essay
H ALKUBRA
The_New_Urban_Setting3.pptxA Tale of Two Cities (and Classes): Urban Life, ca. 1851-1900
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The New Urban Environment
Urbanization
Industrial Economies encouraged the growth of cities at an enormous rate
Overcrowding, disease lead to new sanitation
Cities were laid out/re-drawn
New plans to accommodate housing booms
influx of immigrant/worker populations
maintain social stratification/control by dividing the city into industrial/commercial/residential (divided by class)
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The Second Industrial Revolution
Transportation
1. The Railroad
2. The Steamship
Communications
1. Postal Services
2. Telegraph
Mass Communications
1. Lending Libraries
2. Newspapers
The Rise of Physical and Social Sciences – New Ways to Explain Race and Class
Medicine
Cholera Outbreaks
The 1832-33 cholera epidemic claimed 4,000 to 7,000 victims in London.
Darwin
The Origin of Species (1859)
Herbert Spencer, Social Darwinism and the
“Survival of the Fittest” and Eugenics
Social Sciences
History
Anthropology
Charles Darwin
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Haussmannization
Georges Haussmann redesigns the modern (Bourgeois) city
Prefect of the Seine, 1853-1870
Estimates 70% of Parisians live in poverty
destroys the medieval city in favor of pleasing designs
Installs new infrastructure
new sewer and water systems
By 1870, 560 of the capital’s 805 km of streets had sewers
Discharge dangerous to communities downstream.
40,500 houses have running water (up from 6,000)
gas lighting
new, large public buildings
Uniform in height and style
Residential buildings’ interiors unregulated
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Haussmannization
Goals
prevent Parisians from ripping up the city in rebellion
allowed easy access to the army for putting down rebellion
Eradicate filth and disease
Partly inspired by cholera outbreaks
Eliminate threat of insalubrious, dangerous classes from city center
Poor, immigrants and working-class driven from their neighborhoods
Displaced poverty without eradicating it
Creates the modern
Bourgeois café culture of stores/restaurants and people watching
Formal gardens, linear street grids, and facades of buildings betray bourgeois discourse of order
Ending the Disorder of the Medieval City
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A Beautiful, Organized Space
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877)
On the Pont de l’Europe 1876–77
Le pont de l'Europe, c. 1876
Camille Pissarro, Avenue de l’Opera (1898)
The Whitechapel Murders
“Jack the Ripper” August-November, 1888
The Five Victims: Nicholls, Chapman, Eddowes, Stride and Kelly
“With the Vigilance Committee in the East End: A Suspicious Character”
13 Oct 1888
The Ripper Moment – The Emergence of New Voices
Exposure of the “social ills of ‘Outcast London’”
Bernard Shaw called the Ripper a "solitary genius" for the murders' by-product of drawing interest to the plight of the denizens of the East End
FIRST MEMBER OF CRIMINAL "CLASS." "FINE BODY OF MEN, THE PER-LEECE!" SECOND DITTO. "UNCOMMON FINE! - IT'S LUCKY FOR HUS AS THERE'S SECH A BLOOMIN' FEW ON 'EM!!!" "I have to observe that the Metropolitan Police have not large reserves doing nothing and ready to meet emergencies; but every man has his duty assigned to him, and I can only strengthen the Whitechapel district by drawing men from duty in other parts of the Metropolis." - Sir Charles Warren's Statement. "There is one Policeman to every seven hundred persons." - Vide Recent Statistics (13 October 1888)
II. The Ripper Moment – The Emergence of New Voices
B. Emergence of new political forces in response to bourgeois dominance and Liberal Policy
C. Skepticism and Fear of Authorities
1. Science
2. Police
Anti-Semitism
Feminist Concerns
There floats a phantom on the slum's foul air, Shaping, to eyes which have the gift of seeing, Into the Spectre of that loathly lair. Face it--for vain is fleeing! Red-handed, ruthless, furtive, unerect, 'Tis murderous Crime--the Nemesis of Neglect!
Mocking of glance, and merciless of mien. Mocking? Ah, yes! At Law the ghoul may laugh, The sword is here as harmless as the staff Of crippled age; its sleuthhounds are at fault, Justice appears not only blind but halt. It seems to play a merely blinkered gamer, Blundering about without a settled aim, Like boys at Blind-Man's Buff. A pretty sport For Law's sworn guards in rascaldom's resort! The bland official formula to-day Seems borrowed from the tag of Nursery play, "Turn around three times," upon no settled plan, "Flounder and fumble, and "catch whom you can!"
The Second Industrial Revolution
Improving Conditions for the Working Class
Rise of Working-Class Political Ambitions
Keir Hardie (1892) and the Independent Labour Party (1893) in England
James Keir Hardie, MP
Mass Politics
Conservatives co-opt nationalist/liberal rhetoric
shift support from working class organization to mass national parties headed by old elites
Voting rights expanded
1884- 60% of males in Britain have the right to vote (all male householders and £10 lodgers
West still not fully democratic (no women, 40% of British men)
Radical parties emerge
Play on fears over new immigration and antisemitism
Dreyfus Affair (1890s France)
Limitations of Women – Legislating the Separate Spheres
The Angel in the Household
Social Work: Women in the Public Domain
Charles W. Cope, Life Well Spent, 1862.
Man for the field and woman for the hearth, Man for the sword and for the needle she; Man with the head, and woman with the heart; Man to command, and woman to obey, All else confusion.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
The Princess, 1847
WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Western Women remain disenfranchised until World War I
Work for abolition delays efforts for women’s suffrage
Women often relied on liberal politicians to introduce legislation
Women’s legislation often pushed aside
movement largely ignores working-class women
Increased radicalism
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The Shrieking Sisterhood – Women and Political Rights
England
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
2. The Pankhursts and The Suffragettes
“I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women’s hands not only as a right but a desperate necessity. These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant. In fact, all the women I came in contact with in the workhouse contributed to that education.”
-Emmeline Pankhurst
Pankhurst being arrested at a rally in front of Buckingham Palace
Photo: Museum of London
When we were patient, when we believed in argument and persuasion, they said, “You don’t really want it because, if you did, you would do something unmistakable to show you were determined to have it.” And they when we did something unmistakable they said, “You are behaving so badly that you show you are not fit for it.”
