14. Victorian period

- new social hierarchy

Social Darwinism = some people are better suited for survival than others

Soft Eugenics = race differences, Nazis got idea from this, we are not going to help you survive because other generations would need help too, sterilization of poor Afro-American women – in prison

Hard Eugenics = people who are not suited for survival should be in isolation

Population boom – we are producing more, than we need

- entitlements = nároky

- sanitation

Irish potato famine (great) – period of starvation, repression or epression of population

- 1844-1845 disease, black potatoes

- protectionist policy – British food, people couldnt afford to buy the food

- famine caused by economic policy

1814-1846 wars

- anticatholic legislation – 2nd class citizens

Women’s life

- women had no automatic rights of inheritance or right to vote

- woman married sm – becomes property of her husband

- fallen women – prostitution, social stigma

- hourglass figure – corsets, smelling salts, concept of beauty

- stereotype – women at home cleaning, with kids raising them

- Caroline Norton – social reformer, author

- she wanted to divorce her husband, but he sued her friend from adultery

- she was unable to obtain a divorce and was denied access to her three sons

- first major feminism movement

- hysteria – opium, opium wars, huge black market in London, middle-class, cocaine – upper-class

- prostitution – they could go to prison for this → prisons were overfull – ships on Themes turned to prisons

- 160 000+ people were transported to the colonies (20% Irish – political reasons)

- 80% men, 20% women

- women in transport → turn to prostitution to escape, survival purposes

- 1839 - Custody of Infants Act

- her argument was the natural right of mothers to have custody of their children

- there was a need for the reform

- previously – mostly child custody was awarded to the father

- now - it permitted a mother to petition the courts for custody of her children up to the age of seven

- 1870 Married Women's Property Act

- it allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property

Property and inheritance

- common land – countryside areas which nobody owned

- agricultural revolution – survival of the household, starvation or poverty – stolen land – criminality – urbanization/migration because of work

- land ownership – radical idea from aristocracy

1857

- Divorce law, Matrimonial Causes Act

- women must prove: adultery (cizoložství) and cruelty

1864 Contagious diseases act

- Public health venereal disease (pohlavní nemoc)

- try to stop disease

- state rape – men are not checked

- upper class and middle-class women were against this

- police officers were allowed to arrest women suspected of being prostitutes

- compulsory checks