1700 1800

Gender and Sexuality

During the late 1700s and early 1800s, sex roles and sex-role
stereotyping were not major topics of interest in the United States.
At that time, the United States was mainly an Agricultural society,
although the Industrial stage of our history was beginning.
The adult male role included:.
a. earning an income in one way or another, most men had farms or
plantations, or were farm laborers. Also, at that time, there were
many craftsmen, merchants, and men employed in government.
b. supporting and defending a family.
c. being strong, independent, and self-reliant.
d. working in the fields and marketing farm produce.
The adult female role included:
a. the responsibility to have and to care for children.
b. running a household under the supervision of a husband.
c. if necessary, assisting a husband in farm or garden labor.

Gender and Sexuality

Running a household and caring for children was a full-time job. It usually
included cleaning, preparing and cooking the meals, canning and bottling
the farm produce, and providing for all needs of the husband and
children.Children were taught their roles when very young. Boys were
shown how to farm and provide for in their future families needs. They went
to school where they were taught the basics along with being introduced to
career alternatives. Higher education was available.
Girls learned how to do the household chores, and received some basic
education. Higher education was not opened for women until 1837, and
even then only to a very limited degree, hence career alternatives were not
available for them. Girls were taught how to be wives and mothers.
Surprisingly to some, there were feminists then. They were usually thought
of as unfeminine, sinful women who preached the devils words. Some
feminists did take on manly ways, like cutting their hair short, but the
majority were feminine and married. They were chided by the church, by
most men, and by some women who did not understand their
outspokenness. Feminists advocated equality of the sexes in education and
careers. They also campaigned and rallied for the right to vote. Womens
rights were not all these feminists fought for; they also opposed slavery.

Class?

Britain experienced a major transformation of its economic and

social structure between 1700 and 1800, releasing large numbers of
workers from the land into industry and the towns, and it achieved
unrivalled dominance as an industrial power by the Great Exhibition
of 1851. By the close of the nineteenth century there were
unmistakable signs that other countries were eroding Britain's
industrial lead, penetrating the home market, competing abroad and
developing new technologies in which Britain was a laggard. Yet
there was, according to many recent accounts, one constant in
these contrasting periods: the attitude of the British state, it would
seem, fell somewhere between benign neglect and hostility. - See
more at: http://www.historytoday.com/martindaunton/entrepreneurial-state-1700-1914#sthash.3Rnp8yGj.dpuf

Foreign parts
Foreign trade continued to grow in all its branchesexports, imports, and
reexports. The new trades, such as the importing and reexporting of
tobacco, sugar, linens, calicoes, and slaves, grew steadily in comparison to
the old staple export, finished woolens. The basic pattern of English trade
was shifting, for while the proportion of English imports from northern
Europe still stood at over 30 percent in 1750, the English over time imported
less from Europe and more from the East Indies, the West Indies, and North
America. Similarly, exports and reexports to Europe (especially to Spain and
Portugal) remained of great importance, but shipping to North America and
the East Indies won a larger share. Overall, English overseas trade doubled
between 1700 and 1760, accelerating from a growth rate of about 1 percent
a year in 1700 to 2 percent a year in 1760a remarkable performance for a
preindustrial society. England in the early eighteenth century was no Third
World economy. This foreign trade, as well as the coastal trade in coal and
foodstuffs, made shipping a formidable business. In the 1740s, for instance,
more than two hundred ships (most of them English) worked the tobacco
trade alone.

1711

The Spectator was a periodical published daily by Joseph Addison and Sir
Richard Steele, both politicians, which was one of the bestsellers of the 18th
century. Its 500 issues sold up to 4000 copies a day, and carried news and
comment, but especially comments on manners, morals and literature. The
publication pretended to be the reports by a Mr Spectator on the
conversations of a club comprising representatives of the country
squirearchy, the town, commerce and the army. Its essays, as seen in this
example, show that urban life in the 18th century was not so far different
from today, with observations on begging and binge-drinking. Mr Spectator
particularly comments on debt [I am] extremely astonished that Men can
be so insensible of the Danger of running into Debt.
The magazine of essays was a popular model for expressing various views
on society in the 18th century. Though often short-lived, they sold well and
were read by thousands. The Gentlemans Magazine, Steeles The Tatler,
Samuel Johnsons The Rambler and The Idler and others created an
enthusiasm for discussing ideas and literature that were at the heart of
literate thinking in 18th century England.

1712

In 1712, the English language, according to satirist Jonathan Swift,

was in chaos. He outlined his complaints in this public letter to
Robert Harley, leader of the government, proposing the appointment
of experts to advise on English use. The model was to be based on
that of the Acadmie Franaise, which had been regulating French
since 1634. His proposal, like all the others, came to nothing. To this
day no official regulation of the English language exists.
On these pages
The aim of Swift's proposed academy is given on page 31: 'some
Method should be thought of for ascertaining and fixing our
Language for ever'. The section before suggests how this might be
done, for example by rejecting 'very defective' grammatical forms
and restoring some antiquated words 'on account of their Energy
and Sound.'

1715

A book from 1715 entitled A Vindication of Sugars, argues that sugar is

good for you. Dr Slare was a sugar fanatic, adding it to his wine, using it as
snuff and even as a toothpaste. This page contains one of his case studies the Duke of Beaufort supposedly lived to a ripe old age by eating large
quantities of sweets after dinner every night for at least 40 years.
Books such as these hint at the vast amount of sugar that was being
imported to Britain at this time: sugar consumption in Britain doubled
between 1690 and 1740. But the increase in luxuries, such as sugar, had a
darker side. Imports of raw cotton, sugar, rum and tobacco for example that were shipped by the tonne into prosperous British ports like Bristol,
Liverpool and London - all originated in the plantations of South America
and the Caribbean, where merchants depended heavily on the labour of
African slaves. As the demand for sugar increased, so did the number of
slaves. Over the course of the 1700s around 11 million slaves were
exported by European merchants from Africa to the slave colonies. The
expansion of the transatlantic slave trade was, therefore, directly related to
the growth of British consumption of sugar.

1725

Intro
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that
a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and
wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt
that it will equally serve in a fricasse or a ragout.
Jonathan Swift's attack on the British government's inability to solve the problem of
poverty in Ireland is one of the literary canon's most famous examples of satire. It
proposes that the most obvious solution to Ireland's economic crisis is for the Irish to
sell their children as food: shockingly, it also suggests various ways in which they can
be prepared and served. It was first published anonymously, in 1729, and the
detached, serious tone of its narrator emphasises the horror of what Swift is actually
recommending: only in its final paragraphs, when the essay turns to the realities of
the Irish economic system and the problems caused by absentee landlords, does the
author's view become clear. Despite its power as a piece of rhetoric, A Modest
Proposal did not lead to any lasting changes for Ireland's rural poor; and just over a
century later, thousands would perish in the Great Potato Famine.

