Nineteenth Century British Timeline

Chronology for Nineteenth-Century Britain

1810-1867:

1811 Census recorded 12 million people in the British Isles, a figure which would rise to nearly 32 million by 1871 and 42 million by 1900. About 2.5% of the adult population could vote.

London, the largest city in Europe, had a population of 1 million in 1812 and more than 3 million in 1870.

1815 passage of the Corn Laws. These prohibited the importation of corn until prices had reached a certain (starvation) level.

1815 The end of the Napoleonic Wars was associated with economic distress as discharged soldiers returned home. Concurrently agrarian enclosure forced farm workers into towns, and many once-indepedent farmers were forced to become farmhands.

1815ff Crime reached a high level and remained high until the 1840s.

1817 End of public floggings of women convicted of crimes.

1819 In the "Peterloo Massacre," mounted yeomanry charged into a crowd of 60,000 who were listening to reformist orator Hunt, killing 11 and wounding 400.

1820s By the 1820s the number of offenses subject to capital punishment had been reduced from its eighteenth-century level of more than 200 to about 30. (Sodomy was still a hangable offense until the 1860s.)

1821 London Cooperative Association founded.

1829 Catholic Emancipation Act ended ban on suffrage by Roman Catholics.

1829 London Metropolitan Police established, and borough and country forces increased.

1830 George IV died and was succeeded by his brother, William IV.

1830 Manchester and Liverpool Railway opened.

1830 Whigs gained electoral majority for the first time in half a century and inaugurated a series of (relative) reforms.

1831 "Captain Swing" farm laborers' riots.

1831-36 prosecutions of unstamped radical papers.

1832 First Reform Bill eliminated 56 rotton boroughs and added143 seats to urban area and to Scotland and Ireland, which had been underrepresented. It granted the franchise to ten pound annual leasholders in boroughs, and to forty shilling freeholders in counties; adding 217,00 votes to an electorate of 435,000. Population increase added another 400,000 by 1867. Essentially the First Reform Bill enfranchised upper middle-class males.

1833 Factory Act limited working hours for children under 12 to 48 hours weekly, or 9 hours a day. Those under 18 could only work 12 hours a day. Young children were to be permitted to leave work for two hours a day in order to attend school.

1833 abolition of legal slavery in the colonies, as a result of agitation by William Wilberforce and others. On the other hand, the Jamaican constitution was suspended from 1839-44 to protect former slaveowners who were guilty of brutality towards former slaves.

1834 Poor Law Amendment Act ended outdoor relief and established a system of workhouses. Men and women were placed in separate quarters and rations were kept minimal so that the poorhouse would be less attractive than the worst forms of employment.

1834 repeal of Combination Laws permitted Robert Owen and others to found the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. This enrolled 500,000 members and sought the long-term goal of an eight-hour work day.

1834 6 Dorchester laborers who had sought to enlist others in the union were sentenced to 7 years imprisonament, and the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was dissolved.

1834 practice of branding criminals abolished.

1836 London Working Men's Association founded, with other branches in Manchester and elsewhere.

1836 establishment of civil (non-religious) marriage; marriage before a magistrate permitted.

1836 Anglican church reform forbade nonresident clergy, reshaped dioceses, and distributed the income of bishops more equitably.

1837 William IV died, and was succeeded by his niece Victoria.

1837 Dickens's Oliver Twist depicted the plight of an orphan consigned to the workhouse and public assistance.

1837 Feargus O'Connor begins the Northern Star.

1838 Anti-Corn Law League founded.

1838 The People's Charter was drafted by Francis Place and William Lovett. This called for annual elections, salaries for members of Parliament, election by secret ballot, universal manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, and the abolition of government support for the Anglican church.

1838 end of hangings for crimes other than murder and attempted murder.

1838 Railroad opened to London (Birmingham line). By 1848, 5000 miles of railways had been built.

1838 Great Western paddle steamer crossed Atlantic Ocean in under 20 days.

1839 Public unrest after Parliament rejected petition presented by Chartist delegation. Riots broke out in Birmingham and Newport, Wales, where police fired on the crowd, killing 20.

1839 Child Custody Act permitted women to petition for co-guardianship of children under seven in special cases (if husband convicted of abusive behavior).

1838 Photographic experiments of Talbot and Daguerre became known.

1839-42 "Opium War" in China opened up markets at gunpoint.

