Never was the chasm between rich and poor more stark than in the Regency era. Ian Mortimer chronicles a period in which the wealthiest gorged themselves on the fruits of Britain\u2019s industrial might, while the working classes endured lives that were often nasty, brutish and short <\/p>

In parts of Ashton-under-Lyne, life expectancy was 13, less than a third of that of more prosperous citizens <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
But one period stands out as different: the early 19th century. In the 1830s, middle-class Londoners could expect to live to 44 but working-class ones only 22, just 50 per cent as long. Working-class people in towns like Liverpool, Preston and Manchester were lucky if they reached 19, at a time when average life expectancy from birth in the UK was more than 40. In the unsewered streets of Ashton-under-Lyne, artisans\u2019 life expectancy at birth was just 13, less than a third of that of their more prosperous fellow citizens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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Listen | Historian Ian Mortimer discusses how a vast chasm between rich and poor marked society in the early 19th century<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Extremes of opulence<\/h3>\n
Why was the early 19th century so unusual? As you can imagine, there were several reasons. The industrial revolution obviously led to the worsening of the living conditions of the poor. At the same time it had an impact on the wealthy, too, enriching them to an unprecedented degree. The result was a greater variance in living standards than probably ever before or since. As the American ambassador to Great Britain, John Quincy Adams, put it in his diary while in London in 1816: \u201cThe extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable, and more constantly obvious, in this country than in any other I ever saw.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Anyone who has even so much as glanced at a gentleman\u2019s country house built before 1830 will be aware that the wealthy were surrounded by uplifting, refined architecture and design, in which comfort was combined with a fabulous sense of style. In the grandest houses of all, such as the Prince Regent\u2019s Carlton House on Pall Mall, the internal fittings were a wealth of silk damask and gold. The decorative features were covered in gold leaf, as was the furniture; the huge glass chandeliers were trimmed with gold; golden clocks and ornaments were exhibited on gold-leaf-covered plinths; the paintings were framed in gold. The prince spent vast sums on the place \u2013 by 1795 he was \u00a3630,000 in debt \u2013 and in 1826, as king (George IV<\/a>), he could afford to have it demolished.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Even an ordinary gentleman with an income of about \u00a32,000 per year from his country estate could afford a London house as well as a country seat stuffed with mahogany furniture designed by the likes of Hepplewhite and Sheraton, and decorated with art by Reynolds, Gainsborough and many more great British artists of the time. By the 1820s most gentlemen\u2019s residences had water closets and provisions for washing. Some even had dedicated bathrooms with hot and cold running water.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In marked contrast, the workmen who physically built the houses of the gentry could consider themselves well paid in the 1820s if they received 15 shillings a week. Factory workers and labourers would receive less than this, and servants less still. Hundreds of thousands of men and women lacked regular employment altogether. Their accommodation was truly appalling, especially in the rapidly growing industrial towns. In the parish of St Giles in London, a surveyor visited a slum terrace and found the yard \u201ccovered with night soil from the overflowing of the privy, to the depth of nearly six inches, and bricks were placed to enable the inmates to get across dry shod\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Inspectors frequently reported similar conditions in the northern towns. In parts of Liverpool, people were crammed into court houses at a density of more than 1,000 people per acre. Liquid from cesspits and the foetid rubbish strewn across the ground outside oozed through the cellar walls where many were forced to sleep. The communal cesspits in the courts had no doors as the landlords claimed they would have been used for firewood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Those without homes had to cram together in boarding houses, often on the floors, or find a place in a communal barn at 2 pence per night, where every imaginable disease spread quickly among the unwashed bodies, including such killers as smallpox, tuberculosis and, from the 1830s, cholera<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Life-threatening labour<\/h3>\n
While the poorest Britons lived in squalor, the upper classes managed their estates and indulged themselves in their enthusiasms. Most didn\u2019t work. Younger sons and those who opted for employment chose a well-paid and dignified patriotic service, such as a commission in the army or navy, an ambassadorial role, parliament or the church. The middle classes similarly selected how they wanted to make a living.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
