The Decade of Reform

• 1832 Reform bill
• 1833 Irish Church Act
• 1833 Factory Act
• 1834 Poor Law Reform
• 1835 Municipal Corporations act
• 1836 Ecclesiastical Commission
• 1837 Civil Marriages/Births
• 1833/1838 Slavery abolished

Whig/Radical vs. Tory issues

"Working Class" issues

• £10 Householder
• Cross-cutting allegiance

Ten Hours Movement

Richard Oastler

• "Tory Radicals"

Leeds

Children in Mills

Factory Act of 1833

• Gender and Reproduction
• Inspectors
• Working Class Defeat?

Poor Law Amendment Act 1834

• Reduce "out-relief'
• Universal Workhouses
• Remove unwed fathers financial obligation
• Conform to markets
• Central administration
• "less eligibility"

Anatomy Act of 1832

• Burke and Hare
• Corpsehouses

Abolition of Slavery 1833, 1838

• Baptists in Jamaica
• William Knibb 1803-1845
• Slavery in Yorkshire?

Queen Victoria 1837-1901

• The Triumph of Reform
• Place of Working Class?

Depression--the Hungry Forties

• Polarization: class and poverty
• Two Englands?

Literary Depictions

Thomas Carlyle's essays

Benjamin Disraeli

• Sybil 1845

Charles Dickens

• Oliver Twist 1837-39
• Hard Times 1845
• McChoakumchild

Elizabeth Gaskell

• Mary Barton 1848
• North and South 1855

Why were the Whigs compelled to continue with reform throughout the 1830s?

Why were more people thinking of themselves as "working class"?

Why did some people worry that England was divided into opposing social and political worlds?