1730

Imagine an England without tea in china cups, without pepper, chintz or chutney.
Without the East India Company, these Asian products would not play such a central
role in our culture. From the early 1600s the Company progressively expanded its
trading networks, sending vast amounts of goods from Asia (known in the West as
the East Indies) to Europe, and gaining increasing political power.
This document from 1730 lists the range of textiles - or 'piece goods' - purchased in
Bengal by the Company. During the 18th century Indian textiles provided 60% of the
total value of the Company's sales in London. While workers were subjected to the
devastating effects of extreme climate, famine and war, the landowners, brokers and
the Company grew rich on their skills.
The Company purchased many fine Indian textiles, including muslins, painted or
printed chintz and palampores, plain white baftas, diapers and dungarees, striped
allejaes, mixed cotton and silk ginghams, and embroidered quilts. Indian craftsmen
were masters of colour-fast dyeing techniques, and many fabrics showed wonderful
designs and colour combinations produced by hand-painting and wood-blocking.

1733

Many vulnerable young girls were forced into prostitution through

their failure to secure work, or were otherwise tricked into the
occupation by the promise of respectable employment. This image
is from Hogarth's famous series of prints the Harlot's Progress,
which tells the story of a woman coming to London from the country,
taking up prostitution, being sent to prison and eventually dying of
the sexually transmitted disease, syphilis.
In London, scores of street walkers plied their trade up and down
the Strand, and swarmed the theatres and taverns of the capital.
Dozens of infamous bawdy-houses could be found up narrow
alleyways and down side streets, and even ships moored on the
Thames were sometimes converted into brothels

1738

The population of Britain grew rapidly during the 1700s, from around
5 million people in 1700 to nearly 9 million by 1801. Many people left
the countryside in order to seek out new job opportunities in nearby
towns and cities. Most towns were grimy, over-crowded and
generally unsanitary places to be. London in particular suffered
badly from dirt and pollution; so much so that candles were
sometimes required at midday in busy shops owing to the smoggy
conditions outside. Many travellers noted the 'smell' of London as
they approached from far away, and letters received from the capital
city were often said to have a 'sooty' odour.
This print by William Hogarth shows the chaos of the city
streets. The network of narrow allies and lanes had remained largely
unchanged in many towns since medieval times. Crowds swarmed
in every thoroughfare. Scores of street sellers 'cried' goods from
place to place, advertising the wealth of goods and services on offer.

1738

The satirist Jonathan Swift

published Polite Conversation in
1738. It consists of three satirical
dialogues at breakfast, dinner and
tea, presented as a guide to Genteel
and Ingenious Conversation,
According to the Most Polite Mode
and Method Now Used at Court, and
in the Best Companies of England.
On these pages
The text is full of catch phrases,
colloquialisms, slang, oaths,
exclamations, greetings, farewells
and all kinds of banality. Several
features, such as prefacing a remark
with pray, come or faith, capture
polite conversation of the period.
Swift may be poking fun at phrases
that were considered over-polite or
archaic even then.

James Miller is not well known today but in

his own lifetime was celebrated as a popular
dramatist, prolific poet, and translator of
comedies by the famous French playwright,
Molire. Also less well known today is the
poetic form used here, the verse epistle (or
letter); in its own time, however, this revival
from ancient Greek literature was very
fashionable, much used by the more
enduring poet, Alexander Pope.
Of Politeness, an Epistle was first
published, in the form of a slim pamphlet, in
1738. The poem satirises contemporary
behaviour in polite society by ridiculing the
absurdity of a series of typical characters of
the times. In the excerpt shown here his
target is a spoiled noblemans 'Mammys
Darling' who has all the privileges of high
social status, wealth and education but only
manages to become 'Half Clown, half Prig,
half Pedant, and half Sot' by the end of it.

1740-1

Intro
The author and printer Samuel Richardson was one of the earliest English
novelists. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, which was published anonymously in 1740-1,
was his first novel. Written as a series of letters, it tells the story of the 15-year old
servant Pamela Andrews, who is left without protection after the death of her mistress
Lady B. Pamela is pursued by Lady B's son, Mr B, who is infatuated with her and has
her imprisoned in his remote house in Lincolnshire. During her imprisonment Pamela
keeps a journal recording her feelings for Mr B: although she rejects him at first and
resists his advances, she eventually falls in love with him and the two are united after
admitting both their faults and their affection for each other. The reward Pamela gains
for her virtue is therefore access to upper-class society, and to circles she could never
otherwise have entered.
The novels epistolary style allows the reader access to Pamelas thoughts and
feelings, and was praised by contemporary critics for its psychological
realism.Pamela was extremely popular, although some readers criticised it for its
heroines transcending of class barriers and rise to high status. It sparked many
parodies, including Henry Fieldings novel Shamela (1741), whose heroine is a
manipulative social climber.

1942

The eighteenth century was the great age of theatre. In London and the provinces, large purposebuilt auditoriums were built to house the huge crowds that flocked nightly to see plays and
musical performances. A variety of entertainments were on offer, from plays and ballets to ropewalkers and acrobats.

Said to be taller than Goliath, this Swedish giant was 'exhibited' in a London
glass shop in 1742. The advertisement shown here describes him as giving
'amazing satisfaction to all who see him'. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s,
human 'curiosities' were exhibited for the entertainment of the general
public. The exhibits included people with physical disabilities or those from
overseas who were thought to look 'different' or 'exotic'.

1743
Though wining and dining was fashionable
among the wealthy, eating out was possible for
even the poorest members of 18th-century
society. Most towns had a range of cook-shops
and taverns where meals could be bought
cheaply and drinks such as coffee and chocolate
could be consumed. By mid-century there were
perhaps 50,000 inns and taverns in Britain
catering to all manner of customers. This is an
advertisement for a baker named John Osgood,
selling his wares at the Crown and Muffin in
London's Lombard Street.

1747

The Art of Cookery, written by Hannah Glasse, was first published in 1747. It was a best seller for
over 100 years, and made Glasse one of the best-known cookery writers of the 18th century. As
she explains in the preface, the book was intended to be an instruction manual for servants - 'the
lower sort' as she called them. During the 1700s there was a fashion for books of this kind,
designed to save the lady of the house from the tedious duty of instructing her kitchen maids. As
Glasse puts it, the book should 'improve the servants and save the ladies a great deal of trouble'.
She is dismissive of the fanciful language used by other cookery book writers, which she feels
simply confuses the servants: 'the poor girls are at a loss to know what they mean' she writes. In
contrast, her style is precise and direct.
The book contains one of the earliest references to Indian curry in an English cookbook. Asian
food first became popular in Britain during the 1700s, reflecting the tastes developed by the
employees of the East India Company.
For the decades following its publication, there were widespread rumours thatThe Art of
Cookery had been written by a man. For a woman to have written such an eloquent and wellorganised work seemed implausible to many. James Boswell's diary records a party at the house
of the publisher Charles Dilly, at which the issue was discussed. He quotes Samuel Johnson as
saying, 'Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.'
These pages show recipes for a variety of pastry crusts, including a standing crust for great pies,
a dripping crust and a crust for custards.

1755 Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language is one of the most

famous dictionaries in history. First published in 1755, the dictionary took
just over 8 years to compile and listed 40,000 words. Johnson required only
6 helpers. Each word was defined in detail; the definitions illustrated with
quotations covering every branch of learning. It was a huge scholarly
achievement, more extensive and complex than any of it's
predecessors - and the comparable FrenchDictionnarre had taken 55 years
to compile and required the dedication of 40 scholars.
Literary quotations
In all, there are over 114,000 quotations in the dictionary. Johnson was the
first English lexicographer to use citations in this way, a method that greatly
influenced the style of future dictionaries. He had scoured books stretching
back to the 1500s, often quoting from those thought to be 'great works' such
as Milton or Shakespeare. Thus the quotations reflect his literary taste and
his rightwing political views. However, if Johnson didn't like a quotation, or if
a phrase didn't convey the exact meaning he required, he did not hesitate to
chop, twist around, or rewrite a few words - Johnson famously scribbled all
over his books, underlining, highlighting, altering and correcting the words,
much to the horror of acquaintances who had lent him their books!

