Population in The Victorian Era
The Victorian era was a time of unprecedented demographic increase in England. The population rose from 13.897 million in 1831 to 32.528 million in 1901. Two major factors affecting population growth are fertility rates and mortality rates. England was the first country to undergo the Demographic transition and the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
Many countries in the 19th century did not increase in population so rapidly and successfully throughout the Industrial Revolution. At the time, some believed this lack of growth outside Britain was due to the ‘Malthusian trap’ theory; Thomas Malthus argued before the start of the Industrial Revolution that it was the tendency of a population to expand beyond the limits of resource sustainability, at which point a crisis (such as famine, war, or epidemic) would reduce the population to a sustainable size. England escaped the ‘Malthusian trap’ because the Industrial Revolution had a positive impact on living standards. People had more money and could improve their standards; therefore, a population increase was sustainable.
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Famous quotes containing the words population, victorian and/or era:
“It was a time of madness, the sort of mad-hysteria that always presages war. There seems to be nothing left but war—when any population in any sort of a nation gets violently angry, civilization falls down and religion forsakes its hold on the consciences of human kind in such times of public madness.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humoured, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.”
—C.E.M. (Cyril Edwin Mitchinson)
“The great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece were the last living terms ... once had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, a science in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)