In 1844, an unknown 24-year-old German exile in Britain, the son of a textile manufacturer, writes a book that paints an unforgettable picture of daily life in the new industrial towns – Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool – which have sprung up in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England is a masterpiece of committed reportage and a classic of social history.

Industrial production makes Britain the 'workshop of the world' and the greatest trading nation on the globe. But it also has terrible social effects: abject poverty, overcrowded dwellings, child labour, sexual exploitation, dirt and drunkenness. Engels not only describes the horrors of industrial growth, he also wants to do something about them. In 1848, he teams up with Karl Marx and they write The Communist Manifesto, a call to revolution.

But working people do not heed the call, preferring to celebrate Britain's industrial might. In 1851, the Great Exhibition of All the Nations is held in London. It attracts more than 6 million visitors, of which 4,500,000 visit on the cheap 'Shilling Days'. More than half of the 14,000 exhibitors represent Great Britain and the colonies.

Instigated by Prince Albert, the exhibition is held in Hyde Park in the purpose-built Crystal Palace (a new glass building three times longer than St Paul's cathedral, designed by Joseph Paxton, the duke of Devonshire's gardener and a model of self-help). At the entrance stands an enormous block of coal, weighing 24 tons – a symbol of power married to technology. The exhibition also features the latest in consumer goods, including matches, steel pens and envelopes.

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Industrialisation

In what Thomas Carlyle calls 'the age of the machine', Britain is the workshop of the world. In the 19th century, the factory becomes the dominant form of organising production. This has a dramatic impact on the lives of more than two million labourers.

'An additional race'
the 1851 Census records that 1,296,000 people are employed in the textile industries, 572,000 in metal manufacture and 394,000 in mining. As factory workers, they become servants of machines and subject to the relentless discipline of mechanisation. They have to clock-in to and clock-off from work and, while in the factory, are under the authority of the master or overseer.

This industrial discipline creates a working class – which Robert Peel calls 'an additional race of men' – that is not only dragooned into factories but also compelled to be hard-working, sober and respectable.

Cotton
Cotton is king. The northern cotton mills have a huge impact because, for the first time, large numbers of workers, particularly women and children, are employed in one building. By 1830, cotton spinning in Lancashire is almost entirely a steam-powered factory operation, and weaving soon follows suit. Raw cotton imports rise 30-fold during the century, and Britain produces more than half the total world production of cotton cloth.

Coal
Coal is the fuel of industry. Production increases 20-fold in the 19th century. By 1848, British coal output is two-thirds of total world production. The number of miners doubles between 1840 and 1880. By the 1850s, the north-east is the foremost coal-producing centre in the world, with Newcastle, Jarrow and Gateshead expanding rapidly.

Demand for coal means deeper pits and more complicated machinery – which raises safety issues and scandals about children and women working in terrible conditions.

Iron and steel
The new technology increases the requirement for iron. By 1848, the output of iron in Britain is greater than the total for the rest of the world. Iron production rises sharply from about 1830 onwards, spurred on by the demand from the railways and by solutions to the technical problems of smelting. Heavy goods of all kinds are exported in ever-growing quantities.

Steel is a major industry after 1860 when new processes become available to produce it cheaply, quickly and in large quantities. In 1880, Britain produces 980,000 tons of steel. However, by 1900, the United States and Germany overtake Britain in steel production by using their extensive deposits of phosphoric ores. By now, both the United States and Germany are rapidly becoming more productive and innovative. For British industry, the writing is on the wall.

Ships
Shipbuilding undergoes a remarkable expansion. The development of, from the 1860s, iron ships, steam power and larger tonnages concentrates the industry in places – along the Clyde, Tyne and Mersey and at Barrow and Belfast – that have access to coal, iron, steel and engineering skills. In 1890, Britain builds 90% of the world's ships. By 1901, shipbuilding has become a major industry in which Britain dominates the world.

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Trade

Britain is the supreme trader. Its merchant navy carries the world's goods all around the globe. The value of British exports in the mid-1850s is more than seven times higher than in the 1780s. Exports to Asia are worth more than £20 million in the mid-1850s, while Africa, Australasia and Latin America all provide substantial markets.

Enormous gain
Overseas investment plays a vital role in British prosperity between 1800 and 1901, by which time about £4,000 million has been invested. This provides an enormous gain to the British economy by providing lucrative profits, much of which are used to finance imports. Over a third of all investment is in railways, mostly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The City of London quickly becomes the centre of the financial world, and service industries expand.

Upsurge in exports
During the Victorian era, industrial products such as iron and cotton begin to dominate trade. Because of the increasing popularity of free trade, all restrictions are lifted so that, by the 1850s, there is an upsurge in the volume of trade, spurring further economic development.

Although Britain's share of world trade falls from 38% to 27% between 1870 and 1913, its exports double. Principal British exports are cottons and other textiles, iron and steel, machinery, coal and vehicles.

