Victorian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Victorian Era’
Victorian MP Richard Cobden offered a startling analogy for the American Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery Republicans won the US general election in 1860, prompting eleven slave-owning southern States to declare independence. Some in Westminster sympathised, saying the national result did not reflect the majority of southern voters – but Richard Cobden was scornful.
Philosopher and social activist John Stuart Mill discusses the most liberating kind of education.
J.S. Mill was educated at home by his eminent father, and the experience was a bruising one. He wished that his father had been more patient, but he was profoundly grateful that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he had not merely been trained to meet conventional school targets, but empowered throughout his life to set his own.
The opening of the Bombay to Thane line was the real beginning of British India.
Just twenty-three years after the Liverpool and Manchester Railway hosted the world’s first regular steam-hauled passenger service, British entrepreneurs began running the first trains in India. The ‘Illustrated London News’ described it as an event more important than all Britain’s battles on Indian soil.
All but forgotten today, the RCH was one of the most important steps forward in British industrial history.
The humble Railway Clearing House (RCH) brought real co-operation to Victorian Britain’s many different private railway companies, and gave yet further impetus to the country’s accelerating industrial revolution. Its success should be a reminder to private companies that they and their passengers actually share very similar interests.
A former convict told Henry Morley about his debt to Thomas Wright, the prisoner’s friend.
Thomas Wright (1789-1875) was a foreman in a Manchester iron foundry and a father of nineteen, who never earned above £3 10s a week in his life. But he helped hundreds of ex-convicts back into society, using his own money to indemnify their employers against any relapse.
Thomas Wright never earned more than a foreman’s wage, but he helped hundreds of prisoners back into society.
Thomas Wright (1789-1875) was an ordinary Manchester workman who dedicated his life to helping former prisoners back into society, all on his own time and using his own money. Yet he never earned much over £150 a year, roughly £15,000 today.