Chapter 17 - life in town and country

Town life (p74)

In 1700 England and Wales had a population of about 5.5 million. This had increased very little by 1750, but then grew quickly to about 8.8 million by the end of the century. Including Ireland and Scotland, the total population was about 13 million.

By the middle of the century Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds were already large. But such new towns were still treated as villages and so had no representation in Parliament.

All the towns smelled bad. There were no drains. In fact people added to it, leaving in the streets the rubbish from the marketplace and from houses. The streets were muddy and narrow, some only two metres wide.

The towns were centres of disease. As a result only one child in four in London lived to become an adult. It was the poor who died youngest. They were buried together in large holes dug in the ground. These were not covered with earth until they were full. It was hardly surprising that poor people found comfort in drinking alcohol and in trying to win money from card games. Poor people found comfort in drinking alcohol and in trying to win money from card games. Quakers, shocked by the terrible effects of gin drinking, developed the beer industry in order to replace gin with a less damaging drink.

During the eighteenth century, efforts were made to make towns healthier.

Streets were built wider, so that carriages drawn by horses could pass each other. From 1734, London had a street lighting system. After 1760 many towns asked Parliament to allow them to tax their citizens in order to provide social services, such as street cleaning and lighting. Each house owner had to pay a local tax, the amount or "rate" of which was decided by the local council or corporation.

Soon London and the other towns were so clean and tidy that they became the wonder of Europe. Indeed London had so much to offer that the great literary figure of the day, Samuel Johnson, made the now famous remark, "When a man is tired of

London, he is tired of life. For there is in London all that life can afford."

There were four main classes of people in eighteenth-century towns: the wealthy merchants; the ordinary merchants and traders; the skilled craftsmen; and the large number of workers who had no skill and who could not be sure of finding work from one day to another.

The rich(p75)

Social conditions were probably better than in any other country in Europe.

British aristocrats had less power over the poor than European aristocrats had. It was difficult to see a clear difference between the aristocracy, the gentry and the middle class of merchants. Most classes mixed freely together.

Thomas Gainsborough, perhaps England's finest portrait painter, painted for the rich and famous. "The Morning Walk" has a clam domesticity about it. At the other end of the social scale, Thomas Gainsborough, perhaps England's finest portrait painter, painted for the rich and famous. "The Morning Walk" .

Foreigners noticed how easy it was for the British to move up and down the social "ladder". In London a man who dressed as a gentleman would be treated as one.

The comfortable life of the gentry must have been dull most of the time. The men went hunting and riding, and carried out "improvements" to their estates. During the eighteenth century these improvements included rebuilding many great houses in the classical style. It was also fashionable to arrange natural-looking gardens and parks to create a carefully made "view of nature" from the windows of the house. Some of the gentry became interested in collecting trees or plants from abroad.

Women's lives were more boring. But even the richest women's lives were limited by the idea that they could not take a share in more serious matters.

During the eighteenth century, people believed that the natural spring waters in "spa" towns such as Bath were good for their health. These towns became fashionable places where most people went to meet other members of high society.

Somersetshire Buildings in Mlson Street, Bath, 1788, were among the finest town houses built ii "Georgian" period. Both has survived as England's best preserved Georgian city because was very fashionable during the eighteenth century, but suddenly ceased to be so at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As a result the economy of Bath, based upon tourism, collapsed and the splendid Georgian buildings were replaced during the 19th, or 20th centuries.

The countryside (p76)

The cultural life of Edinburgh was in total contrast with life in the Scottish

Highlands. Because the kilt and tartan were forbidden, everyone born since 1746 had

grown up wearing Lowland (English) clothes. The old way of colouring and making

tartan patterns from local plants had long been forgotten. By the time the law

forbidding the kilt and tartan was abolished in 1782, it was too late.

Highland dress and tartans became fancy dress, to be worn by Scottish soldiers

and by lovers of the past, but not by the real Highlanders.

The real disaster in the Highlands, however, was economic. Towards the end of

the eighteenth century, the clan chiefs began to realise that money could be made from

sheep for the wool trade. They began to push the people off the clan lands, and replace

them with sheep, a process known as the clearances. Many Highlanders, men, women

and children, lived poor on the streets of Glasgow. Others went to begin a new life,

mainly in Canada where many settled with other members of their clan. A smaller

number went to Australia in the nineteenth century. Clan society in the Highlands had

gone forever.

In England the countryside changed even more than the towns in the

eighteenth century. Most farming at the beginning of the century was still done as it

had been for centuries. Each village stood in the middle of three or four large fields,

and the villagers together decided what to grow, although individuals continued to

work on their own small strips of land.

During the eighteenth century most of this land was enclosed. The enclosed land

was not used for sheep farming, as it had been in Tudor times, but for mixed animal

and cereal farms. People with money and influence, such as the village squire,

persuaded their MP to pass a law through Parliament allowing them to take over

common land and to enclose it. The MP was willing to do this because the landowner

was often able to help him at the next election with the votes of those who worked for

him.

