Labels, languages and discourses

The experience of Joseph Henry and his siblings in the 1820s was an important one but it was part of something much bigger. The Oates family were members of one of the urban elites which were growing in prominence and which shared experience with a wide range of profit-seeking, fee-earning, property-owning people. People of middling status have been identified in the populations of British towns and cities since at least the emergence of the early modern economy. The composition of this group varied and relationships with other social groups changed but trade and the control of manufacturing and professional positions and of the middle ranks of government authority had always been vital. The 1820s and 1830s were the years in which this group came to label itself and be labelled as a self-aware social group, ‘the middle classes’. The label was nearly always plural, suggesting an ambivalence regarding the homogeneity, if not coherence of the group. This was an accurate reflection of the wide range of economic status positions and the variety of ‘interests’ encompassed by the label. It was also a group often bitterly divided by religious and political faction.

The growing use of such labels has been seen as a response to the structural changes associated with industrialisation and economic development, together with the associated political experiences. Others have seen the growing language of class as an autonomous development related to political claims, notably those associated with the reform of parliament in 1832.