Social Victorians/Timeline/1870s

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1870

"Until 1870 all of the money women earned belonged to their husbands, and until 1882 their property did too, even after a divorce or separation." (698 of 1203)

In 1870 Parliament debated and defeated the first bill for women's suffrage, but allowed "women who owned property ... to stand for election to school boards." (698–699 of 1203)

"The bulk of Irish farmers did not own their land, and instead leased it from landlords, the majority of whom lived in England. In 1870, only 3 percent of agricultural holdings were occupied by owners." (742 of 1203)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Sullivan were at the same dinner party in 1870?

Another dinner party had as guests Charles Dickens, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Tenniel and George Du Maurier.

January February March April May June July August September October November December

1871

Although Queen Victoria had opened Parliament for the first time in February 1866, when people saw her for the first time in years as her open carriage made its way, she was unpopular because it seemed she was not working. Gladstone was Prime Minister.

Between 1871 and 1874, eighty-five Republican Clubs were founded in Britain, protesting, among other things, the "expensiveness and uselessness of the monarchy" and Bertie's "immoral example." (617 of 1203)

"The 1871 Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases Acts ... declared there was no comparison to be made between prostitutes and their clients: 'With the one sex the offence is committed as a matter of gain, with the other it is an irregular indulgence of a natural impulse.'" (704 of 1203)

January

Germany is united under King William I of Prussia. Julia Baird says, "At the same time, Italy captured and annexed the Papal States, which had been under the direct rule of the Pope since the 700s and had lost their protector in Napoleon III." (646 of 1203)

February March

April

18 April 1871

Karl Marx “was commissioned by the General Council of the International to write a pamphlet about the Paris [377–378] Commune."

May

24 May 1871, Wednesday: Derby Day. Baron Rothschild's Favonius won. The Prince of Wales attended.

June July August September

October

October 1871

At Londesborough Lodge near Scarborough, where Lady Londesborough gave a royal house party in October 1871, not only [ 41/42 ] were the bathrooms few but the drains seeped into the drinking water. Several guests, including the Prince [of Wales] and his groom and Lord Chesterfield, contracted typhoid fever. When Chesterfield and the groom died, the doctors abandoned hope for the Prince.

The Prince of Wales recovered on 14 December 1871.

November December

1872

January February March April

May

29 May 1872, Wednesday: Derby Day

June July

August

August 1872: The "dance on the cruiser Ariadne" probably occurred in August 1872:

When his [the Prince of Wales'] brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, married the attractive Grand Duchess Marie, daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, her family made a fuss because she was not granted precedence above the Princess of Wales. Albert Edward soothed ruffled feelings by inviting the Tsarevitch and his wife Marie Feodorovna (who was Alexandra's sister) to stay for two months and be entertained at Cowes. ...

... At the dance on the cruiser Ariadne which the Prince gave in honour of the Tsarevitch and his Grand Duchess," Lord Randolph Churchill met the 19-year-old "Miss Jennie Jerome of New York."

September October November December

1873

January February March April

May

28 May 1873, Wednesday: Derby Day

June July August September October November December

1874

January February March April

May

1874 May, Early

As monarchists’ hopes flared, the Catholic Church, too, enjoyed a conspicuous revival. The National Assembly approved a design for a new basilica for Paris. Intended as an act of collective atonement, Sacré-Coeur was to perch atop Montmartre, immediately above where Nadar’s balloons had been launched and where the radicals’ insurrection had broken out. Excavations began in early May 1874 .... But the focus of the penance the basilica was intended to embody gradually shifted from the moral decline of French society in general to the despicable excesses of the Commune. In 1872 Archbishop Darboy’s successor claimed to have had a vision as he climbed the Butte Montmartre. The clouds dispersed, and he realized that it was there, “where the martyrs” were (he meant the murdered generals Lecomte and Clément-Thomas), that a new church should be built. And when the Assembly voted to proceed with the construction, legislators specified that its purpose was to “expiate the crimes of the Commune.” (464 of 667)

June

3 June 1874, Wednesday: Derby Day

June July August September October November

December

8 December 1874, Tuesday: "CHATSWORTH, Tuesday, December 8th, 1874. — We are come to the last slide of the Chatsworth magic lantern: the Duke of Cambridge and his equerry, a funny little man called Tyrwhitt, of no particular age, in a grey wig; Lord Carlingford and Ly. Waldegrave, the Spencers, Mr. Leveson, Cavendish."

1875

Disraeli's progressive legislation for labor rights:

In 1875, he passed a series of enlightened acts protecting labor rights, arguing they were as important as property rights. Two of the laws ensured that workers would have the same recourse as employers when contracts were breached, and made peaceful picketing legal, protecting unions from charges of conspiracy. (578 of 1203)

After women who owned property were allowed by Parliament to stand for local school-board elections in 1870, "Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain — in 1865 — stood and was elected to her local board five years later." (199 of 1203) The relationship between Swinburne and Lord Houghton:

...not all Lord Houghton's children appreciated the catholicity of "Papa's" taste in friends: "Swinburne (in a very excited state) came in in the evening," wrote Florence Milnes to her brother in 1875: "He is madder than ever, to my astonishment he flopped down on one knee in front of me, & announced that my hair had grown darker. This was rather embarrassing, and he is also so deaf now, which does not make it easier to talk to him."

January February March April

May

26 May 1875, Wednesday: Derby Day. The Prince and Princess of Wales attended, as did a number of others of the royal family, including Princess Louise and Lorne.

