Stacey Fox

Prehistory of London: Social Classes

In England, the difference in people who made up the different social classes essentially remained the same. However, as time progressed, the statuses of the lower classes became higher because of new laws and of many efforts of the middle classes to improve their education and England’s economy. As a result of the Great Fire and the natural progression of the city, the living areas of the classes became more segregated. The wealthier people did not want to live in the center of the city and the factories, so they moved west into the suburbs, while the poorer classes lived in the east.

During Tudor England, Queen Elizabeth the first introduced the first Poor Law Act, which combated the previous oppression of the lower class in England. Mainly because of the efforts of rising merchants who helped to establish new educational foundations, in addition, other things such as Christ’s Hospital School, created by the Greyfriar’s buildings at Newgate, helped the poorer class by providing them with an education. Other public schools such as the Charterhouse also began at this time. This meant that the lower classes would have a greater change at rising above their status and possibly change how the different social classes would be recognized. After the attempted Spanish Armada in 1588, England became more politically stable and both prosperity and the population grew with it. The wealthier class of Londoners started to move out to the country estates west of the city and since a lot of land was taken from the church, many of the old bishop’s houses were rebuilt for the nobility¹.

In Shakespearean England, late 1500’s and early 1600’s, there were four main social classes, the gentlemen and nobles, citizens and burgesses, yeomen, and the laborers and artisans. The gentlemen and nobles everyone from the lords (princes, dukes, earls, barons, bishops, etc.) to the "gentlemen" who were essentially all the men who were well off and did not do manual labor. The citizens and burgesses were almost at the same level as the gentlemen. However, they could change their statuses by buying it or earning it through education. They were generally merchants and employers, part of the second class. The yeomen were rural smallholders who were essentially citizens, but who lived in the country instead of the city. However, they were slightly lower class because although many had upper-class education, many were also farmers. The laborers and artisans, or lower class citizens, held jobs such as tailors and shoemakers. They were employees who made a living through manual labor and did not own land.

http://britannia.com/history/londonhistory/tudlon.html

Though each of these classes was distinctly different, they all came together in the theater to see a Shakespearean play². That they could do this expressed that though there was a clear difference between classes, they would all still be able to work with one another.

In the Cromwellian period of England, Cromwell officially recognized the Jewish population of England, which essentially ceased to exist after the banishment of Edward the first in 1292. In 1655 there was officially a law that allowed Jews to live there¹². Since Jewish people had been banned from England for so long, they were not of the higher classes because they would have to work harder in order to rise up among the classes. This would be difficult because although Edward’s laws were changed, his sentiments were not necessarily dissolved by everyone in the country who had agreed with him prior to Cromwell’s reversal of the law.

Apart from things such as laws, that were deliberately done to change the statuses of the various social classes, other disasters also effected these classes and he areas in which they lived. For example, in September of 1666 a baker’s shop caught fire, and this led to what is known as the Great Fire because it burnt down adjoining buildings and spread throughout London.

http://britannia.com/history/londonhistory/stulon.html

The Rebuilding Act of 1667 ordered that all buildings were to be built from either brick or stone and it also resulted in wider streets and some of these buildings were not completed until the early 1700’s. After this fire, London became a more commercial city under Lord Mayor. The wealthier classes chose to move into the west and farther out as time progressed. By the time of the reign of King Charles the second, there were no more wealthy people living inside the city. This meant that not only were the classes perceived as different because of their social status, but they were even more visibly different because of where their homes were located. Also as a result of the fire, there was a more recognized need for public services. The Sewage Act of 1671 provided a group who would be in charge of cleaning and draining the streets instead of each homeowner being in charge of his own as it had previously been done. The act was meant to help the common citizens so that they would not have to clean their own streets and dispose of sewage without a true system. However, since the commission was permitted to charge rates in order to finance it, so this might become a problem for the lower class and force them to move elsewhere.

Then land prices inside the city also began to rise, so London’s population began to move to the suburbs. The upper and middle classes lived in the areas of Hempstead and the West End, and the lower, poorer classes moved to the East End, and in sometimes less than desirable conditions. Because many businesses now needed heavy machinery, they too needed to move to the suburbs, so London became the center for clerks and bookkeepers. Because of the rise of the cost of living and the results of that, there was an abundance of poverty and crime in 18^th century London.

In the early 19^th century, between the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 and the Revolutions of 1848, the middle and working class was continuously upset with their conditions and occasionally rioted³. Though the situation had become so that the upper and lower classes were living in different sections of the suburbs, the poor were still distinctly different from the rich; and they still had different types of jobs and styles of living.

Bibliography
Footnotes:
1 www.britannia.com/history
2 http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/346/proj/lew/debweb3.htm
3 http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/victoria.html

Other Sources:
1) http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/victoria.html