1755 Samuel Johnson

A tangled mess
A group of London book-sellers had commissioned Johnson's dictionary, hoping that
a book of this kind would help stabilise the rules governing the English language. In
the preface to the book Johnson writes of the 'energetic' unruliness of the English
tongue. In his view, the language was in a mess, and was in desperate need of some
discipline: 'wherever I turned my view', he wrote, 'there was perplexity to be
disentangled, and confusion to be regulated.' However, in the process of compiling
the dictionary, Johnson recognised that language is impossible to fix, because of its
constantly changing nature, and that his role was to record the language of the day,
rather than to form it.
Johnson's personal touch
Even so, many of Johnson's definitions bear the mark of a rather pompous man (but
also quite a humorous one). Many of the words he included were incomprehensible to
the average reader - long words such as deosculation, odontalgick. He is even
believed to have made up some words. His definition of oats is very rude to the
Scots. He defines the word as 'A Grain, which in England is generally given to horses,
but in Scotland supports the people.' Johnson was criticised for imposing his
personality on to the book. However, his dictionary was enormously popular and
highly respected for its epic sense of scholarship.

Samuel Johnson

Here Johnson discusses the ways in which

languages change over time. However much the
lexicographer may want to fix or 'embalm' his
language, new words, phrases and pronunciations
are constantly appearing, whether brought from
abroad by merchants and travellers, extracted from
the workrooms of geometricians and physicians, or
found in the minds of poets.
Johnson writes: 'When we see men grow old and
die at a certain time one after another...we laugh at
the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand
years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer
be derided, who being able to produce no example
of a nation that has preserved their words and
phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his
dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it
from corruption and decay.'

Here Johnson gives a very unusual

definition for the word oats: 'a grain,
which in England is generally given to
horses, but in Scotland supports the
people.' The description reveals his
low opinion of the Scots.

1762

Several grammar books were

published during the 18th century.
They fulfilled the demand among a
growing middle class for guidance on
how to use polite or correct English.
Robert Lowth, an academic and
Anglican bishop, compiled this
extremely successful work that was reissued around 45 times between 1762
and 1800.
On these pages
This list of irregular verbs includes
forms of the past tense and past
participle no longer in use. They
include brake (broken)
and holpen (helped). Gotten now
associated with American English but
still found in some British regional
dialects is recommended as the past
participle of to get

1762

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712, was one of the 18th century's most
important political thinkers. His work focused on the relationship between human
society and the individual, and contributed to the ideas that would lead eventually to
the French Revolution.
His early work argued that the development of civilisation had actually led to a
decrease in happiness, and that humans should live instead in a state that was as
close to nature as possible. The Social Contract, with its famous opening sentence
'Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains', stated instead that people could
only experience true freedom if they lived in a civil society that ensured the rights and
wellbeing of its citizens. Being part of such a society involved submitting to the
general will - a force that transcended individuals and aimed to uphold the common
good.
Rousseau's theories of sovereignty and law had a direct influence on French
revolutionaries such as Robespierre, and were blamed for some of the worst
excesses of the Terror in France. Nevertheless, The Social Contract has also been
seen as one of the defining texts of modern political philosophy, emphasising the
need for individuals to play a responsible part in civil society if they want their liberty
to be assured.

1773

She Stoops to Conquer is a play of mistaken identities, practical jokes, and

plots-within-plots. The play was first performed at Covent Garden on 15
March 1773, and its fast-paced storyline centres on the spirited Kate
Hardcastle's attempts to win over the rich but socially inept young aristocrat
Charles Marlow by pretending to be a barmaid. It draws on many of the
conventions and character-types of Shakespearean comedy: Kate's quickwitted play-acting places her firmly in the tradition of cross-dressing
heroines such as Rosalind and Viola, while the joker Tony Lumpkin has
been described by one critic as a mischievous Puck in 18th-century riding
clothes'. The emphasis on deception, disguise and farcical confusion draws
attention to the play's theatricality, but it also contains some vivid moments
of psychological realism.
Its author, Oliver Goldsmith, was born in rural Ireland and studied in Dublin,
Edinburgh and Paris before settling in London. He was best known in his
own lifetime as a novelist and poet, and She Stoops to Conquer is by far his
most famous play.

1775

Till the Union made them acquainted with English manners, the culture of their lands
was unskilful, and their domestic life unformed; their tables were coarse as the feasts
of Eskimeaux, and their houses filthy as the cottages of Hottentots.
Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1775,
is both an early example of travel writing and a remarkably detailed piece of cultural
anthropology. It records a journey made by Johnson and his friend and biographer,
James Boswell, in the summer and autumn of 1773. Johnson was then 63 years old,
and had rarely travelled outside London: the Scotland he describes is a remote and
alien place in which everything he experiences, from the lack of trees to the windows
of Scottish houses, is seen as evidence of the country's uncivilised state. His
descriptions of a country still adjusting to the effects of the Highland clearances are
vivid, opinionated and wide-ranging, encompassing subjects such as the Gaelic
language, the primitive nature of Scottish shoes, and the consumption of whisky
before breakfast.
Boswell published his own account of this journey in 1785, and would go on to publish
his famous Life of Samuel Johnson in 1791

1780

1780

Scots reached a literary peak in the 18th

century in the work of Robert Burns (1759
96), later acknowledged as Scotlands
national poet. This poem To a Louse is
from his first published collection: Poems,
Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect(1786), also
known as the Kilmarnock Volume.

Hickys Bengal Gazette was the first Englishlanguage newspaper published in the Indian
sub-continent. It was founded in Calcutta,
capital of British India at the time, by
Irishman James Augustus Hicky in 1779. The
front-page news stories are written in British
English. Elsewhere in the paper, however,
Anglo-Indian expressions are used freely
without translation.

On these pages
Burns wrote both in standard and nonstandard English, but is mainly celebrated
for his use of Scots. This poem contains
features still widespread in Scotland, such
as canna (cant), sae (so) and gae (go), and
less familiar terms such
asgrozet (gooseberry)
and smeddum (powder or finely ground
grain).

On this page
Several Anglo-Indian terms can be spotted in
the back-page advertisements of this issue
for 11 March 1780. For example, towards the
top of the first column a
large godown (warehouse) is offered for sale.
This word is probably adapted from an
expression in one of the South Indian
languages, but is being used by the
European population in Calcutta.

1780

In the late 1780s, there was a fiery debate in newspapers and magazines on
the question of slavery. The West Indies Lobby monitored abolitionist
activities in newspapers and magazines and employed writers of their own
to respond by circulating pro-slavery letters and articles in the same
newspapers. This article attempts to persuade its readers of the economic
benefits of slavery in the West Indies.
Much of the British economy was reliant on the slave trade - both directly
and indirectly. Raw produce such as sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee and cotton
all came from slave plantations. These foods were widely consumed in
British households, served in British shops, coffee and tea houses. Slave
grown cotton was made into fabric in British factories and worn by the
public. Many people's jobs in ports such as Bristol and Liverpool were reliant
on the business created by the slave traders. The economic prosperity
created by the trade allowed great country estates and elegant municipal
buildings to be built.
Many pro-slavery campaigners played on paranoia about empire and
indicated that the prosperity of the British Navy, the merchant navy and the
Caribbean itself all depended on slavery. Destroy this slavery, they argued,
and the British Empire would collapse.

