The middle-classes: The professions

The emergence of a substantial and powerful professional group within the middle-classes was a phenomenon that gathered considerable pace in the later Victorian period.[1] The emergence of a larger group of professional occupations was a function of more global developments in nineteenth century Britain. The growth and maturation of the world’s first modern capitalist economy: the growth in GNP was impressively high between 1841 and 1901. It more than doubled in the period to 1871 and, in spite of anxieties about Britain’s weakening competitive position it managed an 83 per cent increase to 1901. An increasing, and increasingly prosperous, population: the UK population grew by a third in the last three decades of the century, a higher growth rate than for 1841-1871 though here the rate was influenced by the Irish famine and its aftermath. Together with its concentration in urban settlements: in 1841 48 per cent of the population of England and Wales lived in settlements of 2500 people or more; by 1871 this had risen to 65 per cent and by 1901 78 per cent. The diversification of the industrial structure with an increased emphasis on the service sectors: the service sectors’ share of the national income rose from 44 per cent in 1841 to 54 per cent by 1901.

It was in the towns and cities that the middle-classes burgeoned. Those with incomes over £150 per year increased by about 170 per cent from around 307,000 in 1860-1861 to 833,000 in 1894-1895. From the ranks of this expanding middle-class came not only those who retained the non-industrial tasks of the traditional professional occupations -- religion, law, medicine and education (the civil service and armed forces may also be seen as part of this group but, equally, they may be seen as part of ‘government’) -- but also those who helped to ‘professionalise’ other occupations connected with the demands of the post-industrial world: accounting, surveying, civil and mechanical engineering and the emergence of what has been termed the ‘service class’. For Harold Perkin the professions constituted the ‘forgotten middle-class’, temporarily ignored in the early stages of the industrial revolution as the aristocratic, entrepreneurial and working-class ideals vied for supremacy. This neglected groups nevertheless benefited from the expanded opportunities provided by industrialisation.

What is a profession?

Sociologists have long been engaged in a length debate searching for a definition of the term ‘profession’ and the attributes of professional status. By 1850 certain occupations had acquired a fairly high social status by mastering a core of esoteric knowledge and offering it to society for financial reward. However, it was the notion of service to the community that was held to justify a privileged position of trust ‘This great class includes those persons who are rendering direct service to mankind and satisfying their intellectual, moral and devotional wants.’ [2]

A promise of integrity and codes of conduct, identified with the established professions of religion, law, medicine and education, differentiated ‘professional’ from ‘non-professional’ occupations, and in return the state permitted the professions to license and to regulate themselves. The late nineteenth century saw a considerable competition for professional status as emerging occupations tried to join their more established colleagues. In order to do so they had to combine an ideology of service with a mastery of a differentiated body of knowledge. It is possible from this discussion to suggest certain characteristics of a ‘profession’. It requires control of a particular area of knowledge and expertise combined with a license to use this knowledge and expertise. This is combined with an ideology of service to the community of society generally. The activities of a ‘profession’ are controlled and regulated by the profession itself that seeks a degree of monopoly power via restrictive practices. The professions used their control of knowledge and collective organisation to establish a mandate to define the parameters of the work to be performed.

Who were the professional groups in the late Victorian economy?

The counting of professional heads is as difficult as the task of defining professional status. The main source is the decennial census of population that exhibits numerous adjustments to the occupation classification. These reflected not only the structural changes in the economy but also shifting contemporary perceptions of what constituted a ‘professional’. This, for example, the ‘professional class’ in 1851 embraced not only those in the ‘learned professions’ plus ‘literature, art and science’ but also those engaged in government and defence. This classification included Victoria and the royal family as professionals but excluded accountants, architects and surveyors who were included on the list of industrial occupations. Taking the last forty years of the century numbers in this group in the United Kingdom rose from about 345,000 in 1861 to 515,000 in 1881 to 735,000 in 1901, an increase of 113 per cent across the period. Expressed as a percentage of the occupied population, the professional elements in society increased from about 2.5 per cent in 1861 to 4.0 per cent in 1901.

