Early Victorian Coventry: Education in an Industrial Community, 1830–1851

Abstract

The relationship between industrialisation and social life is of particular significance to the student of urban history, and indeed to those interested in urbanisation and industrialisation generally. It has recently been shown¹ that during the period of the classical Industrial Revolution in Lancashire the effect of the advent of factory life was to depress the opportunities for working-class education. In the factory towns of the north of England existing educational establishments were insufficient to cater for the children of the immigrant workers, while at the same time the textile factories, with their demand for child labour and the inadequacy of parental wages, discouraged school attendance. The result was an urban educational problem which was first tackled piecemeal by the adoption of part-time education through Sunday schools, factory schools, Mechanics’ Institutes and the like.