Further Social Reform

Asylums and the insane

Ashley also played a significant role in raising the question of conditions in asylums and madhouses and the treatment of their inmates[1]. In 1842, he had secured legislation that empowered the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy to carry out a detailed inspection of all institutions that housed the insane. In 1844, the Commissioners’ report was completed. On the basis of its evidence, Ashley brought forward two bills to reform the administrative machinery concerning the care of lunatics. The general effect of the legislation was to reconstruct the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy by granting them wider powers of inspection, licensing and reporting. It proved a milestone on the road away from the earlier notorious practices of Bedlam and towards modern ideas of mental health services.

Railways

Between 1841 and 1846, railway mileage doubled from 1,696 to 3,036 miles, the number of passengers rose from 24 to 44 million and goods receipts rise from £1.56 million to £2.84 million. The dramatic expansion and its associated ‘railway manias’ threatened to bring chaos to the financial markets as investors feverishly sought to profit from railway shares. This growth came at a cost and there were growing concerns about passenger safety with railway companies providing few safety precautions. In 1841, there were 65 accidents resulting in 41 passenger deaths and 92 injuries plus an additional 60 accidents among railway employees resulting in 28 deaths and 36 injuries. These statistics raised important questions about the wisdom of an unregulated railway system.

Regulation of railways[2] went to the heart of the government’s strong commitment to the principles of laissez-faire. It raised two important questions. First, under what circumstances was it justifiable for government to intervene in the operation of the free market? Secondly, if intervention was justifiable, what degree of regulation was necessary to protect the public without inhibiting the economic development of the railways? Peel, for example, believed that railway companies would tend to become negligent once relieved of their responsibilities by government and that the public could be trusted to take care of themselves.

William Gladstone, as Vice President and after 1843 President of the Board of Trade adopted a more interventionist position. The result was two pieces of legislation. In February 1842, Gladstone brought in a bill that made the existing inspection of railway lines prior to their opening to the public more effective. Other provisions required railway companies to report all accidents on their lines and improve some safety procedures, In 1844, the ministry introduced the most famous of all Railway Acts designed specifically to improve the safety and convenience of third-class passengers. Gladstone proposed that railway companies that derived a third or more of their revenue from passengers (and most companies did) were to run at least one train daily with a fare of no more than 1d per mile, that it should stop at every station and run at a speed of no less than 12 miles per hour. Thus began the so-called ‘parliamentary trains’. Further legislation ensured a higher standard of comfort and safety for passengers by licensing the Board of Trade to approve the construction of railway carriages.

The government was less successful in regulating the entrepreneurial aspect of railway development. The 1844 Railway Act had also contained provision for the regulation of boards of management of railway companies. Furthermore, Gladstone proposed regulating railway companies in the same wat as the Bank of England was regulation, that is, by review. If, at the end of fifteen years, the annual divisible profit on the paid-up share capital of any company equalled 10 per cent, the government would have the option of revising the fare and charges of that company. Another provision would have allowed the government the option of purchasing any new railway line, whatever the profits.

If these provisions had passed, they would have represented a significant extension of the principle of state intervention in the operation of the railway network. It is unclear what Gladstone’s justification for this was and the proposals seem to have been personal rather than governmental. In the event, many of Gladstone’s Cabinet colleagues disagreed with him and pressure from thirty railway companies on Peel resulted in twenty clauses being deleted from the bill. Gladstone assured the Commons, in a decidedly apologetic speech on 22^nd July 1844, that there had been no intention on the part of the government to become managers of the railway. Rather the intention of the bill had been to reserve the right of the legislature to act on behalf of the general public.

Gladstone’s retreat could not hide the fact that the government had caved in to pressure from the railway interest[3]. The influence of the railway interest is further illustrated by the fate of the Railway Board, established in August 1844. Presided over by Lord Dalhousie, Vice-President of the Board of Trade since Gladstone’s promotion in 1843, its role was to speed the passage of railway bills through Parliament. Instead of each railway line being sanctioned by both houses of Parliament, the Railway Board would receive applications and make recommendations as to which line should be passed, postponed or rejected. By the beginning of 1845, there were already major objections to the Board and criticisms that it was assuming too much authority. There was no defence of the Board by ministers and when Peel withdrew his support, its fate was sealed. The collapse of the Railway Board, in many respects, characterises the government’s railway policy: essentially it was an opportunity lost. It was not until the 1860s and 1870s that there was any attempt by government to exert effective control over the railways.

