ABSTRACT
In 1831, seven million out of a total population of 16.3 million inhabitants of Great Britain (43 per cent) lived in ‘towns’. By 1911, town dwellers numbered 31.8 million out of 40.9 million Britons (78 per cent). But a town could be anywhere of more than 2,500 inhabitants, so the ‘urban experience’ for some town dwellers was still quite limited. Restricting our attention to England and Wales and to the largest ‘urban’ places, just under 20 per cent of the population lived in cities of at least 100,000 inhabitants in 1831, but by 1911 that figure had increased to 44 per cent. In 1841 there were only seven places with more than 100,000 inhabitants and 48 with between 20,000 and 100,000; by 1901 there were 33 places with more than 100,000 and another 141 with at least 20,000 inhabitants (Law 1967, Waller 1983). Given increasing geographical and social mobility, we can conclude that by the end of Victoria’s reign, most of the population had experience of living in big cities at some stage in their lives, and even those who remained in rural areas would have encountered city life in numerous ways: through demands that cities placed on agricultural production, the circulation of newspapers and magazines that originated in cities, the periodic ‘invasion’ of countryside by city dwellers seeking retreat from the pressures of urban life, but unconsciously bringing urban values with them.