1840 Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburn-Gotha, who received the title Prince Consort.

1840 Penny post established to offer reliable and less expensive mail service.

1840 Transportation system for prisoners is phased out; in 1840 transportation to New South Wales (Australia) ended.

1840 New Zealand annexed.

1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London refuses to seat the women in the American delegation.

1841 Jewish Chronicle established to support a policy of emancipation and assimilation for Jews.

1841-42 "Hungry Forties" and economic depression.

1842 statistically highest year for crimes; in 1840s the assault rate was five times that in 1920s relative to population. Evidence also points to a higher rime rate in the industrial north.

Crime decreased later in century until the 1930s. Robbery (theft with violence) declined to one-seventh of its 1857 rate by 1900.

1842 Tennyson publishes his Poems.

1842 Ashley's Act restricts the labor of women and children in mines.

Edwin Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population makes unhealthy urban conditions known to the reading public.

1842 peak of Chartist fervor.

1842 Mudie's Circulating Library founded.

1842 Pentonville Prison built according to new standards of prison design (outside of city center, and with exercise yards) and became the model for 54 other prisons within 6 years.

1843 Thomas Hood published "The Song of the Shirt."

1844 Elizabeth Barrett Browning published A Drama of Exile and Other Poems, including "The Cry of the Children."

1844 Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England.

1844 Factory Act restricts labor of women and children.

1844 Cooperative movement founded first store at Rochdale.

1844 end of imprisonment for debts under twenty pounds; individuals were permitted to file for bankruptcy. The establishment of legal bankruptcy facilitated business expansion.

1845 Lunacy Act of 1845 required parishes to establish separate institutions for mentally ill paupers (removing them from the prisons and poorhouses).

1845-47 Irish famine prompted emigration.

1846 Repeal of Corn Laws (duty on corn reduced to a shilling a quarter bushel).

1846 Commercial telegraph service began.

1846 end of transportation to Van Diemen's Land. Henceforth convicted criminals were imprisoned rather than transported.

1847 Ten Hours Act limited work of women and children to ten hours daily.

1847 first operation using chloroform.

1848 year of popular liberal revolutions throughout western Europe. Massive presentation of the Charter with several million signatures to Parliament, and its rejection.

1848 founding of Christian Socialist movement by F. D. Maurice and others.

1848 Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton.

1848 The Communist Manifesto.

1848 Queen's College founded to instruct women.

1848-49 Cholera epidemic.

1849 Bedford College for women founded.

1850 Restoration of Roman Catholic hierarchy in England (i. e., establishment of an archbishopric and bishoprics).

1850 Public Libraries Act permits taxation for library buildings.

1850 Tennyson publishes "In Memoriam."

1851 Crystal Palace exhibiton.

1851 Census revealed that half the population now lived in towns. The census also showed that non-Anglicans and dissenting religious groups had more members than the established church, and that 42% of the population failed to attend any form of worship.

1851-53 Ruskin published his 3 volume The Stones of Venice, whic critiqued the dehumanizing effect of factory work in its central chapter "The Nature of Gothic."

1853 Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth.

1853 Matthew Arnold, Poems.

1853 Queen Victoria gives birth under chloroform, setting a pattern for middle-class women. Poorer women would gain the advantage of chloroform by the early twentieth century.

1853-56 Crimean War exposed weaknesses in the British army's supply and hospital systems.

1854 London Working Men's College founded.

1854 Dissenters first admitted to study for Oxford baccalaureate degrees (Cambridge 1856), though bared from M. A. degrees, degrees of divinity, and university teaching and administrative offices.

1854 Dickens' Hard Times represents rebellious workers, though with distaste.

1855 abolition of newspaper tax; founding of the Daily Telegraph, first mass-circulation daily.

1855 Robert Browning publishes Men and Women.

1855 Gaskell, North and South.

1856 Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her feminist epic Aurora Leigh.

1857 Matrimonial Causes Act permitted limited divorce (before this, Parliament had granted about 10 divorces a year). The act also legalized a double standard, permitting men to divorce on grounds of adultery but not women.

1857 Indian Mutiny repressed.

1858 William Morris's The Defence of Guenevere published.

1858 Lionel de Rothchild permitted to take his seat in the House of Commons without taking a Christian oath.

1859 George Eliot, Adam Bede.

1859 Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.