1789

On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the
Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob. The prison had
become a symbol of the monarchy's dictatorial rule, and the event became
one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed. This article
reporting the events of 14 July was published in an English newspaper
called The World, a few days after the event took place.
A medieval fortress, the Bastille's 8 30-metre-high towers dominated the
Parisian skyline. When the prison was attacked it actually held only seven
prisoners, but the mob had not gathered for them: it had come to demand
the huge ammunition stores held within the prison walls. When the prison
governor refused to comply, the mob charged and, after a violent battle,
eventually took hold of the building. The governor was seized and killed, his
head carried round the streets on a spike. The storming of the Bastille
symbolically marked the beginning of the French Revolution, in which the
monarchy was overthrown and a republic set up based on the ideas of
'Libert, galit, fraternit' (the French for liberty, equality and brotherhood).
In France, the 'storming of the Bastille' is still celebrated each year by a
national holiday.

1787-1818

Intro
William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet,
mystic, visionary and radical thinker. The closelyfilled pages of this working notebook give a
fascinating insight into his compositional process,
allowing us to follow the genesis of some of his
best-known work, including 'London', 'The Tyger'
and 'The Sick Rose'.
It is believed that Blake first used the notebook in
February 1787, starting from the front and entering
a series of pencil emblems, framed in the centre of
each page, under the tentative title 'Ideas of Good
and Evil'. Blake's series of emblems in this
notebook record man's journey from birth to death.
From this series, Blake was to select 17 designs
that he engraved and published in a small volume
entitled For Children: The Gates of
Paradise (1793).

At around the same time, having reached the end

of the book, Blake turned it upside-down, and used
these pages to transcribe fair copies (later heavily
annotated) of earlier drafts of poems, many of
which would appear in Songs of Experience (1794).
When he started to enter these poems, some of the
pages were already covered with sketches for an
aborted edition of illustrations of John
Milton's Paradise Lost. Some of these sketches
were preserved, while others were overwritten.
Although Blake mostly worked in this notebook
between 1792 and 1794, he kept it with him
throughout his life. He picked it up again to draft
further poems at the front from 1801, and was still
composing as late as 1818.
Working at a time of great social and political
upheaval, Blakes work explores the tensions
between human passions and the repressive nature
of social, religious and political conventions.
Alongside searing observations of injustices in the
physical world around him, he weaves mystical
visions and esoteric meditations on the contrary
states of the human soul. Although widely
recognised today as one of the greatest poets of
the 19th century, his work was largely ignored
during his own lifetime, and took many years to
gain widespread appreciation.

1791

Intro
Thomas Paine's most famous work, The Rights of Man, was published in
1791, 2 years after the French Revolution. In it he defended the values of
the Revolution - those of 'Libert, galit, fraternit' (the French for 'liberty,
equality, brotherhood'). Paine explored the idea that government based on
true justice should support not only mankind's natural rights (life, liberty, free
speech, freedom of conscience) but also its civil rights (relating to security
and protection).
He highlighted the fact that only a fraction of the people who paid taxes
were entitled to vote. Using detailed calculations, Paine showed how a tax
system, including a form of income tax, could provide social welfare in
support of those civil rights. Decades ahead of his time, he outlined a plan
covering widespread education, child benefit, pensions for the elderly, poor
relief and much more. The book sold tens of thousands of copies and
became one of the most widely read books in the Western world at the time.

1791 Walkers correct pronunciation

The public on both sides of the Atlantic was

eager for guidance on how to speak
correctly. John Elocution Walker (1732
1807) met this demand by illustrating how to
reproduce a cultured London accent, which
he described as undoubtedly the best.
Advice is given for people with Scottish or
Irish accents, and above all for Londoners
with a Cockney accent, which according to
Walker is a thousand times more offensive
and disgusting.
On this page
Walker uses a system of marks and
numbers to indicate the desired
pronunciation. A short slanted line like this ,
for example, indicates the syllable
immediately before carries the stress. We
can see in these pages how some words
have changed since his day, such as
balcony, which has the stress on the second
syllable.

1792 Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman

Who was Mary Wollstonecraft?

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was one of the first great feminist writers. She wrote in
various genres (history, novels, travel, even a children's book) but is best known for
her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The title clearly echoes that of Thomas
Paine's clarion call for social justice and liberty, Rights of Man.
Her personal life was equally wide-ranging: she had two intense affairs, and
attempted suicide more than once, before marrying the radical philosopher William
Godwin. (Their daughter Mary later became Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.)
Wollstonecraft died aged just 38, of septicaemia contracted as a result of childbirth,
leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. Thanks to the exposure of her
personal life, she was not well-regarded after her death, but the emergence of the
feminist movement saw her reputation in the 20th century elevated to that of major
founding feminist philosopher.
What did her book say?
She maintained - counter to the assumption of many people at the time - that women
only appeared intellectually inferior to men because they did not receive as good an
education, and she emphasised how much women could contribute to society if only
they were allowed. She wrote: "Would men but generously snap our chains, and be
content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more
observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable
mothers - in a word, better citizens."

1792 Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman

What were women's rights in Wollstonecraft's time?

Essentially, none. In the eyes of the law, a married woman had no property, no vote,
no money of her own, nor any rights to her children. By the 18th century the feudal
state of 'coverture' was enshrined as common law. It regarded a husband and wife as
a single entity, but all rights belonged to the husband. While single, or widowed
women could own money, property and run businesses, married women had no
equivalent right without pursuing expensive legal settlements. It was not until the
Married Woman's Property Act of 1870, and subsequent legislation, that married
women were allowed to keep money they earned directly and have ownership of
property acquired before or after marriage.
What about education?
University education was also denied women, who could thus not pursue professional
careers. It was not discovered until after her death that the army surgeon James
Barry was in fact a woman, the Irish-born Margaret Bulkley. She was disguised as a
boy from the age of 10, and passed her whole adult life as a man, studying at medical
school in Edinburgh and qualifying as a doctor in 1812 and as a surgeon in 1813. It
would be another century before Eleanor Davies-Colley became the first recognised
woman surgeon in 1911.

1794

William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist,

poet, mystic, visionary and radical thinker.
Working at a time of great social and
political change, his work explores the
tensions between the human passions and
the repressive nature of social and political
conventions. In this, perhaps his most
famous collection of poems he investigates,
as he put it in the subtitle, 'the two contrary
states of the human soul'.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is as
much a work of art as a collection of poems.
Produced laboriously from etched copperplates, it combines text and hand-coloured
illustrations, and draws on the nursery
rhymes, chapbooks and popular ballads that
Blake would have encountered during his
London childhood. His intention was to
dramatise the concepts of innocence and
experience, giving them an unorthodox twist
that sprang from his reading of philosophers
such as Emmanuel Swedenborg and Jacob
Boehmen.

