Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2009
After years of concentration on the working class, social historians of nineteenth-century urban Britain have recently rediscovered the upper and middle classes. Various writers have recognized these groups, and elites within them, as significant subjects in themselves and as major influences in urban society generally.
1 Among many others: Cannadine, D., ‘From feudal lords to figureheads’, Urban History Yearbook (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crossick, G. J. (ed.), The Lower Middle Class in Britain 1870–1914 (1977)Google Scholar; Hooper, A. F., ‘Mid-Victorian radicalism: community and class in Birmingham, 1850–1880’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1978)Google Scholar; Howe, A. C., The Cotton Masters 1830–1860 (1984)Google Scholar; Rubinstein, W. D., ‘The Victorian middle classes: wealth, occupation, and geography’, Economic History Rev., 2nd ser., xxx (1977)Google Scholar; Seed, J., ‘Unitarianism, political economy and the antinomies of liberal culture in Manchester, 1830–50’, Social History, VII (1982).Google Scholar
2 For example: Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974)Google Scholar; Fraser, D., Power and Authority in the Victorian City (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hennock, E. P., Fit and Proper Persons (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics (1980).Google Scholar
3 See, for instance: Cook, A. F., ‘Reading 1835–1930: a community power study’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1970)Google Scholar; Daunton, M. J., Coal Metropolis: Cardiff 1870–1914 (1977)Google Scholar; Garrard, J., Leadership and power in Victorian industrial towns 1830–80 (1983)Google Scholar; Rubinstein, , ‘Wealth, elites and the class structure of modern Britain’, Past and Present, lxxvi (1977).Google Scholar
4 Waller, P. J., Town, City and Nation: England 1850–1914 (1983), 238.Google Scholar
5 E.g. Fraser, D., Urban Politics in Victorian England (1976), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf.Hennock, , Fit Persons, 61.Google Scholar
6 Perkin, H., ‘The recruitment of elites in British society since 1800’, J. Social History, XII (1978), 223Google Scholar. Classes are understood to be groups which share similar economic situations, status and organizational advantage. It is not assumed that these groups, or their subdivisions, necessarily think alike or act together. (Cf. Morris, R. J., Class and Class Consciousness in the Industrial Revolution [1979], 24–5, 27, 32–4, 34, 62–3.)Google Scholar For relevant studies which emphasize classes rather than elites see: Field, J. L., ‘Bourgeois Portsmouth: social relations in a Victorian dockyard town’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1979)Google Scholar; and Koditschek, T. S., ‘Class formation and the Bradford bourgeoisie’ (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1981).Google Scholar
7 E.g. as councillors, guardians and the officers and committee members of charity boards. (Cf. Giddens, A., ‘Elites in the British class structure’ in Stanworth, P. and Giddens, A. [eds.], Elites and Power in British Society [1974], 4.Google Scholar) The same approach (sometimes alongside a tacit socio-economic definition) can be found in: Crossick, G. J., An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London 1840–1880 (1978)Google Scholar, ch. 5; Garrard, Leadership; and Morris, R. J., ‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites, 1780–1850: an analysis’, Historical J., XXVI (1983).Google Scholar
8 See, for example, R. E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler, ‘The economic elite: theory and practice’ in Stanworth and Giddens, op. cit., 103–7, 120–1.
