Victorian: All change in Victoria's reign

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An in-depth look into Victorian Derby is given in a new book by Darley Abbey local historian Harry Butterton. “Victorian Derby: A portrait of life in a 19th-century manufacturing town” (above) gives readers a vivid experience of life during Queen Victoria’s reign.

An A J Keene painting of Derby from a back window on North Parade, near St Mary’s Church

A Richard Keene photograph of St Peter’s Street in 1858-59.This side of the street was demolished for widening in the 1870s

THE Derby Mercury, the most important local newspaper of the time, provides the raw material for this fascinating new look back into Derby’s past.

Reflecting the preoccupations of the town’s inhabitants, subjects covered in the hardback book include everything from places of worship and schools to court cases and leisure pursuits.

Illustrated throughout by some wonderful pictures from the collections at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery and Local Studies Library, the author also brings his book up to date with some modern-day images of Victorian buildings.

In the book, the author expands on the research done for the three volumes of his self-published Derby Victorians series, which looked at a year’s issues of the Derby Mercury in every decade of Queen Victoria’s reign.

His first chapters lay out the background to Victorian Derby with the development of the town’s buildings, shops and infrastructure and its ever increasing expansion into the neighbouring countryside as it attempted to accommodate a fast growing population.

It is the vast range of accommodation for the town’s residents which preoccupy the author next, as he considers the often dire poverty in which many of them lived.

He quotes the editor of the Mercury in December 1878: “Filthy rookeries and disgraceful dens were found to exist, in which human beings struggled hopelessly to lead clean and decent lives; whilst in other cases men, women and children were huddled together in brutal disregard of all the decencies of life.” The consequences of such living conditions are considered in sections covering health, charity and the workhouse.

A fascinating chapter deals with the courts and law enforcement, with some amusing examples of wrong-doing, frequently fuelled by alcohol.

The author completes his tour of Victorian Derby with the Queen’s death in 1901 and the Mercury’s own attempt, four years earlier, to assess the extent of change during her reign.

“So people drank less at the end of the century than they had in 1837, despite the number of pubs and the number of alcohol-related cases before the Borough Police Court.

“Women were now much better educated, with high schools for girls and the opportunity of getting to university. ..People were more sensitive to cruelty.

“Boys were no longer sent up domestic chimneys and, if the fox was still hunted, ‘cruelty to animals is tabooed’ and there were societies dedicated to preventing or punishing cruelty to children and animals.”

Mr Butterton continues: “The Derby citizen of 1900, the Mercury maintained, was happier, lived longer, had wider interests and keener activities and was healthier.”

Victorian Derby: A portrait of life in a 19th-century manufacturing town is published by Breedon Books and is on sale now, priced £14.99.