There are major problems of interpreting the available statistical data but it is possible to discern considerable variations in the growth rates of the several occupations. For 1861-1901, the growth in the established professions was modest. Numbers in religion, law and medicine rose by 30-60 per cent, compared to an overall increase in population of 61 per cent and an increase of 170 per cent in those with incomes over £150. However, some occupations exhibited much higher growth rates: dentistry established itself as a recognised activity after the Medical Act 1858 and the Dentists Act 1878; writing and journalism; music and entertainment, indicative of the expansion of leisure activities and their commercial exploitation in the late nineteenth century; teaching, stimulated by the expansion of both public and state schools; and the ‘industrial professions’ of architecture, engineering and surveying. After 1881, the expansion of most professional occupations was more modest. Two occupations experienced considerable growth. Most of the increase in the numbers of physicians and surgeons after 1861 were concentrated after 1881. Acting continued to exhibit above-average growth, its 174 per cent increase between 1881 and 1901 receiving special attention in the 1901 Census Report. Employment opportunities for women remained limited in the major professions and within them the more prestigious posts were meagre. In the main women took part in more subordinate activities and dominated three occupations, teaching, midwifery and nursing, where status was usually low: of the 230,000 teachers listed in 1901, 172,000 or three-quarters were women.

How did they emerge?

Between 1860 and 1900 there is clear evidence of the organising ability of these predominantly male professionalising occupations. New, protective organisations were established, and there was a considerable increase in educational and training activities. Many important landmarks, however, lay outside it: the establishment of the Law Society in the 1830s, the creation of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1818 and a similar body for Mechanical Engineers in 1847, the appearance of the Institute of British Architects in 1834 and the British Medical Association in 1856. In the period after 1860 earlier advances were strengthened. Local and provincial bodies combined to form national associations; royal charters were conferred on existing institutions; and other elements of enhanced status were evidence in statutory recognition, regulation and privilege.

In law, the separation of barristers from the subordinate branch of solicitors and attorneys remained. Barristers took steps to defend restrictive practices through a Bar Committee of 1883, reorganised in 1894 as the Bar Council. Solicitors, who had obtained a monopoly of conveyancing in 1804, obtained more work with the creation of country courts in 1846. Their association, the ‘Incorporated Law Society’ was entrusted with registration in 1843, given a new charter in 1845, given the right to conduct its own examinations in 1877 and established its own Law School in London in 1903. The number of members of the Law Society increased fourfold to reach 77000 by 1901 and the number of practising solicitors rose by 60 per cent over the same period to 16,3000. The creation of the ‘industrial professions’ was, by contrast, emphatically a creation of the nineteenth century. Railways acted as a major stimulus encouraging change in engineering, accounting, surveying and architecture as well as in specialist branches of the law. Two notable organisations were established before 1860: the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1818 and a similar body for Mechanical Engineers in 1847. In the period 1860-1900 a dozen more bodies were established, six in 1860-1873 and six more in 1889-1897. Membership of engineering institutions rose from about 1700 in 1860 to 23,000 in 1900.

There were several common features of the professionalising activities of this period. First, all had broadly similar aims to raise status, increase financial rewards and provide occupational security by means of differentiation, regulation and an emphasis on the gentlemanly virtues of education and middle-class morality. Secondly, both the transformation of the older professions and the emergence of newer branches were part of the general process of socio-political change in Britain with the middle-class striving for an idealised and organising image of itself. Thirdly, professionalising activities, whether stimulated by internal occupational factors like new knowledge, or by external changes like industrial growth, urbanisation and the railways, was a major element in the process by which middle-class elites established and protected their position in an industrial society. Finally, this involved both a separation from the working-classes and a power-sharing and therefore partial identification, with the old aristocratic order. The rise of the professions pointed both backwards and forwards: backwards in that professionalisation failed to shake off the trappings of aristocratic values; forwards in that it encouraged a greater degree of government intervention in the economy, the hallmark of the modern twentieth century state.

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[1] W.J. Reader Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England, 1966 is still the best short introduction to the subject but needs to be read in relation to T.R. Gourvish 'The Rise of the Professions' in T.R. Gourvish and Alan O’Day (eds.), Later Victorian Britain 1867-1900, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 13-36.

[2] 'Remarks on the Industrial Statistics of 1861', Return on Poor Rates and Pauperism, July 1864.

The middle-classes: Entrepreneurs

The quality of British entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century is continually being reassessed. Historians suggested until the mid 1960s that from being the organisers of change in the first half of the nineteenth century, British entrepreneurs had, by its latter decades, come to be responsible for Britain’s failure to retain her role as workshop of the world.[1]

Entrepreneurs and the Industrial Revolution: the need for reassessment

The view of entrepreneurs in the late nineteenth century as having declining initiative and flagging drive rests on a view of the dynamism of their predecessors of the classical industrial revolution. But is this assumption fully justified? It is grounded in a view that an economic transformation did take place between 1780 and 1830 and that entrepreneurs were the chief instruments of change with their reputations for courage and adventurousness, progressive efficiency, organisational ability and grasp of commercial opportunities, combined with a capacity to exploit it. Historians have questioned the promethean basis for economic change and, as a result, have begun to look seriously at the role that entrepreneurs played. The problem is the nature of the sample used to justify the progressive nature of entrepreneurs. The evidence that survives is from those concerns that were sufficiently successful to have created conditions favourable for untypical longevity. Historians have few records of where entrepreneurship failed. On the basis of this biased sample, the temptation has been to construct a composite ‘complete businessman’ possessing all the virtues and to extrapolate from these qualities not only to the hundreds of concerns mentioned in local histories, but even to those whose names have never been recorded. This has confused the issue. In fact the ancestors of the much maligned later Victorian businessman may not have been superior entrepreneurs in every facet of business activity and many who succeeded in the early years may not have fared so well in later decades.

