A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain

by Michael Paterson

  Fasting, Humiliation and Divine Displeasure

  A strict Christian outlook that was manifest in Sabbath observance was not a product of the Victorian era. It had developed by the latter part of the eighteenth century (there were Sunday Observance Acts dating from 1677 and 1780). The battle was not definitively won at that time, for the Victorians were left to campaign for the banning of band concerts in parks on Sundays (they won), the restriction of postal deliveries (reduced to one) and the closing of beer shops (they lost). Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine any era since the Puritan Commonwealth in which the desire to restrict the pleasures of others would have been taken so seriously. Sometimes tragedy might be interpreted as evidence of divine displeasure. Throughout the railway age, trains ran on the Sabbath on many – though not all – lines. When, on the last Sunday of 1879, the Tay Bridge collapsed in a gale, taking seventy-five people to their deaths, the view was widely held that this had been their punishment for using public transport on the Lord’s Day.

  Though Scotland, where the disaster had taken place, was a more deeply religious country than England, this attitude to divine displeasure was not uncommon on both sides of the border, and can be seen in the notion of National Days of Fasting and Humiliation. The first of these, proposed by a Member of Parliament at the time of Britain’s first cholera epidemic in 1831, had been half-heartedly supported, and the idea was not taken seriously. The next one, held in 1854 and again the result of a cholera outbreak, was more successful. The following year there was a similar observance for the Crimean War, and in 1857 there was another day of self-abasement prompted by the most horrific event of the reign – the Indian Mutiny. A proclamation by the Queen stated that 7 October had been set aside: ‘For a solemn Fast, Humiliation, and prayer before Almighty God; in order to Obtain Pardon for our Sins, and for Imploring His Blessing and Assistance in our Arms for the Restoration of Tranquillity in India.’2 The renowned Baptist, Charles Spurgeon, was the preacher, and the chosen venue was not a church or cathedral but the Crystal Palace. This was necessary in view of the numbers expected: in the event, 23,654 persons attended.

  The Evangelicals

  Although ‘Enthusiasm’ – an emotional, demonstrative faith – sat uncomfortably with the British character, it nevertheless took root. It found a response among those who had been cast adrift by the Industrial Revolution, with its destruction of traditional societies and values. By virtue of the number of people who embraced this outlook, it was highly influential during the Regency and pre-Victorian years. While ‘Enthusiasm’ might have been seen as suited only to the industrial working class, it was given respectability, and appeal at a higher social level, through the involvement of the devout and respected MP William Wilberforce. By the forties it was established as an accepted, important shade of opinion. Evangelicals were to be found both in the Nonconformist sects and in Anglican congregations. It should also be remembered that members of the mercantile and manufacturing elite, especially those who came from areas that were Nonconformist in character, often belonged to this tendency (the Quaker Cadburys of York are one instance among several).

  A high incidence of religious enthusiasm and church attendance was not, however, a state of affairs that remained static throughout the reign. Religious revivals, like other popular movements, tend to run their course, peaking and then declining rather than being maintained for decades. Respectable Christianity reached something of a high-water mark in the 1850s, and church congregations were greater from that decade until the end of the seventies than they were to be thereafter. The impetus could, it seemed, not be sustained.

  Rome and Nonconformity

  As we have seen, the Victorian religious world was not a matter of a single Church existing without rivalry, or without serious divisions within its own ranks. Most legal and constitutional constraints on Catholics were removed in 1829, allowing the re-emergence into national life of a vigorous and experienced denomination that had widespread influence within immigrant communities (Irish and Italians). Nonconformity, which had blossomed in the eighteenth century, continued to have a striking level of influence in the nineteenth. Less socially acceptable than Anglicanism, it appealed to the working and lower middle classes, and was often identified with radical politics and trade unionism. To attend ‘chapel’ rather than ‘church’ – to be a Baptist or Methodist rather than an Anglican – was a social label as much as a reflection of a person’s spiritual conscience.

  If we are tempted to regard the Victorian view of religion, with its emphasis on outward respectability, with scepticism or derision, it is worth remembering two things. Firstly, this attitude suited the spirit of the time. It was considered right and appropriate. In the future a number of our own attitudes – our obsession with ‘political correctness’, for instance – may seem equally incomprehensible to historians. Secondly, the influence of Christianity enabled the Victorians to accomplish a very great deal of good both in their own country and in the world at large. As a historian has pointed out: ‘If some people had not taken a pride, even a pharisaical pride, in being better than their half-barbarous fellows or their morally lax forebears, life in Victorian England would have been worse than it was.’3