At first glance, his poems seem childlike

and insubstantial, with simple rhythms and
rhyming patterns and images of children,
animals and flowers. However, they are
often argumentative or satirical, and reflect
his deeply held political beliefs. Blake deals
with radical subjects such as poverty, child
labour, political and social revolution,
industrialisation and the abuses of the
Church. Many of the poems in Songs of
Experience respond to counterparts
in Songs of Innocence, exploring their
themes from darker, more complex angles.
The oddness of Blakes vision led many of
his contemporaries to denounce him as
mad: his biographer Peter Ackroyd has
commented that, 'He might have been some
star-child, or changeling, who withdrew into
himself and into his own myth because he
could not deal directly or painlessly even
with the human beings closest to him'.

Trading Ship Logbook

The Halsewell was one of the ships owned

by the East India Company, the powerful
English trading company that brought goods
in great quantity from Asia to England
- valuable spices, porcelains, silks and such
like. This is a page from the ship's log book.
The log book reveals fascinating details
about life on board the ship: men overboard,
repairs and cleaning jobs, deaths and
punishments, treacherous weather
conditions. It also records an incident in
which Captain Nelson forces the ship to
anchor, and proceeds to poach the
Company's experienced sailors in order to
recuit them into the Royal Navy.

The Language of Shipping and Trade

The unique conditions of life at sea required a
special vocabulary, and a set of expressions and
vocabulary particular to seafarers. During its lifetime
the East India Company sent its trading ships on
thousands of journeys around the world. Crews of
hundreds lived on board in cramped and unhygienic
conditions. The ships carried all sorts of
commodities from Asia to Europe: silks and cottons,
tea, porcelain, spices. These products came to play
a central role in British culture and, as a
consequence, had a profound effect on the English
language

Introduction
The population of Britain grew rapidly
during the Georgian period, from around
five million people in 1700 to nearly nine
million by 1801. It was a time of extreme
luxury and extreme poverty, of burgeoning
consumer culture and the birth of
industrialisation; of spectacular
entertainments from exhibitions of giants
and exotic animals to public hangings.

Crime and Punishment

Throughout this period many people viewed criminals and law

breaking as heroic and courageous, and the activities of robbers
and villains were often widely celebrated in popular culture. Stories
of daring criminality were widely reported in a host of printed
pamphlets, books and newspapers, and generated high levels of
public interest across the country.
Highwaymen in particular were held in high esteem by many people.
Tales of highway robbery often became the stuff of folklore and
legend, and several highwaymen became popular celebrities in their
own lifetime. When street robber Jack Sheppard was hanged in
1724 after making four escapes from prison, 200,000 people
attended his execution. When the celebrated eighteenth-century
highwayman John Rann was let off for a theft in 1774, he was
mobbed by a crowd of adoring admirers as he left court in London.
The newspaper articles below paint vivid pictures of Rann in court.

Law enforcement
Eighteenth-century law enforcement was
very different from modern-day policing. The
prosecution of criminals remained largely in
the hands of victims themselves, who were
left to organise their own criminal
investigations. Every parish was obliged to
have one or two constables, who were
selected every year from local communities,
and were unpaid volunteers. These
constables were required to perform policing
duties only in their spare time, and many
simply paid for substitutes to stand in for
them.

In London, a system of paid watchmen also

operated across different parishes. Known
as charlies, they performed various duties
on top of the detection and arrest of
suspected criminals, including escorting
home drunkards and crying the time
through the streets of their neighbourhood
during the night. Londons watchmen were
widely criticized for being old, decrepit and
ineffective, though many probably served a
useful function to many local
communities.
From the 1750s, however, this patchwork
system of local policing was strengthened
by a more professional force of officers. In
1751 London magistrate Henry Fielding
founded the Bow Street Runners, who for
the first time provided a permanent body of
armed men to carry out investigations and
arrests.

Courts

The vast majority of criminal cases

during the 1700s were brought before
local magistrates, who dealt with
crimes without the benefit of a jury.
Magistrates were themselves unpaid
officials who were drawn from the
ranks of the wealthy, and were
expected to defend the English law as
amateurs. As a result, many
magistrates were easily corrupted. In
London, Horace Walpole believed that
the greatest criminals of this town are
the officers of justice. Though
magistrates were extremely powerful
men, many found their duties
extremely burdensome and often dealt
with their heavy caseloads with great
reluctance.

For more serious crimes such as rape

or murder, cases were referred to
Crown courts, who sat at quarterly
assizes in large towns or at the Old
Bailey in London. For the ordinary
citizen, trials at these higher courts
were hugely intimidating experiences.
Courtrooms were sprinkled with herbs
and scented flowers in order to prevent
the spread of disease and to mask the
smell of unwashed prisoners, while
much of the courts daily business was
conducted in Latin. Most felony cases
did not involve defence barristers until
the end of the century, and witnesses
were usually examined directly by the
judge and even by members of the
jury. The vast majority of cases lasted
for only a matter of minutes, and it was
not uncommon for dozens of cases to
be heard in a single day.

Punishments

The eighteenth-century criminal justice

system relied heavily on the existence
of the bloody code. This was a list of
the many crimes that were punishable
by death - by 1800 this included well
over two hundred separate capital
offences. Guilty verdicts in cases of
murder, rape and treason - even lesser
offences such as poaching, burglary
and criminal damage - could all
possibly end in a trip to the gallows.
Though many people charged with
capital crimes were either let off or
received a lesser sentence, the
hangmans noose nevertheless
loomed large.

Most punishments during the eighteenthcentury were held in public. Executions

were elaborate and shocking affairs,
designed to act as a deterrent to those who
watched. Until 1783 London executions took
place at Tyburn eight times a year, where as
many as twenty felons were sometimes
hanged at the same time. Prisoners were
transported to the gallows along a threemile route by cart, often followed by a huge,
jeering crowd numbering several thousand
people. Prisoners were executed in front of
these noisy, riotous audiences and many
hangings resembled more of a fair than a
solemn legal ceremony. Other hangings, by
contrast, were sombre affairs, accompanied
by deep mourning and widespread
commiseration for the condemned. White
doves were sometimes released by the
spectators as a symbol of their sorrow, and
executions were accompanied by a hushed
silence as the frightening moment of death
arrived.

Poverty
Throughout this period, fluctuating grain prices
at times of poor harvest resulted in many
families struggling to pay for their basic item of
food: bread. Perhaps one in ten families
remained below the breadline over the period,
increasing to nearly two out of every five families
in times of food shortage. There were, of course,
other reasons why people fell on hard times.
Illnesses, accidents and old-age, for example, all
prevented people from working. How did the
poor cope with poverty during this period?

The Poor Law

Charitable relief for the needy was administered by local parishes
through the provisions of the Poor Law. To qualify for financial
assistance the poor were required to prove their right to settlement
in a particular area. This might include being born, married or having
served and completed an apprenticeship there. Paupers deemed
not to have any settlement rights were often passed on to their
home parishes in order to avoid any unnecessary costs.

Relief of the poor was paid from rates levied against wealthier
households. Charity was distributed to claimants through local
overseers, who examined settlement claims and assessed how
much money individuals should receive. As well as apportioning
financial hand-outs to people in their own homes (so-called outdoor
relief), many parishes also awarded relief in kind: in clothing and
fuel during winter months, for example, or in loaves of bread.

