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FLOWING INTO THE FUTURE :
The River Thames and 19th Century Britain
Throughout
the 19th century, the social, political and technological upheaval that
reshaped Britain was mirrored on the River Thames. New docks and
bridges redefined life on London's river while the waterway's upper
reaches, once the domain of eel trappers and osier gatherers, became a
place of rowing regattas and pleasure seekers. In this fully referenced
essay-length study, Mick Sinclair reveals how the changing river
reflected the changing nation, and how the Thames, like Britain, ended
the century in a form starkly different to that in which it had begun
it.
THIS BOOK IS ONLY AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE.
Click Cover Image to Order:
From
Flowing Into The Future:
No
nation in the world
changed as fast as Britain in the 19th century, a period of
unprecedented technological innovation that brought steam, speed,
and rapid industrialisation coupled to an explosion in international
trade that made Britain the powerhouse economy of the globe. Change
was not just scientific and economic but social and political: the
triumph of free trade, greater enfranchisement, the spread of worker
representation, and the educational reforms that would lead to
greater employment opportunities and rising living standards.
All
of these changes
became evident on the nation's greatest river, the Thames. Free trade
ended the cargo-handling monopoly in the Port of London and inspired
the spate of dock building that redrew the map of riverside east
London. The social and economic needs of the fast-growing capital
brought the Thames new bridges, a tunnel and sewer system, the latter
not only cleaning a stinking river but turning parts of its bank into
an architectural wonder. As the nation’s urban areas increasingly
came under the rule of municipal authorities, so public control was
extended, for the first time effectively, to the river.
The
Thames not only
reflected change but the struggles to bring about change and the
unintentional consequences of change. Bazalgette’s sewers might
never have been built without the victory over anti-interventionists
that enabled the creation of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The
docks may have been bastions of free trade but they contributed
significantly to the rise of organised labour and the trade unions
that, for some, represented free trade’s nemesis. The Thames Tunnel
may have been ‘perhaps the most significant nineteenth-century
civil-engineering work in Britain,’
but it was effectively useless until turned into rail conduit, a
purpose its creator never foresaw.
The
railways
themselves, at first only grudgingly permitted to encroach on
riverside land, both ended the waterway’s role as a major cargo
route and facilitated its dramatic rebirth as source of leisure. In
doing so, these icons of the industrial age helped create perhaps the
non-tidal river’s most emblematic symbol of change: the
lock-keepers, who before grappled with the paddles and rhymers of
dilapidated flash locks and swapped obscenities with grizzled
bargemen but who now operated super-efficient pound locks, occupied
pretty cottages, served teas to tourists, and tended gardens in
pursuit of prizes.
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