Many industrial pioneers operated in a uniquely favourable economic environment. They faced a buoyant domestic market buttressed, especially in cotton, by a flourishing overseas demand. This allowed entrepreneurs like Robert Owen, Benjamin Gott and his partners and George Newton and Thomas Chambers to exploit profit potentials. In these generally favourable demand situations the perpetration of the grossest errors often went unpunished by bankruptcy. Imbalances of power supply, mill capacity and potential demand for the product often resulted and optimal factory layouts were rarely achieved. The focus on the successful entrepreneurs during the industrial revolution creates a degree of entrepreneurship that was perhaps not typical. More representative than the Arkwrights, Strutts and Peels were the Wilsons of Wilsontown Ironworks or the Needhams of Litton whose concerns suffered from serious entrepreneurial shortcomings coupled with gross mismanagement.

The hidden decades: 1830-1870?

The overwhelming majority of business records for this period have either been destroyed or have not yet attracted much attention. Analysis is thus either impossible or insubstantial. This is a grave misfortune. Many of the problems of the pioneers had been overcome: relatively sophisticated managerial techniques evolved and the markets of the world long remained open to British exploitation. However, such was the strength of the home and overseas markets, the former benefiting from the coming of railways and gradually rising living standards that the entrepreneur had no great inducement to alter the basic economic structure that had evolved before 1830.

The absence of any dramatic change in the scale of operations, the relatively slow enlargement of the labour forces of individual enterprises and the close coincidence of firm and plant, coupled with the fact that the majority of large companies were but ‘private firms converted’ meant that the nature of entrepreneurship and the structure of the firm changed little in the middle decades of the century. However, the decline of hitherto leading firms can be traced to this period. Marshall’s of Leeds began to decline in the 1840s, though it was to linger on for another forty years by which time many of its leading competitors in flax spinning had already gone: Benyons in 1861, John Morfitt and John Wilkinson a few years later. The Ashworth cotton enterprises, built up between 1818 and 1834 by Henry and Edward Ashworth, began their relative decline in the 1840s. In iron Joshua Walker & Co. did not long survive the end of the Napoleonic Wars, its steel trade being formally wound up in 1829 and its iron trade finally wasted away in the 1830s. Other ironmasters fared little better: John Darwin, one of Sheffield’s leading industrialists, had gone bankrupt by 1828. The Coalbrookdale Company, bereft of managerial guidance when Abraham and Alfred Darby retired in 1849 and Francis Darby died in 1850, faltered and was sustained only by sheer momentum and a continuing demand for the products of its foundry. Though these examples could be multiplied, little can be proved from them. What they do illustrate is that many more firms would have gone down in this period had they been confronted by the degree of competition encountered after 1870.

Some firms that traced their origins to the Industrial Revolution were declining in relative importance; some were disappearing altogether; others were crowding in to take their chances in both old and new fields of enterprise. It would appear that the majority of British firms -- whether their products were sold directly to the customer or through intermediaries -- became increasingly specialised during the middle decades of the century. It was an ideal way to get started and, having become established, to survive.

1870-1914: The critical decades?

In the last two decades there has been a stimulating debate on the competence of entrepreneurs in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain. There was a declining rate of growth of industrial production, a relative deterioration in the international position and a sluggish rise in productivity and all have, to some degree, been blamed on declining entrepreneurial spirit. David Landes, for example, in summarising the case for the prosecution, suggested that British enterprise reflected a ‘combination and complacency. Her merchants, who had once seized the markets of the world, took them for granted; the consular reports are full of the incompetence of British exporters, their refusal to suit their goods to the taste and pockets of the client, their unwillingness to try new products in new areas, their insistence that everyone in the world ought to read in English and count in pounds, shillings and pence. Similarly, the British manufacturer was notorious for his indifference to style, his conservatism in the face of new techniques, his reluctance to abandon the individuality of tradition for the conformity implicit in mass production.’ [2]

The hypothesis of entrepreneurial failure took quite a beating in the late 1960s. The factual basis was broadened away from the areas of iron production and cotton to the new industries where the factory was encroaching on old craft and the multiple on the village store, to the manufacture of soap, patent medicine, mass-produced foodstuffs and confectionery. In these areas, it was argued, the very real commercial and technological successes had been generally underestimated. British historians piled case study upon case study that, if anything, confused the issue of entrepreneurial failure even more.

