The Victorians, Part 1 of 2

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1:08Every plan,$15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending. Zero tears. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. It's early May, 1851, in Hyde Park, London. A man in his mid-twenties stands turning a shilling over and over between his fingers. He is torn. This coin could buy food for his family, or replace the worn boots on his feet. But it is also the gateway to a once-in-a-lifetime spectacular that is opened right here on his doorstep.

1:52With a sigh, he pockets the money and joins the animated crowd, all walking in the same direction drawn towards the same thing.

2:03Up ahead, the specially made glass and iron structure, the Crystal Palace, stretches high into the sky. Glittering in the sunlight, its footprint is the size of ten football pitches, the biggest enclosed space ever to be built. Now it houses the wonders of the world in one place. The Great Exhibition.

2:31The buzz of eager voices rising around him. After the man parts with his shilling, he passes into the entrance hall. Here he is buffeted by the crowd, his mouth hanging open in slack-jawed wonder. A cacophony of steam whistles, clanking gears, and automated clicks assaults his ears as he is carried inside by the impatient throng. He passes a mechanical loom, its rapid movement fascinating, the threads flowing through it faster than he can blink. Now he pauses to watch as a telegraph ticks away in its glass case, sending messages between distant places with a tap of a key. Stepping closer, he listens to the machine, wondering what it would be like to get a message from the other side of the world.

3:18Across the aisle, a steam-powered printing press churns, pushing sheets of printed newspaper through its giant rollers at an impressive speed. He smiles, shaking his head in disbelief.

3:34Other rooms house inventions designed to make people's lives easier, better, more productive. all of them as alien to him as the last, but no less fascinating. He pauses in front of one curious-looking machine, a large wooden frame with iron handles turning in a circular motion. It looks like a barrel, but with a purpose he can't quite understand. Peering at the sign, he discovers it is a washing machine, designed to take the back-breaking work out of scrubbing clothes. His wife would give her eye teeth for a contraption like that. Hall after hall is filled with marvels from around the world, 13 ,000 exhibits in all.

4:23As well as machines, instruments from the scientific to the musical, even flushing toilets one can pay a penny to use. There are exotic fabrics, glassware, spices, the rarest of jewels. and all of it gathered from Britain's growing empire. Excited voices rise around him as people crowd the exhibits, pointing, discussing, laughing. Here, at the Great Exhibition, they stand on the threshold of a new world. And for the first time, he feels like he's part of it.

5:07In the early 19th century, a young Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of a rapidly changing empire. But while her reign would mark an era that became synonymous with progress and prosperity, it was also a time of great moral and social contradictions. Over the course of her 63 years as sovereign, Britain transformed into the world's foremost industrial and imperial power. The Victorians built railways that spanned continents, invented life-changing technologies, and expanded a vast realm that stretched from the Caribbean to India. Yet for all their achievements, they grappled with social unrest, stark inequalities between the rich and poor, and the dark side of imperialism.

5:56So how did the Victorians justify their colonial project while they tolerated such inequality at home? How did their moral values shape the way they treated those at the fringes of their rigid society? And how do the Victorian struggles with industrialization, governance, and poverty echo in the modern world? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is part one of a special two-part short history of the Victorians.

6:33The Victorian era is traditionally defined as the period covering the reign of Queen Victoria, beginning as she ascends to the throne in 1837. Aged just 18, she is an untested monarch, inheriting a nation exhausted by years of war and conflict. Yet beneath this weariness lies a country full of untapped potential, on the brink of a transformative age, one that has been building for decades, long before her coronation. Dr. Amy Mildsmith is Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. So the Victorian period can be defined in a number of ways. Obviously, Queen Victoria is how we get the name, but most historians usually will stretch it back a little bit.

7:27Really, it's after the Napoleonic Wars where society fundamentally changes from before and after that moment. And you get the beginning of what is going to define the Victorian era starting in the late teens, in the 20s, in the 1830s, as they develop into this kind of long Victorian era that it ends, again, not with her death in 1901, but with the First World War. Though the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, they leave an indelible mark on Britain, reshaping its political and economic landscape. By the time Victoria takes the reins, Britain has already established colonies in India, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa, as well as key territories in North America and the Pacific.

8:15These colonies are not just economic assets. They form the backbone of Britain's imperial power, and they shape the way the British view themselves and the world. Dr. Onyeka Nubia is a British historian, writer, and presenter. The first thing is that they had a very, very different concept of Britishness to what we have right now. Their idea of Britishness was an international idea. So the concept that was sold to the colonies, to the territories, is that they were part of Britain, that they were part of the British Empire. So a Canadian person would have regarded themselves not as a Canadian, but as a British subject.

9:03Young Victoria, then, finds herself as monarch not just of a small island, but of a sprawling family of nations brought together under a single citizenship. Yet, before she can settle into her era-defining reign, she must first overcome public doubts in her ability to lead and her own fears about her aptitude for the role. Victoria's early reign is often overlooked by what she would become. We think of Victorian as the great matriarch, as the grandmother of Europe, up as this force of stability, but really when she comes to the throne as still a very young woman who's been very isolated and sheltered, they don't know what the future holds.

