Victorian Chester

(work in progress)



The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the Belle Époque era of Continental Europe. Morally and politically, this period began with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists, and the Evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and arts.

By the 1830's traditional manufacturing trades in Chester, including the making of clay-pipes, clocks and gloves were in serious decline, if not entirely extinct. Ship-building at the Roodee was entering a terminal phase and rope-making barely survived. Both of the two cotton mills had closed by the 1820's, so one of the leading industries of the Industrial Revolution had failed to establish itself in Chester. While in the 18thC. the City Fair's had been dominated by linen (the trade peaked in the 1760's), by 1830 the trade was dead. The reasons for the collapse of the linen trade center around the decline in the Chester/Dublin trade route, as its ends moved from Dublin to Belfast and Chester to Liverpool, as well as the substitution of cheaper cotton for linen. In the impoverished economy, areas away from the glamour of Eastgate Street and upper Bridge Street became progressively more decayed. Stanley Palace became "a decayed mansion", while Gamul House was divided into tenements. The polarisation of rich and poor was noted at the time - Hemingway thought that there were few places in the country where the gentry formed such a high proportion of the population and he was pleased that the lack of factories meant the absence of:


 * "the crowda of the lowest rabble they engender"

George Lee Fenwick commented:


 * "..for a long time [Chester] lay almost motionless upon the great tidal wave of progress which was sweeping past, but at length a movement became apparent, and even ancient Chester.. ..could no longer withstand the onward rush of events. The turning point dates from the accession of Queen Victoria." (A History of the Ancient City of Chester, 1896)

By 1840 Chester's older and wider trade connexions had withered and it had been forced into a diminished role servicing the local region. Modest new industries had appeared in the leadworks, steam milling, and ironfounding, but the heavy reliance on providing services for the hinterland implied a dependence on its fortunes and the need for improved transport connexions. From 1840 the railways provided the means by which that could be achieved.

Red Map, Route and Line
Though not always effortlessly, Britain was able to maintain a world order which rarely threatened it's wider strategic and commercial interests. Britain's naval might was not openly challenged on the high seas between Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson's famous victory at Trafalgar in 1805 and the World War One Battle of Jutland with the German navy in 1916. The United Kingdom's population at Victoria's accession in 1837 was about 25.5 million, eight million of whom lived in Ireland. At her death in 1901, it had risen to 41 million, but that of Ireland had almost halved, mostly due to the devastating famine from 1845 - 1847, the result of a failed potato crop, due to the blight Phytophthora infestans.

At the dawn of the Victorian age Henry de la Poer Beresford, a wealthy British eccentric, arrived in Melton Mobray somewhat drunk and refusing to pay the entry toll grabbed some red paint and proceeded to "paint the town red". The Victorians would take this to an extreme and literally, on a global scale, "paint the map red" (actually, it is pink, so that it is possible to read the place-names). The Nineteenth Century saw Britain's interest and activity expand throughout Asia as Britain attempted to increase its commercial activities with China - often involving opium. Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya were all taken to facilitate trade and economic opportunities in the region - especially between India and China. In some ways opium might seem to be to the Victorians what gin had been to the Georgians although it later became unfashionable, an attitude fuelled by sensationalist journalism and works of fiction such as Sax Rohmer’s novels. Thomas De Quincey, who stayed briefly in Chester, with his mother who lived among the ruins at St Johns inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West. That most rational of Victorian fictioonal characters Sherlock Holmes was more than a little fond of morphine and cocaine. The reality was probably that "opium dens" were not as commonplace as journalists make it appear, but in many parts of India the majority of British revenue was from opium, and the Victorians purchased tea and silk in China with the profits from Indian opium. These valuable and lightweight commodities were easilly transported, but also easilly pirated, and so a navy was needed to partol the seas and take action as needed. The navy had new ships driven by steam power, required coaling stations and ports for maintenance. Defence bases were also needed for the protection of sea routes and communication lines, particularly of expensive and vital international waterways such as the Suez Canal. The eventual result was the "All-Red Route" which led from Southern Britain → Gibraltar → Malta → Alexandria → Port Said (after construction of the Canal) → Suez → Aden → Muscat (and access to the Persian Gulf) → India → Sri Lanka → Burma → Malaya → Singapore (branching out into the Pacific Ocean towards Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and other British colonies).