The Workhouse
Though the vast majority of people claiming relief in
the eighteenth century were needy through no fault
of their own, certain sections of society
nevertheless believed that poverty was caused by
the bad habits of the poor: their preference for
drinking and gambling, for example, or through their
own simple laziness. To reduce the rising cost of
poor relief some people argued that the act of
receiving charity itself should be made less
attractive and hence less likely to be sought after.

Legislation passed in 1722 entitled parishes to

provide poor relief in specially built workhouses. By
the 1770s there were around 2,000 such
workhouses in the country housing nearly 100,000
people. Ninety separate workhouses operated in
London alone, housing around 15,000 inmates.
Poor people were lodged in single sex wards
where the able-bodied were set to menial tasks:
spinning thread or sewing clothes, for example, and
inmates were ordered to follow strict rules of
behaviour and to conform to daily routines. Jeremy
Bentham described how workhouses were
essentially prison-like structures, designed
principally to grind rogues honest.

But life in the workhouse varied enormously from

parish to parish. Some workhouses were clean and
comfortable havens for the poor. Many provided
education, rudimentary health care and clean
clothing. Others echoed to the sound of children
playing, many of whom were placed in local
businesses as apprentices, and most workhouses
allowed visitors to come and go as they pleased.
Other parishes particularly in small rural
communities - refused to build parish workhouses
altogether owing to their substantial running costs.
In many parishes outdoor relief remained the chief
means of assistance, administered to the poor on
an individual basis.
Other workhouses, however, were dark and
foreboding places. Many were hopelessly
overcrowded.

Charity
Poor people were not, however, wholly dependent
on help from the parish. Many towns and cities
supplemented official sources of relief with money
collected through charitable donations, which
played an important part in helping the needy.
Funds were collected from social events that
frequently took place up and down the country:
balls, musical concerts or charitable art exhibitions,
for example. Many people also bequeathed
substantial sums of money to charity in their wills.
Several private charitable institutions sprang up in
the eighteenth century that offered further forms of
assistance. In London, the Foundling Hospital was
established in 1739, which took care of dozens of
illegitimate children whose mothers could no longer
afford to support them. In the 1750s, the Marine
Society was also founded in London, in order to
train poor boys for a life at sea. Many towns and
cities also built local infirmaries and dispensaries
that offered free medical care to the poor.

Pauper trades
With people reluctant to enter workhouses or plead
for relief, many resorted instead to begging on the
streets. Beggars were a familiar feature of most
towns and cities in the eighteenth century,
particularly around shops, markets and other busy
places. But begging could be a very dangerous
activity. Vagrancy remained illegal throughout the
century and beggars were regularly whipped and
imprisoned in Houses of Correction.
Like begging, prostitution was another highly visible
alternative to pauperdom. Many vulnerable young
girls were forced into prostitution through their
failure to secure work, or were otherwise tricked
into the occupation by the promise of respectable
employment.
The appearance of prostitutes at evening time was
a familiar part of life in eighteenth-century towns,
and prostitutes catered to all tastes among the rich
and poor alike. In London, scores of street walkers
plied their trade up and down the Strand, and
swarmed in the theatres and taverns of the capital.
Dozens of infamous bawdy-houses could be found
up narrow alleyways and down side streets, and
even ships moored on the Thames were sometimes
converted into brothels.

Industrialisation

Early 18th century British industries were generally small scale and
relatively unsophisticated. Most textile production, for example, was
centred on small workshops or in the homes of spinners, weavers
and dyers: a literal cottage industry that involved thousands of
individual manufacturers. Such small-scale production was also a
feature of most other industries, with different regions specialising in
different products: metal production in the Midlands, for example,
and coal mining in the North-East.
New techniques and technologies in agriculture paved the wave for
change. Increasing amounts of food were produced over the
century, ensuring that enough was available to meet the needs of
the ever-growing population. A surplus of cheap agricultural labour
led to severe unemployment and rising poverty in many rural areas.
As a result, many people left the countryside to find work in towns
and cities. So the scene was set for a large-scale, labour intensive
factory system.

Steam and coal

Because there were limited sources of power, industrial development during
the early 1700s was initially slow. Textile mills, heavy machinery and the
pumping of coal mines all depended heavily on old technologies of power:
waterwheels, windmills and horsepower were usually the only sources
available.
Changes in steam technology, however, began to change the situation
dramatically. As early as 1712 Thomas Newcomen first unveiled his steamdriven piston engine, which allowed the more efficient pumping of deep
mines. Steam engines improved rapidly as the century advanced, and were
put to greater and greater use. More efficient and powerful engines were
employed in coalmines, textile mills and dozens of other heavy industries.
By 1800 perhaps 2,000 steam engines were eventually at work in Britain.
New inventions in iron manufacturing, particularly those perfected by the
Darby family of Shropshire, allowed for stronger and more durable metals to
be produced. The use of steam engines in coalmining also ensured that a
cheap and reliable supply of the iron industrys essential raw material was
available: coal was now king.

Factories
The spinning of cotton into threads for weaving into
cloth had traditionally taken place in the homes of
textile workers. In 1769, however, Richard Arkwright
patented his water frame, that allowed large-scale
spinning to take place on just a single machine.
This was followed shortly afterwards by James
Hargreaves spinning jenny, which further
revolutionised the process of cotton spinning. The
weaving process was similarly improved by
advances in technology. Edmund Cartwrights
power loom, developed in the 1780s, allowed for
the mass production of the cheap and light cloth
that was desirable both in Britain and around the
Empire. Steam technology would produce yet more
change. Constant power was now available to drive
the dazzling array of industrial machinery in textiles
and other industries, which were installed up and
down the country.

New manufactories (an early word for 'factory')

were the result of all these new technologies. Large
industrial buildings usually employed one central
source of power to drive a whole network of
machines. Richard Arkwrights cotton factories in
Nottingham and Cromford, for example, employed
nearly 600 people by the 1770s, including many
small children, whose nimble hands made lightwork of spinning. Other industries flourished under
the factory system. In Birmingham, James Watt and
Matthew Boulton established their huge foundry
and metal works in Soho, where nearly 1,000
people were employed in the 1770s making
buckles, boxes and buttons, as well as the parts for
new steam engines.

Though not all factories were bad places to work,

many were dismal and highly dangerous. Some
factories were likened to prisons or barracks, where
workers encountered harsh discipline enforced by
factory owners. Many children were sent there from
workhouses or orphanages to work long hours in
hot, dusty conditions, and were forced to crawl
through narrow spaces between fast-moving
machinery. A working day of twelve hours was not
uncommon, and accidents happened
frequently.

Transport
The growing demand for coal after 1750 revealed
serious problems with Britains transport system.
Though many mines stood close to rivers or the
sea, the shipping of coal was slowed down by
unpredictable tides and weather. Because of the
growing demand for this essential raw material,
many mine owners and industrial speculators
began financing new networks of canals, in order to
link their mines more effectively with the growing
centres of population and industry.
The early canals were small but highly beneficial. In
1761, for example, the Duke of Bridgewater opened
a canal between his colliery at Worsley and the
rapidly growing town of Manchester. Within weeks
of the canals opening the price of coal in
Manchester halved. Other canal building schemes
were quickly authorised by Acts of Parliament, in
order to link up an expanding network of rivers and
waterways. By 1815, over 2,000 miles of canals
were in use in Britain, carrying thousands of tonnes
of raw materials and manufactured goods by horsedrawn barge.