9:45It's a much rockier moment.

9:50While her subjects look to her to uphold the strong moral ideal of women at the time, to be the embodiment of domestic virtue, they also expect her to be a strong figurehead. Though the country is governed by the prime minister and cabinet, with decisions largely in their hands, Victoria still wields significant authority as the symbolic leader of the empire. She offers advice on matters of state and exercises her influence on diplomatic affairs through the personal relationships she establishes with key political figures both at home and abroad. But in these early years of her reign, Victoria faces several challenges.

10:30A scandal erupts when, after she backs false claims that a lady-in-waiting is pregnant out of wedlock, it transpires that the young woman is in fact suffering from an aggressive ovarian cancer. Meanwhile, a dispute over the appointment of chambermaids further complicates matters as Victoria tries to assert her independence from her mother's influence and the expectations of the government. This struggle over household control threatens to tarnish her reputation as she grapples with the weight of her new role. There is goodwill towards her, certainly, but she makes a series of blunders in the first years of her reign which perhaps demonstrate her naivete, perhaps demonstrate her age, or perhaps even, you could argue, reflect an old way of being a monarch that is just not going to be acceptable in the 19th century.

11:25She quickly forms a close alliance with Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, who will become both a trusted advisor and a long-standing friend. With her confidence now growing, the young queen is encouraged to seek a suitable husband, to join her on the journey.

11:43It doesn't take long to settle on her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, despite some reservations from her family and advisors. He will become not just her husband, but also a central figure in her reign, though his secondary role in their relationship takes some getting used to. Prince Albert, certainly when he came into power, felt that he was the spare monarch. Here Queen Victoria is as monarch without his justification to support her state. So this was an unusual position for a male monarch in a patriarchal society.

12:24Albert, however, is keen to support his new wife. And Victoria is determined that his role will complement hers while not undermining her authority. I think in terms of education, he was much better educated to be a world leader. He was much more worldly. He had a philosophical nature. He was interested in science and was very pragmatic. And she, when she was young at least, was much more emotional. She had been far more constrained. But it is interesting because, of course, she is still the queen and she was very aware of that. She seeks out roles for him that take advantage of his education and interests, particularly in science and the arts, but which don't place him ahead of her in the hierarchy of leadership.

13:08What this enabled him to do was to carve out a new space and part of carving out that new space was to promote technology, to promote things like the Great Exhibition, to create and sponsor scientific geographical society, to make Britain the home for the intellectual revolution.

13:32One of the key projects he champions is the Great Exhibition, a grand display of the world's finest achievements housed in an extraordinary glass and iron building known as the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. It's estimated that six million people visit, around a third of the total population of Britain at the time. The Great Exhibition wasn't just attended by the higher class, it was also attended by the lower class who felt that these innovations were there. They were British innovations, even though those innovations came from all over the world and they were created by the peoples from all over the world.

14:13They had the stamp of Britishness placed upon them. The exhibition shows the public what it is to be British at this time of spectacular global influence, instilling an inflated sense of national pride and superiority in even the poorest worker. And at the same time, it heralds a new phase of industrialization, which is about to grip the nation and change the lives of almost everyone in it.

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15:37But the shift also comes with deep social change, disrupting traditional ways of life. Just a few decades before Victoria, the Luddite uprising marked an early violent protest against industrialization. The term Luddite originates with Ned Ludd, who destroyed a loom in protest, making his name synonymous with those opposing the rise of industrial machinery. In 1811, fearing the loss of their craftsmanship and livelihoods, the Luddites targeted the contraptions that were displacing skilled artisans, smashing factories, and destroying weaving and knitting machines. I think it's a shame the term Luddite now means this kind of unthinking rejection of technology.

16:25It wasn't about the technology, it was about what the technology represented. I think it was a very thoughtful understanding of the long-term effects of these new machines coming in and replacing workers and changing how work was done. While their movement was ultimately subdued by the state, their grievances and concerns are far from silenced. And now, as the machines march on, the social divide between the wealthy factory owners and the workers made redundant only deepens. people's individual lives could absolutely be crushed by industrialization if you are somebody who was a master weaver one day and then new machinery comes in and the boss fires you and you have no job or he offers you a new job where you're going to make a third of the pay you once did and it's not that you can go to the next town and find your old profession intact that job is just gone.

17:28And that protection of your skill is gone. And that respect of your skill is gone. At the heart of this rapid industrialization is the steam engine. Perfected by James Watt in the late 1700s, but really coming into its own now, steam power is crucial. Not just to factories, but also the machines, trains and ships underpinning this revolution. Suddenly, both the mass production and mass movement of goods is possible. The textile industry is one of the first to feel the impact. Factories driven by steam machines spring up across Manchester, Leeds and other urban centres. Manchester is the first industrial city, going from a small market town in the late 18th century to what was dubbed Cottonopolis by the mid-19th century with the advent of the spinning jenny and industrialized spinning and weaving.

