Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Labour of the People of London
in 1890, providing the first clear picture of the social
fabric of the city and shaming the council into action. In the face of powerful vested
interests - landlords, factory owners and private utility companies - the LCC's Liberal
leadership attempted to tackle the enormous problems, partly by taking gas, water,
electricity and transport into municipal ownership, a process that took several more
decades to achieve. The LCC's ambitious housing programme was beset with problems,
too. Slum clearances only exacerbated overcrowding, and the new dwellings were too
expensive for those in greatest need. Rehousing the poor in the suburbs also proved
unpopular, since there was a policy of excluding pubs, traditionally the social centre of
working-class communities, from these developments.
While half of London struggled to make ends meet, the other half enjoyed the fruits
of the richest nation in the world. Luxury establishments such as
The Ritz
and Harrods
belong to this period, which was personified by the dissolute and complacent Prince of
Wales, later
Edward VII
(1901-10). For the masses, too, there were new entertainments
to be enjoyed: music halls boomed, public houses prospered and the circulation of
populist newspapers such as the
Daily Mirror
topped one million. The first “Test”
cricket match between England and Australia took place in 1880 at the Kennington
Oval in front of twenty thousand spectators, and during the following 25 years nearly
all of London's professional football clubs were founded.
From World War I to World War II
Public patriotism peaked at the outbreak of
World War I
(1914-18), with crowds
cheering the troops off from Victoria and Waterloo stations, convinced the fighting
would all be over by Christmas. In the course of the next four years London
experienced its first aerial attacks, with Zeppelin raids leaving some 650 dead, but
these were minor casualties in the context of a war that destroyed millions of lives and
eradicated whatever remained of the majority's respect for the ruling classes.
At the war's end in 1918, the country's social fabric was changed drastically as the
voting franchise was extended to all men aged 21 and over and to women of 30 or over.
Equal voting rights for women - hard fought for by the radical
Suffragette
movement
led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters before the war - were only achieved in
1928, the year of Emmeline's death.
Between the wars, London's population increased dramatically, reaching close to nine
million by 1939, and representing one-fifth of the country's population. In contrast to
the nineteenth century, however, there was a marked shift in population out into the
suburbs
. Some took advantage of the new “model dwellings” of LCC estates in places
such as Dagenham in the east, though far more settled in “Metroland”, the sprawling
new suburban districts that followed the extension of the Underground out into
northwest London.
In 1924 the
British Empire Exhibition
was held, with the intention of emulating the
success of the Great Exhibition. Some 27 million people visited the show, but its success
couldn't hide the tensions that had been simmering since the end of the war. In 1926, a
wage dispute between the miners' unions and their bosses developed into the
General
Strike
. For nine days, more than half a million workers stayed away from work, until the
government called in the army and thousands of volunteers to break the strike.
1836
1851
1858
1863
The first railway is built
in London between
London Bridge and
Greenwich
Great Exhibition
held in Hyde
Park
The Great Stink when the
smell of untreated waste
in the Thames reached an
unprecedented level
The first section of the
Underground opens
between Paddington
and Farringdon
