Decency and Disorder: The Age of Cant 1789-1837
by Ben Wilson
Ben Wilson's sweeping and exhilarating history of Britain is nothing less than a study of the decline and fall of John Bull, that free-born, free-living, roistering libertarian, a character whose demise was guaranteed as the country underwent the transformation from an agrarian-based society to an industrial one.
Bull's downfall was hastened by the rise of the urban middle classes who conveniently forgot whence they had sprung and their bourgeois desire to extirpate what they perceived as the moral turpitude of the underclass. From a middle-class point of view, there were certainly grounds for concern. According to the census of 1811, there were no fewer than 49,500 pubs in England, Scotland and Wales, that is, one house in 45 was a licensed premises. Many also doubled as gaming houses and brothels. Then there were activities such as bullock baiting, in which the animal would have its ears blocked with peas and its body pierced with iron rods. The enraged beast would then career down the road, pursued by a baying crowd, thrilled to see what havoc it could wreak.
Such pursuits did not fit in with what the great and good considered appropriate for a civilised country and a new puritanism, driven by Whig reformers, evangelists and philanthropists, as concerned with self-aggrandisement as morality or benevolence, gradually enforced a new code. Society, rather than the individual, became paramount; the pursuit of pleasure was replaced by the work ethic. Nowhere was this more evident than in the behaviour of the nascent Metropolitan Police. This was supposed to be a force that would dispense even-handed justice. In practice, it was used to clear the streets of those dubious types respectable people deemed undesirable. Britain became undeniably a more sober, prosperous and hygienic country, but in the process, it lost much of its gaiety, spontaneity, exuberance and delight in good living and plain speaking. As Leigh Hunt wrote in 1825: 'We were to show our refinement by being superior to every rustic impulse and do nothing but doubt and be gentlemanly and afraid of committing ourselves.'