BBC - History British History in depth: The Rise of the Victorian Middle Class (2024)

The middling sort

The image of the nineteenth century as a period of great opportunity for men of energy and skill is one that has been long established. In the past, historians have argued that an industrious middle-class made great fortunes in the early days of the industrial revolution and converted economic success into political power in the 1832 Reform Act. This political power was then used to ensure policy reflected the middle-class interests. Such arguments present the middle-class as a coherent body mobilising their economic and political power to forge society in their image. Challenging landed privilege and aristocratic corruption, this industrial and urban middle-class can be seen as striving to establish a society based on merit rather than on one's birth. Through education reform, schemes of civic improvement and the growth of the market the Victorian middle class saw themselves as facilitating equality of opportunity by enabling the working classes to realise their abilities. These reforms mean that today we live in an open society in which we all have the potential to become middle-class...doesn't it?

The Victorian middle-class is largely associated with the growth of cities and the expansion of the economy. The term was used from around the mid-eighteenth century to describe those people below the aristocracy but above the workers. As a social category, the 'middling sort' always referred to a broad band of the population, but this diversity increased in the nineteenth century. Alongside the businessmen associated with the growth of manufacturing, the period saw the increased numbers of small entrepreneurs. Shopkeepers and merchants who undertook to transport and retail the fruits of industry and empire. The increased scale of industry and oversees trade, together with the expansion of empire fuelled the proliferation of commerce and finance such as banks, insurance companies, shipping and railways. This system needed administrating by clerks, managers and salaried professionals. The expansion of cities, towns and the economy produced new spaces that needing regulating and running. The Victorian period witnessed the massive expansion of local government and the centralised state, providing occupations for a vast strata of civil servants, teachers, doctors, lawyers and government officials as well as the clerks and assistants which helped these institutions and services to operate.

Such diversity makes a satisfactory definition of the middle-class impossible. There is no clear relationship to the means of production. Although there were some individuals that accumulated spectacular wealth in the nineteenth century through entrepreneurial activity, there were many more businessmen who scraped a living and many who worked for wages as public servants, managers or clerks. The economic boundary of the 'middle-class' was not clear. Some members of the middle-class used their wealth to buy land and stately homes, becoming as rich, if not richer than the aristocracy. At the same time, many members of the skilled working class could earn as much if not more than some members of the lower middle-class.

Rise to power

Upper middle class home©Such economic and financial divergences were compounded by differences of religion, background and politics. But, whilst it is difficult to talk of the Victorian middle-class as a group with a coherent outlook, they nevertheless gained coherence out of the political and social changes of the period. Giving voice to urbanisation and industrialisation this emerging middle-class emphasised competition, thrift, prudence, self-reliance and personal achievement as opposed to privilege and inheritance. The moral terms of this outlook enabled the middle-class to accommodate diversity. Being middle class was defined by taking responsibility for one's self, one's family and the community but the precise terms of this were open to individual interpretation.

The success of the middle-classes in the Victorian period can be seen in their ability to universalise a set of principles based on individuality and progress. In moving from a society based on rank and privilege to one based on free exchange, the very idea that an individual, through hard work, thrift and self reliance, could achieve social and economic success provided an equalising principle. But, whilst the idea of social mobility was, and still is, central to legitimising the idea of a market economy, many critics of industrialisation, such as Thomas Carlyle, feared that the community was threatened by the aggressive individualism of some or the frustrated aspirations of others.

A sense of social order was formulated in the mixing of political economy, paternalism and evangelical religion which ascribed specific roles to groups of people. The working classes were encouraged to improve but they were also reminded they should be content with their lot as labourers. Whilst women's work, either for wages or to ensure the success of the family business, might be essential, the idealised wife and mother was prescribed the responsibility for cultivating morality and spirituality in the home as a corrective to the worst excesses of competitive industry.

These perspectives were popularised in a range of books and articles in the nineteenth century but are perhaps best demonstrated by Samuel Smiles and his best seller Self Help published in 1859. Smiles argued, along with others of his time, that individuals were responsible for their own future: men had the same characteristics and potentialities that could be maximised through hard work, perseverance, thrift, prudence and self-reliance. These ideas emphasised individuals rather than classes, morals rather than economic realities, and talked of the deserving and undeserving, the rough and the respectable, thus reducing persistent inequalities to moral rather than economic causes.