1859 Tennyson publishes first four idylls of Idylls of the King.

1860 Food and Drugs Act restricts adulteration of food.

1860 George Eliot, Mill on the Floss.

1861 William Morris and others found Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, influential in improving interior design.

1861 death of Prince Consort.

1861-65 American Civil War causes unemployment and depression in cotton districts.

1862 Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems.

1862 George Eliot, Silas Marner.

1862 John Ruskin, Unto This Last.

1864 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend.

1865 Antiseptic surgery pioneered by Joseph Lister.

1865 Transatlantic cable opened.

1866 Hyde Park demonstrations; agitation for extension of franchise.

1867 Revival of Irish nationalist (Fenian) movement.

1867 Second Reform Bill passed. This granted the franchise in boroughs to those paying five pounds annual rent, and in the county to those who paid twelve pounds annually in taxes. The Second Reform Bill added 938,000 voters to an electorate of 1,057,000; though even so, less than 10% of the adult population could vote. Most of the new county votes were middle class, but the town electorate included more prosperous working-class voters. Small boroughs were still underrepresented.

1868-1901ff:

1868 Nonconformists exempted from taxes to maintain parish churches.

1868 last public hanging.

1869 imprisonment for debt abolished.

1869 accused persons permitted to testify at trials, as could their spouses.

1869 establishment of first women's college at Cambridge, Girton.

1869 Contagious Diseases Act required medical examination of suspected prostitutes in ten towns near army bases, with forced incarceration and treatment if invected with syphillis.

1869 Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book published.

1870 beginning of Josephine Butler's campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act

1870 Franco-Prussian War: Germany, the winner, begins to rival Britain as Europe's leading industrial power. For several months, a Paris Commune controlled Paris before the Communards were defeated by invading troops.

1870 Competitive examinations for home civil service instituted.

1870 First Married Women's Property Act permitted women to retain their earnings after marriage, to open accounts in savings banks, and to retain legacies up to two hundred pounds.

1870 Education Act for England (one for Scotland followed soon after) established a national system of primary schools for children up to age 12; in 1880 attendance at primary school was made mandatory.

1870 Dante Gabriel Rossetti published Poems.

1870s peak in alcohol consumption, accompanied by an increase in crimes triggered by drunkenness, such as assault and wife-beating.

1871 Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man.

1871 Religious tests for university teachers and officials abolished, permitting non-Christians and atheists to serve as teachers and administrators.

1872 National Agricultural Labourers Union founded.

1872 Secret ballot adoped in national elections.

1873 Agricultural depression begins.

1873 Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance.

1875 Artisans' Dwelling Act (first public housing legislation) limited the density of dwellings in slum areas.

1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote "The Wreck of the Deutschland."

1876 Victoria proclaimed Empress of India.

1876-78 Workers and others protest British plans to begin war with Russia in defense of Turkish control of Bulgaria and other Balkan States (“The Eastern Question)

1877 Society for the Protection of Ancient buildings founded by William Morris and others concerned with the arts.

1878 Matrimonial Causes Act empowers magistrates to grant writs of separation to women whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault.

1877 Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant prosecuted for disseminating birth control information.

1881 Irish Home Rule becames major election issue.

1881 Census revealed that the majority of the population attended no religious services.

1882 Democratic Federation is founded, the first socialist party in England. In 1883 it changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation.

1882 Married Women's Property Act permitted wives to retain their own property after marriage. Wives could still not have a legal residence apart from their husbands, and courts could enforce "conjugal rights."

1884 Fabian Society established.

1884 Socialist League founded by William Morris and others.

1884 Friedrich Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State published.

1884 Electoral Act extended franchise to urban lower-middle class males and some agricultural workers.

1885 William Stead published articles on forced child prostitution. Age of consent raised from 13 to 16.

1886 repeal of Contagious Diseases Act.

1886 William Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bill defeated.

1886 Guardianship of Infants Act granted guardianship of children to mother on father's death.

1886 Crofter's Act gives small tenant farmers in Scotland (crofters) rights to land tenancy, in an attempt to stanch massive depopulation caused by Highland "Clearances."

1887 Socialist Trafalgar Square demonstration repressed on "Bloody Sunday."

1887 Queen's golden jubilee; outpouring of imperialistic sentiment.

1889 London dock strike.

1889 Browning's Asolando, his last volume.

1890 William Morris publishes News from Nowhere in Socialist journal Commonweal.

1890 All civil offices opened to Jews.

1891 founding by William Morris and Emery Walker of the Kelmscott Press, which sets a new standard for fine book printing.

