote that "the prevailing opinion of the religious people I knew and loved was that Roman Catholic worship is idolatry, and that it was better to be an Atheist than a Papist".
The Liberal party leader William Ewart Gladstone had a complex ambivalence about Catholicism. He was attracted by its international success in majestic traditions. More important, he was strongly opposed to the authoritarianism of its pope and bishops, its profound public opposition to liberalism, and its refusal to distinguish between secular allegiance on the one hand and spiritual obedience on the other. The danger came when the pope or bishops attempted to exert temporal power, as in the Vatican decrees of 1870 as the climax of the papal attempt to control churches in different nations, despite their independent nationalism. His polemical pamphlet against the papal infallibility, infallibility declaration of the Catholic Church sold 150,000 copies in 1874. He urged The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, Catholics to obey the crown and disobey the pope when there was disagreement.[Philip Magnus, ''Gladstone: A Biography'' (London: John Murray, 1963), pp. 235–6.] on the other hand, when religion ritualistic practices in the Church of England came under attack as too ritualistic and too much akin to Catholicism, Gladstone strongly opposed passage of the Public Worship Regulation Bill in 1874.
Edwardian Era, 1901–1914
The Edwardian Era of economic and social prosperity, and political reform, spanned the short reign of Edward VII from 1901 to 1910 as well as early reign of King George V until the start of World War I. The new king had long been the leader of the fashionable elite that set a style influenced by the art and fashions of continental Europe. Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun never set on the British flag."
The Liberals returned to power in 1906 United Kingdom general election, the 1906 landslide and made Liberal welfare reforms, significant reforms. The era was marked by significant shifts in politics among sections of society that had largely been excluded from power, such as Laborer, labourers, servants, and the industrial working class. Women started to play more of a role in politics.
Social change and improved health
Mortality declined steadily in urban England and Wales 1870–1917. Robert Millward and Frances N. Bell looked statistically at those factors in the physical environment (especially population density and overcrowding) that raised death rates directly, as well as indirect factors such as price and income movements that affected expenditures on sewers, water supplies, food, and medical staff. The statistical data show that increases in the incomes of households and increases in town tax revenues helped cause the decline of mortality.
Higher incomes on average permitted higher spending on food, and also on a wide range of health-enhancing goods and services such as medical care. The major improvement in the physical environment was the quality of the housing stock, which rose faster than the population; its quality was increasingly regulated by central and local government. Infant mortality fell faster in England and Wales than in Scotland. Clive Lee argues that one factor was the continued overcrowding in Scotland's housing.
Status of middle-class women
For middle class housewives, sewing machines enabled the production of ready-made clothing and made it easier for women to sew their own clothes. More generally, argues Barbara Burman, "home dressmaking was sustained as an important aid for women negotiating wider social shifts and tensions in their lives." Increased literacy gave women wider access to information and ideas. Numerous new magazines appealed to her tastes and helped define femininity.
By 1900 Gender roles shifted as better educated young women made use of the new technology to upgrade their lifestyle and their career opportunities. The inventions of the typewriter, telephone, and new filing systems dramatically increased white collar employment opportunities. So too did the rapid expansion of the school system, and the rapid growth of the new profession of nursing. Education and status led to demands for female roles in the rapidly expanding world of sports.
Women were very active in church affairs, including attendance at services, Sunday school teaching, fund raising, pastoral care, social work and support for international missionary activities. They were almost completely excluded from leadership roles.
=Women's suffrage
=
As middle-class women rose in status, they increasingly supported demands for a political voice.
There were numerous organisations which did their work quietly. After 1897, they were increasingly linked together by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) led by Millicent Fawcett. However, front page publicity was seized by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Founded in 1903, it was tightly controlled by the three Pankhursts, Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), and her daughters Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) and Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960).
It specialised in highly visible publicity campaigns such as large parades. This had the effect of energising all dimensions of the suffrage movement. While there was a majority of support for suffrage in Parliament, the ruling Liberal Party refused to allow a vote on the issue; the result of which was an escalation in the suffragette campaign. The WSPU, in dramatic contrast to its allies, embarked on a campaign of violence to publicise the issue, even to the detriment of its own aims.
