The visitors who came to the Great Exhibition on the shilling days were often working people from the Midlands and the North. They would have worked in factories, coalmines and on the railway. 4

The visitors who came to the Great Exhibition on the shilling days were often working people from the Midlands and the North. They would have worked in factories, coalmines and on the railway. 4 shillings would have been at least a day's pay for many of them. What was it like to work in Victorian Britain?

Did working people share in the enormous wealth and prosperity of the Great Exhibition?

In the middle of the 18th century, most coalmines in Britain were near the surface and mining was a small scale industry where families worked together in bell-pits or adits. But in the second half of the century surface coal began to run out and mines became deeper.

Deeper mines were much more dangerous. There was not only a much greater risk of rock falls and flooding, but miners could also run into pockets of gas underground that could lead to explosions or suffocation.

Miners had virtually nothing to protect themselves against the increased dangers. Some took canaries underground to warn them against gas, if the canary stopped singing that was a sign that gas was present. To try to prevent the roof caving in, miners left columns of coal standing. This was known as the 'pit and stall' method. But coal can collapse very easily, so this was not a safe method of working.

Ventilation became a serious problem as miners went deeper and deeper underground. The earliest solution was digging a down-shaft and an up-shaft. At the bottom of the up-shaft a fire was set ablaze, which sent hot air up the shaft. This in turn sucked fresh air into the down-shaft. To make sure that the fresh air reached all parts of the mine, trapdoors were put in all the galleries of mines, which were opened and closed as the coal trucks passed through. This ensured that there was a constant supply of air throughout the mine. The trapdoors were opened by small boys (trappers), whom sat in total darkness listening for the sound of the corves (coal trucks/sleds).

The most serious danger of all was caused by the need for light. At first miners carried candles underground, but this proved to be very dangerous, as pockets of gas could ignite without warning. In all, it was dark, dangerous and deadly work. Throughout the 19th century more than a thousand miners were killed every year in Britain.

Most of the working people, who came to the Great Exhibition on the 'Shilling Days', arrived by rail, often from the north of England. King's Cross station had been opened in 1850 and there were nearly 7,000 miles of track linking London with the towns of the Midlands and the North.

The most popular way of getting to the Great Exhibition was by buying a ticket that included a return rail journey and entry. These could cost 4, 5 or 6 shillings. Hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of these day trips, which were the idea of Thomas Cook.

Thomas Cook started his business in 1841, but the Great Exhibition gave him his big chance.

He booked trains from all over Britain to take people to the Great Exhibition and charged them a fixed price for the return trip and the entry ticket. Overnight he had invented the 'Day Out'. As Cook's business grew he began to offer excursions to more and more places, including trips to other European countries. When Thomas Cook's son took over the family business he increased the tours abroad and offered a wider choice of excursions. Soon the railway companies began to run their

own excursions.

At first, railway companies tried to avoid catering for the masses and preferred to run trains that only offered second and first class carriages. They also tried to avoid stopping their trains at every station. But in 1844 the Railways Act stated that at least one train a day must stop at every station and include third class carriages. Now large numbers of Victorians could afford to travel. Rich people could even take their horses with them on special hunting excursions!

The railways were to make a huge difference to the leisure activities of the Victorians. Not only were opportunities for holidays and day trips increased, sporting events also grew in popularity. Special trains and trips were run to take people to the races, cricket matches or the FA Cup Final, which was held for the first time in 1872. It was not only spectators that benefited, the football clubs that were being started in many of Britain's Happy cities could now travel away to play against each other.

In 1888 the Football League was founded. This was made up of professional teams. It would have been impossible for the first teams to have travelled to play away matches without regular trains. So the railways were very important in the development of professional football in Britain.

But many of these developments only affected the better off people in Britain. For most working people, the important changes were the cheap day returns that many railway companies started to offer.

In 1871 Bank Holidays were introduced and so began the great British tradition of the day at the seaside, along with sticks of rock, candy-floss, walks along the pier, fun-fair rides and fish and chips. The first fish and chip shops appeared in the 1860s.

Most of the visitors to the Great Exhibition came on days when the tickets cost a shilling, or five pence. About 4,500,000 people came on these 'shilling days'. These were working people, who came from all over Britain. The first 'shilling day' was expected to lead to a great deal of trouble. One MP, Colonel Sibthorpe warned that there would be crime and disorder.

So on the first 'shilling day' there was a heavy police presence. But nothing happened. In the five and a half months that the Great Exhibition was open, only seven people were arrested and there was hardly any vandalism.

The men who policed the Great Exhibition were members of the Metropolitan Police force.

This force had been established in 1829 and its police constables were given the nickname 'Peelers' after Sir Robert Peel who was Home Secretary at the time. Until the 1820s the main emphasis in law and order was on punishment, because there were few police forces.

There were 400 offences that carried the death penalty, including picking someone's pocket of anything worth one shilling (5p) or more and stealing anything worth £2.00. Sir Robert Peel abolished almost all of the capital offences (those that carried the death penalty) and also began to reform prisons, as well as setting up the Metropolitan Police Force.

