Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in 1736; in 1743 there were further riots in defence of cheap liquor; and in the 1760s
there were more organized mobilizations by supporters of the great agitator
John
Wilkes
, calling for political reform. The most serious insurrection of the lot, however,
were the
Gordon Riots
of 1780, when up to fifty thousand Londoners went on a
five-day rampage through the city. Although anti-Catholicism was the spark that lit the
fire, the majority of the rioters' targets were chosen not for their religion but for their
wealth. The most dramatic incidents took place at Newgate Prison, where thousands
of inmates were freed, and at the Bank of England, which was saved only by the
intervention of the military - and John Wilkes, of all people. The death toll was in
excess of three hundred, 25 rioters were subsequently hanged, and further calls were
made in Parliament for the establishment of a proper police force.
Nineteenth-century London
he
nineteenth century
witnessed the emergence of London as the capital of an empire
that stretched across the globe. The world's largest enclosed
dock system
was built in
the marshes to the east of the City, Tory reformer
Robert Peel
established the world's
first civilian
police
force
and the world's first public-transport network was created,
with horse-buses, trains, trams and an underground railway.
The city's population grew dramatically from just over one million in 1801 (the first
o
cial census) to nearly seven million by 1901.
Industrialization
brought pollution and
overcrowding, especially in the slums of the East End. Smallpox, measles, whooping
cough and scarlet fever killed thousands of working-class families, as did the cholera
outbreaks of 1832 and 1848-49. The
Poor Law
of 1834 formalized
workhouses
for the
destitute, but these failed to alleviate the problem, in the end becoming little more
than prison hospitals for the penniless. It is this era of slum life and huge social divides
that Dickens evoked in his novels.
Architecturally, London was changing rapidly.
George IV
(1820-30), who became
Prince Regent in 1811 during the declining years of his father, George III, instigated
several grandiose projects that survive to this day. With the architect
John Nash
, he
laid out London's first planned processional route, Regent Street, and a prototype
garden city around
Regent's Park
. The Regent's Canal was driven through the
northern fringe of the city, and Trafalgar Square began to take shape. The city already
boasted the first secular public museum in the world, the
British Museum
, and in
1814 London's first public art gallery opened in the suburb of Dulwich, followed
shortly afterwards by the National Gallery, founded in 1824. London finally got its
own university, too, in 1826.
The accession of
Queen Victoria
(1837-1901) coincided with a period in which the
country's international standing reached unprecedented heights, and as a result Victoria
became as much a national icon as Elizabeth I had been. Though the intellectual
achievements of Victoria's reign were immense - typified by the publication of Darwin's
The Origin of Species
in 1859 - the country saw itself above all as an imperial power
founded on industrial and commercial prowess. Its spirit was perhaps best embodied by
the great engineering feats of
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
and by the
Great Exhibition
of
1851, a display of manufacturing achievements from all over the world, which took
place in the Crystal Palace, erected in Hyde Park.
1720
1750
1751
1759
1760
The South Sea Bubble
causes financial ruin
for many
Westminster
Bridge opens
The Gin Act brings the
decades of London's
Gin Craze to an end
British Museum
opens
City of London gates
demolished
