Victorian civic pride

Birmingham Council House, Victoria Square
Public domain

The building of cities was a characteristic Victorian achievement, impressive in scale but limited in vision, creating new opportunities but also providing massive new problems. Perhaps their outstanding feature was hidden from public view - their hidden network of pipes, drains, and sewers, one of the biggest technical and social achievements of the age ... Yet their surface world was fragmented, intricate, cluttered, eclectic and noisy, the unplanned product of a private enterprise economy developing within an older, traditional society. …Economic individualism and common civic purpose were difficult to reconcile.… Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities.

Individualist preference for avoiding public enterprise whenever possible died hard. J.K. Ensor, England, 1870-1914.

Urbanisation

The census of 1871 revealed that out of a population of 31 million nearly two thirds still lived in rural areas or in towns of less than 10,000 inhabitants. Apart from London only five cities housed more than a quarter of a million people. Heavy urbanization was physically confined to certain localities: London and Middlesex, Lancashire and Durham, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, west-central Scotland and parts of south Wales.  Suburbia was still limited and was unknown as a word. Most people still lived near their place of work. Farm labouring was the largest male occupation. Even in industrial areas many urban-dwellers lived within walking distance of green fields.

But this census was the last decennial survey for which this was true. The picture was irrevocably shattered by 

1. the agricultural depression that drove many off the land 
2. the gravitational pull of urban employment 
3. the development of a cheap, suburban transport system. 

Writing in 1901 the novelist H. G. Wells envisaged the total breakdown of the traditional distinction between town and country. He predicted that by the start of the twentieth century the Londoner might ‘have a choice of nearly all England and Wales south of Nottingham and east of Exeter as its suburb' (quoted G. R. Searle, A New England?, Oxford, 2004, p. 86).

The Victorians continually commented on the speed of urban development. A north London rector wrote,

I have tried to keep Hornsey a village, but circumstances have beaten me (quoted Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, 1954, p. 31.)

The visitor to Birmingham could expect to find a street of houses in the autumn where he saw his horse at grass in the spring. In Victorian South London the houses could spring up in what seemed a single night (Briggs, p. 31).

Much of the effort went into church building, but particularly in the last quarter of the century there was a huge development of public offices, hospitals, schools, sewage farms, and water works.

These rapid changes meant that the late Victorians were subject to two conflicting ideas. On the one hand there was a flowering of civic pride, seen in the growing activism of the municipal corporations set up by the Act of 1835. On the other there was a deep rural nostalgia shown in the growing market for idyllic depictions of the countryside.

Transport

Trains: The railway linked the new cities together and made their growth possible. The first railways encouraged the concentration of the urban population (contrast with the car which scattered cities further away from their centres). The first local passenger service to be authorized in London was started between Tooley Street and Deptford in 1863. The first workman’s fare was introduced in London by the Metropolitan Railway Company in 1864 and on a section of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1852. The Cheap Trains Act of 1883, which compelled the railway companies to offer workman’s fares was deliberately designed for further encouraging the migration of the working classes into the suburbs in order to relieve housing congestion in the central areas.

Trams: The first tram was introduced in Birkenhead in 1860 by the American engineer, George Francis Train. The Tramways Act of 1870 gave local authorities the option to buy out private tramways by compulsory purchase after twenty years of operation. By 1900 61 local authorities owned tramways and 89 undertakings were managed by private enterprise. The trams made it possible for working men to get to the football grounds and to the holiday firework displays and galas in the public parks.

London transport: In London, the advent of trams was fiercely resisted. But in the 1850s Charles Pearson, solicitor to the City of London, devised a plan to build an ‘Arcade Railway’ beneath the Farringdon Road to connect the Great Northern railway at King’s Cross with Farringdon in the City of London. The Great Northern agreed to subscribe £170,000, but one of its officials misappropriated the money and was transported for life.

The scheme was revived in the 1860s in the form of the Metropolitan Railway which would connect Paddington, Euston and Kings Cross to the Faringdon terminus. The Times condemned it as Utopian. Most of the capital was contributed by engineering firms, who hoped to gain contracts to build the proposed railway. The Metropolitan Railway was opened on 9 January 1863. The railway earned its shareholders reasonable dividends, though these were mainly due to the policy of building railways overground into the suburbs - Gladstone lost £25,000 worth of stock in 1884.

The Inner Circle was complete by 1884. The City and Southwark followed in 1890. An Act of 1893 authorized the Bakerloo Line to link Baker Street and Waterloo, though the building was held up by problems of funding.