The Nineteenth Century also saw Britain's interest in Africa bloom as they attempted to control the maritime routes via the Cape and later the Suez Canal. As rival European powers expanded their own imperial interest in the continent, there occurred something of a 'scramble' which saw the majority of Africa come under direct European control in a remarkably short period of time. This gave them access to raw materials, especially ivory, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea, and tin. Britain's interest in the Gulf and Middle East also intensified for the same reason - as Britain sought to control access routes to and from their "Jewel in the Crown"

Science and Technology progressed enormously during Victorian times. At its beginning the telegraph was barely being invented, by its end radio signals were about to cross the Atlantic. During her reign the far-flung empire was in part held together by a network of submarine cables known as the "All Red Line". The British had both supply side and demand side advantages. In terms of supply, Britain had entrepreneurs willing to put forth enormous amounts of capital necessary to build, lay and maintain these cables. In terms of demand, Britain's vast colonial empire led to business for the cable companies from news agencies, trading and shipping companies, and the British government. Britain also possessed the majority of the world's underwater-telegraph deployment and repair equipment and expertise, and a monopoly of the gutta-percha insulation for underwater lines.

Early Victorian: Debt, Votes and Railways
During the Victorian age, Britain was the world's most powerful nation, having inherited a vast commercial empire from the Georgians. It had also inherited a vast national debt from the expense of the incessant Georgian wars - half of the tax revenue (admittedly far lower than today) was spent on servicing that debt. It has been said that half the debt came from trying to push the Bourbons off the throne of France, the other half trying to get them back (in place of Napoleon). Chester was in the difficult position that its "commercial empire" had effectively evaporated.

Britain also started the Victorian age with some reform of government. It had avoided the revolutionary changes in France, but had been forced to dispose of the most blatant "rotten boroughs" and extend the franchise, if only slightly. This had some effect on Chester but in many ways the system there was still rotten.

It had also seen the introduction of the first steam railways providing for relatively rapid movement of goods and services. Industrial towns had grown but Chester was not one of them, neither was it an effective port. However the arrival of the railways would bring significant opportunities.

The Chartists and Napier
One of the themes which ran through Georgian Chester was the gradual development of electoral procedures, both for the parliamentary seats (dominated by the Grosvenors) and the Corporation. Both were the subject of what would now be seen as blatant corruption and malpractice, although that was commonplace at the time. The [ Reform Act of 1832] extended the franchise. In county constituencies in addition to forty shilling freeholders franchise rights were extended to owners of land in copyhold worth £10 and holders of long-term leases (more than sixty years) on land worth £10 and holders of medium-term leases (between twenty and sixty years) on land worth £50 and to tenants-at-will paying an annual rent of £50. In towns and cities it gave the vote to all householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more and some lodgers.

The passing of the Reform Act 1832, failed to extend the vote beyond those owning property, and the political leaders of the working class made speeches claiming that there had been a great act of betrayal, with those owning property having looked only to their own interests as soon as they gained the vote. This sense that the working class had been betrayed by the middle class was strengthened by the actions of the Whig governments of the 1830s. Notably, the hated new Poor Law Amendment was passed in 1834, depriving working people of outdoor relief and driving the poor into Workhouses, where families were separated. It was the massive wave of opposition to this measure in the north of England in the late 1830s that gave Chartism the numbers that made it a mass movement. It seemed to the Chartists that only securing the vote for working men would further change things.



In 1839 the state of the country was unsettled and there was much talk of possible riots by the Chartists - and possibly even an attack on Chester Castle. The Castle was next to Chester Gaol, where Chartists were held (as in the Chartist song "Chester Gaol"). General Sir Charles Napier wrote to Chester as follows:


 * Major Bayly, August 10th.—I attach little credit to the threatened attack on Chester Castle, yet be prepared. You must urge the town magistrates to swear in special constables and arm the pensioners; the gentlemen of the city may arm themselves also. Be most careful of the castle and cautious how you weaken your garrison in case of danger. Colonel Wemyss has orders if armed insurgents move from Hyde towards Chester to have them pursued by as strong a body of cavalry as he can spare.