Most roads were in a terrible state early in this

period. Many were poorly maintained and even
major routes flooded during the winter. Journeys by
stagecoach were long and uncomfortable. London
in particular suffered badly when wagons and carts
were bogged down in poor conditions and were left
unable to deliver food to markets. Faced with these
difficulties, local authorities applied for Turnpike
Acts that allowed for new roads to be constructed,
paid for out of tolls placed on passing traffic. New
techniques in road construction, developed by
pioneering engineers such as John McAdam and
Thomas Telford, led to the great road boom of the
1780s.
The improvements achieved by 18th century road
builders were breathtaking. By the 1830s the
stagecoach journey from London to Edinburgh took
just two days, compared to nearly two weeks only
half a century before.

Material Culture: Getting and Spending

The Georgian period has been described by historians as the age of manufactures, when British men and women
gained access to a dizzying range of material things.

Shops and shopping

With improvements in transport and
manufacturing technology, opportunities for
buying and selling became faster and more
efficient than ever before. And with the rapid
growth of towns and cities, shopping
became an important part of everyday life.
Window shopping and the purchase of
goods became a cultural activity in its own
right, and many exclusive shops were
opened in elegant districts: in the Strand
and Piccadilly in London, for example, and
in spa towns like Bath and Harrogate.
But even in poorer districts, dozens of
shops competed with one another, and
represented an important centre of social
activity in most communities. Weekly
markets in agricultural produce and
livestock were also important events in most
towns, alongside the daily bustle of peddlers
and hawkers selling all manner of produce
for a few pence: pastries, fish, fruit,
vegetables and an array of household
goods.

Shop fronts were designed to attract the

attention of passing trade and entice
customers inside. Bow windows displaying
goods, hanging signs, bright lights, mirrors
and colourful trade advertisements all
became standard features of retail early in
the century.

Many shops catered specifically to refined

tastes, and shopping in them came to define
ones social status. Milliners, haberdashers,
goldsmiths and furniture sellers, among
others, all appealed to the latest tastes
among the wealthy. One visitor to London at
the end of the century described a world of
gold and silver plate, then pearls and gems
shedding their dazzling lustre, home
manufactures of the most exquisite taste, an
ocean of rings, watches, chains, bracelets,
perfumes, ready-dresses, ribbons, lace,
bonnets, and fruits from all the zones of the
habitable world.

Clothes
Clothing and fashion was highly important to the
wealthy. A single item of clothing often represented
the most expensive item in a persons possessions
and new items of apparel were usually highly
treasured. Woollen garments that were heavy and
difficult to clean began to disappear gradually after
the first half of the century. These were replaced by
cheaper printed cotton fabrics, that were first
imported from India and then later manufactured in
the expanding British textile trade in the north of
England. Cotton clothes allowed ordinary men and
women a greater choice of light and colourful
clothing that was durable, easily washed and
therefore more hygienic for the wearer.

Food
Most towns enjoyed fresh produce as a result of
expanding domestic trade. London as a busy
seaport had regular access to seafood, and
tonnes of fresh fish were landed at the city
quaysides every day. Fresh fruit and vegetables
also arrived from the nearby market gardens and
orchards of the home-counties, and elsewhere
other towns held weekly agricultural and livestock
markets.
Though wining and dining remained fashionable
among the wealthy, for even the poorest members
of society eating out was still possible. Most 18thcentury towns had a range of cook-shops and
taverns where meals could be bought cheaply and
drinks such as coffee and chocolate could be
consumed. By mid-century there were perhaps
50,000 inns and taverns in Britain catering to all
manner of customers. Coffeehouses in particular
became great centres of sociability, where politics
were discussed and business transactions
conducted. Many banks and insurance houses,
such as Lloyds of London, owe their origins to this
eighteenth-century coffeehouse culture.

Household things
As with food, over the course of this period the
objects of everyday life that had once been too
expensive for all but the wealthy gradually became
accessible to the masses. Mass-produced, cheaper
varieties of many household items were now within
the grasp of the ordinary working man and woman,
who began to enjoy the benefits of a consumer
revolution.
Prosperity and expansion in manufacturing
industries such as pottery and metal-wares
increased consumer choice dramatically. Where
once labourers ate from metal platters with wooden
implements, ordinary workers now dined on
Wedgwood porcelain. Consumers came to demand
an array of new household goods and furnishings:
metal knives and forks, for example, as well as
rugs, carpets, mirrors, cooking ranges, pots, pans,
watches, clocks and a dizzying array of furniture.
The age of mass consumption had arrived.

Luxury and slaves

Greater purchasing power, together with a gradual
fall in prices, led to rising demand for new consumer
products. Sugar consumption in Britain, for example,
doubled between 1690 and 1740, while the price of
tea halved. But the wider availability of such luxuries
had a darker side. Imports of raw cotton, sugar, rum
and tobacco for example - that were shipped by the
tonne into prosperous British ports like Bristol,
Liverpool and London - all originated in the
expanding plantations of South America and the
Caribbean, where merchants depended heavily on
African slaves as their primary source of labour.
Over the course of the 1700s perhaps eleven million
slaves were exported by European merchants from
Africa to the slave colonies on the opposite side of
the Atlantic. As many as one in five slaves died
during the journey, after enduring cramped, filthy
and dangerous conditions. Thousands of others
would die later on the plantations as a result of
disease, over work and maltreatment. Only in the
latter part of the century did a forceful British antislavery movement emerge, led by evangelical
reformers like William Wilberforce and Thomas
Clarkson. The expansion of the transatlantic slave
trade can thus be located in the growth of British
consumer demand, behind which lay the sale into
bondage of many millions of Africans.

Health and Hygiene

Medical knowledge was very basic during the this period. While there were gradual improvements in healthcare, for
many people even minor diseases could prove fatal

Living Conditions
The growth of cities and towns during the
1700s placed enormous pressures on the
availability of cheap housing. With many people
coming to towns to find work, slum areas grew
quickly. Living conditions in many towns
consequently became unimaginable. Many
families were forced to live in single rooms in
ramshackle tenements or in damp cellars, with
no sanitation or fresh air. Drinking water was
often contaminated by raw sewage and
garbage was left rotting in the street. Problems
with the disposal of the dead often added to the
stench and decay. Many London graveyards
became full to capacity, and coffins were
sometimes left partially uncovered in poor
holes close to local houses and businesses.
The death rate in most towns remained
extremely high. In London, perhaps one in five
children died before their second birthday. In
certain districts the infant mortality rate reached
75% of all births whenever epidemics struck.
During the 1700s more people died in London
than were baptised every year. It was only the
steady flow of migrants coming to the cities
from rural areas, that prevented London's
population declining dramatically.