The Northern Metropolitan Railway coined the term ‘Metroland’. In 1868 an independent railway company had opened a line from Baker Street to Swiss Cottage, and in 1880 the Northern Metropolitan extended it to Harrow. The slogan: ‘Live in Metroland’ showed that it was not so much satisfying existing needs as creating new residential districts.

The railway made chain stores and large department stores possible. W. H. Smith and Sons were directly dependent on the railway. They began to build their networks in the 1850s. Department stores began to flourish in London and the provinces in the 1880s and 90s.

Long distance commuting also became possible. In 1891 a commentator wrote of how ‘rich merchants and stockbrokers’ went up to town in the morning from Brighton, and returned in time for dinner.

Health

In 1869 Manchester appointed its first medical officer of health - Liverpool had been even earlier - 1847. But in general, it was not until after the 1870s that health conditions in the poorer parts of the cities began to improve. The Sanitary Commission of 1869-1870 collected ample evidence concerning the petty jealousies and unwillingness to spend money of the mid-Victorian Boards of Health. This was the prelude to the setting up of the Local Government Board in 1871, the Public Health Act of 1875, which divided the country into urban and rural sanitary districts with clearly defined duties, and the Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwelling Acts of the same year.

Civic pride?

In spite of its problems, the political vitality of the Victorian city was a cause of civic pride. Liberal politicians in particular praised it for its progressive spirit and lack of deference. In contrast to the Dorset labourers, Manchester working men were not expected to touch their caps to their masters.

However the problems of the cities were increasingly recognized. During the 1880s and 90s the detailed study of the poorer parts of the city became highly systematic and organized, and social surveys founded on statistical investigation familiarized the reading public with the awkward facts of deprivation.

There was also the phenomenon recognized by European observers, that wealthy manufacturers did not wish to live in the town but in the country. Ruskin, Morris, William Booth and other commentators expressed horror at urban life. The paradox is that the most urban society in the world was deeply ambivalent about urbanization. One religious novelist wrote:

Adam and Eve were created and placed in a garden. Cities are the result of the fall (quoted Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 78).

Birmingham and the Civic Gospel

During the 1870s and 1880s Birmingham (population 344,000) acquired the reputation of being the best governed city in the world. It had a very diverse labour force, skilled and therefore relatively prosperous. Housing was better than in most English cities, and there was a high degree of social mobility. In the early Victorian period it was the home of Christian Socialist clergymen, such as the Unitarian, George Dawson, who preached the civic gospel, and of radical politicians. From 1857 John Bright was one of the MPs. He had been defeated in Manchester because of his opposition to the Crimean War, but was welcomed in Birmingham.

The radical tradition continued with the formation of the Birmingham Liberal Association in 1865. It campaigned with the Reform League for the extension of the franchise. The Association became a powerful body within the Liberal party, and in the general election of 1868 it secured the return of three Liberal MPs. This type of ‘caucus’ organization was unprecedented.

The other great Birmingham radical was  Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), a member of Dawson's congregation.

Joseph Chamberlain in later life
Public domain

Chamberlain had arrived in Birmingham in 1854 at the age of eighteen, and quickly established a reputation as a businessman and forceful personality. He became a partner in the screw-manufacturing firm of Nettlefold and Chamberlain. A Unitarian, he was drawn into politics by his opposition to Anglican privilege. He became a councillor in 1869 and in 1870 of the first School Board. Four years later he was chosen as Mayor as well as Chairman of the School Board. He was re-elected mayor in 1874 and 1875.

His three years of office from 1873 to 1876 saw the implementation of his civic gospel.

There is no nobler sphere for those who have not the opportunity of engaging in imperial politics than to take part in municipal work, to the wise conduct of which they owe the welfare, the health, the comfort and the lives of 400,000 people. Quoted Tristram Hunt, 'Streets of stone, cities of gold', BBC History Magazine, 5 (July 2004)

His radical programme in Birmingham and the caucus system of securing it were wildly controversial, yet both forced the problems of big cities into national prominence. City government was transformed

Chamberlain’s achievements in Birmingham were:

1. the purchase by the corporation of the gas-works, water-works and sewage farm 
2. the destruction of the slums in the heart of the city 
3. the provision of artisans’ dwellings 
4. the extension of free libraries and galleries

Gas figured prominently in the working out of the civic gospel - it was the classic symbol of ‘improvement’. Chamberlain gave three reasons for ‘municipalizing’ the gas and water companies 

1. financial: its profits could be used to improve the health of Birmingham. 
2. all monopolies in any way sustained by the state should be in the hands of the elected representatives of the people, to whom their profits should of right go.
3. municipalization would increase the power and influence of the local council, which should be encouraged to become a real local parliament, supreme in its own sphere of jurisdiction.