Status of working-class women
=Birth control and abortion
=
Although abortion was illegal, it was nevertheless a widespread form of birth control. Used predominantly by working-class women, the procedure was used not only as a means of terminating pregnancy, but also to prevent poverty and unemployment. Abortion did not need any prior planning and was less expensive. Newspaper advertisements were used to promote and sell abortifacients indirectly. Not all of society was accepting of contraceptives or abortion, and the opposition viewed both as part of one and the same sin.
=Single mothers
=
Single mothers were the poorest sector in society, disadvantaged for at least four reasons. First, women lived longer, often leaving them widowed with children. Second, women had fewer opportunities to work, and when they did find it, their wages were lower than male workers' wages. Thirdly, women were often less likely to marry or remarry after being widowed, leaving them as the main providers for the remaining family members. Finally, poor women had deficient diets, because their husbands and children received disproportionately large shares of food. Many women were malnourished and had limited access to health care.
=Female servants
=
Edwardian Britain had large numbers of male and female domestic servants, in both urban and rural areas. Middle- and upper-class women relied on servants to run their homes smoothly. Servants were provided with food, clothing, housing, and a small wage, and lived in a self-enclosed social system within their employer's house. However, the number of domestic servants fell in the Edwardian era due to fewer young people willing to be employed in this capacity.
Fashion
The upper classes embraced leisure sports, which resulted in rapid developments in fashion, as more mobile and flexible clothing styles were needed. During the Edwardian era, women wore a very tight corset, or bodice, and dressed in long skirts. The Edwardian era was the last time women wore corsets in everyday life. According to Arthur Marwick, the most striking change of all the developments that occurred during the Great War was the modification in women's dress, "for, however far politicians were to put the clocks back in other steeples in the years after the war, no one ever put the lost inches back on the hems of women's skirts".
Fabrics were usually sweet pea shades in chiffon (fabric), chiffon, mousse line de sore, tulle with feather boas and lace. 'High and boned collars for the day; plunging off shoulder décolleté for the evening'. The tea gown's cut was relatively loose compared to the more formal evening gown, and was worn without a corset. The silhouette was flowing, and was usually decorated with lace or with the cheaper Irish crochet.
evening glove, Long kid gloves, trimmed hats, and parasols were often used as accessories. Parasols are different from umbrellas; they are used for protection from the sun, rather from the rain, though they were often used as ornamentation rather than for function. By the end of the Edwardian era, the hat grew bigger in size, a trend that would continue in the 1910s.
The Edwardians developed new styles in clothing design. The Edwardian Era saw a decrease in the trend for voluminous, heavy skirts:
* The two-piece dress came into vogue. At the start of the decade, skirts were trumpet-shaped.
* Skirts in 1901 often had decorated hems with ruffles of fabric and lace.
* Some dresses and skirts featured trains.
* Tailored jackets, first introduced in 1880, increased in popularity and by 1900, tailored suits known as tailormades became popular.
* In 1905, skirts fell in soft folds that curved in, then flared out near the hemlines.
* From 1905 – 1907, waistlines rose.
* In 1911, the hobble skirt was introduced; a tight fitting skirt that restricted a woman's stride.
* Lingerie dresses, or tea gowns made of soft fabrics, festooned with ruffles and lace were worn indoors.
* Around 1913 women's dresses acquired a lower and sometimes V-shaped neckline in contrast to the high collars a generation before. This was considered scandalous by some, and caused outrage among clergy throughout Europe.
Newspapers
The turn of the century saw the rise of popular journalism aimed at the lower middle class and tending to deemphasise highly detailed political and international news, which remain the focus of a handful of low-circulation prestige newspapers which reached a small elite. The new press, on the other hand, reached vastly larger audiences by emphasis on sports, crime, sensationalism, and gossip about famous personalities. Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe used his ''Daily Mail'' and ''Daily Mirror'' to transform the media along the American model of "Yellow Journalism". P. P. Catterall and Colin Seymour-Ure conclude that:
Two world wars
First World War
What really changed all ranks of English society was the World War I, Great War. The army was traditionally a small employer; the regular army stood at only 247,000 at the start of the war. By 1918 there were five million men in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force, newly formed from the Royal Naval Air Service, RNAS and the Royal Flying Corps, RFC, was about the same size of the pre-war army. The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation", and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon's ''Blighters'' criticising the ill-informed jingoism of the home front. Conscription brought people of many different classes, and also people from all over the empire, together and this mixing was seen as a great leveller which would only accelerate social change after the war. During the World War, infant mortality fell sharply across the country. J. M. Winter attributes this to the full employment and higher wages paid to war workers.
