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| 1833 |
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| Educational reform, although schooling was mandated by the factory act, was quite limited. A government grant for education of £20,000 was divided between the British and Foreign School Society (Dissenters) and the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. No money went to the Catholics despite the fact that the Irish represented a large and growing number of the poorest classes. Working-class organizations also established Mechanics Institutes to educate the working men. Dissenters and radicals established the University of London (1828), which attracted those excluded by religious belief from Cambridge and Oxford. The Anglicans established their own London institution (King's College, 1831), which was united with the university in 1836. | 1 |
| The economic hardships resulting from changes in farming, increase in pasturage, and enclosure came to a head in the 1830s and 1840s. During the Swing riots, rural laborers, under the direction of “Captain Swing,” destroyed threshing machines and burned hayricks in protest over low wages and the necessity of applying for assistance under the Poor Law. The Speenhamland system, established in 1795, had increased relief and thus enabled rural landholders to pay wages below subsistence levels, with the Poor Law administration making up the difference. The abuses under the Poor Law system resulted in the Poor Law Amendment Act. | 2 |
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| 1834, Aug. 14 |
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| The Poor Law Amendment Act, supplementing the Great Poor Law of 1601 and its amendments of 1722, 1782, and 1795. Causes: Besides the agricultural difficulties and abuse by farmers of the Speenhamland system, reformers cited (1) increased poor rates, and (2) the economic arguments of Ricardo and Malthus, and the emerging notions of the need for moral improvement of the poor. Provisions: (1) A Poor Law Commission (converted into a Poor Law Board in 1847) provided the necessary organization for the system; (2) all outdoor relief to able-bodied paupers ceased, and those paupers were to report to the workhouses; (3) paupers were housed separately from their families at workhouses and forced to live on a spartan diet while performing hard labor; (4) bastard children became the mother's responsibility, thus emphasizing female responsibility for chastity as well as eliminating the need to spend Poor Law monies searching for wayward fathers. Among the individuals who served on the Poor Law Board was Edwin Chadwick. Chadwick had been involved in compiling information for the reports that led to passage of the Poor Law and remained a tireless reformer, turning to problems of sanitation in the 1840s and 1850s. | 3 |
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| 1834 |
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| Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was organized by John Doherty, with Robert Owen as its president. The Grand National's avowed policy was to promote a general strike for the eight-hour day. | 4 |
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| March |
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| Six Dorchester laborers (Tolpuddle Martyrs) were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for organizing a lodge of the Grand National because it required that members take an oath. Unions also lacked any legal status or protection and could not prosecute officers for embezzlement or misappropriation of funds. Plagued by such problems, the Grand National dissolved in Oct. However, the impetus for working-class, and particularly electoral, reform continued to be expressed in the penny press, through the London Workingman's Association and the Birmingham Political Union. | 5 |
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