  Victorian Christian Values

  The tenets of Christianity as developed in Britain by the end of the eighteenth century fitted well, for several generations in the nineteenth, with the virtues that Victorians admired. They provided a moral code that suited the circumstances, and created the middle-class morality that became so much a feature of the age. The ethos of hard work, frugality, unselfishness in serving others – be they the poor, the community or the nation – drew on roots that went back to the Puritans of two hundred years earlier (and, like the Puritans, many Victorians believed that prosperity was a reward from God for their virtue). In the early decades of the reign, when there was widespread economic hardship and resulting social unrest, the wisdom of avoiding a show of wealth and luxury on the part of the rich was obvious, and this notion of modesty in any case fitted with the national preference for understatement. The encouragement of frugality among the poor was likewise suited to the times. The earnest desire for self-improvement, again a characteristic left over from the Puritans, but one that the Victorians continued to revere, stressed the need to put work before pleasure, obligations before self-indulgence. However much many people failed to match this ethos of selfless service in their own lives, they admired it in others, for moral responsibility was perhaps their most respected ideal. Probably the two greatest popular celebrities of the age were David Livingstone and General Gordon. Both were, by any measure, heroic, but that both were so deeply and obviously pious added immensely to their appeal, as could be seen by the number of books about either of them that were given as Sunday School prizes. These notions of responsible, patriotic altruism gradually went out of fashion after the Victorian era, not least because they had become associated with it. They are not easily understood by societies that are based on entitlement and the belief that personal desires are paramount.

  The Dispossessed

  While respectability became a cult among the better off, there were millions beyond its reach. The Anglican Church remained a middle-class body, and as Nonconformists gained legal recognition they began to lose the radical, political edge that had earlier characterized them and to join the social mainstream. This left a vast section at the bottom of society that belonged to no denomination and whose plight captured the attention and enthusiasm of a number of evangelists. At one end of the doctrinal spectrum, the Catholic wing of Anglicanism sought to address the plight of those in inner-city slums. They had some success in building congregations because their services so closely resembled those of the Roman Catholic Church, with which the large Irish immigrant community was familiar. In at least one area – south-east London – they also achieved respect as the only denomination whose priests stayed, and died, during a cholera epidemic.

  At the other end of the doct
rinal scale, the slum missions and the Salvation Army deliberately pursued those who were considered beyond the reach of churches. William Booth established the latter organization in 1865 as a result of deliberately engineered experiences living in this same corner of south-east London. If it were not possible to induce an audience to come inside a meeting hall, he reasoned that the service must be taken outside. The uniforms in which his followers were attired made them conspicuous, as did the band music they provided. In an era when only ballad-singers, barrel organs and itinerant musicians performed in the streets, this form of free entertainment was popular, though the accompanying tracts and sermons and prayers were not always so welcome. Marching Salvationists were often pelted with missiles. The sturdy poke bonnets worn by women members, which are still seen occasionally even today, had already passed out of fashion by the time the organization was founded, but they were necessary for protection.

  The Salvation Army, and similar bodies, did not have the field to themselves, for gradually missions were established in slum districts. The Anglican Church was subject to the ‘mission fever’ of the mid-century, but found it difficult – perhaps even undesirable – to persuade the very poor to enter its doors. The answer was to copy the Nonconformists and resort to street evangelism and worship in mission halls, practices previously disdained. This type of facility was established not only by denominations but by other types of community; the school or university mission, in which young men volunteered their time and money for the betterment of their less fortunate contemporaries, became an established feature of the urban landscape. Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Rugby and many other illustrious seats of learning associated themselves with this type of work, and some of their premises were almost overwhelmingly conspicuous: the huge terracotta-fronted Bedford School Mission in Finsbury, built a year or two after Victoria’s death, must have dominated the entire street in which it was set.

  Christian Charity

  While young men might give lectures or teach skills during their spare time at a school mission, it was women who carried the greater part of the burden in terms of church-related charity work, and it is undeniable that Victorian religious work could not have been so wide-ranging or successful without them. Women of the middle classes had, during the early and mid-Victorian era, comparatively little else to do. They had no political power, and no prospect of respectable occupation other than the refined end of the teaching profession, while education for them did not begin to be taken seriously until the 1870s. They were often unable, because of the dangers of the streets, even to travel from home without an escort. At the same time rising prosperity meant that in even a moderately wealthy home, the mistress of the house and her daughters would be surrounded by servants who undertook almost all the domestic work and left them prone to boredom. The result was that they channelled their energies into a wealth of ‘good works’ that filled their empty hands and idle hours. Dickens made gentle fun of this in Sketches by Boz:

  In winter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the ladies’ soup distribution society, the ladies’ coal distribution society and the ladies’ blanket distribution society; in summer, when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies’ dispensary, and the ladies’ sick visitation committee; and all the year round we have the ladies’ child’s examination society, the ladies’ bible and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies’ childbed-linen monthly loan society.4

  He described how swiftly such organizations might spring up:

