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The Demoralization of London? s Culture The culture of London degenerated in spite of its economic growth, culminating into a society desensitized with its internal miseries up to the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the Victorian Age. London? s commercial importance predestined its culture to bloom in theatre, clubs, coffeehouses, music, art, and literature, from alluring a mass of population that would enrich its upper classes.
However, while capitalism produced great wealth and contributed to London? s rise to world pre-eminence, it also produced social disparities, exploitation, and moral decline. Nineteenth century London saw a birth of modern urban ills produced by the inequalities of capitalism: Prostitution, alcoholism, crime and hopelessness. Charles Dickens? Hard Times described this capitalistic era as concerned with only economic self-interest, devoid of pity for the impoverished that are trampled upon. The upper class?
economic ambitions that curbed the working class to an economic misery that found temporary solace in immoral activities such as prostitution, alcoholism, and a loss of faith. The in balance of wealth was the fountain by which the spring of culture emerged. With the wealth, acquired from the starvation and sweat of the working class, London? s leaders maintained a luxurious image with their social life, and an overabundance of food, materials, and servants. Meanwhile, most of the population struggled to survive under suppression. A rioter in London once stated?
A gentleman needs to possess no more than one thousand dollars a year; that is enough for any gentleman to live on? . Capitalism was, without a doubt, a factor that led to the disintegration of morality in London. Working women were the most burdened by poverty. From an early age many were victims to rape, being too poor and uneducated to prosecute; they had to settle for lower wages that men, and when marine to starvation, sometimes were prostituted for survival. Most had become ridden with sexually transmitted diseases and were thrown into the streets to die.
Not surprisingly, impoverished mothers who were unable to sustain themselves were left with the ultimatum to abandon their children. Infant transience rate was extraordinarily high during this period. Statistics show that more than seventy-five percent of children born in London died before the age of five. Poor women had no dignity for themselves, due to their dismal conditions. Women coped with poverty by either prostitution or abandonment of their children, but overall, the working class habitually escaped their misery by getting drunk of gin. Men and women would use the majority of their earnings to intoxicate themselves.
This further drowned them into poverty, but it made no difference because most were already in debt. Alcoholism hints to the extent of the hopelessness most workers felt. It was their immoral means of coping with the degradation of their dignity. They were not even considered to be humans by industrialists. The work union were? hands? , a Charles Dickens coined phrase, rather than people.
Due to the scarce resources of the lower class, some resolved to crime as a means of survival. Gangs formed in the lower classes, which survived from pilfering, breaking into homes, and then selling the stolen goods on the market. All of the people of London were a bit paranoid about their goods, but most of them managed to regain their goods through the market. Among all the chaos, a lower class worker named Jonathan Wild became notorious for being the ringleader of the lucrative business of organizing crime, then selling to the victims, their own possessions.
Murder was common in London among the lower classes. Masters physically abused apprentices: the worst case of abuse took place during the nineteenth century, when Sarah Meteyard and her daughter were found to have murdered a girl apprentice. Another famous murder occurred in the late seventeenth century when a dismembered, headless corpse was found in Parkers? Lane; some human remains were found in a boat, lying at Bull Stairs on Bank side. The violence was horrendous.
Unquenchable mobs would spontaneously rise and destroy streets out of no solid purpose, usually the effect of alcohol and misery. Killing and stealing became a normal part of life. Even while London was famous for its great array of churches, especially Saint Paul, it did not hold tightly to its Christian ideals. London was a city of pleasure seekers, rather than of godly reverence. Bishops and Deans of Saint Paul were powerless to enforce a religious London. There was very little respect for the church; it was robbed, its statues were broken horses and mules passed through the sacred corridors, businesses were discussed at Saint Paul, books were sold inside the church, and markets were held outside the church.
Evidently, morality was not as important as the issue of commerce. London? s immorality took speed at the birth of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. Both upper and lower classes engaged in immoral acts, conveying disrespect for humanity and life in general. The lower class partook in mostly alcoholism, prostitution, and robbery, while the upper class engaged in subtle exploitation and murder. Up to the Victorian Age, however, crimes in the upper class were more evident.
With the economic spur of the Industrial Revolution, morality was of subordinate concern. Capitalism had no restraint on the economic detriment and hopelessness it produced on the workers living in the slums of London.
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