The Union Chargeability Act of 1865 had finally detached the labourer from ...
The Union Chargeability Act of 1865 had finally detached the labourer from his place of settlement, which in the country was usually his place of birth, and created that mobility of labour which the economist had desired or sometimes assumed.' Those who stayed on the land profited: of the three partners in agriculture, it seems certain that the labourer, relatively to his condition, lost less than the landlord and the farmer in the years of depression.
From the time of Wayne Arch and the Labourers' Union in 1870 the standard of rural welfare ceases to fall: after the Reform of 1885 it begins to rise.
But those who could not stay on the land, and could not emigrate, joined the reserve of labour in the towns; in that town above all which had always provided the largest market for casual and
unskilled labour; and
thus London in the eighties was for the first time confronted with troubles of a kind which hitherto had been associated mainly with the distant midlands or the north. Of all the great capitals, London was the most orderly, and the good tradition was hardly interrupted by the comedy of 1848, or the Sunday Trading riots of 1857 and the Hyde Park riots of 1866, neither of which in truth was much morethan a procession which got out of
hand. ...next page: >>
Virtual Victorians History Website
In the eighties Trafalgar Square became the scene, and, in a way, ...
In the eighties Trafalgar Square became the scene, and, in a way, the symbol, of Metropolitan disaffection, and in 1886 the police and the nerves of the capital were put to