Social Reform and Change
Social reform and change. This historic theme examines the work of reforming campaigners and parliamentary reformers, who brought changes to the conditions of the poor and destitute.
Florence Nightingale
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else
Charles Dickens
Use the timeline and maps to see how reform changed society and people's lives.
Britain in the 19th century was one in which the suffering of it's poor was a marked contrast to the wealth and privilege of it's rich but there were some, who questioned the course of the nation and demanded change.
Alms Houses St Cross Winchester
The crusade and triumph of Reform
Ambivalence by many, to the desperate situation of the poor in the early 19th century, stood alongside the actions of others, who demanded reform at every turn. The campaigning social reformers worked in all areas of society. They concerned themselves with the sick and destitute, seeking reform to the Poor Laws. They wanted regulation brought in to protect workers from being used as slaves in the new manufacturing industries. The plight of children and women was of particular concern, so education and women's property laws were challenged. Institutions were set up to encourage others to join the cause of reform. Places like the Foundling Hospital, dependent upon donations to fund it's function.
Shaftsbury Society Southwark
Social injustice went hand in glove with political inequality.
The Whigs and the Tories took opposing views as to whose interests to represent, with industrialists and landowners all pulling in different directions, with the poor caught in between, with no voice and no one to represent them in parliament. The bigger issues of reform, such as the abolition of slavery in Britain encountered support and dissent in equal measure.
The barbarity of the slave trade carved into a tusk.
In this theme we explore many aspects of reform across the centuries and the people who have spent a lifetime trying to achieve it.