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The railway age

Railways are the most powerful symbol of Victorian progress. Although the first purpose-built railway, from Stockton to Darlington, opens in 1825, 12 years before Queen Victoria ascends the throne, the early years of her reign witness the most extraordinary boom.

In 1850, there are 10,000 miles of railway in Britain; by 1901, that number has grown to about 35,000. The railway age changes social habits and enables economic growth. One painting, The Railway Station (1862) by William Powell Frith (1819-1909), perfectly conveys the bustling atmosphere of the mid-century railways. By the end of the century, there are 9,000 new stations.

Navvies
Thousands of miles of track are laid by companies funded by an army of private investors. In the peak year 1847, more than a quarter of a million railway workers – 'navvies', a term originally use for the 'navigators' who built the canals – are employed in this work. They are partly Irish immigrants, who come to Britain during the potato famine (1845-51), and partly locals.

The professions
Railways also help the development of the professions. Railway engineering, for instance, is specialised and highly skilled work that, coupled with the construction industry, produces great works of civic engineering such as the Sankey Viaduct on the Liverpool–Manchester railway.

Railways also need sharp lawyers to protect their interests, and the legal profession profits from sorting out contentious issues of landownership, sale and conveyancing. The actuarial side of the railway business helps the emergence of accountancy as a separate profession.

'This strange disease'
Railways help existing industries, especially iron production on which they have a massive impact. Some important developments, such as the new postal service, could not have happened without railways. But not everyone is happy with the new industrial pace of life. The poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-88), for example, complains of 'this strange disease of modern life with its sick hurry, its divided aims'.

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Urbanisation

Industry needs cities. It needs to have a workforce that is close to the factories and mines. And workers, who in Victorian times cannot afford the cost or time to travel to work, have to live within walking distance of their place of employment.

The cities created by the Industrial Revolution are both inspiring and frightening, both magnificent in their scale and monumentality and frightful in their horrific slums. Yet, at the same time, cities are magnets, offering women and men much better opportunities for work and marriage than ever before.

Booms and conurbations

In 1801, only London has more than 100,000 people. By 1851, there are 10 towns of this size. London grows from 959,000 in 1801 to 2,362,000 in 1851, Manchester from 75,000 to 303,000. London is now the largest city in the Western world. The textile towns of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Scotland attract migrants because of the possibility of employment they offer. Metal-working centres around Birmingham also experience a boom.

The expansion of the industrial cities becomes particularly marked after 1871 with the development of 'conurbations' – the densely populated regions that grow up around the centres of manufacturing, mining and shipbuilding. In 1851, the Census records that more people live in towns than in the countryside. By 1881, only 12% of the population are agricultural workers.

Despoiling

The growth of industry and cities frightens some commentators, such as John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, who believe that money-making and manufacturing will soon take over and despoil the whole landscape.

Some philanthropic industrialists and visionary town planners realise that urban sprawl is both ugly and unhealthy. In the 1850s, Sir Titus Salt (1803-76) moves his alpaca and mohair mills out of Bradford and sets up Saltaire – a model town that provides not only houses for workers but shops and schools, too. The Cadbury family establishes Bournville in the 1880s, and in 1899, Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) founds the Garden City Association, which advocates towns built in the countryside with clean centres where a garden would be surrounded by public amenities. In the early 20th century, this results in the building of Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn Garden City (1920).

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Conditions at work

In 1830, in a letter to the Leeds Mercury, Tory churchman Richard Oastler denounces the appalling working conditions that industrialisation has brought. He points out that:

Thousands of little children, both male and female, but principally female, from seven to 14 years of age, are daily compelled to labour from six o'clock in the morning to seven in the evening, with only – Britons, blush when you read it! – with only 30 minutes allowed for eating and recreation.

This description, along with those of many other humanitarians, persuades Parliament to carry out a series of measures to improve working conditions.

Child labour
A series of Factory Acts provides for the inspection and regulation of factories and mines. In the first, in 1819, Parliament had already prohibited children from working more than a 12-hour day. In 1833, a second act lays down that, in textile factories, children under 9 years are prohibited from working, and those between 9 and 13 years old are to work no more than 9 hours a day. In 1842, the Mines Act abolishes female labour in mines, and boys under 10 are prohibited from working underground.

Successive acts in 1844 and 1847 establish the 10-hour day for females and the 6.5-hour day for children under 13.

Resistance
Although the Factory Acts improve the conditions of work, there is often resistance to reform among workers. Some of them see limitations on work as a danger to their livelihoods – they cannot afford a reduction in the family income from the loss of women's and children's wages. The acts are also opposed by factory owners who see in the reduction of wages the danger of an economic crisis if workers don't have enough money to buy goods.