Self reliance

Two women enjoying the fruits of personal wealth©In practice however, most middle-class Victorians acknowledged that the environment had an influence on men's behaviour. In fact, the rise of the middle-classes in the Victorian period has as much to do with this recognition as the promotion of political economy. Improvement was a key part of middle-class culture. The persistence of poverty and the tendency of the working classes not to emulate middle-class behaviour provided the impetus for a host of reform movements. The Victorian middle-class defined their own values in these attempts to make the poor 'see' their own interests. Policy proposals and reform strategies promoted middle-class values and helped to cement middle-class leadership and authority.

Education reform, factory reform and the New Poor Law emphasised progress and civility through work, thrift and rationality. But, perhaps more significantly, local voluntary societies such as Mechanics Institutes and temperance societies promoted improvement cross class communication and rational recreation. Personal narratives of success were an important part of this culture. Records of achievement were popularised and promoted in books like Self Help as examples of how all individuals could and should improve.

Individualised narratives of great men building fortunes from nothing became a staple part of Victorian middle-class culture. However, they need to be read with a certain scepticism. A close reading of these stories often reveals that personal contacts and supportive connections were important in establishing a business or in gaining entry to a profession. Having access to networks of support in the Manchester business community was central to the success of the engineer and industrialist James Nasymth. Nasmyth gained legal advise, credit and customers through a network of professionals and businessmen in the area. Like many successful Victorian businessmen, Nasmyth was introduced to these networks through his family relations and family friends.

Despite the expansion of the economy and the growth of towns and cities, reputation and personal contact remained significant factors in business arrangements and recruitment in the Victorian period. The working class could and did enter the ranks of the lower middle-class through small capital accumulation and the ownership of a small business but such concerns were often in a very precarious market position. Booth's inquiries into London in the late nineteenth century show the fragility of small businesses. They often yielded modest incomes for hard work. With little access to credit, they were not well equipped to withstand competition or slack periods of trade. The white-collar salaried professions, such as public administration and banking, did however, provide the potential for mobility.

Insular privilege

In many such professions, promotion up the ranks was structured into the job. But, even here personal contact was a crucial element in filling posts. White-collar workers were largely recruited from within the ranks of the middle-classes. Clerk positions would more generally provide opportunities for the working class to move into the ranks of the middle-class. However, many of these posts were very poorly paid and of quite uncertain status. This uncertain status grew towards the end of the century as they became associated with women's work.

Thrift, responsibility and self-reliance were important aspects of Victorian middle-class culture. These middle class 'virtues' could be used to define a society in which success was contingent on individual perseverance and energy. In practice, middle-class society was not as open as this rhetoric implied. For a start, the categories of class were uncertain and shifting. The relationship between affluence and attitude was certainly not clear to contemporaries. Categories such as, 'respectability' and 'deserving' were often used rather than class labels in describing communities of like-minded individuals.

Middle-class values were carved out in these attempts to define a society based on merit rather than aristocratic privilege. However, the importance of cultural capital and social networks to success in the period implies that the rise of the middle-classes in the Victorian period saw the replacement of one set of privileges with another. The vast expansion of the service sector in the Twentieth Century perhaps did more than social reform and voluntary association to swell the ranks of the middle-classes in the Twentieth Century.

Find out more

Books

Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl by Simon Gunn and Rachel Bell (Phoenix, 2003)

The Lower Middle Class in Britain ed. by Geoffrey Crossick (Croom Helm, 1977)

The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City, 1840-1914 by Simon Gunn, (Manchester University Press, 2000)

Class edited by Patrick Joyce (Oxford University Press, 1995)

The Making of the British Middle Class? Studies of Regional and Cultural Diversity eds. Alan Kidd and David Nicholls, (Sutton, 1998)

Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism. Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940 edited by Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (Manchester University Press, 1999)

The Self Made Man: Businessmen and their Autobiographies in Nineteenth Century Britain by Donna Loftus, (Business Archives, 80, 2000, pp.15-30)

Building European Society. Occupational Change and Social Mobility in Europe, 1840-1940 by Andrew Miles and David Vincent (Manchester University Press, 1993)

Self Help by Samuel Smiles, (1859)

About the author

Dr Loftus is a lecturer in history at the Open University. Her research interests are with nineteenth century British industrial and urban culture and in particular on the place of the market in social and political life. She is presently pursuing these themes in a book Markets and Morals: Capital and Community in Nineteenth Century England.