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1 results

  • 21 - The middle class

  • from Part IV - Getting and spending
  • Edited by Martin Daunton, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Urban History of Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 January 2001, pp 673-714

  • Summary

    In recent years historians have begun to put flesh on the bones of the modern British middle class. This chapter deals with the issues of social structure, roles played by middle-class individuals and groups in the broader economic, social and political life of urban Britain. It examines the relative size, the occupational structure and the internal stratification of the urban middle class, paying particular attention to variations between the urban provinces and the urban South- East. Public involvements by the urban middle class had significant consequences both for the middle class itself and for urban society more generally. Middle-class interventions in public affairs varied not only over time but also among different types of urban settlement. In the economic sphere, while the rising numbers of middle-class rentiers were detached, top industrialists and merchants were especially influential in bodies such as Chambers of Commerce and employers organisations.