1891 Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey.

1892 Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.

1892 Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto.

1893 founding of the International Labour Party, the ILP.

1893 Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act established special schools for these children.

1893 New Zealand became first country in world to grant universal adult suffrage.

1893 Gaelic League founded.

1893 Oxford University abolished the requirement that women attending lectures be chaperoned.

1895 Oscar Wilde sentenced to prison.

1899 first motor bus in service.

1899-1902 Boer War

1900 Boxer Rebellion in China.

1901 Commonwealth of Australia established.

1901 Factory Act forbade employment of children under 12 in factories or workshops.

1901 Queen Victoria died and was succeeded by Edward VII.

1903 formation of Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) by Emmeline Pankhurst and others.

1908 Capital punishment for children abolished. Incest (father-daughter) becomes illegal.

1913 Cat and Mouse Act

1914 outbreak of World War I in August.

1918 In November the war ended, having caused the death of a million soldiers and civilians.

1918 suffrage granted to wives of electors over thirty, female householders over thirty, and university graduates over 30.

1918 women granted the right to serve in Parliament; 16 or 17 women candidates ran but lost the election.

1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act permitted women to become solicitors, barristers, and magistrates.

1919 first woman m. p. elected, Viscountess Astor.

1922 Law of Property Act decreed that in cases of intestacy, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, would inherit equally.

1923 Matrimonial Causes Act granted divorce on the same ground (adultery) to both sexes; in 1937 desertion, cruelty and insanity were added to the list of grounds for divorce.

1925 Guardianship of Infants Act places fathers and mothers in equal position with regard to custody of children.

1928 suffrage for all adults over 21.

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Some Dates in Scottish History from 1745 to 1914:

1746 The second Jacobite rebellion failed when the supporters of James III's son Charles Edward--the legendary Bonnie Prince Charlie, helped in his wanderings by Flora Macdonald-- were defeated by the forces of the Duke of Cumberland (son of George II) at the battle of Culloden. Severe reprisals earned Cumberland the sobriquet of "butcher."

1747 Act of Proscription, repealed 1782, banned Highland dress and martial music. English was imposed in the schools.

1740s-1761 Scottish votes were largely controlled by Duke of Argyll, using a system of bribery and influence-peddling. By the 1770's his successor in this role was Henry Dundas.

1750-1780 period of economic growth, with population increase, rising farm prices, and improved agricultural methods and communication, including roads and canals. In early days of banking, several private banks overextended themselves, causing insecurity and high interest rates.

1783-1806 period of greatest influence of Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate of Scotland, who "managed" Scottish votes for the Tory party by doling out patronage to government jobs, including those of the navy and the East India Company.

1752 Scottish Academy of Art founded by Robert Foulis. Important painters of the century included David Allan, Allan Ramsay and Henry Raeburn.

1761 James Macherson's Fingal, claiming to be a translation of Gaelic legends by Ossian, helped inspire a romantic interest in Highland literature.

1774 Death of poet Robert Fergusson in an Edinburh madhouse at the age of 24, one of several Scottish poets to die in obscurity.

1775 Samuel Johnson published A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

1780-1860 first stages of the Highland Clearances. As the clan system was broken up, crofters lost their alleged hereditary rights to the land and chiefs demanded cash rent. In addition, as cereals declined in value in international markets and better forms of transportation made it possible to sell meat and wool abroad, many lords dispossessed their tenants in favor of sheep farming. The dispossessed left for industrial centers such as Glasgow, or emigrated to Canada, the U. S., Australia, New Zealand or India. By 1860 the Highlands had been severely depopulated.

1760ff. The Scottish Enlightenment flourished, characterized by high originality and concern for reason, rhetoric and "common sense," applied to an examination of the natural world and society, and displayed in the works of David Hume, Tobias Smollet, Francis Hutcheson, the physicist Joseph Black, the geologist James Hutton, Adam Smith and others. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776, David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in 1779. The values of the Scottish Enlightenment encouraged major scientific advances in the next century. In the 1820's Charles Lyell's geological discoveries provided the basis for Darwin's researches, and Lyell presssed Darwin to publish his Origin of Species in 1859.

1760 foundation of Carron iron works, makers of weaponry and other iron products.

