2nd Edition

The Birth of Industrial Britain 1750-1850

By Kenneth Morgan Copyright 2011
    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Industrial Revolution had a profound and lasting effect on socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain.

    The Birth of Industrial Britain examines the impact of early industrialisation on British society in the century before 1850, coinciding with Britain’s transition from a late pre-industrial economy to one based on industrialisation and urbanisation.

    This fully revised and updated second edition provides a comprehensive range of pedagogical material to support the text, including a Glossary of terms, people and parliamentary acts, new primary source documents and a brand new Chronology and ‘Who’s Who’ section. The Birth of Industrial Britain provides an essential up-to-date synthesis of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on British society for students at all levels.

    PART ONE: Introduction

    1.   THE BIRTH OF INDUSTRIAL BRITAIN

    PART TWO: ANALYSIS

    2.   WORK AND LEISURE

    Agriculture

    Domestic Industry and the Factory

    Women’s Work

    Child Labour

    Legislation on Labour Practices

    Leisure and Recreation

    3.   LIVING AND HEALTH STANDARDS

    The Demographic Context

    Housing and the Environment

    Real Wages

    Regional and Occupational Wage Variations

    Female and Child Labour, Family Budgets and Entitlements

    Height and Health

    4.   RELIGION AND SOCIETY

    The Church of England

    The Rise of Evangelicalism

    Methodism and Society

    5.   POPULAR EDUCATION

    Elementary Schools

    Sunday Schools

    Voluntary Schools and Monitorial Education

    State Provision for Schools

    Factory Schools

    Poor Law Schools

    Literacy and the Curriculum

    Social Control and Elementary Education

    Adult Education

    6.   THE OLD AND NEW POOR LAWS

    The Operation of the Old Poor Law

    The Old Poor Law under Pressure, 1793–1832

    Changing Views on the Old Poor Law

    The Royal Commission on the Poor Law, 1832

    The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834

    The Implementation of the New Poor Law

    The Poor Law in Scotland

    7.   POPULAR PROTEST

    Grain Riots and the Moral Economy of the Crowd

    Wilkes and Liberty

    Revolutionary Protest?

    The Luddites

    From Luddism to the Reform Bill Riots

    Chartism

    8.   CRIME, JUSTICE AND PUNISHMENT

    The Operation of the Law

    Prosecution

    Enforcing the Law

    Physical Punishments

    Convict Transportation

    Prisons

    PART three: assessment

    9.   CONCLUSION

    PART FOUR: DOCUMENTS

    1.   New Lanark, A model factory, 1784–91

    2.   Occupations in 1851

    3.   Richard Oastler on child labour in Yorkshire Mills

    4.   Festivals, holidays and local communities

    5.   Two family budgets, 1794

    6.   Pauperism and public health, 1842

    7.   Annual leverage price of British wheat per quarter, 1801–51

    8.   Average weekly wages in some industrial, 1849–51

    9.   Religion and class, 1849

    10. The visitation of Chesterfield, 1751

    11.  A Methodist class meeting, c.1822

    12.  Samuel Bamford on Sunday schools

    13.  Work and discipline in the monitorial school, 1810

    14.  A view of workhouse education, 1838

    15.  Address at the opening of the London mechanics’ institution, 10 February 1824

    16.  The duties of an assistant overseer of the poor, 1832

    17.  Settlement examination and removal order, Wiltshire, 1766

    18.  The Speenhamland decision, 6 May 1795

    19.  A pauper letter of 1826

    20.  The principle of ‘less eligibility’

    21.  A Cornish bread riot, 1773

    22.  Parliament against trade unionism, 1799

    23.  A warning from Ned Ludd, 1812

    24.  The Peterloo Massacre, 1819

    25.  The ‘Swing’ protests in Norfolk

    26.  The Chartist land plan

    27.  Chartism and a trial for sedition

    28.  Attitudes towards the Game Laws

    29.  Old Bailey proceedings, 1764

    30. The state of the prisons in England and Wales, 1777

     

    References

    Further Reading

    Biography

    Kenneth Morgan is Professor of History at Brunel University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His books include Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (1993) and Slavery and the British Empire (2007).