The working classes, who made up more than 70 per cent of the population, had no such choice. Those who were lucky enough to work as agricultural labourers could expect to live for 36 years \u2013 approximately twice as long as their cousins in the industrial towns. But agricultural opportunities were on the decline as more machines were employed, more arable land was given over to sheep farming, and more food was imported. For the remainder, the options were to go into service or to work in a factory or mill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Robert Blincoe\u2019s career is illuminating in this respect. He was born in London in 1792, orphaned at the age of four, and placed in a workhouse. From there he was sold at the age of seven to the owner of a mill near Nottingham. For the next 14 years he was required to work without pay for 14 hours a day, six days a week, on the spinning frames, in dusty conditions. His clothing was minimal; he was not given soap to wash nor was he fed properly. He started stealing doughballs from the mill\u2019s pigsties but the pigs soon became wise to his pilfering and threw them in the mud when they saw him coming. He suffered from constant diarrhoea, was regularly beaten, and like all his young colleagues, he lost parts of limbs in the unguarded machines. One day he watched in horror as a girl his age was dragged into a spinning machine by her skirts. He heard her bones all snapped by the whirling mechanism and then her blood \u201cthrown around like water twirled from a mop\u201d. Later, he tried to run away from the mill but was quickly caught and returned, with a reward being paid to the man who found him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Those who had such a start in life, with no education and nothing else to offer, were generally doomed to a short existence of hard labour. Blincoe left the mill as soon as he was old enough but many stayed there for their whole lives, and died either from the dust or their injuries.<\/p>\n
Huge numbers of men, women, boys and girls worked as labourers in the mines. In 1813 in Cumberland, 630ft underground, the author Richard Ayton raised his lantern to see lines of wagons driven by young girls in the pitch-black tunnels. He described all the people down there as being \u201cdistinguished by an extraordinary wretchedness. Immoderate labour and a noxious atmosphere had marked their countenances with the signs of disease and decay; they were mostly half-naked, blackened all over with dirt, and altogether so miserably disfigured and abused that they looked like a race fallen from the common rank of men and doomed, as in a kind of purgatory, to wear away their lives in these dismal shades.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever the industrial process, it was likely to contribute to the workers\u2019 ill health and premature deaths. Painters and glaze dippers developed lead poisoning. Tailors developed chronic heart and stomach problems. Chimney-cleaning boys developed scrotal cancer. Arguably the worst working conditions of all were those to be found in the grinding industries, especially in Sheffield. The work was carried out in poorly ventilated cellars and generated a lot of dust. Most fork-grinders in Sheffield were dead by the age of 28. Ninety per cent did not make it to 40.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
For the rich, the Regency period was one of haute cuisine and epicurean variety. As the poet Robert Southey wrote in 1807: \u201cAll parts of the world are ransacked for an Englishman\u2019s table. Turtle are brought alive from the West Indies\u2026 India supplies sauces and curry powder\u2026 hams [are imported] from Portugal and Westphalia; reindeers\u2019 tongues from Lapland; caviar from Russia; sausages from Bologna; macaroni from Naples; oil from Florence; olives from France, Italy or Spain; cheese from Parma and Switzerland.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Over-indulgence was common. Several \u2018ordinaries\u2019 or standard menus in the finest London hotels at this time cost 3 guineas (\u00a33 3s) per head, with an extra guinea for a bottle of fine wine. The earliest restaurants in London were established at this time; there was even an Indian curry house in the 1810s catering to returning nabobs.<\/p>\n
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Escaping the workhouse: the Victorian war on child poverty<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Tea-stained water<\/h3>\n
The poorest sectors of society found themselves eating as their medieval ancestors had done, with very little protein in their diet. Many examples were quoted by the Revd David Davies in his examination of the living standards of agricultural labourers in the 1790s. A typical case was that of a Berkshire couple and their five children, who bought 7\u00bd gallons of flour each week for their daily bread, plus 1lb of bacon. They also purchased a little tea, salt, sugar and butter. And that was it. No fish, no cheese and no vegetables other than what they grew for themselves. No beer, even. Of their total income of 8s 6d per week, 8s 3d went on food. Most meals were simply bread and butter. So when the price of flour in Berkshire trebled<\/i>, as it did in 1800, their lives became wretched.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
As for tea, people talked about it being a great leveller, but there was a world of difference between the fine teas drunk by the wealthy and the water stained with a few re-used tea leaves consumed by the poor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
An agricultural labourer\u2019s family could at least use the garden that probably went with their cottage. It was precisely for this reason that the growing of potatoes spread across the whole of the British Isles over the course of the 18th century. In short, gardens saved lives. Those living in the over-populated urban slums had no such opportunities to grow their own. For them, it was not so much a matter of having a balanced diet as obtaining anything<\/i> to eat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Among the lower classes, the difficulties faced by mothers and newborn babies were particularly challenging. For a start, the mothers were malnourished. The children of those transported to Australia grew about 2\u00a0inches taller than their parents, due to food shortages having stunted their parents\u2019 growth in England.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
When it came to the birth, well-heeled families could afford their own accoucheurs, midwives and doctors, equipped with forceps and good medical knowledge. Some private doctors saw maternal mortality rates of just 0.2 per cent over the course of their careers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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