1767 Craig's plan for new Edinburgh published, expanding the town for the growing upper and upper-middle classes.

1769 James Watt's improved steam engine patented and available for industrial use.

1786 Robert Burns published Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

1792 Cotton spinning introduced into Glasgow, which became a center for weaving mills. Factory families often lived in one-room dwellings until the twentieth century; the new towns of the region were overhung with smoke and lacked rudimentary sanitation.

1792 Society of the Friends of the People founded to support reform along French and American democratic lines.

1793 Scottish radical Thomas Muir sentenced to transportation to Australia for "sedition."

1800-1850 Glasgow grew rapidly, expanding 25% in population between each decade. The death rate of both major towns rose in the 1820's and 1830s, especially from typhoid fever, so that population growth was sustained by immigration rather than the births of children.

1802 Edinburgh Review founded, representing a Whig-Radical challenge to Tory authority.

1802 the first steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas, built on Clyde.

1803 James Hogg published his first poem, "The Mountain Bard."

1812 Robert Owen, one of the pioneers of modern socialism, established an improved, humane factory system at New Lanark, as described in his New View of Society.

1814 Walter Scott's Waverley published, inspiring a series of kindred novels about Scottish identity.

1815 Corn Laws gave price-supports to grain, thereby aiding large landowners but increasing the cost of food.

1817 The Scotsman founded in Edinburgh as a politically independent daily paper.

1818 Susan Ferrier's Marriage satirized Highland life, as did her Inheritance (1824).

1820 Radical War occurred in the southwest, a set of demonstrations and riots in Clydeside in general desperation at declining wages.

1821 John Galt published Annals of the Parish.

1822 George IV visited Edinburgh, donning the Steward tartan and entering Holyrood castle. After the royal family purchased Balmoral Castle in the 1850s, the Highlands became a fashionable center for aristocratic tourism, creating a demand for deer parks and other "sporting" venues which displaced farming and sheep-raising. Gradually political-nationalist sentiments became muted or were displaced onto a cultural nationalism until the turn-of-the- century, when the success of the Irish Home Rule movement suggested the possible advantages of a negotiated separatism.

1824 James Hogg published The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

1829 James Nielsen's hot blast furnance made the smelting of second-grade iron ore deposits possible, opening up Lothian and Renfrewshire for intensive iron and steel production. The industrial primacy of the Glasgow and Clyde region was made possible by coal and iron deposits, served by canal, sea and rail transportation.

1832 death of Sir Walter Scott

1832 Scottish Reform Bill granted the franchise to males who held a ten pound annual lease, raising the number of voters from 5,000 to 65,000, a higher proportion of increase than in England. Scotland became a traditional Whig (later Liberal) stronghold, producing prime ministers Balfour and Rosebery.

1833 The Burgh Reform Act established guidelines for municipal government, limiting corruption and unrealistic levels of debt. Reform was slowed by the existence of parallel governing structures based on older town councils and new "police act" boards.

1837 accession of Queen Victoria

1838-1842 period of Scottish Chartism, characterized by a "moral force" approach. 1840 was the peak year for the employment of handloom weavers.

1839 launch of first clipper ship in Aberdeen

1840-1841 Opium War in China, precipitated in part by Scottish investments in region.

1841 YMCA founded in Glasgow.

1842 Edwin Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain first publicizes conditions of filth and overcrowding in Scottish cities.

1842 A Royal Commission on mines led to the Coal Mines Act.

1842 Queen Victoria first visited Scotland.

1843 The Scottish national church, controlled by the "moderate" party until 1833, was split by the "Disruption," in which many of its leaders and constituents left to form the "Free Church of Scotland." The major issue was whether the church should continue to abide by the provisions of the Patronage Act of 1712, which gave landowners--as opposed to the presbyters or congregation--a determining say in the selection of church ministers. In general the "Free Church" was more Evangelical and more resistant to the pluralistic adaptations of orthodox doctrine which arose from nineteenth century Biblical criticism and other secular and social challenges to orthodoxy.

The existence of a parallel set of competing church institutions created divisiveness, and when the government revoked the provisions of the Patronage Act in 1874, the way was prepared for the reunion of the United Presbyterian Church and the Free Church in 1900 and of most major Presbyterian bodies in 1929. A separatist, highly Calvinist Evangelical wing of the Free Church, called the "Wee Frees," refused to join the united body and continued to exercise considerable influence in the Highlands.

