A History of Britain 13. Victoria and her Sisters (14 of 29)

A History of Britain

Ann Wood, for example, who lived in a cottage very much like this one, was just an Edinburgh charlady, but one with enough Scottish thrift and determination to save up 50 to put down for a lot at Great Dodford.
That gave her the pick of the crop.
And, after settling at number 36, along with her two daughters, Ann did well enough at any rate to lead a long life, dying at 86.
So, when all the sound and fury had ebbed away, what seemed to count for most was making a home, not a revolution.
Prince Albert himself understood this.
In the year of the Great Exhibition, he commissioned and had built model lodgings for the working class.
Later they were rebuilt at Kennington, on the very site of the Chartist revolution that wasn't.
And, as the boom years of the 1850s replaced the hungry 40s, Britain had never seemed so middle-class, starting with the monarchy.

The many photographic visiting cards circulating the country showed the queen and Prince Albert, not on their aristocratic high horse, but acting out the rituals of middle-class life.
Respectable, reliable, even a little boring.
Queen Victoria was to have nine children in all, and never had Britain had a monarch who went to such lengths to advertise her domestic pleasures to the nation.
The stroll in the park.