Assertions of British entrepreneurial failure imply a comparison with performance elsewhere, usually in Germany and America. McCloskey studied the iron and steel industry and found that the British iron and steel masters exploited the potential of world technology before 1914 as well as, if not better, than their much lauded American competitors though he was less convinced by the potential of the British coal industry. Similar studies of the cotton industry found that failure to introduce newer technology and reliance on mule-spinning did not lead to a decline in productivity. On the basis of these and other studies, McCloskey expressed the belief that there was ‘little left of the dismal picture of British failure painted by historians’. But doubts still remained. If the British entrepreneur is to be criticised for failing constructively to confront the organisational constraints that were progressively strangling the staple industries, especially their labour-intensive nature, and if he is to be criticised for failing more vigorously to enter new manufacturing industries, then arguably the same entrepreneur deserves some praise for moving into the service sector, whose relatively rapid rate of output growth and high productivity between 1870 and 1914 was so much superior to the old staples that its expansion provided what little buoyancy there was in Britain’s aggregate economic growth. The four decades before the First World War were not, therefore, a critical period of entrepreneurship. British entrepreneurial errors and hesitation were always present, even in the period of the classic Industrial Revolution. They simply became more apparent after 1870.

A gentrification of British businessmen?

There is a deep-seated and enduring conviction that British culture was the root cause of Britain’s industrial decline. The central tenet of this tradition is the belief that the British people, and especially those of the middle-classes, have long been averse to industry. For them the real Britain has been the ‘green and pleasant land’ of the traditional British countryside.[3] Those businessmen who could forsake industry and trade for a life of gentility have eagerly done so. This ‘gentrification’ of the English middle-classes caused a dampening of industrial energies and led to a decline in Britain’s economic prowess.

The politicians and civil servants whose actions shaped the economic environment in which private enterprise functioned were drawn from the gentry or, if of humbler birth, educated to the ideals of style, leisure and service at a public school or one of the ancient universities. The financiers and traders of London to whom they looked for economic expertise were also imbued with the same anti-industrial spirit. However, what little evidence there is suggests that the biases of British life were not nearly as hostile to manufacturing as some historians would have us believe. The upper middle-classes did send a significant number of their sons into business and the flow of elite sons into manufacturing and commerce was neither limited to genteel pursuits like merchant banking. Sons of landowners and professional accounted for roughly a quarter of British steel manufacturers active in the period 1865-1914 and both groups were substantially over-represented in this heavy industry in comparison with their incidence in the population as a whole.

Given the willingness of the landed and professional classes to embrace industry as a source of jobs for their sons, it is perhaps not surprising that British businessmen failed to ape the allegedly anti-industrial disposition of their social superiors. Industrialists and merchants, for example, long displayed an unwillingness to educate their sons at the public schools that served as the gateways to elite status in Britain. Just 21 per cent of the men listed in the Dictionary of Business Biography who had been born between 1840 and 1869 had been to a public school, and only 18 per cent of the entrepreneurs active in Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester between 1870 and 1914 were so educated. It is questionable whether the propensity of successful businessmen and merchants to become landowners in the late nineteenth century represented a new departure. Land and the status that its possession entailed had figured in the definition and distribution of prestige in Britain long before 1870. Since the purchase of estates by businessmen did not damage the economy in the decades before 1870 and since there is little evidence that the sons of businessmen were increasingly deflected to the lifestyle of landed gentry after 1870, it is hard to see why this tendency should have significantly weakened Britain’s competitiveness.

The decline of industrial Britain after 1870 was a matter of the decisions about tools and techniques, education and training and advertising and sales that the men who remained in the offices and on the shopfloors made. There is as yet virtually no direct evidence linking the choices entrepreneurs and managers made about production and marketing with the anti-industrial values to which they supposedly succumbed. If there was a ‘gentry cast’ to their minds, that strongly influenced business decision-making, historians have found few traces of it in the records of British enterprises.

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[1] P.L. Payne British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century, Macmillan, 2nd. ed., 1988 is a brief analysis of research. Michael Dintenfass The Decline of Industrial Britain 1870-1980, Routledge, 1992 is a challenging account of Britain's long-term decline since the 1870s and provides the most accessible, and briefest, discussion of this vexed question.

[2] D. Landes The Unbound Prometheus, CUP, 1969, page 564.

[3] The classic modern exposition of this view can be found in Martin Wiener English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980, CUP, 1981.