In his 1867 masterpiece Das Kapital, Karl Marx shows that, although the Factory Acts force factory owners to lower the hours worked by women and children, they also make numerous concessions to employers. For example, none of the acts challenge the idea that men over the age of 18 should work a 15-hour day, from 5.30am to 8.30pm.

Saving the workers

While working men tend to gather in pubs and taverns to discuss politics, find out news and listen to music, mid-Victorian society soon begins to frown on the drunkenness and lechery associated with these places. To create more respectable meeting places, the Reverend Henry Solly, a Unitarian minister, sets up the Workingmen's Club and Institute Union in 1862.

Soon these clubs proliferate all over the industrial north. But although their origins are in the temperance movement, many of them quickly shake off the restrictions of their founders and introduce beer, then music and entertainment. Working men take what they want from the philanthropists and reject the rest.

In 1865, William Booth and his wife Catherine launch their Christian mission to save the souls of 'the heathen of our own country'. In 1878, this expands into the Salvation Army, which is organised along military lines into officers and soldiers. Mainly comprising working men and women, its recruits are people who have themselves experienced conversion and practise self-denial, avoiding especially the temptations of drink. From the 1880s, the Salvation Army becomes more philanthropic, setting up night shelters for the homeless and helping the poor in urban slums.

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Education

One way of helping the children of the working classes is to educate them. Philanthropists and reformers such as Sir James Kay Shuttleworth (1804-77) accept the need to 'rescue' children from the moral as well as the physical effects of poverty by means of schooling.

Shuttleworth advocates using the poor law system to train children in practical skills, and helps develop a broad curriculum in schools. By 1870, William Edward Forster's Elementary Education Act allows board schools to be funded out of local rates to fill gaps left in the education system by the patchy provision of church schools. Elementary schooling becomes compulsory.

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Technology

Industrialisation and technology go hand in hand. The Victorian age is a time of inventors and inventions, of rapid progress in creating the objects of modern life – from the steam engine to the steam printer, from the skyscraper to the machine-gun, from the radiator to the flush toilet. In general, steel replaces iron as a material for ship's hulls and boilers, refrigeration is developed and petroleum harnessed for the first motor cars. As technology improves travel speeds, the world is divided into 24 time zones.

Engineers
King of the engineers is Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59). In 1858, his ship, the Great Eastern, is launched. For the next 40 years, this is the largest ship to run a transatlantic service. In 1856, inventor and engineer Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-98) patents the first method for mass-producing steel. Now steel production begins to rival iron production (see 'Industrialisation' above).

Communication
In 1876, Scottish-born scientist Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) manages to transmit the first sentence by telephone (although, despite his name on the US patent, he did not invent the instrument). The first working telephone is built a year later. In 1860, the chemist, physicist and inventor Joseph Swan (1828-1914) demonstrates the first electric light, having developed a carbon-filament incandescent lamp some 20 years before US inventor Thomas Edison. In 1878, Swan also produces an all-glass hermetically sealed bulb.

At about the same time, the British Admiralty begins to install radio equipment devised by Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) in some of its ships. Radio transmission is pushed to greater lengths, and by 1899 – the year in which the Italian inventor established the Marconi Telegraph Co. in London – he sends a signal nine miles across the Bristol Channel and then 31 miles across the Channel to France. Two years later, he is able to transmit across the Atlantic, thus opening the door to a rapidly developing wireless industry.

In the 1840s, Rowland Hill (1795-1879) invents the penny post, which replaces the more-expensive system of payment by recipients. The 42-year-old Hill publishes his pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its importance and practicability in 1837, and advocates the use of pre-printed envelopes and adhesive postage stamps. He also calls for a uniform low letter-sending rate of one penny per half-ounce to anywhere in the British Isles. The cost makes communication more affordable to the working classes. There are five deliveries a day.

New ways of looking
Calotype photography is patented in 1841. While on honeymoon at Lake Como in 1833, William Fox Talbot (1800-77) tries and fails to sketch the scenery, so he dreams up a new machine with light-sensitive paper that can record sights automatically. By 1839, he has perfected a process that allows multiple images to be made from a single negative. By the mid-1850s, photography is a commercial success.

In March 1882, Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) comes to the Royal Institution to lecture before an audience that includes the prince of Wales and Alfred Lord Tennyson, and demonstrates his projector with rotating discs – the zoopraxiscope. The results are stunning. The moving pictures clearly show for the first time that galloping horses lift all four legs off the ground simultaneously. This is the forerunner of moving pictures. In 1896, the first films are shown at a cinema in Leicester Square.

Towards the 20th century
In 1895, at the end of the Victorian age, the first British four-wheeled car is produced by Frederick Lanchester (1868-1946). In the same year, Herbert Austin (1866-1941) designs a three-wheeled car that is then built by the Wolseley Sheep-Shearing Company in Birmingham. This is a glimpse of the face of the 20th century.

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