1920s
The social reforms of the previous century continued into the twentieth with the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party being formed in 1900, but this did not achieve major success until the 1922 general election. David Lloyd George, Lloyd George said after the World War that "the nation was now in a molten state", and his Housing Act 1919 would lead to affordable council housing which allowed people to move out of Victorian inner-city slums. The slums, though, remained for several more years, with trams being electrified long before many houses. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave women householders the vote, and in 1928 full equal suffrage was achieved.
After the War, many new food products became available to the typical household, with branded foods advertised for their convenience. The shortage of servants was felt in the kitchen, but now instead of an experience cook spending hours on difficult custards and puddings the ordinary housewife working alone could purchase instant foods in jars, or powders that could be quickly mixed. Breakfast porridge from branded, more finely milled, oats could now be cooked in two minutes, not 20. American-style dry cereals began to challenge the porridge and bacon and eggs of the middle classes, and the bread and margarine of the poor. Street vendors were fewer. Shops were upgraded; the flies were gone as were the open barrels of biscuits and pickles. Groceries and butcher shops carried more bottled and canned goods as well as fresher meat, fish and vegetables. Whereas wartime shipping shortages had sharply narrowed choices, the 1920s saw many new kinds of foods—especially fruits—imported from around the world, along with better quality, packaging, and hygiene. Middle classes households now had ice boxes or electric refrigerators, which made for better storage and the convenience of buying in larger quantities.
Great Depression
The relatively prosperous 1920s gave way by 1930 to a Great Depression in the United Kingdom, depression that was part of a worldwide crisis.
Particularly hardest hit were the north of England and Wales, where unemployment reached 70% in some areas. The UK General Strike 1926, General Strike was called during 1926 in support of the miners and their falling wages, but it failed. The strike marked the start of the slow decline of the British coal industry. In 1936 two hundred unemployed men walked from Jarrow to London in a bid to show the plight of the industrial poor, but the Jarrow March, had little impact and it was not until 1940 that industrial prospects improved. George Orwell's book ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' gives a bleak overview of the hardships of the time.
People's War: 1939–1945
The war was a "people's war" that enlisted every party, class and every region and every interest, with strikingly little dissent. It was started with a "phony war" with little fighting. Fear of bombing led to Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, women and children were moved from London and other cities liable to air raids and evacuated to the country. Most returned some months later and remained in the cities until the end of the war. There were half the number of military casualties in this war than the last, but the improvements in aerial warfare meant that there were many more civilian casualties and a foreign war seemed much closer to home. The early years of the war in which Britain "stood alone" and the Blitz spirit which developed as Britain suffered under aerial bombardment helped pull the nation together after the divisions of the previous decade, and campaigns such as "Dig for Victory" helped give the nation a common purpose. The focus on agriculture to feed the nation gave some people their first introduction to the countryside, and women played an important part in the war effort as the Women's Land Army (World War II), Land Girls.
A half a million women served in the armed forces, led by Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, the future queen, who donned the Auxiliary Territorial Service, ATS soldier's uniform as a lorry driver.
Since 1945
Austerity: 1945–1951
The Labour Party (UK), Labour Party victory in 1945 represented pent-up frustrations. The strong sense that all Britons had joined in a "People's War" and all deserved a reward animated voters. But the Treasury was near bankruptcy and Labour's nationalization programs were expensive. Prewar levels of prosperity did not return until the 1950s. It was called the Age of Austerity. The most important reform was the founding of the National Health Service on 5 July 1948. It promised to give ''cradle to grave'' care for everyone in the country, regardless of income.
Wartime rationing continued, and was extended to bread. In the war the government banned ice cream and rationed sweets, such as chocolates and confections; sweets were rationed until 1954. Most people grumbled, but for the poorest, rationing was beneficial, because their rationed diet was of greater nutritional value than their pre-war diet. Housewives organized to oppose the austerity. The Conservatives saw their opening and rebuilt their fortunes by attacking socialism, austerity, rationing, and economic controls, and were back in power by 1951.