Assessing social policies

Where does Peel’s government fit in the context of the debate about the growth of government in the first half of the nineteenth century? In broad terms, historians have identified two schools of thought: the theorists and the empiricists. The theorists claim that the impetus for state intervention derived from Jeremy Bentham and his disciples. They argue that Bentham laid the philosophical foundations for intervention in his principle of ‘utility’. Benthamite publicists publicised his theory and Benthamite civil servants exercise their influence over government to enact utilitarian reforms. The empiricists deny the importance of theory and argue that, for the most part, government responded to the pressure of events. This, they maintain, accounts for Britain’s erratic and piecemeal reformism.

Peel’s government cannot be regarded as Benthamite in character or that his ministers had marked Benthamite sympathies. However, Peel’s government relied on the investigative powers of Benthamite officials. The Royal Commission on children’s employment contained at least one well-known Benthamite reformer, Southwood Smith as well as Leonard Horner, the factory inspector who was Benthamite in sympathy. Horner’s advice was also sought by Graham during the drafting of the 1843 Factory Bill though Horner actually advised a cautious policy rather than a further extension of governmental intervention. Indeed, it was Ashley, certainly no Benthamite, who urged greater intervention in the factory system.

The empiricist model is perhaps the better guide to the Peel ministry. Peel and his ministers were not social reformers acting on a rational plan for government intervention. They were conscious of the need to balance interests (economic, religious or political) and had no intention of tipping the balance in favour of any single interests. Their approach was cautious and often reactive, being nudged forward by one interest and deflected by another. The problem was that Peel’s executive view of government required administrative solutions to social problems whereas, in reality, those problems needed a resolution that defined the relationship between areas where it was justifiable for the state to intervene and where responsibility should lie with the individual. This, and opposition within his own party, limited the extent to which Peel’s government was capable of innovative solutions to social problems.

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[1] On the question of madness and the insane, Roy Porter Mind-Forg’d Manacles, Athlone Press, 1987 is perhaps the best introduction to developments between 1660 and the early 1830s. Andrew Scull The Most Solitary Affliction: Madness and Society in Britain 1700-1900, Yale University Press, 1993, Andrew Scull, Charlotte MacKenzie and Nicholas Hervey Masters of Bedlam: the transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade, Princeton, 1996, Leonard D. Smith ‘Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody’: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early-Nineteenth Century England, Leicester University Press, 1999 and Peter Bartlett The Poor Law of Lunacy, Leicester University Press, 1999 provide greater focus and analysis of the nineteenth century.

[2] On this issue see Henry Parris Government and the Railways in Nineteenth-Century Britain, London, 1958.

[3] On this issue see P. S. Bagwell ‘The railway interest: its organisation and influence, 1839-1914’, Journal of Transport History, volume 7, (1965), pages 65-86.

Factory reform and the 'condition of England' question 1843-46

The 1843 Factory Bill and the 1844 Factory Act

There was an obvious difference between Ashley’s proposals in social legislation and the government’s own initiatives. For Ashley, it was a crusade; the government was far more concerned with the promotion of social and political order. This can clearly be seen in the government’s own factory proposals in 1843. Peel and Graham agreed on the importance of improving educational provision for the working population and making the educational clauses of the 1833 Factory Act effective. Graham believed in the importance of education as a means of social control and emphasised the moral content of schooling. He was convinced that the riots in the autumn and winter of 1842 were the result of declining religious attendance. It was necessary, he told Parliament to ‘rescue the rising generation in the manufacturing districts from the state of practical infidelity… [only if] the education of the rising youth should be the peculiar care of the Government’ could the moral tone of the nation be elevated.

For the state to sponsor religious training in factory schools meant, to some degree favouring the Church of England. Graham anticipated opposition and took exceptional care in drafting the educational clauses of the proposed bill. He consulted two of his factory inspectors: Leonard Horner, who he believed had some influence with the Nonconformists, and Robert Saunders, who had the confidence of the Bishop of London. He also drew on the educational expertise of James Kay-Shuttleworth. The bill was presented to Parliament in March 1843 restricting children aged 8-13 to 6½ hours’ work with three hours’ daily education in improved schools largely controlled by the Church of England.  

He could not have imagined the depth of opposition to this proposal. Fear and prejudice came together in the massive and unusually united campaign by nonconformist groups coordinated by an extra-parliamentary pressure group, the United Conference, stressing the virtues of ‘voluntaryism‘ and professing concerns about the ‘Romanising’ effects of the Oxford Movement. Within two months, it had organised a petition to Parliament containing over two million signatures. Graham’s proposal for state assistance in the education of factory children was thought by Nonconformists and Roman Catholics to favour the Church of England unfairly. In June 1843, the education clauses were withdrawn. In its failure to make the Church of England responsible for the education of England’s manufacturing districts, Peel witnessed the fading of Anglican hopes to reassert its claim as the effective church of the whole state.

