The English class system

THE ENGLISH CLASS SYSTEM

Contents

• Introduction
• Class divisions before the Victorian Age
• The Nobility
• The Gentry
• The Professionals
• Changes during the Victorian and Edwardian Ages
• From World War I to World War II

Introduction

In what follows some may feel I have sometimes stated the obvious. But times have changed, genealogy is an international interest, and a familiarity with English traditions or usage should not be assumed.

For example in checking through parish records one occasionally comes across entries that are out of the ordinary. Usually a baptismal entry will give the parent's names as "John and Mary Smith", but sometimes the names are entered as "Mr John Smith and his wife, Mary", or even "Mr John Smith and his lady wife, Mary". Here the "Mr" is not being used merely as a mark of respect, but as a title, an indication of that person's class. To understand these nuances one needs some familiarity with the English class system.

Prior to the 1960s, class hierarchy dominated the social fabric of the UK. Social mobility was extremely difficult. People were expected to "know their place" and "not get above themselves". The vocabulary of England was rife with class-laden expressions. She married "beneath her". He's "getting above himself". He's a person of "quality", or as P. G. Woodhouse would quaintly put it, of the "noblesse".

Trains had First, Second, and Third class carriages. So too railway station waiting rooms. Public houses had "saloon" bars with carpets on the floor and little plates of nuts or crisps on the tables, whereas in the "public" bars furnishings were scant and if you wanted peanuts you had to buy your own. Ordinary people travelled by bus, but the "toffs" travelled by taxi. And no one of class ever sat in a Doctor's waiting room, the Doctor went to them.

Even the pre-decimalization monetary system had its class aspect. In the 1940s an ordinary person would take home a few pounds a week, and would think seriously before "breaking into" another pound. Half-a-crown (2/6d, 2 shillings and 6 pence, or 12.5p in today's money) could buy a seat at the cinema plus fish and chips afterwards, but the well-to-do thought in terms of pounds and guineas rather than shillings and pence. Such small change was for tips.

In the cinema most people sat in the "stalls" where they looked up at the screen. If they were really poor, or children spending their pocket money, they sat in the "front stalls" where they had to crane their necks to see the action. But no one with any class pretensions sat in the stalls; they sat in the more expensive "circle", well above the hoi polloi.

And what did they watch? The heros and heroines were always from the middle classes, whereas the working class were portrayed as "comic cockneys" or salt-of-the-earth types like Dixon of Dock Green, never the romantic lead. War films were always about officers, stiff upper-lipped and ex-public school. There was a slight improvement in the late 1950s with a spate of "kitchen sink" films, but in retrospect this was really middle-class voyeurism into the seamy side of working class life. It wasn't until 1965 that the first English film to feature a working class hero was released - The Ipcress File with Michael Caine.

Fortunately these times have gone (well, almost!). But to understand our ancestors it is necessary to understand the world in which they lived.

Class divisions before the Victorian Age

Society was divided into two main classes:

• The Nobility - a hereditary class descended from supposedly "noble" blood lines.
  
• Commoners - everyone else.
  
  

The terms still have relevance today. The British government sits in the House of Commons, whereas the nobility (hereditary peers) and government appointees (life peers) meet in the House of Lords. Ah, me...

Commoners were further divided into:

• The Baronetage - commoners with the hereditary title of Baronet
  
• The Knights - commoners who had been knighted by the monarch
  
• The Gentry - commoners with inherited wealth and no need to work
  
• The Professionals - Lawyers, doctors, and members of the Church of England
  
• The Yeomanry - a rural class who owned their means of production, such as farmers who owned the land they worked, millers who owned their own mills, etc.
  
• Tenant farmers - farmers who leased their land
  
• Tradesmen
  
• Labourers
  

Of the classes mentioned above three warrant further amplification: the nobility, the gentry, and the professionals.

The Nobility

Essentially the nobility inhabited a world of their own. To a commoner any member of the nobility was to be addressed as "My Lord" or "My Lady", but within the nobility itself there were levels of rank of which the commoner probably would be oblivious.

To use a fictitious example, Lord Byron would address the Duke of Wellington as "My Lord" or "My Lord Duke" because Wellington was of a higher rank. But Wellington, as a Duke, might well address Byron, as a mere baron, simply as "Byron".

The name following "Lord" is a hereditary title, not a surname. For example, Lord Falmouth. To take the poet Byron again, Baron Byron was his full title, Lord Byron was the term used to to refer to or address him, but his name was actually George Gordon. Similarly his wife, Lady Byron, was Anna Milbanke.

Note: not all individuals reffered to by the term "Lady" were necessarily members of the nobility. The rules are complex - see the page class terminology

The Gentry

Commoners with inherited wealth and no need to work.

Typically the gentry had distant aristocratic connections - Winston Churchill is a good example. In English law, noble titles are passed on to the elder son, younger sons being left in the cold. Without a title they tended to marry into non-aristocratic circles, and within a couple of generations their noble ancestor was only a distant memory. Their male descendants were now considered "gentlemen", members of the gentry class, and addressed as "Mister".

A good source for understanding the gentry class is the novels of Jane Austen. They were targeted precisely at this class, especially the younger females. The values are always traditional, and virtue, propriety, and the established order always win in the end.

A good example comes from Pride and Prejudice. Reading it today we tend to miss the point. When Elizabeth Bennet takes umbrage at Lady Catherine de Bourgh's demand that Elizabeth should give up Mr Darcy accompanied with a sneering comparison of Elizabeth's father's modest income with the Darcy family's wealth, Elizabeth retorts that her father, Mr Bennet, is a "gentleman".

