The Context

Abstract

London during the Victorian period was the largest city in the world, a focus for migration, and the centre of international finance, trade, and manufacturing as well as technological and scientific research, and the seat of imperial government. Its population included the very rich and the very poor, and a rapidly expanding professional and commercial middle class. Despite its vast and growing population, the metropolis had no formal identity and no central authority to coordinate services with the result that for much of the period water supplies and waste disposal were chaotic. With overcrowded housing, disease was endemic, and the death rate high. London was a very unhealthy place. Commercial success led to major redevelopment in the centre, and constant outward migration leading to suburbanization, a developing suburban transport network, segregation of classes, and a rapidly expanding leisure industry. Fluctuations in trade and economic downturns led to financial insecurity and political anxieties, periods of extreme distress among the poorest contributing to social unrest and fuelled millenarian hopes and fears. This provided the context for an extraordinary level of religious and religiously inspired philanthropic activity.