By April 1840 General Sir Charles James Napier was moved to Chester from Nottingham with a force of cavalty and troops to quell potential riots. He recorded his view of Chester:


 * All the rogues, and fools and drunkards in the country seem collected, and the Row balconies are filled all day with idlers and well-dressed girls, young and old, looking into the streets from daybreak till dark. Such idleness I never witnessed as at Chester. My life has been long, it has but twelve years to run, and yet I never, in any country, witnessed such stupid idleness as in Chester. Those who go to the course have some fun, but those who hang over the Row balconies all day like old clothes, see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing.

The reason why so many Chartists were imprisoned at Chester Castle was presumably that it was not a particularly Chartist city, and had a gaol with a militay garrison on site. By the summer of 1840, the threat posed by Chartism's first Charter petition and the anger that followed its rejection had receded. In the crackdown that followed Parliament's brusque dismissal of the petition, some of the movement's most able leaders had been imprisoned, some at Chester. In the final few months of 1840, the inspectors of prisons set about the production of a remarkable report for their political masters at the Home Office. Each of the Chartist prisoners was in turn interviewed by a prison inspector - 73 interviews in all - and information recorded about their personal circumstances and religious views, their offences, and their own experience of imprisonment. It seems that, for the time, prison conditions for the Chartists ware not harsh. As for Napier's later career, Napier House at Chester Castle is named after him. Napier is famous for some of his other quotes in the tradition of British colonialism:


 * "The best way to quiet a country is a good thrashing, followed by great kindness afterwards. Even the wildest chaps are thus tamed"

In 1843 Sir Charles James Napier led a small force (2,500) of native infantry and cavalry and one British regiment, the Cheshire Regiment, against the Baluchi Army of the Ameers of Scinde. The desert fortress of Emaun Ghur was destroyed, and then, on February l7th, 1843, the small British force defeated 30,000 Baluchis at Meeanee. A month later the Baluchis were defeated at Hyderabad. The province of Scinde fell into British hands, and The Regiment gained the honours of Meeanee, Hyderabad and Scinde. The honours of Meeanee and Hyderbad are shared with some Indian Regiments. That of Scinde is borne by the Cheshire Regiment alone.

There is the now known to be apocryphal tale that after Charles Napier defeated the Emirs of Scinde, he send a one word telegram to Lord Ellenborough – "Peccavī" (Latin for "I have sinned") he is said to have recieved the response "Vovī" (I have Oudh - actually "I have vowed", not very good latin). Unfortunately none of this is true. The Military Museum at Chester Castle features an extensive display on Napier and explains how the urban myth about his signal "Peccave" came about. This was not said by Napier at all, but was a suggestion made by Catherine Winkworth a latin student to a vicar (possibly William Gaskell), who wrote to the newspapers about it. The quote was used in "Punch" magazine and after that was falsely attributed to Napier.

The fighting in Scinde was an early stage in the "Great Game" a possibly fictitious political and diplomatic confrontation that supposedly existed for most of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire, over Afghanistan and neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia. There has been much speculation as to whether the "Great Game" was to lead onto the Crimean War, the first war in which steam powered armoured ships took part, and in which poison gasses might have been used but for the refusal of Michael Faraday to develop them. Such "frightfulness" would have to wait for another war.

The Railways and Chester


The Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825-1863) demonstrated the feasibility of steam locomotive propulsion for hauling coal. But this did not spark a railway investment mania. What really changed investor expectations for railways was the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in September 1830. This line demonstrated to investors that there was a new, initially unanticipated, and until that opening very speculative, source of demand for railway transportation, namely passenger travel. Matters were only helped by the publicity provided by the death of the unfortunate Liverpool MP William Huskisson, run down by Stephenson's Rocket while trying to shake the hand of the Duke of Wellington. The money to be made moving people around the North West of England wouldbecome a clear draw for investors.

