19th Century 1800-1899

Peterloo Massacre

The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 was a tipping moment in British history. The event that came to be called the Peterloo Massacre did not begin with the intention of being a pivotal point in history. On the 16th August 1819 tens of thousands of ordinary citizens of Manchester met in a place called St Peter’s…

Read More

Sir Thomas Lipton

Sir Thomas Lipton

Sir Thomas Lipton, the very embodiment of the cliche, ‘Poor boy makes good’, was born in 1850 of working class Northern Irish parents in Glasgow. Lipton started work as n errand boy and became a millionaire through the vast chain of grocers shops that he had created and by 1908 he was one of the…

Read More

Stale Bread Act 1801

This entry is part [part not set] of 15 in the series Reformers and Radicals

What did the act say? This was an Act imposed at a time of panicked desperation by a British Government trying to keep the lid on an explosive and fed up population. The bread shortage of the previous five years had not abated and so the Government, in its wisdom decided that the population would…

Read More

Hyde Park Riot 1866

Hyde Park Riots 1866
This entry is part [part not set] of 15 in the series Reformers and Radicals
This entry is part [part not set] of 6 in the series Reform

There is nothing new in Governments facing opposition to the passage of bills over which there has been much heated debate. During the 1860’s and following on the heals of the Chartists, there emerged in 1864, a Reform League. The Reform League wanted fundamental changes to the voting rights of ordinary working class men and…

Read More

Octavia Hill

Octavia Hill

Octavia Hill, social reformer and one of the founders of the National Trust. Octavia Hill was born in 1838 into a family of social reformers, her grandfather was Thomas Southwood Smith a public health reformer and her father was a friend of Jeremy Bentham so from an early age she was exposed to the need…

Read More

The Framework Knitters Declaration 1812

Frameworkers
This entry is part [part not set] of 4 in the series Agricutural Revolution
This entry is part [part not set] of 15 in the series Reformers and Radicals

The issuing of this declaration by the framework knitters was in response to the machines that as the workers saw it was bringing down wages and producing inferior quality goods. The framework knitters (also called stockingers), launched the Luddite protests in Nottingham in 1811, justifying their actions by referring to the 1663 Charter of the…

Read More

The Framework Knitters 1821

Almost ten years on from the 1812 ‘Declaration of the Framework knitters’, conditions for the framework knitters of the counties of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester has not seen any sign of improving. The pay for these workers, of whom there were estimated to be about 15,000 in these three counties, was insufficient to keep them…

Read More

Chimney Sweeps Act 1834

The Chimney Sweeps Act 1834 was enacted in an attempt to protect the children employed by the ‘sweeping’ masters from cruel exploitation. The act forbade the apprenticing of any boy under the age of 10 years and the employment of children under 14 in chimney sweeping unless they were apprenticed or on trial. There seemed…

Read More