Mid-Victorian Prosperity

Abstract

T H E years between 1850 and 1873 are often described as an era of mid-Victorian prosperity. Although contemporary economists were not unanimous in their assessment, the optimistic view seems to have predominated—an interpretation which continues to receive wide support in some popular texts.¹⁵ Feinstein’s estimates of real national income show a rise between 1855 and 1873 by 46 per cent, most of which occurred in the boom of the 1870s. Contrary to what might be expected, estimates of real wages of artisans, constructed by Tucker and Phelps Brown and Hopkins, suggest that per capita incomes rose at roughly similar rates in the third and second quarters of the century¹⁶—the latter period often characterised as one of depression, discontent and social tension, with which it has become customary for historians to contrast the socio-political stability of the mid-Victorian ‘age of equipoise’, when economic prosperity was the palliative [98: 47; 157:279; 81:269]. The income statistics with which historians must work are, if anything, even less satisfactory than those relating to investment and production, but the general impression derived from the most recent assessments is that the Victorians prospered more in the 1860s than in the 1850s and that there was at the same time a more than proportionate increase in the number and incomes of the middle income group [3; 119; 27].