The Victorian era saw Chester transformed into something of a "Railway Town", but not one that benefitted from the industry that railways directly brought (such as at Crewe). Rather the railways brought stock for it's stores, and access to visitors and customers. Chester, with its racecourse, was at the junction of several routes and could therefore source these visitors from those who saw it as a destination and those passing through. The railways were privately funded and "Railway Mania" was an instance of speculative communications frenzy in Britain in the 1840s. It followed a common pattern, similar to that of the "Canal Mania": as the price of railway shares increased, more and more money was poured in by speculators, until the inevitable collapse. Railway Mania reached its zenith in 1846 (the same year as the Irish Famine), when no fewer than 272 Acts of Parliament were passed, setting up new railway companies, and the proposed routes totaled 9,500 miles (15,300 km) of new railway. Few made a fortune, most lost their money. Much the same pattern was followed in the 1990s in the stock of telecom companies, but the railway mania was in economic terms a far larger crash, at it's most fervent individual capitalists, in pursuit of private profit, were plowing more than twice as much into the constructionof a public infrastructure as their nation was spending on the military. This private funding was quite unlike anywhere else in the world, were governments were heavily involved in financing the construction of this infrastructure.

Railway promoters needed government permission to force land-owners to sell the land needed for the railways. Until recently, with the Parliamentary reforms, the government had been completely dominated by the landed aristocracy and perhaps the fact that "everything was changing quickly" fueled the frenzy.

During the late 1830's there was much discussion of the possible route of an improved rail and sea communication with Dublin. With the passing of the Act of Union in 1800, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, elected Irish members of the new United Kingdom Parliament sought the same quality of travel and postal facilities as their fellow members from England, Wales and Scotland. Improvements continued slowly during Georgian Chester, and by the time Thomas Telford had completed his A5 road with improvements through Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Betws-y-coed, Bangor and his Menai Suspension Bridge in 1826, the London to Holyhead journey by road and ship was down to under 30 hours. Chester's Grosvenor Bridge was to a large part a response to Telford's A5 roud route and the percieved threat to the historic Irish trade in Chester.

The origins of the General Station came about as a consequence of the fragmentary nature of early railway development where many individual companies built relatively short lines that only later came to form strategic national routes. The major routes into the station were all completed within the decade from 1840 to 1850. The actual histories of the individual companies is somewhat complex as this was a time of considerable speculation when companies were founded, renamed, merged or bought out frequently. The following summary is only an outline.

Lines to Birkenhead and a month later the Crewe begain the railway age in Chester in 1840 connecting through to the national rail network and London Euston. In November 1846 the Chester & Shrewsbury line was opened from Ruabon to Chester and by 1848 it was completed through to Shrewsbury affording a direct link from Chester to London Paddington. The Chester & Holyhead Railway was authorised in July 1844, but by November 1846 it was opened only as far as Saltney. Completion to Bangor followed in May 1848, Holyhead the final destination only being reached in 1850 on the completion of the Brittania Bridge across the Menai Straits. The last major line to reach Chester General was the Warrington Line of the Birkenhead Lancashire and Cheshire Junction Railway. This line was authorised in 1846 and opened in 1850. A branch to Whitchurch opened in 1872 and the line to Mold & Denbigh as early as 1849.

From 1841 to 1871 Chester enjoyed thirty economic boom years. These coincide roughly with the "Great Victorian Boom". The main evidence for this is the extent of migration to the city and population growth, but prosperity was also reflected in a large rise in the number of businesses and in the amount of rebuilding in the city centre. The arrival of the railways reasserted Chester's importance for transport and consolidated its function as a service centre for the region. A limited growth in manufacturing further diversified the economy. In choosing their route through the City, and given the main imperative of creating efficient communication with Ireland through the new port of Holyhead, the railway avoided the City Centre, locating Chester Station in an outlying area of marshy land known as Flookersbrook after the stream that ran through it. The land was occupied only by market gardens and a single row of cottages: one of which was occupied by a shoemaker who had to be forcibly evicted. The growth of Hoole followed quickly.