Prosperous 1950s
As prosperity returned after 1950, Britons became more family centred. Leisure activities became more accessible to more people after the war. Holiday camps, which had first opened in the 1930s, became popular holiday destinations in the 1950s – and people increasingly had money to pursue their personal hobbies. The BBC's early television service was given a major boost in 1953 with the coronation of Elizabeth II, attracting an estimated audience of twenty million, proving an impetus for middle-class people to buy televisions. In 1950 1% owned television sets; by 1965 75% did. As austerity receded after 1950 and consumer demand kept growing, the Labour Party hurt itself by shunning consumerism as the antithesis of the socialism it demanded.
Small neighbourhood stores were increasingly replaced by chain stores and shopping centres, with their wide variety of goods, smart-advertising, and frequent sales. Cars were becoming a significant part of British life, with city-centre congestion and ribbon developments springing up along many of the major roads. These problems led to the idea of the green belt to protect the countryside, which was at risk from development of new housing units.
1960s
The 1960s saw dramatic shifts in attitudes and values led by youth. It was a worldwide phenomenon, in which British rock musicians, especially The Beatles, played an international role. The generations divided sharply regarding the new sexual freedom demanded by youth who listened to bands like The Rolling Stones.
Sexual morals shifted towards greater acceptance of sexual behaviors and identities that had been considered taboo or immoral. One notable event was the publication of D. H. Lawrence's ''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' by Penguin Books in 1960. Although first printed in 1928, the release in 1960 of an inexpensive mass-market paperback version prompted a court case. The prosecuting council's question, "Would you want your wife or servants to read this book?" highlighted how far society had changed, and how little some people had noticed. The book was seen as one of the first events in a general relaxation of sexual attitudes. Other elements of the sexual revolution included the development of The Pill, Mary Quant's miniskirt and the 1967 legalisation of homosexuality. There was a rise in the incidence of divorce and abortion, and a resurgence of the women's liberation movement, whose campaigning helped secure the Equal Pay Act 1970, Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.
The 1960s were a time of greater disregard for the ''establishment,'' with a satire boom led by people who were willing to attack their elders. Pop music became a dominant form of expression for the young, and bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were seen as leaders of youth culture. Youth-based subcultures such as the Mod (subculture), mods, rocker (subculture), rockers, hippy, hippies and skinheads became more visible.
Reforms in education led to the effective elimination of the grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...
. The rise of the comprehensive school was aimed at producing a more egalitarian educational system, and there were ever-increasing numbers of people going into higher education.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Modern immigration to the United Kingdom, immigration of people to the United Kingdom, mainly from former British colonies in the Caribbean, India and Pakistan, began to escalate, leading to racism. Dire predictions were made about the effect of these new arrivals on British society (most famously Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech), and tension led to a few race riots. In the longer term, many people with differing cultures have successfully integrated into the country, and some have risen to high positions.
1980s
One important change during the 1980s was the opportunity given to many to buy their council houses, which resulted in many more people becoming property owners in a ''stakeholder society.'' At the same time, Conservative Margaret Thatcher weakened her bitter enemy, the trade unions.
The environmentalism movements of the 1980s reduced the emphasis on intensive farming, and promoted organic farming and conservation biology, conservation of the countryside.
Religious observance declined notably in Britain during the second half of the 20th century, even with the growth of non-Christian religions due to immigration and travel (see Islam in the UK). Church of England attendance has particularly dropped, although charismatic churches like Elim Pentecostal Church, Elim and Assemblies of God in Great Britain, AOG are growing. The movement to Keep Sunday Special seemed to have lost at the beginning of the 21st century.
1990s and the new millennium
Following on from the resurgence of economic liberalism in the 1980s, the last decade of the 20th century was noted for a greater embrace of social liberalism within British society, largely attributed to the greater influence of the generation born in the socially transformative 1960s. In 1990, 69% of Britons surveyed believed homosexuality was morally wrong; by the end of the decade this had fallen to below half, and the legal age of consent for homosexual sexual activity had been lowered to 16, in line with heterosexual sex.
