Britain

By Scarlettbanana

  • Old poor Law

    Placed the responsibility of dealing with poverty onto local parishes

  • Bank of England

  • Thomas Newcomen invented the first Steam Engine

  • Bubble Act

    Limited the number of joint stock banks

  • Poorhouses introduced

  • Population reached 6 million

  • 2 towns at the size of 50,000

  • Period: to

    Coal production increased from 6 million to over 17 million

  • Rebellions by enslaved people in Jamaica

    Lasts several months
    Claimed many lives

  • The Bridgewater Canal opens

    Commissioned in order to transport the coal from his mine in Worsley
  • Period: to

    Cotton increased by £297 million

  • James Hargreaves conceives the idea of the Spinning Jenny

  • James Watt’s Steam Engine is innovated

    After repairing a Newcomen steam engine, he notices it wastes a lot of steam

  • Granville Sharp begins legal challenges to the slave trade with the case of Johnathan Strong

  • Miners in the North-East went on strike

    Ineffective
    Easily replace the striking workers

  • James Watt’s Steam Engine is patterned

  • James Hargreaves pattens the Spinning Jenny

  • Arkwright’s first spinning Mill

  • John Woolman, an American Quaker, comes to England to start an anti-slavery campaign

  • Granville Sharp won a ruling in the Somerset case

    Held that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain

  • Slavery technically abolished in Britain but it become fashionable to have black servants

  • Richard Arkwright develops Mills

    In which the process of yarn manufacture is carried on by one machine
    Later recognised as the father of the modern industrial factory system

  • Adam Smith ‘The Wealth of Nations’

  • Over 2000 poorhouses nationwide

  • Papist Bill

    Reduce Catholic discrimination

  • Jonas Hanway campaigned to improved working conditions for chimney sweepers

  • Samuel Crompton invented the Spinning Mule

    Cross between the machines invented by Arkwright and Hargreaves
    Permits the large scale manufacture of high quality thread and yarn

  • Gordon Riots

    Anti-Catholic riots following the passing of the 1778 Papist Bill to reduce Catholic discrimination

  • Society for Constitutional Information emerged

    Led by Major John Cartwright aiming to promote the need for reform

  • Bubble Act in place

  • Period: to

    Membership of a union is illegal

  • 150 Africans thrown overboard on the slave ship Zong

  • Lord North resigns; full parliamentary gov restored

  • letters of the late Ignatius Sancho are published

  • Gilbert’s Act

    One of the first reforms
    Allowed only orphaned children or the old and sick to use poorhouses due to a rising demand

  • 133 Africans thrown overboard on the slave ship Zong court case

    So that the owners could claim compensation from their insurance company

  • British Quakers forms a committee against the slave trade

    Petition signed by 273 people
    Sent to the gov
    Quakers set up a 23 person committee to actively campaign for the abolition of the slave trade

  • End of the American war for independence

    Helped develop a new negative attitude towards the slave trade
    Revolutions themes of republicanism and individual liberty left the British public reconsidering attitudes to the slave trade

  • Bank of England = 119 banks

  • James Ramsey’s pamphlet on the experiences of slaves in colonies

    Ship surgeon
    Helped by Clarkson

  • Edmund Cartwright invented a crude power loom

    Predecessor of the modern power loom
    Sets up a weaving and spinning factory in Doncaster

  • Disenfranchisement of 36 boroughs attempt failure

    Attempted by PM William Pitt
    Drafted by 74 votes in the commons

  • Coal gas first used for lighting

  • Thomas Clarkson ‘A Summary View on the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of its Abolition’

  • Joseph Townsend ‘Dissertation on the Poor Laws’

    Claimed that poor relief worsened people by denying the full extent of the lesson that poverty provides
    Represent the idea of self help

  • Thomas Clarkson’s ‘Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species’

    Helped ignite the movement
    Won a special prize at Cambridge and printed 10,000 copies
    Helped win over Wilberforce

  • US Constitution

    Effect on British views of republics and indivisible liberty

  • John Newton ‘Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’

  • Josiah Wedgewood ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’

  • The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade created

    Made up of mainly Quaker and Evangelical abolitionists
    Campaigned mainly through the distribution of pamphlets
    Used Josiah Wedgewood’s iconic image of a slave in chains ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’

  • Equiano joined the Sons of Africa group

    Alongside Quobna Ottobah Cugoano
  • Period: to

    Clarkson travelling to collect evidence on the slave trade

    Travelled more than 35,000 miles across Britain
    Collected evidence and presented to audiences
    Helped set up 1,200 branches of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade

  • Nationwide effort organised by the Society for Affecting the Abolition

    To highlight the evils of the Atlantic slave trade and to mark it as an issue of national outcry
    Met with vastly positive public response
    Over 100 petitions were presented to parliament within 3 months
    Manchester sent the largest petition with 10,639 signatures (almost 20% of the city’s population)

  • Sons of Africa group march to parliament to support the Dolben Act

  • The Dolben Act

    Restricted the number of Africans to be carried on ships and required that a doctor be present for every voyage to maintain the health of the “cargo”

  • Olaudah Equiano ‘The Interesting Narratuve of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African’

  • Wilberforce made his first speech to parliament about the abolition

    Able to secure a select committee to investigate the Slave trade

  • Olaudah Equiano’s ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Gustavus Vassa, the African’

    First hand account of his experiences
    Become one of the first major non-white abolitionists

  • The French Revolution

  • The first bill of the Abolition of the Slave Trade fails

  • Paine ‘The Rights of Man’

  • Slave Rebellion in St. Domingue (Haiti)

  • Clarkson credited with convincing MP Wilberforce to join the abolitionist movement

    For the next 8 years, Wilberforce introduced an abolition bill to parliament though failing

  • House of Lords reject an Abolition Bill passed by the House of Commons

  • Speenhamland System established

    Set the rate of outdoor relief to the price of a loaf of bread

  • Banks allowed to issue bank notes and paper currency

  • The Combination Act

    Prevents workers in England from collectively bargaining in groups or through unions for better pay and improved working conditions

  • Robert Owen’s New Lanark

  • Union of Great Britain and Ireland

  • Richard Trevithick was the pioneer of steam powered transport

    Built the first working railway locomotive

  • Health and Morals of Apprentices Act

  • The first locomotive railway journey takes place

  • Slave Rebellion in St. Domingue = successful

    First independent black state outside Africa - Haiti - is est

  • Transatlantic Slave Trade Abolished by the British Parliament

  • Bank of England = 800 banks

  • Period: to

    Wheat prices 49-57 shillings a quarter

    Same as during the napoleonic wars

  • Luddite Protests in East Anglia against manufacturing

    Fears of their skills being replaced with machines
    £100,000 worth of machined and factories destroyed
    Took place in Nottingham and the north of England
    Led by Ned Ludd - mythical leader
    Motivation = hand loom workers whose jobs were being replaced by steam powered looms
    Lasted 6 years

  • Population reaches 18 million

  • George IV begins to serve as Prince Regent

  • Lord Liverpool becomes PM

  • Frame Breaking Act

    Aimed at increasing the penalties for Luddite behaviour to discourage it

  • 17,000 troops were sent to Yorkshire to stop further industrial violence

  • Anti-Luddite mill owner, William Horsfall, shot dead

  • Period: to

    War of 1812 between England and the United States

  • Statute of Artifices repealed

    Encourages free trade and handing ports to the employers

  • Robert Owen wrote ‘A New View of Society’

  • Napoleon is defeated ending the War if the Sixth Coalition

  • Ends of Napoleonic Wars - defeated at Waterloo

  • Games Laws

    Passed when the penalty for stealing a rebut was death

  • Davy’s lamp invented

    To help miners see in the dark

  • Cost of poor relief was 5.8 million

  • Corn Law

    Prohibited the importation of foreign corn until the price of domestic corn reached 10 shillings a bushel
    Designed to protect British farmers from foreign competition
    Artificially isolated the price of bread

  • Poor Harvest

  • Future Tsar of Russia Nicholas I visited Robert Owen’s model town in New Lanark

  • Robert Owen opened the first infant school in the UK

  • Riots at Spa Fields in Islington, London

  • Cost of poor relief was 7.9 million

  • Pentrich Rising

    Marched towards Nottingham expecting to be part of a national uprising to overthrow the government
    Tricked them and forced to arrest them - Jeremiah Brandeth was hung for his role

  • Suspension of Habius Corpus

    Permits arrest without trial and imprisonment without charge

  • Luddism Ends

  • Blanketeers arranged a March to London to take a petition to the Prince Regent

  • David Ricardo ‘Principles of Political Economy’

  • Act for the Regulation of Parish Vestries

    Parish communities could scrutinise relief going and recommend the level of provision

  • Cotton Mills Act

    Required that no children under the age of 9 could be employed in cotton mills with a maximum of 16 hours a day for under 16