9 Garrard, J., Leaders and politics in nineteenth century Salford: a historical analysis of urban political power (n.d.), 27–8.Google Scholar
10 Garrard, , Leadership, 47.Google Scholar The definition is adapted from Harrison, B. H., ‘Philanthropy and the Victorians’, Victorian Studies, IX (1966), 356.Google Scholar For the important role played by philanthropy north of the Border, see Checkland, O., Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland (1980).Google Scholar
11 For extended treatment of these topics see, for instance: Garrard, J., ‘Parties, members and voters after 1867: a local study’, Historical J., xx (1977)Google Scholar; MacLaren, A., Religion and Social Class…in Aberdeen (1974)Google Scholar; McLeod, H., Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (1974)Google Scholar; Yarmie, A. H., ‘Employers' organizations in mid-Victorian England’, International Rev. Social History, xxv (1980).Google Scholar
12 Morris, , ‘Voluntary societies’, 99–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The middle class and British towns and cities of the Industrial Revolution 1780–1850’ in Fraser, D. and Sutcliffe, A. (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History (1983), 299–300Google Scholar; Yeo, S., Religion and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis (1976), 37Google Scholar; Lees, L. H., ‘The study of social conflict in English industrial towns’, Urban History Yearbook (1980), 39, 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trainor, R. H., ‘Authority and social structure in an industrialized area: a study of three Black Country towns, 1840–1890’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981), 77–80.Google Scholar
13 L. Davidoff and C. Hall, ‘The architecture of public and private life: English middle-class society in a provincial town 1780–1850’ in Fraser and Sutcliffe, op. cit.; Prochaska, F. K., Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (1980)Google Scholar, esp. 226 n.11.
14 The middle class here excludes the smallest retailers and craftsmen but includes other marginals (e.g. those with a very few employees) who, more frequently than working men, enjoyed the parliamentary vote 1832–67, the effective municipal vote, and eligibility for posts such as Poor Law guardian.
15 Morris, , ‘Voluntary societies’, 101Google Scholar; Keith-Lucas, B., The English Local Government Franchise (1952)Google Scholar, passim; G. Crossick, ‘Urban society and the petty bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century Britain’ in Fraser and Sutcliffe, op. cit., 310.
16 Bealey, F., ‘Municipal politics in Newcastle under Lyme 1872–1914’, North Staffordshire J. Field Studies, v (1965), 64Google Scholar; McCord, N., ‘The Poor Law and philanthropy’ in Fraser, D. (ed.), The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century (1976), 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Sheppard, M. G., ‘The effects of the franchise provisions on the…municipal electorate 1882–1914’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, XIV (1982)Google Scholar; Hennock, , Fit Persons, 10–13, 308, 316.Google Scholar
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23 The boundaries of these subdivisions of the middle class would vary with the size and economic structure of towns. Modest minimum levels, adapted to a town typified by smaller-scale industry, might be: (for the upper middle class) 100 non-family employees: £250 rateable value or £20,000 probate value; (for the middle middle class, with most of its elite members comfortably exceeding these levels) 10 non-family employees (5 for dealers), £40 rateable value or £2,000 at probate; and (for the lower middle class) 1 non-family employee, £20 rateable value, or £200 probate value. Professional and commercial men ordinarily qualify for the middle middle class, white-collar employees for the lower middle class. A broad intermediate category is appropriate in order to isolate the extremes of great and minimal resources (cf. Hennock, , Fit Persons, 363Google Scholar). For the derivation of these guidelines and discussion of other variables see Trainor, , ‘Authority’, 394–8.Google Scholar
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26 Ibid., 168; Bailey, V., ‘The dangerous classes in late Victorian England’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1975), 21, 28–9, 31–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zangerl, C. H. E., ‘The social composition of the county magistracy in England and Wales 1831–1887’, J. British Studies, XI (1971)Google Scholar; Jones, P., ‘The recruitment of office holders in Leicester 1861–1931’, Trans. Leicestershire Archaeological (and Historical) Society, LVIII (1981–1982), 65, 68–70Google Scholar; Trainor, , ‘Authority’, 240–1.Google Scholar
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28 Cf. Hennock, E. P., ‘Finance and politics in urban local government in England, 1835– 1900’, Historical J., VI (1963)Google Scholar; Nossiter, T. J., ‘Shopkeeper radicalism in the nineteenth century’ in Nossiter, et al. (eds.), Imagination and Precision in the Social Sciences (1972).Google Scholar
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