Agreement with the gas companies (the Birmingham Gas and Light Co and the Staffordshire Gas Light Co) was finally reached in March 1874. The Birmingham Corporation Gas Act received the Royal Assent in August 1875. The first year’s profits greatly exceeded expectations. Plant was extended and modernized, the price of gas was lowered (it had come down by thirty per cent by 1884) and the working conditions of the employees improved.

In the same year the Council began negotiations to acquire public control of the Birmingham Waterworks Company. This put up more of a resistance than the gas companies, and in the Lords the bill was bitterly opposed as ‘compulsory purchase’ and unjust to shareholders. The bill passed the House in August 1875 and the Works were transferred in January 1876.

Chamberlain’s third venture was his town improvement scheme. The 1875 Artisans’ Dwelling Act allowed corporations to purchase slum property for the purchase of clearance. Chamberlain saw in this not only an opportunity to clear away the slums in the centre but a chance to carry out a radical new town improvement. His intention was to create a new ‘Parisian Boulevard’ (Corporation Street) lined with blocks of modern dwellings - though when it was built the new street was composed of shops and office buildings. Work began in 1878. Corporation Street was opened as far as Bull Street in 1881.

Birmingham: the new buildings

The classical Town Hall, modelled on the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, had begun in 1832 but was not finished until the early 1860s. Its total cost was the relatively modest £25,000. It was a town hall in the literal sense in that it only contained one large room.

Between 1855 and 1863 it was joined by E. M. Barry’s Midland Institute and Public Library (demolished in 1965). 

The Birmingham and Midland Institute
British Library, Public domain

On the exterior, a rusticated ground floor carried a giant order of Corinthian half columns. Inside the Central Library was the 'Corporation Art Gallery', which opened in 1867 with a collection of only fifty-six paintings. Thanks to donations from wealthy benefactors, the collection increased dramatically. In 1881 it moved to the City Museum and Art Gallery.

In 1853 the Council bought the site of the future Council House for municipal offices, but it remained undeveloped until 1870. In that year a proposal of the Estates Committee was at last accepted and Alfred Waterhouse was hired as a consultant. Chamberlain laid the foundation stone in 1874. The total cost was £120,000. It remains 'a brick and mortar memorial to the municipal gospel (Tristram Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 2005, p. 356)'.

Birmingham: showcase city

In 1874 Chamberlain stood unsuccessfully for Sheffield. At a by-election in 1876 he was elected MP for Birmingham. In 1877 he reorganized the Liberal party in the constituencies by forming large local associations on a representative basis in federating them in a central organization, the National Liberal Federation. He was thus able to claim substantial credit for the Liberal victory in 1880. The election was regarded as a test of ‘the efficiency of the new democratic machinery of which Birmingham is the capital’.

Writers from all parts of the world went to Birmingham to report on what they saw there. In 1890 an American writer called it ‘the best governed city in the world’. The doctrine of ‘municipal socialism’ rapidly enveloped the 19th century city. In 1909 of the 74 county boroughs in England and Wales, 53 owned their water undertakings, 33 the gas supply, 65 electricity and 50 the tramways. The socialist writer, Sidney Webb, described the route of a town councillor as he walked along

the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water (quoted Briggs, p. 236).

Conclusion

The development of Birmingham shows the growth of civic pride in the late-Victorian era. As Tristram Hunt has written

The sanctity of laissez-faire, of legislative let-alone and governmental interference, had been progressively (if haphazardly) undermined by growing local and central intervention through the 1840s and 1850s. Concerns over urban sanitation and public health slowly augmented the power and reach of town councils. Part of the consequence of that change was a conceptual shirt in perceptions about what the nineteenth-century stood for. [Early nineteenth-century voluntary organisations] were being forced to share the civic terrain with an increasingly confident set of democratic town councils. … Cities became known not just by the activities of their businesses or the culture of their civil society but also by the reforms and rhetoric of their councils (Building Jerusalem, 2004, pp. 315-16).

But for all its impressive achievements, Birmingham continued to suffer the usual fate of Victorian cities - alternating between periods of civic spending and going slow. Battles about rates were endemic as rate-payers were often reluctant to finance grand civic schemes. The Victorian city never quite matched up to its ideals.