The Coal Mines Act of 1842, Social Reform, and Social Control

Abstract

Oliver Macdonagh’s ‘model’ for social legislation in the mid-nineteenth century is, after more than twenty years, a familiar one. It requires the exposure of a social evil, preferably in sensational terms, which sets in motion ‘an irresistible engine of change’. The increased scale of industrial processes, coupled with the ‘ widespread and ever-growing influence of humanitarian sentiment’, and stricter views of sexual morality and ‘decency’ combined to put pressure on legislators to assume new social responsibilities. This pressure, it has been said, frequently owed its origin to a pervasive Christianity, or at least to the work of churchmen, while legislation rested less on philosophic foundations than on forces which, if not inevitable, were at least inherently probable in the context of Victorian social and political life - in short, were part of a ‘self-generating’ process.