Mother Gin

The rise of the Gin Craze from the 1720s made

matters worse. Distilling gin was inexpensive
because of low corn prices: so much so that by
1750 nearly half of all British wheat harvests went
directly into gin production. And the market for gin
was huge. In London, the drink was incredibly
popular with the poor. It was cheap and extremely
strong, and for many people offered a quick release
from the grinding misery of everyday life.
Already by the 1730s, over 6000 houses in London
were openly selling gin to the general public. The
drink was available in street markets, grocers,
chandlers, barbers and brothels. Of 2000 houses in
one notorious district, more than 600 were involved
in the retail of gin or in its production. By the 1740s
gin consumption in Britain had reached an average
of over six gallons per person every year.
Many people believed that the drinking of gin was
leading to a social crisis. Crime, poverty and a
soaring death rate were all linked to the insatiable
demand for Madame Geneva as the drink was
known. In 1751 novelist Henry Fielding argued that
there would soon be few of the common people left
to drink it if the situation continued. The crisis
required decisive political attention. In the 1740s
and 50s Parliament was forced to pass a series of
acts restricting both the sale of spirits and its
manufacture, in order to bring the situation back
under control.

Medicine
Due to the growing use of dissection as part of
medical training, most doctors in the 1700s had a
practical knowledge of the human body. Diagnosing
and successfully treating disease, however, was
often hit and miss. The connection between
uncleanliness and the spread of diseases was not
properly understood, and many people continued to
die simply as a result of poor hygiene. Many women
died in childbirth because of infection. Even having
your teeth pulled out could be fatal. Major surgery
was particularly dangerous. Dirty surgical
instruments caused wounds to be infected, and this
caused the death of many patients. Flea and rat
infestations were also common, even in wealthy
households, and many diseases were spread this
way in crowded urban environments.

A doctors consultation was costly and often

inconclusive. Most doctors dealt with only the
wealthiest members of society, and the poor were
often left to seek alternative forms of help. Lower
down the scale, barber-surgeons might be called on
to perform a range of surgical procedures: the
removal of kidney stones, for example and the
lancing of boils or setting of broken bones, or
simply letting the blood of patients for a whole
range of ailments and conditions. Apothecaries
might also be consulted, who were able to
proscribe traditional drugs and remedies. In many
towns charitable hospitals and dispensaries also
offered basic healthcare: to poor children and
expectant mothers, for example, or to old sailors
and soldiers. And as a last resort, dozens of quacks
were on hand to offer an array of (often useless)
potions, powders and elixirs to those most
desperate for relief from pain or discomfort.
Contagious diseases could be particularly
devastating. Cholera, smallpox and typhus were all
present in 18th century towns, and disease
regularly carried off scores of people in only a
matter of days.

Popular Politics

Throughout the Georgian period the

political rights of ordinary men and
women were extremely limited. Only
those with substantial property or
wealth were entitled to vote - this
amounted to around 200,000 men
which was only a tiny fraction of the
population. Many Members of
Parliament were elected to represent
rotten boroughs - these were
boroughs in which just a handful of
voters had disproportionate
representation in parliament. Many
large towns like Manchester, on the
other hand, which were expanding
quickly as a result of migration and
industrialisation, had no separate
representation at all, until the passing
of the first Reform Act in 1832.

Although the majority of the British

population had no right to vote, the
influence of public opinion was
extremely strong. The will of the
people was expressed in many
different ways. The leading political
factions of the period - the Whigs and
the Tories - were endlessly bullied and
ridiculed in print, for example, and like
today, reputations could rise and fall
quickly according to public opinion.
Most politicians were satirized
mercilessly in cartoons by leading
artist like James Gillray and Thomas
Rowlandson, and there was a huge
market for political pamphlets, books,
ballads and newspapers.

Political opinion was also expressed in a more

direct manner. Rioting was a familiar feature of daily
life in both towns and the countryside, and many
people came to fear the power of the mob. Crowd
action was particularly strong in London, where
people regularly threw stones at the carriages of
leading politicians or booed unpopular ministers.
Crowds sometimes forced householders to light
their windows in celebration of political or military
victories and formed massive mobs around their
political heroes. In 1780, after the government had
passed legislation giving more political rights to
Catholics, thousands of people rioted for a week in
London in protest. Catholics were attacked, and
Catholic property smashed up. All of Londons
major prisons were burnt to the ground and the
Bank of England came under attack. King George
III was forced to call in the army in order to restore
order and over two hundred people were killed in
the ensuing violence. The incident became known
as the Gordon Riots.

Riots over the rising cost of food also occurred

regularly. In 1766 rising grain prices caused rioting
across the British countryside. In Wiltshire food
stores were looted and over 3000 troops were
called in to disperse the crowds. Rioting and
disturbances also frequently occurred during
industrial disputes or strikes. In the 1760s, for
example, hundreds of silk weavers in London rioted
over foreign competition and the unemployment
caused by the use of new weaving technology.
A major question is why Britain did not experience a
political revolution, such as that which took place
elsewhere in Europe. Rioting and protest against
the establishment was certainly serious in Britain in
the late 1700s, but never resulted in upheaval. An
answer can perhaps be found in the fact that the
relationships between different social classes were
mainly stable. The working classes remained the
backbone of the industrial revolution and their rights
and customs were usually recognised by those in
power. By the 1790s many working-class protests
were also channeled through more formal political
organisations, that proved highly effective in
bringing about political change by peaceful means.

French Revolution
The French Revolution of 1789 had serious
consequences in Britain. News of events
across the channel initially caused much
interest, and prompted many political radicals
to agitate for Britains own political reforms.
For others, however, the French Revolution
represented a grave political danger. It was
the cause of much concern in the British
government and illustrated the potentially
serious consequences of social unrest at
home.
The situation in France resulted in a range of
measures passed in Britian during the 1790s
that were designed to restrict political protest.
This was a period of great repression in the
country that has been described as Prime
Minister William Pitts Reign of Terror. A
series of legal measures were implemented
to restrict the activities of political radicals,
including the restriction of political meetings,
the banning of treasonable publications and
the use of spies and informers. At the same
time large loyalist associations were formed
throughout the country pledging allegiance to
the crown.

In 1793, Britain - in coalition with other

European states - was drawn into war with
France. Over the following twenty-two years
Britain was in an almost constant state of
war, resulting in severe strains on her
national economy. A threat of invasion by
French forces in the south created a sense
of panic throughout the nation and was
responsible for a wave of anti-French
sentiment sweeping the country. In villages
and towns up and down the country
thousands of men were called to arms, and
dozens of amateur volunteer forces were
formed. By the end of the century nearly
400,000 men were in readiness for an
imminent French invasion - more than twice
the size of the standing army. These
impressive lines of national defence would
remain in place until Napoleons eventual
defeat later in 1815.

 Need to copy this:

http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/u
topia/revolution1/revolution2.html

 1700s
An age of dictionaries, grammars and rules and
regulations Human knowledge continues to stretch into
new areas, with discoveries in the fields of medicine,
astrology, botany & engineering. Many scholars believe
that the English language is chaotic, and in desperate
need of some firm rules. Books teaching 'correct'
grammar, pronunciation & spelling are increasingly
popular. Samuel Johnson publishes his famous
dictionary in 1755.
Derided words Words hated by Johnson, and omited
from his dictionary, include bang, budge, fuss, gambler,
shabby, and touchy.

 Industrial Revolution 1760-1800s

Transformation of the western worldIn an age of
inventions and contraptions, of science & industry, of
expanding cities & smog-gurgling factories the language
must swell to accommodate new ideas.
New wordsNewly coined words include biology,
taxonomy, caffeine, cityscape, centigrade, watt,
bacterium, chromosome and claustrophobia. In the
world of burgeoning capitalism, money can
suddenlyslump, inflate, boom and
cause depressions.Victorian writers pen over 60,000
novels.