The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 was also observed to have demonstrated the way in which social attitudes towards mourning had changed, with the unprecedented mass public outpourings of grief that characterised the days after her death being remarked upon as reflecting a change in the national psyche.
Growing disparity in the relative affluence of those who have benefitted and those 'left behind' from the Deindustrialization, deindustrialisation and Globalization, globalisation of the economy was attributed as one of the primary factors behind the surprise victory of the 'leave' campaign in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016 European Union membership referendum, and began wider discourse on the emergence of 'two countries' within England that represented greatly differing social attitudes and outlooks.
Historiography
The social history of the medieval period was primarily developed by Eileen Power, H. S. Bennett, Ambrose Raftis, Rodney Hilton, and Sylvia Thrupp before the rise of the Social history, New Social History in the 1960s.
Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of English rural history and focuses on an "orthodox" school dealing chiefly with the economic history of agriculture. The orthodox historians made "impressive progress" in quantifying and explaining the growth of output and productivity since the agricultural revolution. A challenge came from a dissident tradition that looked chiefly at the negative social costs of agricultural progress, especially enclosure. In the late 20th century there arose a new school, associated with the journal ''Rural History''. Led by Alun Howkins, it links rural Britain to a wider social history. Burchardt calls for a new countryside history, paying more attention to the cultural and representational aspects that shaped 20th-century rural life.[Jeremy Burchardt, "Agricultural History, Rural History, or Countryside History?" ''Historical Journal'' 2007 50(2): 465-481]
See also
* Economic history of the United Kingdom, after 1700
* History of women in the United Kingdom
* History of the United Kingdom (1945–present)
References
Further reading
* Adams, James Eli et al. eds. ''Encyclopedia of the Victorian era'' (4 vol, Groiler 2003)
online vol 1-2-3-4
comprehensive coverage in 500 articles by 200 experts
* François Bédarida, Bédarida, François. ''A social history of England, 1851–1990'', Routledge, 1991, ,
* Bolton, J. L. ''Mediaeval English Economy, 1150–1500'' (2nd ed. 1985) 416 pp
*
* Britnell, R. H. ''Britain and Ireland 1050–1530: Economy and Society'' (2004)
* Chadwick, Owen. ''The Victorian Church. Part One'' (1966
online
* Chadwick, Owen. ''The Victorian Church. Part Two: 1860-1901'' (1972
online
* Clark, G. Kitson. ''The making of Victorian England'' (1962)
* Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa, eds. ''The encyclopedia of the Victorian world: a reader's companion to the people, places, events, and everyday life of the Victorian era'' (Henry Holt, 1996
online
*
* Daunton, M. J. ''Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1850'' (1995)
* Devine, T. M. and Rosalind Mitchison. ''People and Society in Scotland: A Social History of Modern Scotland: 1760–1830'' (1988)
* Gilley, Sheridan, and W.J. Sheils, eds. ''A history of religion in Britain. Practice and belief from pre-Roman times to the present'' (Blackwell, 1994)
* Glynn, Sean, and Alan Booth. ''Modern Britain: An Economic and Social History'' (Routledge, 1996)
* Gregg, Pauline. ''A Social and Economic History of Britain: 1760–1950'' (1950
online
* Brian Harrison (historian), Harrison, Brian. ''Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951–1970'' (2009, paperback with revisions 2011)
online
* Brian Harrison (historian), Harrison, Brian. ''Finding a Role? The United Kingdom 1970–1990'' (2010, paperback with revisions 2011)
online
major scholarly survey
* Hobsbawm, Eric, and George Rudé. ''Captain Swing'' (1969)
* Horn, Pamela. ''Life below Stairs: The Real Life of Servants, the Edwardian Era to 1939'' (2012
online
* Horrox, Rosemary, and W. Mark Ormrod, ''A Social History of England, 1200–1500'' (Cambridge UP, 2006),
* McKibbin, Ross. ''Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951'' (1998) 576 pp
* Marr, Andrew. ''A History of Modern Britain'' (2009); covers 1945–2005.
* Marr, Andrew. ''Elizabethans: How Modern Britain Was Forged'' (2021), covers 1945 to 2020.