June July

August

August through October 1875 Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) and son Robert Milnes toured the U.S. and Canada:

They set off in the steamer s.s Sarmatian from Liverpool in August 1875, stopping at Ireland to pick up the usual load of emigrants bound for the U.S.A. The most interesting among the passengers was 'Mr. Butler, author of Erewhon, who is very amusing and clever though infidel,' but, although he played whist with Samuel Butler, the young man was far more interested in the Eustace Smiths (parents of his friend W. H. Smith), and in a Canadian family named Macpherson, the youngest of whose two daughters, the dark-eyed Isobel, caught his fancy: he saw them afterwards in Toronto, and when they parted she gave him two larger than carte-de-visite photographs of herself, he gave her a smaller one of himself together with the inevitable volume of his father's verse."

September

October November December

1876

Disraeli pushed through the Cruelty to Animals Act in order to please Queen Victoria. This act "forced researchers to demonstrate that any experiments with animals involving pain were absolutely necessary, and ensured they would be anesthetized if so." (679 of 1203)

January February March April

May

11 May 1876: In the midst of the Aylesford scandal, the Prince of Wales returned from a journey to Egypt and India, etc.:

However harassed and exhausted, the Prince and Princess of Wales would put up a good show. Within an hour of their arrival home they set forth to attend a gala performance at Covent Garden Opera House. It was a brave decision to face the public and allow an immediate opportunity for demonstration. The Prince and Princess were rewarded when the audience rose to its feet to give them a standing ovation before the start of every act, as well as at the end, of Verdi's Ballo in Maschera.

27 May 1877: Lily Langtry:

Her big moment on May 27, 1877, when Sir Allen Young, the arctic explorer, invited her to late supper in his house, where it had been arranged that the Prince of Wales should meet her after the opera. The result was all that could have been expected. Mrs. Langtry became the Prince's first openly recognised mistress.

31 May 1877, Wednesday: Derby Day. The Prince and Princess of Wales did not attend, as he was ill.

June July August September October November December

1877

"In 1877, unemployment was 4.7 percent; by 1879, it had risen to 11.4 percent." (690 of 1203)

January February March April

May

30 May 1877, Wednesday: Derby Day.

June July August September October November

December

15 December 1877

On Dec. 15, 1877, the Queen honoured Lord Beaconsfield, the Premier, with a visit at Hughenden Manor. Her Majesty, accompanied by Princess Beatrice and attended by General Ponsonby and the Marchioness of Ely, left Windsor at 12.40 and proceeded by special train to High Wycombe, which was reached at 1.15. The Premier received the Queen at the station. A lofty triumphal arch spanned the entrance to the station-yard, and beneath this the royal party drove into the gaily decorated little town. The reception along the route was of the heartiest, and the drive of two miles to Hughenden was one long triumph. Lord Beaconsfield, who had preceded the party, welcomed the Queen at his own door. Lunch was served, and her Majesty remained about two hours. Before leaving she planted a memorial tree.

1878

January February March April May

June

5 June 1878, Wednesday: Derby Day.

July August September October

November

8 November 1878: from the journal of George, Duke of Cambridge:

November 8. — Gave farewell diner to the Lornes; Louise and Lorne, Augusta, Mary and Francis, Arthur, Leopold, Gleichens, J. Macdonald and self, and played at Nap afterwards. It was a good and nice little dinner."

December

1879

January

12 January 1879

On 12 January 1879 Robert Milnes came of age, an event celebrated at Fryston by a tenants' ball.

28 January 1879: Brett "Harte kicked off his tour at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham on January 28, 1879."

February March

April

Early April 1879 or so, probably, Bret Harte got "an invitation to dine the same evening with Arthur Sullivan and the Prince of Wales" as a dinner in Birmingham where Harte met T. Edgar Pemberton.

May

28 May 1879, Wednesday: Derby Day; the Prince and Princess of Wales attended.

June

June 1879, Robert Milnes became engaged to "Sibyl Marcia, a daughter of a North-country baronet, Sir Frederick Graham of Netherby." Parties must have followed.

July August September October November

December

28 December 1879: The Tay Bridge Disaster: The Tay Bridge collapsed with a train on it. The weather was very bad, with gale-force winds and rain.

The Times reported that the average high temperature for the week ending December 31, 1879, was 53° F. and the low was 20° F.

In his column "What the World Says" in the 21 January 1880 World, Edmund Yates writes the following:

How am I to describe better the magnificence of the Earl and Countess of Rosslyn’s ball at Euston Lodge last month, than by calling attention to the fact that M. Carlo, the eminent Knightsbridge coiffeur, arrived early in the day to crimp and powder the lacqueys? My informant adds, however, that the curled darlings were rather the worse for the festivities towards night. Was it not enough to turn their heads in every sense of the word?

31 December 1879: Edmund Yates, editor of The World: A Journal for Men and Women, in his column "What the World Says," describes a private viewing at the Grosvenor Gallery:

The private view at the Grosvenor on the last day of the year gave people something to do on a desperately wet afternoon. The artistic dresses were perhaps in greater force than ever; indeed the faces and the hair and the attitudes pursued me to my bed, and gave me many a nightmare. I suppose the plain woman of all time has had the ambition to be looked at: centuries of failure have at last been crowned with a real success. Besides the Cimabue Browns there was an interesting menagerie of real lions, artistic, literary, and clerical. The artists were numerous, and their host and hostess seemed to enjoy themselves very thoroughly. Frequenters of the picture private views have a new sensation this winter. Last season they mobbed beauty: now hideously-attired unkempt dowdiness provokes the stare. The prize for the new style seems generally awarded to a rhubarb coloured flannel Ulster and a cart-wheel beaver hat, which pervaded both the private views last week. [2 private views last week, one at the Grosvenor]

The official premiere of The Pirates of Penzance occurred in New York City on 31 December 1879 at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, to establish international copyright. Gilbert and Sullivan were there with the cast. The performance was a social event: attending were Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Astor.