  • Act to Amend the Laws for Rallies of the Poor

    Parish communities could scrutinise and decide the level of provisions

  • Factories Act of 1819

    Limited child labour to 12 hours per day

  • Gov reaction to peterloo by bribing the six act

  • Cotton Mills Act

    Brought about Robert Owen

  • Peterloo Massacre

    Henry Hunt spoke to the crowd at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester
    Sabre charged by yeomanry into the crowd
    Killed 11
    Injured 400

  • London Mechanics Institute

  • The Combination Act repeal

    Believed to have caused irritation, discontent and rise to violence

  • The first passenger railway opens

  • Banking co-partnership Act

  • Cap removed on banks to enable growth into joint stock banks

  • First Joint Stock bank created = Lancashire Banking Company 1826

  • Catholic Emancipation Act

  • Peel est Met Police

  • Period: to

    Swing Riots

    Due to poor harvests in the Oates 1820s, introduction of the threshing machine, winter unemployment as a result of machinery, poverty and hunger
    Sent threatening letters
    Hayricks burned, intimidation, breaking of threshing machines

  • 1832 Great Reform Bill

    Adds £10/year householders to the voting rolls and reapportions parliamentary representation much more fairly, doing away with most rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs
    Adds 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000

  • Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire

  • The Abolition of Slavery Act

    Abolished slavery in all British territories

  • Act for the Emancipation of the Slaves

  • Factory Act of 1833

    Forbade the employment of children under 9 in all textile mills
    Children under 13 were not allowed to work for more than 9 hours a day and 48 hours per week
    Under 18s not allowed to work for more than 12 hours a day or night at all
    Factory children had to have 2 hours of education a day
    Was not enforced enough as there were only 4 inspectors

  • New Poor Laws

  • Chimney Sweeps Act

    Pointless - no way of enforcing
  • Period: to

    Chartist Movement

  • Accession of Queen Victoria

  • Chimney Sweeps Acts

    Pointless - no way of enforcing

  • Chartist riots

  • 1844 Factory Act

    First health and safety act in Britain
    All dangerous machinery to be fenced off
    No child to clean mill machinery in motion
    Limited children to side and a half hours of work
    3 hours schooling
    Max 12 hour days for 13-18
    12 hour rule applied to women

  • Corn Laws repealed

  • Period: to

    Potato failure in Europe; starvation in Ireland

  • Success of the 10 hour movement

  • Cholera outbreak

  • Factory Act

    Passed regulating work hours of women and children

  • Population reached 27 million

  • 27 towns at the size of 50,000

  • First ‘Model Union’ established

  • Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE)founded

  • Great Exhibition

    Important because it showed the inventions of the Industrial Revolution
    International event
    Many thousands attended

  • First Strike action by ASE - defeated

  • Outdoor relief regulation passed

  • Factory Act passed

    Extended the regular hours to 10 for children between 8-15
  • Period: to

    The Crimean War

  • Friendly Societies Act

  • Factory Act passed

    Repealed some of the safety features established in 1844

  • Abolition of Property Qualifications for MP’s

  • Samuel Smiles publishes ‘Self Help’

  • Period: to

    Lord Palmerston as PM (Liberal)

  • 16% of the population lived in cities

  • 1/3 of the nations income comes from manufacturing

  • Chartism has died out

  • Garibaldi takes Naples; Unification of Italy

  • Period: to

    The Great Lancashire Cotton Famine

    Due to the American civil war and lack of raw materials
    Mill closures and mass unemployment

  • Charles Kingsley raised awareness of the mistreatment of child chimney sweeps

  • Period: to

    Lord John Russel as PM (Liberal)

  • Period: to

    Lord Derby

  • Christopher Scholes invents the prototype for the modern typewriter

  • The Factory Act

    Was extended to include all work places employing more than 50 workers

  • Second Reform Bill

    Enfranchise many working men
    Adds 938,000 to an electorate of 1,057,000 in England and Wales
    Extended the vote to all households and lodgers in boroughs who paid a rent of £10 a year or more

  • The Trades Union Congress was formed

  • Period: to

    Benjamin Disraeli as PM (Conservative)

  • Period: to

    William Gladstone as PM (Liberal)

  • Foster’s Education Act

    Enforces compulsory education

  • The Secret Ballot Act

  • population of the United Kingdom at 26 million

  • Public Health Act

    Consolidation of sanitary legislation

  • Artisans’ Dwelling Act

    Government aid for housing

  • Trade Union Act

    Legalises peaceful picketing
  • Period: to

    William Gladstone as PM (Liberal)

  • Married Women’s Property Act

    Allows women to buy, own and sell property, and to keep their own earnings

  • The Third Reform Act

  • Period: to

    Lord Salisbury as PM (Liberal)

  • London dock workers and match girls strike