The Victorians

A description of the VIctorian way of living, the changing values of money, the routine of daily life, what they ate and how and when, their clothes, clubs, pastimes, and their attitude to women and to foreigners. Includes a discussion of the abuses of the period, the condition of the army and the navy, the grorth of the slums, the pathetic lot of little seamstresses, forced to work from five in the morning until after midnight. Agriculture was one part of the Victorian economy which did not flourish. Falling prices. the exodus to the towns, caused stagnation and depopulation in the villages. Nor did the Church, until the latter part of the century, show very much social consciousness, and the doctrinal disputes arising out of the Higher Criticism and Modernist tendencies generally, together with the Oxford Movement, caused deep division among the clergy. Ireland and Scotland changed at least as drastically as England during Victoria's reign and a chapter is devoted to each country. Factors at work are summarised, and their results; the terrible depopulation of Ireland after the Famine, the rift in the Scottish Presbyterian Church and the effect of the Royal Family's enthusiastic adoption of Balmoral. This book describes a social revolution of which we are the heirs,,,