1844 Robert Chambers published Vestiges of Natural Creation, an early account of evolution.

1845 Poor Law Amendment Act made some effort to increase Scottish poor relief, which was about a fifth of the English rate per capita; the Scottish law provided for relief only in cases of disability. In practice, the Board of Supervision for medical relief urged preventive measures. Wives of the unemployed could obtain no relief unless deserted, a provision which encouraged the breakup of destitute families.

1846 great potato famine intensified pace of Highland emigration.

1830's-1860's major Scottish artists included David Wilkie and William Dyce.

1847 James Nasmyth discovered anaesthetic properties of chloroform; in 1850's-1870's Scotland became a center of medical reform with James Simpson pioneering in the use of anaesthetia and Joseph Lister in the study of infection and use of antisepsis. Conan Doyle studied medicine at Edinburgh Univeristy under Joseph Bell, whose deductive methods may have been a partial model for Sherlock Holmes.

1846 Repeal of Corn Laws forced Scottish grains to be sold on an unprotected market, but lowered the cost of food. The 1840s-70s were a prosperous period for Scottish agriculture.

1850's foundation of Scottish National Museum reflected interest in science and technology.

1853 Scots entrepreneurs established jute mills in Calcutta to obtain cheap labor.

1853-1856 Crimean War

1858 Universities Act began restructing of Scottish universities under independent commissioners; these added new chairs in science and, after a second Act of 1889, in the humanities.

1861 Housing commission reported that a third of Scotland's population of over three million lived in one-room dwellings, of which 8,000 had no window.

1861-1865 American Civil War damaged cotton trade.

1864 Church of Scotland permits formerly forbidden hymn-singing and other forms of music in church services.

1867 Public Health Act for Scotland began to set housing and sanitation standards.

1867 Scottish Women Suffrage Society founded, in support of J. S. Mill's bill to enfranchise women on the same grounds granted to men.

1868 Reform Act widened franchise to include upper members of artisan class; the 1884 Electoral Act gave the vote to most steadily employed male urban workers and farmers.

1830's-1870's Glasgow and Edinburgh were centers for engineering and science, home to the most eminent Victorian scientists William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, one of the authors of the laws of thermodynamics, James Clerk Maxwell, a pioneer in the theory of electromagneticism, and David Brewster, researcher in optics and photography and inventor of the kaleidoscope. By the 1870's the new scientific subjects had been integrated into the universities, a development which was delayed in England until the turn of the century.

1870 Gaelic permitted as language of instruction in schools.

1870s-1880's Edward Caird established an influential philosophical school at Glasgow University, arguing a variant of Hegelian idealism which stressed participation in a community, governmental pursuit of communal objectives, and social welfare. His views helped encourage the formation of a Settlement Movement in Glasgow in the late 1880s.

1870's-1880s agricultural depression lowered land values; Highland depopulation accelerated as former potato and grain farms were first used for sheep, which depleted their soil, then converted to deer forests. Living conditions in the Highlands lagged behind those of the rest of the country.

1871 Northeast "Kailyard" novelist William Alexander published Johnnie Gibb o' Gushetneuk.

1872 Education Act for Scotland established mandatory education for children ages 5-13 under control of a local school board.

1872 Ballot Act ensured secret voting, ending bribery and coercion as a means of manipulating elections.

1873 death of David Livingstone, Scottish African missionary and national popular hero.

1873 Moody and Sankey evangelistic campaign bings a more cheerful tone to Scottish evangelicalism.

1879 first steel ocean liner launched by William Denny of Dunbarton; ship-building a major Scottish industry until WWII.

1880's Dr. Macewen developed antiseptic surgery, as observed in W. H. Henley's "In Hospital."

1881 Householders of Scotland Act gave local franchise to some women; Married Women's Property Act for Scotland enacted.

1883 Crofters' War, uprising by Highland small landowners against loss of pasture rights and eviction.

1884 Reform Act extended franchise and ended Scottish underrepresentation by tying parliamentary seats to population

1883 establishment of a Chair of Celtic Languages at Edinburgh University gives academic status to Gaelic.

1883 Boys Brigade founded.

1885 an office of Secretary of State for Scotland (re)established, below cabinet status. ManyScots felt laws administered from Westminster failed to take into account conditions specificto Scotland. The Secretary could at least propose legislation.

