The Impact of the Railway on Victorian England

Introduction

The railways worked in collaboration with the Industrial Revolution in England during the nineteenth-century to play a crucial part in the lives of the Victorian people as well as the outlook of the city during this era. The impacts they produced were unseen in relative terms as the technology pioneered was unlike anything produced by man in our history. It is undeniable that the development of railways had universal impacts all over the different spheres of interactions and the amount of people this affected was on a scale that was unprecedented in history.

Unlike the sluggish horse carriages that preceded this technological innovation, the railways allowed for transportation time to be dramatically reduced. This establishment of the steam locomotive of the 1830s provided a boost to the already booming British economy. The cultural impacts that took place due to the augmentation of the train and railways were monstrous. Moreover, the image of slum remover of railways was far from reality, which contributed to the increase in crime rate of those Victorian cities.



Cultural Impacts

The train was a significant innovation of the Victorian era and as it was something never before seen during the history of mankind and it created an important impact upon the cultural atmosphere of that era. As technological advances during this period of time including the maturation of steam energy instead of manual efforts was unheard of, this should not be surprising. One important example of the cultural impacts against the ‘cultural heritage’ of the British people was the train’s intrusion into the rural regions of Britain. The Victorians, and the English in general, have a deep love of the countryside believed their countryside was a divine gift thus despised the trains that cut deep into the rural regions. Despite the negative connotations, the train still became an important accepted symbol of the era with impacts both positive and negative.

From labor standpoint, the labor force of railway companies were almost exclusively men unlike the factories of the same period of time. This aforementioned phenomenon led to the masculinity being the dominant force in the generating symbolization applied to trains. Due to this, trains, despite being a massive locomotive weighing in tones, were generally referred to as ‘she’. Furthermore, trains were also seen as a symbol of sexual intercourse and this was particularly true with when trains crossed tunnels. However, this comparison of the railway system with intercourse was not a positive comparison as the Victorians were conservative and sex tended to be looked upon negatively. The negative aspects of the train did not simply end with this though as almost every detective story had murders or crimes committed on board the trains causing the train to effectively evolve into one of sub-genres of detective stories.

After the consideration of the aforesaid, it was interesting to see how trains was also seen by others, including notable figures such as Samuel Smiles, as a representation of the morality of the modern era. This created an interesting dilemma as train was also seen in extremely negative sight by other acknowledged scholars of this period such as Charles Dickens. This was peculiar as both Dickens and Smiles were writers from the same phrase of time, indeed they were born in the same period. The difference in opinion could be based upon the ethnic background of the two different writers as Smiles was Scottish and Dickens was English. This was interesting as it showed that the train culturally affected the Scottish people and English people differently. There were many different cultural impacts that the trains caused in Britain and the views upon it differed from person to person but regardless of whether the train was viewed as a positive or negative effect, it was irrefutable that the modern British culture was dramatically influenced by the introduction of the railway system.



Economic Impacts

The trains played a major part in abetting an already growing British economy initially from the industrial revolution. There were many ways that had been discussed by other historians such as the aforementioned time-space compression which allows for increased trade as well as other such benefits. Nevertheless, despite them being the most popular economic impacts, they were not the only things that contributed to the economical enhancements.

The economy of Britain became further improved with the assistance of the trains due to one of its unlikely impacts, suburbanization. While most people would see that as a social impact more than economic one, it was important to consider the suburbs as another developing sector rather than a dependency upon the urban economy. As the trains quickened the transportation from cities to the suburbs, the economic strengths of the British city spread out into the countryside. In contrary to popular theories and beliefs, the suburbanized population of Britain did not seek employment inside the city. Instead, they pursued their careers within the suburbs themselves. This allowed the British economy to enlarge itself similarly to the current Chinese method of using the trickle-down technique. In other words, as the wealthy people headed towards the countryside, they brought their venture capital with them.