Disease, Slum Courts and Poverty
Chester's poor lived in the many "slum courts" around the city. Often within a very short distance of prosperity. Sanitation was poor and in some cases non-existent. A court could have a single tap providing water of dubious quality. Cess pits were sometimes the only means of disposing of wastes. Even for the wealthier, the sewers were of unsuitable construction and some even emptied into the River Dee above the weir.

In 1866 there was an outbreak of cholera (see: Pandemic). At a meeting of the Assembly in May 1866 it was decided to provide two places for Cholera wards within the City in case the outbreak reached Chester. One of these was located in a disused farmhouse on the land which was to become Grosvenor Park. The heftiest women from the local workhouse were selected as potential nurses but there was some concern that they were neither honest nor sober, had no training and that it was unwise to put them in charge of either patients or medicines. Fortunately Frances Wilbraham (1815-1905) of Kings Buildings (King Street), a wealthy member of the local gentry volunteered to oversee them. The first two case of cholera appeared on 1st September 1866. One was a woman from a tenement in Goss Street the other Alderman John Trevor, a former mayor and editor of the Chester Chronicle: both were dead within days. The ward in the park was soon full of the sick and dying, but Francis Wilbraham nursed them tirelessly and by November the outbreak began to abate. The Duke of Westminster called Frances Wilbraham the "Florence Nightingale of Chester". The farmhouse was demolished before Grosvenor Park was opened. The epidemics illustrated the weakness of the sewage system in Chester and in 1872–5, alarmed by analysis of the drinking water, and with George Angelo Bell as consultant, the council built intercepting sewers to collect the outfall from the existing drains, one running from the Bars to the Little Roodee and the other from Liverpool Road to a new treatment works by the Dee off Sealand Road, from where the treated effluent was discharged into the river.

Despite the improvements to the water supply, little else was done for the city-center poor. White Lion Yard, just off Crook Street was an example of a stable converted into "houses". In November 1879 the Chester Chronicle reported on a visit to White Lion Yard:


 * "We looked into one of those places – I cannot call them cottages – where Mother Brady resides. The poor old body, whose wrinkled and decrepit little form seemed made of parchment, and very dirty parchment at that, said she had been very ill since last Christmas. The walls were yellow with grease and her den is about six feet in width – next to it is a bulk of eight closets, separated from the houses by a passage of some two feet. An ash pit full to the brim occupied the centre and on both sides of the passage a filthy stream ran. The cottages may be compared to No 1c ell in the County Gaol, with the difference being that they are neither clean nor well ventilated."

Poverty was often associated with crime. Hannah Payne of sometimes of White Lion Yard was brought before the magistrate Major French over 100 times for a variety of "petty crimes": she eventually died on a bench in the Market Inn, aged 66, in 1874.

It would be well into the 20th Century before the last of the City-center slums was cleared.

Fenians
In 1867, Chester Castle was the focus of an audacious plot by Fenians (supporters of Republicanism in Ireland) that ended in farce. Their plan was that around 2,000 men would infiltrate Chester and, under American-Irish command (by officers with experience in the American Civil War), seize a cache of rifles belonging to the Chester Volunteers. These arms would be used to storm the castle, at that time garrisoned by only 60 regular soldiers of the 54th Regiment. The castle arsenal contained 10,000 rifles and 900,000 rounds of ammunition, which the Fenians hoped to obtain. Once armed, the plan was to commandeer a train, take the arms to Holyhead, seize a streamer, sail to Wexford and raise a revolt in Ireland. Unsubstantiated additional features of the plot (possibly just scaremongering) included sabotage of the waterworks, the burning of Chester and the sacking of its shops.

Immorality
Detail of "immoral" conduct in Victorian Chester is hard to find, possibly because of self-censorship by the press. In the 29th November 1879 issue of the "Chester Chronicle" we read that the slum courts of Chester are: "foul and filthy dens, the resorts of thieves, prostitutes, and drunkards", but no further detail is given. Brothel-keeper "Madam Chester" of Manchester was actually Polly Evans of Cefn near Wrexham, but little is known of her brief career in Chester, other than a vague suggestion that the services she offered included flagellation.

