History - The Victorians

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Year

AD
1837	Queen Victoria is crowned. Charles Dickens publishes his first novel Pickwick Papers.
1840	Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert. The Penny post service is introduced.
1844	Potato famine in Ireland.
1845	Brunel builds the S.S. Great Britain, the first steamship driven by propeller.
1847	Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is published. Jane Erye by Charlotte Bronte is published.
1848	“Communist Manifesto" is published byKarl Marx and Frederich Engels.
1851	Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace.
1853	Crimean war starts. Ends in 1856
1859	‘Origin of Species’ is published by Charles Darwin.
1861	Prince Albert dies of typhoid fever aged 42.
1867	A new law is introduced by Disraeli so that all taxpayers can now vote.
1868	The last shipment of convicts to Australia sets sail from England.
1877	Telephones, invented by Alexander Graham Bell, are commercially available. Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
1879	Zulu War begins. Electric light-bulb invented by Edison.
1885	Karl Benz builds the first automobile.
1888	The murderous Jack the Ripper terrorises the East End of London.
1901	Marconi transmits a radio signal across the Atlantic. Queen Victoria dies.

During the Victorian period Britain achieved great economic growth which, in turn, supported the expansion of the Empire. However there was a cost for all this. The divide between the classes grew and the poor suffered. The new factories required people to work in them and conditions, especially for the young, were far from being ideal.

Not everybody was eligible to vote, and those that were had their own reasons to keep Britain the way it was. Even so it was a time of great change with lots of exiting new inventions and advances in technology, medicine, education and other things.