Tag Archives: Queen
Hansard Tweets’ the Queen’s Letter
Posted by on Aug 24, 2013
In 1837 Queen Victoria inherited a monarchy that was not popular and her advisers belonged to a governing plutocracy. The Peterloo Massacre of 1812 and the recent Newport Rising of 1839 resonated amongst the working classes. The 1832 Reform Act deliberately limiting voting rights to a privileged few, and the 1834 Poor Law deliberately extending poverty to a less privileged many, simply reinforced the existing social inequalities. Continual civil unrest fuelled by the suffering and distress amongst the working classes eventually culminated in the Chartist’s General Strike of 1842. Read more of this post
National Distress (Hansard 1842)
Posted by on Aug 24, 2013
In the House of Lords on May 26 1842, when debating The Queen’s letter, the following statement regarding national distress was made by Lord Kinnaird:
Stockport, in Cheshire, is one of the principal seats of the cotton manufacture, and a large portion of its population is dependent on that manufacture for support. During the last three years many failures among the mill-owners have occurred; but distress among the working people did not assume a very aggravated form until within the last eight months; since that time a large number of the manufacturing workmen, accustomed to constant industry, have been reduced by the stoppage of mills to want of employment, and to a dependence on legal or voluntary alms. Read more of this post