The "Chester City Police Reports Against Constables Book", 1842-69, shows that a significant number of officers were dismissed from the force for drinking with prostitutes, being drunk in a brothel and being drunk on duty. When prostitutes made reports against these same officers, documented in the newspapers, they were not recorded in the Reports book. There are also many examples of inappropriate comments and behaviours being displayed in the courtroom by the women being prosecuted, with a multitude of taunts and "improper" comments being levelled at the magistrates and Mayors. This perhaps demonstrates that the bench was dealing with "known" characters, however "known" is interpreted.

Salvationists and the Skeleton Army
During the Victorian period the link between Irish immigration, crime, and disorder in England was widely regarded by contemporary observers as axiomatic. In 1836 the Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain devoted four pages to the examination of Irish criminality, noting that:


 * "..the Irish in the larger towns of Lancashire commit more crimes than an equal number of natives of the same places,” and in 1839 the Report of the Constabulary Commissioners observed that in the towns of South Lancashire, “when large bodies of Irish of less orderly habits, and far more prone to the use of violence in fits of intoxication settled permanently in these towns, the existing police force, which was sufficient to repress crime and disorders among a purely English population, has been found, under these altered circumstances, inadequate to the regular enforcement of the law."

In Chester much the same prejudice existed. Large numbers of Irish people came to Chester during the Famine, in 1851 forming 7.3 per cent of the population. The Irish were, nevertheless, a minority among the newcomers to Chester. In 1851 over 30 per cent of the city's population had come from the surrounding counties and another 20 per cent from further afield in Great Britain. The proportions had not altered greatly by 1911.

The Gilded Age
The Edwardian period featured many innovations. Ernest Rutherford published his studies on radioactivity. The first transatlantic wireless signals were sent by Guglielmo Marconi, and the Wright brothers flew for the first time. By the end of the era, Louis Blériot had crossed the English Channel by air; the largest ship in the world, RMS Olympic, had sailed on its maiden voyage and her larger sister RMS Titanic was under construction.



There has been much debate as to the causes of World War I and the actual picture is still considered unclear. The deepest distinction among historians remains between those who focus on the actions of Germany and Austria-Hungary as key and those who focus on a wider group of actors. Some historians maintain that Germany deliberately sought war while others do not. The main distinction among the latter is between those who believe that a war between the "Great Powers" was ultimately unplanned but still caused principally by Germany and Austria-Hungary taking risks, and those who believe that either all or some of the other powers, namely Russia, France, Serbia and Great Britain, played a more significant role in risking war than had been traditionally suggested. A view has been put forward that the cause was Jingoism. Marxist historians see it as the inevitable clash of capitalist systems, while Social Darwinists see it as a conflict over resources following a period of growth into new empires. Others have suggested that the development of the Dreadnought, a fast highly advanced warship with an "all big gun" configuration, showed the world that it was possible to build a navy which could compete with the long-standing British dominance of the seas. There are arguments and counter-arguments all ways.

People
Many people contributed to the development of photography and in Victorian times it became fashionable. In the March 1851 issue of The Chemist, Frederick Scott Archer published his wet plate collodion process. It became the most widely used photographic medium until the gelatin dry plate, introduced in the 1870s, eventually replaced it. The Victorians embraced phtography as an alternative to painted portraits, so it is here, in the Victorian gallery that photographs first appear.

Related Pages

 * Chester Station: how the railways transformed Chester;
 * Town Hall: where Victorian sculpture depits their view of history;

Online

 * Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s;
 * THE CHARTIST PRISONERS, 1839-41
 * THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF INDIAN OPIUM AND TRADE WITH CHINA ON BRITAIN’S ECONOMY, 1843–1890;
 * "When all hope is gone";

Chester in Other Historical Periods



 * Before The Romans;
 * Roman Chester;
 * Dark Ages;
 * Medieval Chester;
 * Tudor Chester;
 * Stuart Chester and Civil War;
 * Georgian Chester;
 * Victorian Chester;