  Mrs Johnson Parker, the mother of several extremely fine girls, reported to several other mammas of several other unmarried families, that five old men, six old women, and children innumerable, in the free seats near her pew, were in the habit of coming to church every Sunday without either bible or prayer-book. Was this to be borne in a civilised country? Could such things be tolerated in a Christian land? Never! A ladies’ bible and prayer-book distribution society was instantly formed: president, Mrs Johnson Parker; treasurers, auditors and secretary, the Misses Johnson Parker: subscriptions were entered into, books were bought, and all the free-seat people provided therewith.5

  If not distributing Bibles, such ladies were often found knitting, sewing or crocheting either for sales of work or for gifts to the deserving – though the suitability of doing even this work on the Sabbath might have been questioned by many. Ernest Shepard – later to win fame as the illustrator of the Winnie the Pooh stories – remembered his elderly aunts’ habit of filling their Sunday afternoons with work for particular causes:

  The Aunts rested or knitted garments for the people of Algoma. Aunt Emily had her own special activity, which was in aid of Deep Sea Fishermen. The garments she knitted, which were of fearful and wonderful proportions, were often tried on Father, who was inclined to make derogatory remarks, while Emily, with puzzled looks, and a knitting-needle in her mouth, would say ‘Tut-t-t, very odd. I know I followed the pattern most carefully’, and, ‘but then, Harry, you must remember they are very big men.’6

  A Revival of Contrasts

  Christianity was extremely visible not only in the public recognition given to prominent churchmen and missionaries but in the buildings it created. The Roman Catholic Church was granted freedom to conduct public worship in 1833 and had its hierarchy of cardinals and bishops restored seventeen years later. Emerging from centuries of persecution, censure and disapproval, it began the building of cathedrals and parish churches throughout the British Isles to replace those that had been lost at the Reformation. Much of this naturally went on in Ireland, where the greatest number of Catholics was to be found, but Roman Catholic churches began to share the skylines of towns and cities everywhere. This process culminated in the creation of a cathedral in Westminster – no more than half a mile from the Abbey – when a great Byzantine-revival structure was begun on a site formerly occupied by a penitentiary. Though planned, designed and largely paid for during the Victorian era, this in fact opened the year after the Queen’s death, and is still not complete. As well as places of worship, seminaries and Catholic schools became part of the English landscape, and these included those that educated the gentry and even the aristocracy. Downside and Ampleforth, whatever their antecedents, were products of the Victorian era.

  At the other end of the spectrum, Nonconformist church building also flourished to keep pace with an expanding population. Baptist and Methodist chapels, particularly common in Wales, the north and East Anglia, were solid and functional, deliberately plain but not without elegance. Typically they were rectangular and designed with a large, square pulpit set above the ground on pillars. This was surrounded on all sides by seating on both the ground floor and in a gallery. Their influence was Classical rather than Gothic, with modest flourishes of ionic column and palmette. Numbers of these buildings are still in use, and such is their functional beauty that many have remained unaltered since they opened.

  Within the Church of England itself there was a veritable explosion of church-building. Not only was the populace increasing, but a revival of interest in ritual and the desire to return to the spirituality of the Middle Ages had a considerable effect on the appearance of Anglican ecclesiastical architecture. By the 1840s new churches, influenced by the Ecclesiological Society (founded as the Cambridge Camden Society with the aim of returning church architecture to its medieval splendour), were bristling with statuary and ornament in a way that had not been seen since the sixteenth century. As with the Roman Catholic Church, places of education were founded to provide suitable priests. The most conspicuous, both spiritually and architecturally, was Keble College, Oxford (opened in 1868 and completed in 1876).

  Not even the Middle Ages had seen ecclesiastical building on a scale like this. By the mid-1870s the Roman Catholics had erected 738 new churches. The Anglicans built 1,727 and the Nonconformists almost 2,500. These numbers proved somewhat optimistic, and large numbers of pews were never to be filled. Nevertheless the conspicuous prese
nce in towns and cities of these places of worship reminded contemporaries – as the surviving ones continue to remind us – of the confidence, and importance, of organized religion in their society.

  The Victorian Sunday

  One much-discussed aspect of Victorian religion was the perceived emptiness of the Sabbath. Even in London – let alone smaller cities, towns and villages – shops, places of entertainment and museums were shut on Sundays, and a sense of unspeakable dreariness might prevail. A well-known description of this is given in Dickens’ Little Dorrit, when Arthur Clennam returns to England after years abroad:

  Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot . . . Everything was bolted and barred that could possibly furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world – all taboo with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing for the spent toiler to do but compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of his six days, and make the best of it.7

  In 1851 a Continental visitor, strolling in the City, remarked on this same sense of emptiness:

  I walked down Cheapside, which is quite a long street. I would have liked to go into a coffee house for a glass of ale or claret but all the shops were hermetically sealed. Even the front door of my hotel was locked and only if one knew the secret could one turn the right knob and force an entry. I asked for my bill as I have been accustomed to settle my account every day. But the innkeeper politely asked me to wait until Monday.8