One main cause of these enclosures was that a number of the greater landlords,

including the aristocracy, had a great deal of money to invest.

Most of them wanted to invest their money on the land, and having improved

their own land, and built fine country houses, they looked to other land. Their reason

was that farming had become much more profitable.

Traditionally the land had been allowed to rest every three years. But by

growing root crops one year, animal food the next, and wheat the third, farmers could

now produce more. Growing animal food also made it possible to keep animals

through the winter. This was an important new development. Before the mideighteenth

century most animals were killed before winter because there was never

enough food to keep them until the following spring. For the first time people could

now eat fresh meat all the year round.

Richer farmers wanted to change the system of farming, including the system of

landholding. With one large area for each farm the new machinery and methods would

work very well. They had the money to do this, and could expect the help of the

village squire and their MP, who were also rich farmers with the same interests. They

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had a strong economic argument for introducing change because it was clear that the

new methods would produce more food for each acre of land than the traditional

methods. There was also another strong reason, though at the time people may not

have realised it. The population had started to grow at a greatly increased rate.

Improved use of land made it possible to grow wheat almost everywhere. For

the first time everyone, including the poor, could eat white wheat bread. White bread

was less healthy than brown, but the poor enjoyed the idea that they could afford the

same bread as the rich. In spite of the greatly increased production of food, however,

Britain could no longer feed itself by the end of the century. Imported food from

abroad became necessary to feed the rapidly growing population.

But in social terms the enclosures were damaging. Villagers sometimes knew

nothing about an enclosure until they were sent off the land. Some had built their

homes on common land and these were destroyed.

The enclosures changed the look of much of the countryside. Instead of a few

large fields there were now many smaller fields, each encircled with a hedge, many

with trees growing in them.

The problem of the growing landless class was made very much worse by the

rapid increase in population in the second half of the century.

Help was given to a family according to the number of children. Before the

enclosures farmers had smaller families because the land had to be divided among the

children, and because young men would not marry until they had a farm of their own.

The enclosures removed the need for these limits, and the encouraged larger families

since this meant an increase in financial help.

Family life

In the eighteenth century families began to express affection more openly than

before. One popular eighteenth-century handbook on the upbringing of children, itself

a significant development, warned: "Severe and frequent whipping is, I think, a very

bad practice. The most likely thing to expand a youthful mind is …praise”.

Girls, however, continued to be victims of the parents' desire to make them

match the popular idea of feminine beauty of slim bodies, tight waists and a pale

appearance. To achieve this aim, and so improve the chances of a good marriage,

parents forced their daughters into tightly waisted clothes, and gave them only little

food to avoid an unfashionably healthy appearance.

Parents still often decided on a suitable marriage for their children. However,

sons and daughters often had to marry against their wishes.

The increase in affection was partly because people could now expect a

reasonably long life. This resulted mainly from improved diet and the greater

cleanliness of cotton rather than woollen underclothing. However, it was also the result

of a growing idea of kindness. Perhaps the first time people started to believe that

cruelty either to humans or animals was wrong. It did not prevent bad factory

conditions, but it did help those trying to end slavery. At the root of this dislike of

cruelty was the idea that every human was an individual.

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Hogarth is best known for his realistic pictures of society's its, but to make money he also painted wealthy

people. "The Graham Children' ' gives a delightful view of a warm relaxed and jolly atmosphere. Play began to be

recognised as good for children, but only for young one it was feared that if older children played they would become lay

adults. One lord wrote to his son on his ninth birthday, "Childish toys and playthings must be thrown aside, and your

mind directed to serious objects."

This growing individualism showed itself in a desire for privacy. In the

seventeenth century middle-class and wealthier families were served by servants, who

listened to their conversation as they ate. They lived in rooms that led one to another,

usually through wide double doors. Not even the bedrooms were private. But in the

eighteenth century families began to eat alone, preferring to serve themselves than to

have servants listening to everything they had to say. They also rebuilt the insides of

their homes, putting in corridors, so that every person in the family had their own

private bedroom.

Individualism was important to trade and industrial success.

Such individualism could not exist for the poorer classes.

The use of child labour in the workhouse and in the new factories increased

towards the end of the century. This was hardly surprising. A rapidly growing

population made a world of children. Children of the poor had always worked as soon

as they could walk. Workhouse children were expected to learn a simple task from the

age of three, and almost all would be working by the age of six or seven. They were

particularly useful to factory owners because they were easy to discipline, unlike

adults, and they were cheap.

Then, quite suddenly at the end of the century, child labour began to be seen as

shameful. Horrified by the suffering of children forced to sweep chimneys, two men

campaigned for almost thirty years to persuade Parliament to pass a Regulating Act in

1788 to reduce the cruelty involved. In the nineteenth century the condition of poor

children was to become a main area of social reform. This was a response not only to

the fact that children were suffering more, but also that their sufferings were more

public.

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