Although this theory normally applied when tax cuts allowed the rich to profit and it was the perception that they would then spread the wealth to the lower classes, the train worked to the same effect with spreading wealth by allowing the rich to benefit. The people who could afford to move away from the city centers after the railway system was all wealthy so therefore, the rich were the only people who benefitted from trains and its subsequent suburbanization. However, this was not the case as the suburbs forced the creation of new infrastructure as well as other necessary items that could create employment.

Moreover, governmental spending as a result of increased population was only a small part of the cascading effects that strengthened the economy of Britain. The new inhabitants became entrepreneurs and invested mightily in the suburban economy and caused an enormous change in the environment of the area as they no longer remained farmlands but instead became extensions of the cities instead. The manufacturing sectors of large companies suburbanized with the people and slowly, suburbs became specialized industrial production areas rather than simply the outskirts of towns.

The railways played a crucial part in this evolution of the economy as they allowed for the production of merchandise to be moved further away from its destination. Before the railway system was fully developed, only the port cities became prosperous but as the trains became more commonplace as transportation, the production did not necessarily have to need near the coast. This allowed for Britain as a whole to share the benefit of its industrial prowess that was formerly only enjoyed by the urban dwellers thus enhancing the British people’s lives and its own economy as an entity.

Social Impacts

The train was a great influence towards life in general in the Victorian city as transportation was slow thus restricting what people now take for granted: food and shelter.

As the trains developed, time-space compression occurred as the amount of time it required to get from point A to point B was drastically reduced as the relationship between the significance of distance was reduced by the acceleration of the experience of time was revolutionized. The significance of this cannot be overlooked as this allowed people to live apart from their workplace thus sparking the suburbanization of the major cities. Although the temptation to leave the urban center was existent even prior to the widespread usage of the train, the fact that the train was the single factor that made this relocation possible. Nevertheless, the eagerness to move was partly also due to the train itself as the initial misconceptions of it being a slum remover was faulty. Originally, the train was thought capable of removing slums as they were razed a path through major cities mainly in the slum regions as the land was the least expensive. Needless to say, this was not the case as trains moved through the slums, its original inhabitants, already poor, were forced to move to other parts of the city that featured similarly low land prices.

While the train was definitely not in the favor of most urban dwelling Victorians, its impacts were both positive and negative. The negative impacts of trains were effectively highlighted by the increased crime rates after the introduction of the railway system. Despite knowing that the English cities pre-industrialization and steam locomotives were not crime-free, the situation deteriorated greatly after the introduction of the railways. Crime was and continues to be a complex response to intricately connected social forces. The rural people made use of the innovative transportation system to move into urban areas in hopes of improving their living standards by working in factories or the railways but ironically, the reality of the Victorian cities fell short of their expectation. Despite the pre-existence of this exodus prior to the establishment of the railways, the situation worsened due to increasing rural to urban migration of unskilled labor as a result of the reduced cost. With unskilled laborers, who were more motivated to living a life of crime moves in, the problem compounded because people who were less motivated to crime, the middle class, moved into the suburbs. Once they migrated to the urban regions, they were compelled to live in slum housings and exploited by capitalists in factories. Therefore, their discontentment accumulated and made the cities the melting pot for diversified forms of criminality which mainly included violent assault as well as property crimes.

Conclusion

The introduction of trains in the Victorian Britain imposed enormous influences in cultural, economical and social dimensions, which were linked up with the notion of time-space compression. Although there were polemic controversies from the general public about the expansion of railways to suburbs, the establishment of the railway network modified the British cultural characteristics. Economically speaking, railways were beneficial to the implementation of trickle-down theory from the city centre to the suburbs and thus promoted suburbanization. Eventually, business clusters were developed in the original business clusters and also local economies in the port regions. In spite of the economic prosperity that British attained because of railways, the underprivileged remained to be exploited in terms of working conditions and living environments. Therefore, the possibility of committing crimes for the labouring-classes who were under immense tension was unreasonably high, which gradually turned into an atmosphere of city chaos.

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