How did the perspectives on the problems of urban life in Britain change from 1870 to 1914?

In the late Victorian to Edwardian period in Britain, cities were growing. The nineteenth century was witness to a huge boom in urban population – in Birmingham for example, it had increased from seventy-one thousand in 1801 to two hundred and thirty-three thousand in 1851. Yet they were seen as being “loathsome centres of fornication and covetousness”, and this essay will demonstrate how undoubtedly from 1870 to 1914 the urban centre was feared and needed reform. However, the manifestations of these feelings and what should be done about the problems of urban life that stemmed from living in these areas changed slowly but surely. Through this, the essay will say how perspectives on the problems of urban life changed overall by being seen as a private issue for individual and local programmes to tackle, to – with the advent of welfare following the 1906 Liberal election – one that high politics had to address. Throughout this essay, it will be shown that concerns about the problems of urban life were a popular one. Despite this, it will be shown that the perspectives on the problems of urban life were not the same for those looking at it from a distance and those actually experiencing it; yet it was the former who appeared to be the most active in getting their issues and opinions acted on. Historians seem to focus primarily on how these elites perceived the problems of urban life. By looking at these, this essay will use the historical debate to explain why this may be the case. Additionally, it will approach why the perspectives changed for these people, and what they were for those actually living in the urban areas seen to be so detrimental. The first perspective to approach is one that seemed to primarily exist at the beginning of the period, from the 1870s to 1890. This – stemming from moral and religious views of Victorian middle and upper-classes as well as political leaders – was that the standards of living were too poor for good Christians to allow to exist within their country. The perspectives on the problems of urban life here were that the conditions were simply too poor for people to abide by. Stead wrote in the Pall Mall Gazette that “The horrors of the slums… [represented] the one great domestic problem which the religion, the humanity and the statesmanship of England are imperatively summoned to solve.” In reports, the concerns of people about just how their fellow countrymen were living can be seen. Hall says how these and writings such as Mearns’ The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, which spoke of “child-misery” and “inherited… vice” led to the formation of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes in 1884. The realisations that came from this helped encourage a will to move back to the countryside and stem the ever-growing movement into the cities as it was a divine provision. Ebenezer Howard wrote of how ‘that beautiful land of ours… [is] the very embodiment of Divine love for man’. If such an opportunity was offered to the people of the country, then it was only fair for those living in urban areas with the problems that the Royal Commission discovered (such as some eight to a room being typical and ‘noxious’ housework taking place) would be given it. Therefore, the perspectives on the problems of urban life during this period were those of visionary religious and moral thought. However, action was not to be willingly taken by governments. During this time, such morals may have pervaded upper society but they were not acted on – these were private issues to be handled by local authorities – if at all. Cherry writes about how there was an ever-growing demand for action on housing but no political framework until the twentieth century. This focusses too much on just the ability and necessity of political ideology within the corridors of power and not enough on the pressure of popular politics in Britain over this issue (which the essay will discuss later), but has validity. In this period, it was not seen to be the role of national government to involve itself directly in the lives of the people, and this transferred into the concerns about urban life. Hall supports this when he writes that the recommendation of the Royal Commission was ‘rather than adding new powers [on housing], focussed on how to ensure that local authorities used existing ones.’ Whilst the writings of Howard on his Garden City idea may be considered as ‘visionary’ by Hall, it cannot be ignored that within this and the pieces that originally encouraged action on housing there are smatterings of concerns about the nature of the people in urban living. In The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, Mearn writes of how drunkenness and poor parenting is ‘inherited’; and in making the case for his Garden City, Howard comments on how “great cities tend more and more to become the graves of the physique of our race”. Here, fears about the attitudes of the people living in urban areas are suggested, and the idea that the nature of the class living in cities damaging the nation and the rest of its people seems to come to the fore. In 1906, the Liberal Party won a landslide election and in a couple of years began a programme of radical reform, introducing welfare to Britain. Here, it can be seen how this change in politics placed perspectives on the problems of urban life to be placed in the hands of the government. Cherry writes that it was simply the election of the Liberals that allowed this, however, this may be too simplistic an idea. Instead, it can be said that it was the concerns of the populous – such as about the nation’s place in the world and the fact that around one-third of the population lived in terrible conditions as reported by the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration – that influenced action. It wasn’t until the second Liberal Prime Minister of the term, was sitting for statutes on welfare to be put forward – including a bill on housing in 1908.