newspaper production. In 1814 The Times
announced “the greatest improvement
connected with printing since the
discovery of the art itself” as it switched
to a steam-powered press, allowing the
production of 1,000 impressions an hour
as opposed to the 250 per hour from an
unmechanised hand-press. Prefiguring
the move of The Times to new production
facilities in Wapping in 1986, the
machinery used in 1814 was secretly
prepared to prevent the opposition of
workers, who had already mounted a
strike in 1810.
Dickens describes the spread of
industry even to the edge of the Thames
in David Copperfield as the titular
character follows Martha Endell along
the marshy banks of the river from
Westminster south past “the great blank
Prison” Millbank Penitentiary: “The
clash and glare of sundry fiery Works
upon the river-side, arose by night to
disturb everything except the heavy
and unbroken smoke that poured out
of their chimneys.” Manufacturing
continued to be important throughout
the century, providing employment
and profit that in turn fostered demand
elsewhere in the economy. Although
labour, rental and coal costs were
relatively high, investment and working
capital was available, as was Europe’s
largest consumer market, one of its
leading ports, and a range of skills.
The presence of so much industry
provided supply, demand, skill and the
equivalent of an assembly line shared
between enterprises. There were also
skilled trades growing in the city,
including the silk industry in Spitalfields
and clock-makers in Clerkenwell.
This concentration of activity proved
beneficial for both the industrial and
service sectors, and contributed to
the presence of specialised industrial
districts. Another example of adaptability
included the response late in the century
to advances in retailing by means
of the production of branded goods,
which proved a way to provide scale in
consumer-led industries.
Tr ansport for
London
London was also a centre of innovation
in transportation, from the development
of large-scale passenger train and
omnibus services to the famous London
Underground, the construction of which
Dickens commented upon in Dombey
and Son. He describes the disruption
brought as Camden Town and nearby
areas were transformed by the building
of Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras
stations and their extensive marshalling
yards and lines: “The first shock of
a great earthquake had... rent the whole
neighbourhood to its centre... Houses
were knocked down; streets broken
through and stopped... Everywhere
were bridges that led nowhere...
mounds of ashes blocked up rights of
way, and wholly changed the law and
custom of the neighbourhood... the yet
unfinished and unopened Railroad was
in progress, and, from the very core of
all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly
away, upon its mighty course of
civilisation and improvement.”
When MP Robert Lowe spoke at the
lunch served at Farringdon station on
9 January 1863 to mark the opening
of tube services, he also reflected on
the advances that the new rail system
brought to London. “The traffic of
London has long been a reproach of the
most civilised nation of the world, and
the opprobrium of the age,” he said. “Dr
[Samuel] Johnson used to say that if you
wanted to see the full tide of human
life, you must go to Charing Cross, but
Dr Johnson would have to raise his
estimation of the full tide, or rather of
the close jam of the full tide of human
life, many hundred per cent before he
could arrive at the state which the traffic
of London has now reached... Through
gas-pipes and water-pipes and sewers...
and... the Fleet Ditch... The line has hadBELOW The
technological
advances of the
Industrial Revolution
transformed London
into the world’s most
powerful cityLEFT Dickens
often wrote about
the poor working
conditions that many
Londoners enduredDickens started his writing career as
a journalist and published his first
novel, The Pickwick Papers, in 1836