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Queen Victoria (1819-1901) reigns for more than 63 years, longer than any other British monarch. Dutiful and conscientious when she becomes queen at 18, she is also strong-willed and energetic. Her marriage to Albert (see below) is loving but stormy, and they have nine children. She is partisan in politics – at first, very pro-Whig, then under Albert's influence a convert to Robert Peel's free trade policies. In later life, she likes Disraeli, who creates her empress of India, and detests Gladstone, about whom she complains that he addresses her as if she is a large meeting. When Albert dies young, she is devastated and withdraws from public life, leaving the prince of Wales to take over her duties. She courts scandal by becoming inseparable from John Brown, a royal ghillie (gamekeeper), but her staunch patriotism endears her to her people. By the time of her death, she has become a symbol of British imperial might. Prince Albert (1819-61), the queen's consort, is a high-achieving intellectual. Victoria adores him, but the British resent him as a German-speaking foreigner (his full title is Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha). He influences the queen's politics, winning her round to Peel's free trade ideas, and stoking her dislike of Palmerston's gun-boat diplomacy. He is never idle: he designs houses, innovates farming methods and introduces science to Cambridge University. He's also instrumental in organising the Great Exhibition. The British people remain suspicious of such over-activity, and he dies, depressed, of typhoid at 42. William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848), is prime minister when Victoria (see above) becomes queen and educates her politically. Son of a newly ennobled family, as a young man he serves in Tory and Whig governments, and when he settles as a Whig, he is moderate and wary of social reform. As prime minister, he introduces the workhouse and, in 1834, ensures the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. He tries, but fails, to reform the Irish tithe system. Seen by his friends as a decent man with a sad personal life – his wife Lady Caroline Lamb fell in love with the poet Byron, was discarded by him, went mad and died young – he forms a strong bond with the 'girl queen' Victoria. When his government falls in 1839, she keeps him in office for another two years by refusing to endorse his successor Robert Peel (see below). Robert Peel (1788-1850), several times Conservative prime minister and devotee of free trade, is one of the most dynamic political figures of the century. The son of a calico magnate, he is handsome, ambitious and clever. He is also a pragmatist, willing to cut across the traditional loyalties of class and religion to get a result. He outrages fellow Tories several times: by bringing Catholic MPs into Parliament; by reducing the Church of England's privileges; by getting rid of most import taxes; and, finally, by abolishing the Corn Laws. This last splits the Conservative Party and ends his career. He retires and dies four years later in a riding accident. Free trade lives on. Richard Cobden (1804-65) is a man of strong beliefs. Born to a poor farming family, he recognises that the Corn Laws, which keep the price of grain artificially high, profit the rich landowner and make the poor go hungry. He founds the Anti-Corn Law League and campaigns through pamphlets, lectures and meetings to have the laws repealed. His direct manner wins him many friends, and he manages to keep his organisation non-violent. Once elected as an MP, he converts many people to his views, notably Robert Peel (see above). The Chartists join his campaign, and in 1846, the Corn Laws are repealed. Cobden goes on campaigning: not only for free trade but for peace between nations. He dies without achieving either of these. Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865), comes from an aristocratic family with lands in Ireland. Vigorous and blunt, he starts his political career as a Tory and gains expertise in army affairs before switching to the Whigs. He is foreign secretary for 15 years, and uses the navy to force Britain's will on the rest of the world. He wages the Opium War with China, bombards Egypt and intervenes in small nations to further British interests. His strong-arm approach is popular at home but loathed abroad. He spends the last ten years of his life as prime minister, blocking major change and doing political deals to hold on to power. He eats, rides and parties with gusto, until his death at the age of 80. William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98) sits in the House of Commons for 63 years, serves as minister in Tory and Whig governments, and is Liberal prime minister four times. He comes from a wealthy merchant family and champions free trade. Deeply Christian, he combines a concern for others' well-being with a regard for the status quo and fear of radical change. He is against expansionist imperial policies and clashes furiously with Disraeli (see below). Throughout his stints as prime minister, he struggles with the Irish issue, reforming the unjust land laws and then trying to bring about home rule (that is, an Irish parliament in Dublin with limited powers). He resigns after his 2nd Home Rule Bill is rejected. Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91) is a handsome, aristocratic Irish Protestant who becomes leader of the Home Rule Party. He works for Irish independence on many levels – encouraging tenant farmers to boycott landlords (see Irish Land War), raising funds for armed rebels, and fighting for land reforms and home rule in Parliament. He and his colleagues also obstruct parliamentary affairs by 'filibustering'. Irish land laws are reformed and many injustices are removed, but Parnell does not achieve home rule. He is hounded from politics over his love affair with Kitty O'Shea, a married woman with whom he has three children. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-81), is clever, flamboyant and highly ambitious. At first a writer of satirical novels, he starts his political career as an outsider, partly because of his Jewish origins. He eventually rises as a Conservative MP through defending the established Church and landowners' rights. By opposing Corn Law abolition, he splits the Conservative Party and then revitalises it, climbing what he calls 'the greasy pole' of success and winning new supporters from the white-collar lower middle class. He also finds time to continue writing novels, at once worldly and romantic. As prime minster, Disraeli expands the British empire, flirts with Queen Victoria and has slanging matches with Gladstone. A glamorous figure even when old, he dies of a chill caught at a party. Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), descended from a long line of English statesmen, is deeply conservative, wily and cautious. A Tory through and through, he is ferociously critical of Disraeli (see above) when he abandons protectionism for free trade. His scorn doesn't stop him becoming Disraeli's foreign secretary, and in international crises, Salisbury skilfully combines diplomacy with British might. He wins Britain a 99-year lease on Hong Kong and later, as prime minister, he gets Britain a large share in the 'scramble for Africa'. Prime minister three times in the 1880s and 1890s, he – despite his personal reluctance – and his government have to bow to progress and widen the vote. Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) is a businessman with radical views and a champion of local government. As mayor of Birmingham, he takes gas and water into council control, cleans up the slums and builds imposing public buildings. Popular with the public, 'Joe' becomes a Liberal MP and leads the radical wing of the party. He campaigns for a range of social reforms and helps achieve some – notably free schools. But he is a wholehearted Imperialist and leaves the government in protest against proposals to give Ireland home rule. He forms the Unionist Party and eventually becomes colonial secretary under Salisbury. He supports British expansionism and is largely responsible for taking Britain into the 2nd Boer War. Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), English vicar's son and empire builder, makes his fortune through diamond mining (he founds the De Beers diamond company in 1880) and gold mining in South Africa. He enters politics there and becomes prime minister of the British-run Cape Colony. His ambition is to colonise the whole of Africa and, under the auspices of his British South Africa Company, makes a start with Matabeleland and Mashonaland, which are amalgamated and renamed Rhodesia. He backs a failed uprising against the Boers in the Transvaal (see 1st Boer War), which worsens British–Boer relations and helps bring about the 2nd Boer War. Rhodes resigns as Cape Colony prime minister in 1896, and returns to the mining business. He uses his wealth to secure political power, dispossessing many Africans and establishing a white ruling class in 'Rhodesia'. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-85), is loved by some as a social reformer and resented by others as a killjoy. As an evangelising Christian, he works to save the souls and the bodies of the poor. He helps bring about reforms in factories, mines and asylums, and builds a model village for tenants on his estate. He is devoted to children (including his own ten) and helps run ragged schools. His evangelism has a grim side, too: his campaign to keep the Sabbath holy stops bands from playing in public parks and closes the Crystal Palace. At his funeral, hundreds of poor people came on to the streets of London to mourn him. Oddly enough, the statue of Eros in London's Piccadilly Circus commemorates this sober-minded individual. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is a talented, driven middle-class woman who revolutionises nursing in Britain. After training as a nurse aged 33 (despite her family's protests), she is put in charge of Scutari Military Hospital during the Crimean War. Arriving to find a filthy barracks with no beds, she and 40 nurses introduce basic hygiene and systematic nursing care. Her nickname 'The Lady with the Lamp' belies her fierce approach – she is often a thorn in the side of politicians. After the war, she helps change the entire approach to health and morale in the army, alters how hospitals are built and gets nursing schools established – mainly from her bed, which she takes to more or less permanently after her return from the Crimea. Charles Bradlaugh (1833-91), a large and forceful man, becomes famous for his atheism. In fact, this is just one of his many radical beliefs – he also campaigns for democracy, social reform, birth control and republicanism. The son of a solicitor's clerk, he studies law and founds the National Secular Society. In 1880, as a newly elected MP, he asks to affirm his loyalty instead of swearing a religious oath but is expelled from the House of Commons. The case divides the country. Some consider him 'the Cerberus of Atheism, treason and filth'; to others, he is a hero. After being re-elected twice more by the good people of Northampton, he is finally admitted to Parliament in 1886, and the law is changed to protect the right to freedom of conscience. See also Bradlaugh affair. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) rises from poor beginnings in Scotland to be a hugely respected author and pundit. He holds that history is the story of 'great men', and proceeds to tell many such stories, in ruggedly poetic language, notably in his book The French Revolution (1836). More than a best-selling author, Carlyle fires a spirit of moral enquiry among his readers and is considered one of the great minds of his day. In person, he can be irritable and self-centred and towards the end of his life, he makes enemies of fellow writers. He is offered the chance of burial in Westminster Abbey, among the 'great men' he extols, but chooses instead a grave in his native Scotland. Charles Dickens (1812-70) achieves enormous fame through his novels, which are so popular that they become a force for social change. Rising from failed family fortunes to become a legal clerk and journalist, Dickens writes about the society he sees around him, observing some of his best scenes during night-time walks through London. His stories are often published in serial form in periodicals, and people queue to buy the latest instalments. Although comic and entertaining, his novels exposes many brutalities – the workhouse in Oliver Twist (1837-8), the debtor's prison in Little Dorrit (1855-7). Public indignation sometimes prompts reform, and Dickens is personally involved in some campaigns. (See also The arts.) William Booth (1829-1912), the Victorians' most prominent evangelist, preaches religion and clean living. Working in the East End of London, he specialises in converting 'disreputable' people, including drunks and prostitutes. He and his wife Catherine (1829-90) gain many followers who, in 1878, become the Salvation Army, complete with uniforms and military-style bands. 'General' Booth is handsome and charismatic; he raises huge sums in donations to build soup kitchens and workshops. He is also tireless: he exposes child prostitution, goes on tours at home and abroad and is so high profile in the United States that he is invited to pray at the opening of the US Senate. Octavia Hill (1838-1912) pioneers good housing for poor people. After her family loses its money in a financial crash, she does administration and drawing work, until a chance meeting leads to a partnership with John Ruskin (see below). With his backing, she builds two housing developments in the Marylebone area of London. She goes on to build many more, most with funding from wealthy individuals. The buildings offer modest, clean accommodation, with access to open space. Hill insists that her tenants pay rent on time and keep the properties tidy. Her buildings become models for good housing and influence government reforms. She also co-founds the National Trust, to buy special buildings and land and keep them for public use. John Stuart Mill (1806-73) is the most influential thinker of the Victorian age. Given a rigorous education by his father (as a three-year-old, he learned ancient Greek), he becomes a knowledgeable, earnest young man who questions his society and its moral beliefs. Influenced not only by the rationalist theories of Jeremy Bentham (see Words: Utilitarianism), but also by Romantic poetry, he writes a series of books exploring political economy, psychology and poetry. These provoke great discussion in intellectual circles, and Mill's combination of rigour and humanity raises the level of debate. His most ambitious work is The System of Logic (1843), an attempt to prove moral, political and social beliefs, but he is perhaps best known for his books On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1863) and the controversial Subjection of Women, which remains a founding text of feminism. Besides writing, he also works for the East India Company, and after the death of his wife Harriet Taylor, whom he credited with the co-authorship of virtually all his published works, he is briefly a Radical MP. John Ruskin (1819-1900) is a revered figure who becomes famous as an art critic, but is also a poet, philanthropist and social reformer. An Anglo-Scot who has had a strict religious upbringing, he is intensely moved by the art he sees on European tours. His Modern Painters, which is published in five volumes over 20 years beginning in 1843, changes the way people look at art. His books The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-3) unleash the Gothic revival, and he champions the Pre-Raphaelite painters. He also argues for a fairer economic system, free schools and libraries, and garden cities. He funds the first housing developments of Octavia Hill (see above) and works with his own hands on such projects as building roads. William Morris (1834-96) fights what he sees as the dehumanising effects of industrialisation with art, craftsmanship and poetry. He founds Morris & Co to produce hand-made furniture and decoration, and works with the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and others of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Both visionary and practical, he promotes traditional craftsmanship but employs modern piece-work methods in his business. He becomes a socialist after reading Marx – joining, first, the Social Democratic Federation, and then the Socialist League – and uses profits from his firm to fund socialist newspapers. In his own time, he is most famous for writing epic romantic poems; future generations will value his arts and crafts design more highly. An emotional, temperamental man, he is a devoted father and remains a loyal if puzzled husband during his wife's long affair with Rossetti. Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905), shocked to discover children sleeping rough, starts up a network of homes and boarding houses that give them shelter plus training in a trade. Running the organisation himself, he is an inspired fundraiser, using heart-tugging photography campaigns and friends in high places to bring in over £3 million. But his aggressive personal style and militant Protestantism make him enemies. He can also be unscrupulous, forging doctor's qualifications to give himself more authority, but his excesses are finally curbed when a committee is appointed to help run the charity. By the time of his death in 1905, his homes have sheltered 60,000 children. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) is the first British woman to become a licensed doctor (in 1865). She has to take a roundabout route to this goal, first becoming a nurse so she can learn medical and surgical skills directly from the doctors. After she gets a medical degree in Paris, London University finally opens its doors to women. She becomes dean of the London School of Medicine for Women and works for girls' education in general. Practical, capable and friendly, Garrett Anderson raises the profile of women in public life. When she is elected on to the school board in Marylebone, London, she wins more votes than any other candidate in the country. Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) is an engineer of genius. Trained by his father Marc, a French exile who built the first tunnel under the Thames with his son's help, he is inventive and energetic, and constantly experiments. After becoming famous for designing the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol, he constructs the Great Western Railway, which runs 120 miles from Bristol to the station he created at Paddington, London. He builds another tunnel – this one over a mile long – under Box Hill in Wiltshire, and bridges over the Tamar and the Wye. Regarding distance as an opportunity, he builds the first two passenger ships that regularly cross the Atlantic. He has some ingenious failures, including a vacuum-operated uphill railway, but his many successes change the way people live. He dies of a stroke, aged 53. In 2003, he comes in second (after Winston Churchill) in a BBC competition to choose the 'Greatest Briton'. See also an extract from Men of Iron, a dual biography of Brunel and railway engineer Robert Stephenson. Charles Darwin (1809-82) is a naturalist who comes up with the most important scientific theory of the age – evolution. It is sparked by observations he makes on a five-year voyage round the Americas in the Beagle. Once home, he painstakingly tests his findings for more than 20 years. From a prosperous background and happily married with ten children, Darwin is wary of controversy. When he finally publishes it in 1859 – prompted by reports that another scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace, is about to publish similar theories – On the Origin of Species outrages the Church and causes a national debate. But scientists swing behind Darwin and society slowly comes round. See also Darwinism and Evolution. Karl Marx (1818-83), a German philosophy student, develops communist beliefs while studying in Paris. Exiled from France in 1848, he eventually comes to London where he spends the rest of his life. With Friedrich Engels, whom he met in 1844, he publishes the Communist Manifesto, describing history as a struggle between oppressor and oppressed. He sets up the First International, an organisation of revolutionaries, and points to the Paris Commune, in 1871, as a sign of things to come. His influence is limited during his lifetime, but his ideas live on, especially in Das Kapital (Capital), which analyses how capitalists use the labour of working people to enrich themselves. In the 20th century, his ideas inform the British labour movement and many other socialist and communist movements. George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859-1925), is an aristocrat who perceives himself to be a member of the natural ruling élite. He becomes under secretary for India while still a young man, in 1891-2. At the age of 40, he is governor general of India, where he applies his business-like mind to reorganising finance and commerce, and also introduces new irrigation schemes to make farming more productive. Appointed viceroy in 1898, he is a committed imperialist: seven years later he reacts swiftly to the early stirrings of Indian nationalism by partitioning Bengal – a policy that, during the 20th century, will become a favoured British method of containing unrest. Curzon goes on to serve in the Cabinet during World War I and to be an international statesman in its aftermath. |
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