* Mathias, Peter. ''The transformation of England: essays in the economic and social history of England in the eighteenth century'' (Taylor & Francis, 1979),
* Mitchell, Sally.. ''Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia'' (Garland, 1990)
* Mitchell, Sally.. ''Daily Life in Victorian England'' (2nd ed. ABC-CLIO, 2008)
* Mowat, Charles Loch. ''Britain Between the Wars, 1918–1940'' (1955), 690pp;
* Neale, Matt. "Research in urban history: recent theses on crime in the city, 1750–1900." Urban History. (2013) 40#3 pp 567–577
online
* Newman, Gerald, ed. ''Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714-1837: An Encyclopedia'' (1997)
* Nowell-Smith, Simon, ed. ''Edwardian England, 1901–14'' (1964), 620pp; 15 wide-ranging essays by scholars
online
* Platt; Colin. ''Medieval England: A Social History and Archaeology from the Conquest to 1600 A.D'' (1994)
* Pope, Rex. ''Social Welfare in Britain 1885-1985'' (2017)
* Pope, Rex. ''Atlas of British Social and Economic History Since c.1700'' (1989)
* Roy Porter, Porter, Roy. ''English Society in the Eighteenth Century'' (2nd ed. 1991)
excerpt
* Royle, Edward. ''Modern Britain: A Social History 1750–1997'' (2nd ed. 1997), with detailed bibliography pp 406–444
* Ryder, Judith, and Harold Silver. ''Modern English society: history and structure 1850-1970'' (1970
online
* Sharpe, J. A. ''Early Modern England: A Social History 1550–1760'' (2009)
* Stearns, Peter, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Social History'' (1994) 856 pp.
* Stearns, Peter, ed. ''Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000'' (5 vol 2000), 209 essays by leading scholars in 3000 pp.
* Thompson, E.P. ''The Making of the English Working Class'' (1963)
* Thompson, F. M. L., ed. ''The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950.'' ''Vol. 1: Regions and Communities. Vol. 2: People and Their Environment; Vol. 3: Social Agencies and Institutions'' (1990). 492 pp.
online
* Woodward, Lewellyn. ''The age of reform 1815-1870'' Oxford UP, 1962
online
* Youings, Joyce A. ''The Social History of Britain in the 16th Century'' (1991
online book review
Medicine and health
* Berridge, Virginia. "Health and Medicine" in F M.L. Thompson, ed., ''The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, vol. 3, Social Agencies and Institutions,'' (1990). pp 171–242.
* Cherry, Stephen. ''Medical Services and the Hospital in Britain, 1860–1939'' (1996
excerpt and text search
* Howe G. M. ''People, Environment, Death and Disease: A Medical Geography of Britain Through the Ages'' (U of Wales Press, 1997).
* Nagy D. ''Popular Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Bowling Green State UP, 1988).
* Porter, Roy. ''Bodies politic: disease, death, and doctors in Britain, 1650-1900'' (Cornell UP, 2001)
online review
* Porter, Roy, and Dorothy Porter. ''In Sickness and in Health: The British Experience, 1650–1850'' (1988).
* Porter, Roy. ''Mind forg'd manacles: madness and psychiatry in England from restoration to regency'' (1987).
* Riley, James C. ''Sick not dead: the health of British workingmen during the mortality decline'' (Johns Hopkins UP, 1997).
* Wohl, Anthony S. ''Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain'' (1983).
Historiography
* Burchardt, Jeremy. "Agricultural History, Rural History, or Countryside History?" Historical Journal 2007 50(2): 465–481.
* Hawke, Gary. "Reinterpretations of the Industrial Revolution" in Patrick O'Brien and Roland Quinault, eds. ''The Industrial Revolution and British Society'' (1993) pp 54–78.
* Kanner, Barbara. ''Women in English Social History, 1800–1914: A Guide to Research'' (2 vol 1988–1990). 871 pp.
* Navickas, Katrina. "What happened to class? New histories of labour and collective action in Britain," ''Social History (journal), Social History,'' May 2011, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 192–204
* Thompson, E. P. ''The Essential E. P. Thompson'' (2001). 512 pp. highly influential essays on 19th century working class
* Wilson, Adrian, ed. ''Rethinking Social History: English Society, 1570–1920 and Its Interpretation'' (1993). 342 pp.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Social History of England
Society of England,
Social history of England,