ABSTRACT
The lowering of social barriers to aristocratic society in the late nineteenth century had important repercussions on the London marriage market. With high birth no longer an essential determinant of elite membership, it was easier for resourceful young women of beauty and personality outside aristocratic circles to gain access to men of higher social standing than themselves. This, in turn, exacerbated a demographic imbalance within the marriage market and caused much concern within aristocratic families trying to find suitable marriage partners for their daughters. The crisis was all the more acute for landed families suffering from a fall in income as a result of the agricultural depression, since their daughters now had to compete against women with superior financial resources from the wealthy business classes, foreign and British. There had always been marital alliances with the daughters of bankers or successful businessmen, but the growing acceptance of alliances outside traditional aristocratic circles, together with the influx of foreign plutocratic families, seemed to threaten the entire fabric of aristocratic social arrangements at the turn of the century.