Today that is usually taken to mean Lady de Bourgh is being snobbish and that Elizabeth is taking the moral high ground based on Mr Bennet's character. But at the time the book was written it would be understood very differently. Elizabeth is actually inferring that, no matter how much money Mr Darcy may have, Mr Darcy and her father Mr Bennet belong to the same class - the gentry. The amount of Mr Darcy's wealth is irrelevant; it is class that defines Elizabeth's and Mr Darcy's status, and therefore the suitability of their marriage.

The gentry were specifically an English phenomenon. On the continent the law of primogeniture did not apply, and therefore all sons of an aristocratic father inherited the title. Young aristocrats with a small income, but no responsibilities, proliferated. This could well have been responsible for the rise of the Libertines (such as Casanova, the Marquise de Sade, etc.), which was purely an aristocratic cult. In England this was mirrored by the rise of the Dandy movement, but due to the different social structure Dandyism was taken up by young English aristocrats and members of the gentry class alike.

The Professionals

Commoners who "profess" they are "called" to an occupation

Before the mid-twentieth century the term was used solely for practitioners in the legal, medical, and ecclesiastic fields. It's origins date from the late-eighteenth / early-nineteenth century when the gentry had to come to terms with the unpleasant fact that lawyers knew all about their financial matters, doctors examined their wives, and vicars examined their souls. Strictly speaking these people worked for a living and therefore were not "gentlemen" - which was an unacceptable situation. As a result the fiction developed that they were "honorary gentlemen" because although they worked for a living, they would still have been "called" to carry out that work even if they were not paid.

But it was a one-way traffic. A gentleman could invite the local vicar, lawyer, or doctor to make up a foursome of whist, but it would be a blunder for the invitee to attempt to return the hospitality unless he was very sure of his ground. John Hanson, the Byron family lawyer, (and eventual criminal), frequently invited the adolescent George Gordon (the future Lord Byron) to his house for a weekend. He had a son of the same age with whom George was friendly, so it was within the bounds of propriety. But Hanson would never have presumed to invite George's mother.

Unlike most commoners who were simply referred to by their name, the professionals were given the status of titles: the Reverend John Smith, Dr John Smith, or in the case of lawyers, John Smith, Esq.

Today the term "professional" has lost its original relevance and has been expanded to include teachers, nurses, engineers, policemen, soldiers, etc. In fact it is commonly applied to mean any job well done.

However it is noteworthy that the original professions still hold on to their status of self regulation, a status denied to the newer professionals. And some of the old terminology still survives: in the USA lawyers still append Esq to the names of other lawyers in written communications, and in England barristers are still "called" to the bar.

Changes during the Victorian and Edwardian Ages

Due to the wealth generated by Industrial Revolution, the late Eighteenth Century saw the rise of individuals who had the money to rival that of the gentry. During the Victorian age they became far more numerous, and many of them became very rich indeed. The gentry of course resisted this change, the usual accusation being that these nouveau riche were uncultured, common, and not from "good" families. But it was a losing battle.

During this period the title "Mr", which had originally denoted a member of the gentry, became more widely applied and eventually lost its class status.

From World War I to World War II

By the time of the First World War class terminology had changed. The term gentry had fallen into disuse, and was replaced by the term "upper-middle classes" (or haut bourgeoisie). The distinction between Yeomen and tenant farmers was also disappearing.

The class terminology now in use divided the population into:

• the upper classes - the nobility and the extremely rich
  
• the upper-middle classes - the wealthy with private incomes
  
• the lower-middle classes - a large class including small manufacturers, shop keepers, civil servants, secretaries, etc.
  
• the working class - factory workers, agricultural workers, etc.
  

Note the distinction between the lower-middle classes and the working class was not clear-cut, and does not equate to the difference between white-collar workers and blue-collar workers. To a large extent the distinction was based on family background and the type of dwelling they lived in. Class still ruled.

There had been an ancient distinction between a cottage and a house that is less than transparent to our eyes. It really depended on who lived there. Essentially any dwelling that had either a separate reception room, or study, or a sufficiently-large hall where a servant could leave visitors while announcing their presence to the master or mistress of the dwelling, was suitable for a gentleman to live in and was therefore considered a house. Dwellings without these facilities could never be occupied by gentlemen and were therefore cottages. Where I live there are many imposing four-bedroomed three-reception roomed farmhouses that no one today would describe as cottages, but they are listed as such in the Nineteenth Century records.

Following World War I, there were many with reduced incomes who did not wish to lose their status as gentlemen, and of course the upwardly mobile who craved this status. Most of the available property on the new esates were the sort of houses that we know today - there was certainly no space where a maid could deposit visitors, and hardly room for the maid. As a result one can still come across three- or four-bedroomed semi-detached houses built in the 1920s or 30s which attempt to get around this problem. They usually have a large, square entrance hall, often oak panelled, with its own fireplace and room for a table and comfortable chairs, but to accomodate this, once one gets behind the facade, the remaining ground floor rooms are often extremely cramped and there is certainly no more oak panelling. The hall is the best room in the house. Class pretentions, as ever, was alive and well!

The nobility was also going through a period of immense change. During the Victorian age the nobility had wielded immense power, but their decline became unavoidable with World War I. Much of their wealth was based on vast landed estates, and the loss of manpower caused by the war, and the rise of expectations and wages, meant that these estates were becoming liabilities rather than assetts. The sale of these estates became commonplace. As a result P. G. Woodehouse did not have to look far for his plots - many of his novels from this period feature impoverished aristocrats trying to off load their estates, usually on unsuspecting Americans.