Peel wanted to put the emphasis upon preventing crime, rather than punishing criminals. Some of the novels of Charles Dickens, who was writing in the 1830s and 1840s, show how lawless the streets of British cities could be.

In 'Oliver Twist' Fagin runs a gang of pickpockets, and Bill Sykes is a violent and dangerous criminal. In 'Great Expectations', Pip is befriended by the convict Magwitch, who had escaped from a hulk.

At first the Police Force was not very popular. People were very concerned that the new police should not be like the military and therefore great care was taken to ensure that police constables did not look like soldiers.

This is why peelers wore top hats instead of helmets and carried truncheons instead of rifles, although cutlasses were available for emergencies!

The success of the Metropolitan Police Force, however, led other parts of the country to set up their own forces. However, it did not become compulsory for counties and boroughs to have police forces until 1856. The duties of the police were extended as more and more laws were passed.

For example the 1872 Licensing Act made them responsible for supervising public drinking places. Policing was not the only aspect of law and order that changed during the Victorian period.

The ways in which criminals were punished were also changed. 1857 saw the end of Hulk ships. These were anchored ships, which held prisoners who were either awaiting transportation to the colonies, or were used to carry out public works, such as clearing the River Thames.

The transportation of criminals gradually declined and the last convict ship arrived in Australia in 1868. These changes led to a new prison building programme based upon the model prison at Pentonville. Inside these new prisons, prisoners were separated, forbidden to communicate with each other and given meaningless work to do. But did these changes make a difference?

Look at the opening of the Great Exhibition. Did you notice anything unusual? How many women did you spot in the crowd? There was the Queen of course and the other members of the royal family, the Princesses Victoria, Alice and Helena and their ladies-in-waiting were all there. But are there any other women? There are some women looking down from the back of the balcony. But why were they tucked away like this? It looks as though they were less important than men. So what was women's status in 1851?

In many different ways women were regarded as second class, even though Queen Victoria had been on the throne for fourteen years and few people would have dared to argue with her.

No women could vote, and this would not change until 1918. There were no important female political figures, apart from the Queen herself and almost all the major reforms during the nineteenth century were carried out by men. Queen Victoria was also a determined opponent of 'votes for women', which she described a 'mad, wicked folly'.

At work, women had few opportunities. Work in textile factories was one of the few that women had, the other main one was domestic service, which became even more important in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Women's legal rights were also restricted. In 1851 a woman could not even be the legal guardian of her own children and could not retain her own property after marriage. This led to unscrupulous men trying to run away with rich heiresses and take their fortunes.

Middle class women usually did not work. Their role in the family was to supervise the household and support their husbands. The great majority of women seem to have accepted this role.

But, despite all of these disadvantages, there were signs that women were beginning to demand and achieve some forms of equality. Many of the leading novelists of the first half of the nineteenth century were women. In the field of medicine, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Blackwell and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson all made important breakthroughs. In the second half of the century women began to demand the vote and the leaders of the suffrage movements were all female. The first leader was Lydia Becker, but the most famous was Emmeline Pankhurst.

Prince Albert married Queen Victoria in 1840 and they had nine children, but in December 1861 he fell ill and died. Prince Albert had caught TYPHOID, a disease that is caused by drinking either dirty water or milk, or eating dirty food. The usual cause of typhoid was allowing drinking water to be polluted by sewage.

The death of her husband was a great shock to Queen Victoria. How could one of the most important people in Britain die from a disease like this? Was this common? Were rich and poor just as likely to die from diseases like this at the time of the Great Exhibition?

The big killer disease of the mid-nineteenth century was CHOLERA which was caused in a similar way to the disease Prince Albert had died of. Cholera had arrived in Britain for the first time in 1831, probably arriving on ships bringing imports from China.

Doctors had little idea about the causes of cholera. Most accepted the miasmatic (read on!) theory of disease. They believed that diseases were caused by the air somehow being polluted by waste. This came about because severe outbreaks of disease often happened in hot summers when there was a great deal of rubbish lying in the streets. As the rubbish rotted, it gave off a stronger and stronger smell. This, many doctors believed, caused disease.

Cholera was most dangerous in the new industrial towns of the north or in the centre of big cities like London. Here people lived in crowded housing. Most people got their water from a tap in the street and often the supply was pumped out of a nearby river. This river could easily be used for sewage disposal at the same time. In London, one water company drew water out of the River Thames from a point right next to the outlet of the Great Ranelagh Sewer.

In the new industrial towns, cholera was even more dangerous because many of the houses had been built quickly with no attempts at planning. Often there was no sanitation and no fresh water. In one street in Bolton the people used a trench at the back of the houses as a toilet, which was cleared out and the mess stacked up against the end wall of the last house. The mess was taken away every six months.

There was a second big outbreak of cholera in 1848, a third in 1853 and a fourth in 1866. Each time thousands of people died swiftly and in terrible pain. They suffered violent vomiting and diarrhoea, coupled with very bad stomach pains. The actual cause of death was often dehydration (not enough water).

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04