Victorian morality

Historians have generally come to regard the Victorian era as a time of many conflicts, such as the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of dignity and restraint, together with serious debates about exactly how the new morality should be implemented.

Historian Harold Perkin wrote:Between 1780 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical.

Asa Briggs emphasizes the strong reaction against the French Revolution, and the need to focus British efforts on its defeat and not be diverged by pleasurable sins.

Moralists in the late 19th century such as Henry Mayhew decried the slums for their supposed high levels of cohabitation without marriage and illegitimate births.

It took so long because the anti-slavery morality was pitted against powerful economic interests which claimed their businesses would be destroyed if they were not permitted to exploit slave labour.

Eventually, plantation owners in the Caribbean received £20 million in cash compensation, which reflected the average market price of slaves.

[8] In the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, "fighting or baiting Lions, Bears, Badgers, Cocks, Dogs, or other Animals" was made a criminal offence.

[12] Historian Harold Perkin writes: Between 1780 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical.

The transformation diminished cruelty to animals, criminals, lunatics, and children (in that order); suppressed many cruel sports and games, such as bull-baiting and cock-fighting, as well as innocent amusements, including many fairs and wakes; rid the penal code of about two hundred capital offences, abolished transportation [of criminals to Australia], and cleaned up the prisons; turned Sunday into a day of prayer for some and mortification for all.

The campaign that led to the Factory Acts was spearheaded by rich philanthropists of the era, especially Lord Shaftesbury, who introduced bills in Parliament to mitigate the exploitation of children at the workplace.

[15] Additional legal interventions throughout the century increased the level of childhood protection, despite the resistance from the laissez-faire attitudes against government interference by factory owners.

[17] Historians Peter Gay and Michael Mason both point out that modern society often confuses Victorian etiquette for a lack of knowledge.

[citation needed] Contrary to popular conception, however, Victorian society recognised that both men and women enjoyed copulation.

Too much sex was seen as unhealthy, which led to a moral panic about masturbation, especially its perceived prevalence among middle class adolescent boys.

In the early Victorian period, a traditional idea that married women had an intense sex drive which needed to be controlled by their husband was still common.

[19] Victorians also wrote explicit erotica, perhaps the most famous being the racy tell-all My Secret Life by the pseudonym Walter (allegedly Henry Spencer Ashbee), and the magazine The Pearl, which was published for several years and reprinted as a paperback book in the 1960s.

[citation needed] The enormous expansion of police forces, especially in London, produced a sharp rise in prosecutions for illegal sodomy at midcentury.

[citation needed] Judith Walkowitz, a professor emerita at the department of history of the Johns Hopkins University, has multiple works focusing on the feminist point of view on the topic of prostitution.

[26] While overcrowding in urban cities and the amount of job opportunities for females were limited, Walkowitz argues that there were other variables that lead women to prostitution.

[28] Prostitutes were often presented as victims in sentimental literature such as Thomas Hood's poem The Bridge of Sighs, Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton, and Dickens' novel Oliver Twist.

The emphasis on the purity of women found in such works as Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House led to the portrayal of the prostitute and fallen woman as soiled, corrupted, and in need of cleansing.

[31] This emphasis on female purity was allied to the stress on the homemaking role of women, who helped to create a space free from the pollution and corruption of the city.

[citation needed] After 1815, there was widespread fear of growing crimes, burglaries, mob action, and threats of large-scale disorder.

Crime had been handled on an ad-hoc basis by poorly organized local parish constables and private watchmen, supported by very stiff penalties, including hundreds of causes for execution or deportation to Australia.

The Metropolitan Police Act 1829, championed by Home Secretary Robert Peel, was not so much a startling innovation, as a systemization with expanded funding of established informal practices.

Legally they had the historic status of constable, with authority to make arrests of suspicious persons and book offenders before a magistrate court.

[39] The British penal system underwent a transition from harsh punishment to reform, education, and training for post-prison livelihoods.

The Criminal Justice Administration Act of 1914 required courts to allow a reasonable time before imprisonment was ordered for people who did not pay their fines.

The intellectual approach tends to minimize the importance of Nonconformists and Evangelicals—the Methodists, for example, played a powerful role among the upper tier of the working class.

[42] Victorian era movements for justice, freedom, and other strong moral values made greed, and exploitation into public evils.