1885ff. "The Glasgow Boys" brought romantic and exotic themes to Scottish art. Important members of the school included E. A. Hornel, George Henry, William McTaggart and John Lavery. The Glasgow School of Art attracted pioneers such as Francis Newbury, Charles Renniw Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. It was an early pioneer in the training of women artists.

1886 Edinburgh host to International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art.

1886 R. L. Stevenson published Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His novels with Scottish settings

included The Master of Ballantrae (1889) and the posthumous Weir of Hermiston.

1886 Crofters' Holdings Act provided security of tenure and rent control to small land leasers,

though too late to stem the tide of emigration.

1886 Scottish Home Rule Association founded.

1888 'Goschen formula' established ratio of grants to Scotland equivalent to its share in taxation (11 to 80).

1890 Universities Act empowered universities to accept women students; St. Andrews had permitted women to take the L. L. A. degree in 1872, and a Glasgow College for women had begun to offer courses in the 1880's, with medical instruction commenced in the 1890's.

1891 Scottish Orchestra founded, with Herschel as its first conductor.

1890 James Frazer published The Golden Bough.

1890's-1920's Patrick Geddes promoted the study of social and urban planning along cultural reformist lines, along with modern environmentalist ideas.

1892 founding of the Glasgow Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum.

1893 founding of Independent Labour Party by Keir Hardie and others, absorbing much of support for Scottish Land and Labour League (founded 1888).

1894 Home Rule for Scotland bill passed in Commons, but was dropped when the government fell.

1897 Congested Districts Board established to promote better land tenure conditions in Highlands.

1899-1902 Boer War

1900 cost of education at Scottish universities remained about fifteen pounds annually, in contrast to two hundred pounds annually for Cambridge.

1900 Union of the United Presbyterian Church and the Free Church, in an attempt to widen membership.

1901 population of Scotland reached four and a half million. Scotland's proportion of the population of the U. K. declined from one in six to one in eight during the nineteenth century as a result of emigration, despite a stream of Irish immigrants, mainly Catholics who settled in the lowlands. Emigration continued to exceed immigration through the 1960's. Scottish twentieth-century mortality rates were higher than those for England; in 1936 the infant mortality rate for Glasgow was 180 per cent that of Chicago and 290 per cent that for Stockholm. Child death correlated directly with cramped housing, as the one-roomed dwelling had double the infant mortality rate of that of four rooms. Nearly half the

population still lived in one or two rooms during the First World War.

1901 death of Queen Victoria and accession of Edward VII, who reigned until 1910.

1901 George Douglas Brown's The House with the Green Shutters provides a corrective to "Kailyard" sentimentalism about rural life.

1904 James Barrie published Peter Pan.

1906 modern Labour Party formed and organized working-class politics for most of the century.

1908 Scottish headquarters of Women's Social and Political Union opened in Glasgow. The "general" for WSPU London parades, Flora Drummond, was Scottish. An alternative, less autocratically-run suffrage society, The Women's Freedom League, set up Glasgow and Edinburgh premises by 1909.

1908 Old Age Pensions established.

1909 report on Poor Law included data that 65 per cent of those living in the Highlands died without a doctor to sign their death certificates; the report lled to establishment of Highlands and Islands medical services to bring medical care to the Highlands, a forerunner of the National Health Service.

1910 accession of George V, monarch of U. K. 1910-1936.

1911 salaries granted to members of parliament.

1914 outbreak of the First World War with declaration of war on Germany August 4th.

1915 labour-management unrest during war; Rent Restriction legislation controlled prices.

1918 end of war; vote granted to women over 30.

1922 Ten I. L. P. M. P.'s elected from "Red Clyde."

1924 Housing Act of 1924 helped add to available housing, though on a more limited scale than in England; Glasgow slum clearance rebuilt area where people lived 1,116 per acre.

1928 founding of Scottish National Party.

1929 Union of the United Church of Scotland and the Free Church, uniting all branches of Scottish Presbyterianism except the "Wee Frees," the United Free Church, a branch of the Free Church which maintained an undiluted Calvinist orthodoxy and whose members centered in the Highlands.

1930's world-wide depression had especially severe and lingering effects in Scotland, which failed to benefit from a housing and consumer goods boom occuring in England. Although the Second World War brought economic recovery, this generally failed to aid domestic conditions.

1961 proportion of Scots living in one or two-roomed houses continued higher than in rest of U. K.

1966 government investment grants offered to Scotland as a "development area," which aftercontrast to two hundred pounds annually for Cambridge.