Opposition to the educational clauses had delayed the bill as a whole but the government was committed to proceeding with the remainder of the bill. However, the government decided not to proceed further in the 1843 session and it was not until the following February that Graham submitted the truncated Factory Bill. It proposed reducing daily working hours for factory children (8-13 years of age) from 9 to 6½ hours.  It increased their required hours in school from 2 to 3 hours daily. In effect, children became ‘half-timers’, working for only half a day and spending a proportionately greater amount of time in school.  The hours of adult females were limited to 12 hour. This meant that they could work the same amount of time as young persons (13-18 years of age). This represented an important development as previous factory legislation had only limited the hours of work of children and young persons. By its application to textile mills, the new proposal extended considerably the precedent for the regulation of adult female labour set in the 1842 Mines Act.  Dangerous machinery was to be fenced in.  It was permissible for factories to operate for 15 hours a day.

Richard Oastler mounted a major campaign in the spring of 1844 but he was unable to graft a ‘10 hour clause’ on to the revised factory bill. However, Ashley moved an amendment to reduce the twelve hour limitation for women and young persons to ten hours daily. The introduction of the Ten Hour Movement into the factory debate precipitated the most serious crisis in the life of the government to that time. The debate on the ten hour amendment developed over the next two months and forced the government into a series of difficult manoeuvres. Initially, Peel and Graham argued against Ashley on economic grounds. Peel was prepared to pass legislation preventing exploitation of children and women but he argued adult males were free agents and the law should not interfere with market forces. Even so, he doubted whether employers would pay a twelve hour rate for ten hours, work. Graham warned the Commons that the reduction of two hours’ work might damage British industry by reducing productivity, thus lowering profits and ultimately wages. Not all members of the House were convinced by this argument. Secondly, there was an important political motivation in supporting Ashley. The agricultural interest, upset of Peel’s liberalised tariff policy and angered by the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League saw an easy opportunity for revenge against manufacturers. This mixture of motives accounts for the surprising victory on 18^th March in committee of Ashley’s amendment by 179 to 170. However, four days later, when the specific clause of the Ten Hours’ Bill was presented, the vote went against Ashley.

There was now some room for compromise around eleven hours and some of Ashley’s supporters signalled that they were prepared to accept this. However, Peel made it clear that he was unwilling to accept any compromise and on 25^th March Graham announced the government’s intention of bringing forward a new bill after the Easter recess in which the twelve hour restriction would be maintained arguing for the dangers of legislative interference in the free market for labour. However, Graham advanced a new argument: should a ten hour amendment pass, then he would seek ‘a private station’; in other words the government would resign. This brought the Conservative dissidents to heel and when Ashley’s amendment came to the Commons it was heavily defeated by 297 to 159.

This may seem a rather extreme way of getting the Factory Bill through. Even Peel admitted that in practice there were only a few mills in which workers had a twelve hour day. So, why not accept a compromise? However, both Peel and Graham believed that cabinet government and executive action were the only effect way to carry out the growing mass of public business. Peel expected his party to support legislation; it was a matter of confidence.

Factory reform 1845

Ashley returned to factory reform the following year. The Royal Commission on the employment of children had investigated abuses not only in mines and collieries but in numerous other unregulated industries. Ashley was determined to extend government regulation over these exempted industries and concentrated on calico printing. Since it was a textile industry, he thought that the restrictions on work contained in the 1844 Factory Act could be extended with relative ease. His proposal to limit the hours of children and women in calico printing was introduced to the Commons In February 1845 and initially attracted some support from the government. The result on this occasion was a compromise. The government agreed with those parts of Ashley’s bill that provided education for children under thirteen, prohibited the employment of children under eight and prohibited night work for children and women. However, it did not agree with restrictions on the hours of children between eight and thirteen years old arguing that the employment of children in calico printing was more necessary than in other industries. With Ashley’s acceptance of the government’s position, an effective compromise was reached and the measure passed into law.

Aftermath

There was considerable disappointment in the textile towns with the failure to implement the ten hour day in 1844. A series of conferences sought to maintain unity by reviving the Ten Hours Bill in Parliament, and after a wide winter campaign Ashley Cooper moved for leave to introduce it in January 1846. However, the debate over industrial conditions was now overshadowed by the nation-wide controversy over the Corn Laws. Ashley felt morally obliged to resign his seat and John Fielden took his place as parliamentary leader but lost his seat in May. As another campaign was mounted in the autumn a gathering industrial recession weakened the case for opposition. Final Whig attempts to compromise on 11 hours were defeated and Fielden triumphed in May 1847 with the Ten Hours Act receiving the royal assent in June.