18:29That would have transformed all elements of people's lives, not just from where you work, but how you work, what a workday looks like, what your home life looks like. All of that changes. The cotton mills of Manchester churn out fabric at unprecedented speeds, making clothing and textiles more affordable and accessible. As factories boom in the cities, the British economy flourishes, capitalising on the products, people and labour at home and in the colonies. These were large industrial cities, certainly during Victoria's era, where they were forced to work for poor wages and poor salary. these wages and this whole industrial complex was supported by empire.

19:19Cotton is king but cotton wasn't grown here in Britain. Tea isn't grown here. Coffee doesn't grow here. It had to be brought from elsewhere. So many of the things that we associate with the industrial revolution, so many of the things, the products that we associate with the industrial revolution came from the British empire. And thanks to the growing railways, cities join the vast interconnected network of the realm. Goods are transported direct to major port towns, from where they can be sent out to the colonies for trade, just as more raw materials are shipped back to feed the machines. The system keeps the wheels of industry turning and fuels the empire.

20:06Soon, the cities begin to swell, bringing in workers from the countryside. At the start of the 19th century, rural areas were home to around 80 % of the population. Drawn by the promise of steady wages in factories and far from the seasonal unpredictability of farm work, by 1850, around half of the British population lives in cities. Yet, while factory owners amass fortunes, the workers are left behind, toiling in unsafe conditions with long hours, poor ventilation, and unsafe machinery. Children, often no older than four or five, are also put to work in these dangerous conditions. Their small hands are a perfect fit for the narrow gaps in factory machines, and they are tiny enough to crawl under the giant cotton looms to free trapped threads or jammed gears.

21:02It's a perilous existence, often resulting in awful, life-changing injuries and early deaths. But for many, it's the only option available.

21:15And it's not just the conditions in the factories that cause problems. Life outside of work is equally challenging. These huge numbers of people who began to arrive in the middle part of the 19th century, in the places like Macclesfield, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, these people were not planned for. There was an extraordinary lack of planning in terms of sanitation, in terms of housing. So whilst there was a desire for them to come and give their labour, there was very little being done about when that labour is finished, where do they go back to? Where do they live? There was the construction of what became known as back-to-back housing.

22:03This was substandard for housing with often no sanitation. Inside these back-to-back houses, just two small rooms are nestled one above the other. They're usually shared by multiple families, with little more than a single window for ventilation and no kitchen to speak of. And as the name suggests, the houses are tightly packed, backing onto each other in cramped rows. Houses crowded with each other in tenements and in estates where the people are suffering from poverty and economic deprivation. In these slum estates, outhouses are shared between many. Human waste is dumped in pits that commonly overflow onto the streets.

22:48The lack of clean water leads to rampant disease, and many thousands die in a series of cholera outbreaks. Life here is grueling, with little to no support for those who fall ill or lose their jobs. But even amid this stark inequality, reforms to public health are eventually triggered. When you take a bird's eye view of the Industrial Revolution, everybody's life did get better from the bird's eye view. Life expectancy increases, sanitation is improved, people's food is more nutritious, death rates, infant mortality comes down. But that is looking from 100 years away and from 100 yards away.

23:36Yet at the other end of the economic spectrum, the improvements are clear. With the rise of factories and entrepreneurialism, a new elite social group emerges, the industrialists. This new class is distinct from the traditional landed gentry, but they are equally wealthy and increasingly influential. Having amassed their fortunes through trade, manufacturing, and industry, they form the core of a growing middle class, which starts challenging deeply entrenched ideas of status and heritage. Suddenly, the class you are born into no longer entirely defines who you are, where you live, how you work, or what your future may hold.

24:21I think what's interesting about the class structure of the 19th century is that we now are in a moment where the old forms of the class structure that it was built on, paternalism, that's gone, really. The newly acquired wealth of this burgeoning middle class now allows them to claim many of the social privileges once reserved for the aristocracy. And by the mid-Victorian period, they become a force to be reckoned with, both economically and politically. They can send their children to school, acquire fine houses, and enjoy leisure activities that were previously denied. As the wealth of Britain expanded, it was a wealth retained by the upper classes and the middle classes.

25:07But what is interesting about this process is that many of the middle classes became extraordinarily rich and extraordinarily famous, and some working class people made good became household names. So people like Isambard, Kingdom Brunel, this is a quite simple man who became the face of British industrialization.

25:34Even so, while the Industrial Revolution creates opportunities for some to rise from the ranks of the poor, these breaks are still rare. Instead, it's the colonial empire with its immense exploitable wealth that provides the best routes for faster social advancement. Young men from middle-class families can now become merchants, military officers and businessmen, heading out to make their fortunes in the colonies. Whether they are off to run plantations in Jamaica or India, or to manage gold mining operations in Africa, the path to fortune is already well beaten. And when you arrived there, you had an explorer entering a brave new world.

26:18You were someone arriving at a place that had already been subdued, that had already been turned into a part of the empire where the people spoke English. You could negotiate your position and your status very quickly. You could make wealth after a few years and you could return home and improve the status of your family. And that is what people did. Additionally, the army offers another avenue for advancement. Soldiers can rise through the ranks based on merit rather than birth, providing opportunities for lower-class men to achieve a higher social status. But this surge of social mobility soon begins to challenge the old hierarchical order, leading to demands for more representation and rights for the working class.