This thesis sets out the evolution of Britain's Sudan policy during a turbulent period from late 1883 to early 1885 through nine discrete phases: a refusal to engage; compelling Egypt to withdraw; the appointment of Maj.-Gen. Charles Gordon to manage the withdrawal; a partial evacuation of garrisons; British military intervention on the Red Sea coast; termination of evacuation forced by the encirclement of Khartoum; the despatch of the 'Gordon Relief Expedition'; the fall of Khartoum; and finally the abandonment of Sudan. Most of these phases resulted from Gladstone's unilateral executive decisions, in a climate where the public debate on policy was restricted by the active suppression of important evidence. Others were precipitated by the actions of an increasingly intransigent Gordon or by the interventions of critics at Westminster or in the British Army. Two key conclusions arise from this analysis. Firstly, Gladstone's policy was at no time one of' drift', even if his steely determination was manifested at times as passive resistance. Secondly, by the end of the final phase, he had achieved his stated objective: minimum engagement in and zero responsibility for Egypt's erstwhile colony. A policy victory, then, but also a pyrrhic victory: Gladstone's satisfaction, achieved despite well-organised opposition from an aggressively interventionist coalition of imperialist politicians, news editors, business interests and groups like the Patriotic Association. and Primrose League, was short-lived. As this thesis also makes clear in its analysis of the aftermath of the fall of Khartoum, the personal cost to Gladstone was great. The posthumous publication of Gordon's Khartoumjournal (presented here for the first time in unexpurgated form) was followed by its systematic use as a political weapon by the Conservatives in the 1885 election. Thus was established the image of 'Gordon the Hero' and 'Gladstone the Villain' that has been sustained in most of the subsequent historiography: a central aspect of the Sudan crisis that this thesis sets out to test, refute and invert.

Most studies of poverty and welfare in the late nineteenth century focus on urban areas such as London or on the counties of arable framing in the south and east of England that experienced extensive agricultural depression. This study examines the situation in the prosperous northwestern region in England at that time that depended on animal husbandry. It uses a case study focusing on the three large parishes of Bunbury, Tarvin and Tarporley in mid-Cheshire, using parish magazines, newspapers, and annual reports from a number of organisations.

Using archival materials in the Library of the Religious Society of Friends in London (LRSF) and the Alfred Gillett Trust, at the shoemaking firm of C. & J. Clark (AGT), this thesis makes an empirical investigation into the 'Free Labour Cotton Depot' in the village of Street, in Somerset in the West Country of England. The 'depot' was a stall, set up in the village temperance hall and was founded and run by Eleanor Stephens Clark, the Quaker wife of the shoemaking pioneer, James Clark. Between1853 and 1858 the 'Street Depot' sold a highly specialised range of cotton goods, chiefly cotton cloth by the yard. The goods appealed to particular clientele, for they were verified as 'free labour,' and made from cotton grown by waged, or 'free' labour, rather than slave labour. This catered to customers who wished to participate in the 'Free Produce Movement,' which was a consumer-led strategy, set within the transatlantic anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth century. Via the case study of the Street Depot, the thesis examines the British Free Produce Movement, and specifically its campaign against slave-grown cotton, from the 1830s to the 1860s. It examines the trading history of the Street Depot and it scrutinises the complex transatlantic free cotton supply chain, which provided free labour cotton cloth. It examines the Quaker and women's networks that operated within the movement, and it situates the work of the Free Produce Movement within the wider transatlantic campaign to end slavery. It examines the hitherto unrecognised anti-slavery work of Quaker wife, Eleanor Clark, and it explores her deeply-held moral opinions. The thesis also analyses the free produce cotton clothes worn by the Clark family, which it views as practical expressions of anti-slavery sentiment. It draws conclusions on the relationship between middle-class Quaker women, free produce activism, practical expressions of anti-slavery feeling and clothing made from free or 'ethical' cotton cloth.

The identification of the unknown dead in England and Wales has received little scholarly attention from historians, and this thesis - covering the years 1800 to 1934 - represents its first dedicated study. It engages with, and introduces new perspectives on, the histories of sudden death investigation, the modern bureaucratic state, forensic medicine, the place of the dead, and personal, social and legal identities. It situates and studies identification procedure within the context of the inquest, but argues that this inquiry was entirely independent to that into the cause and circumstances of death. This thesis examines the ways in which this medieval investigation was adapted to satisfy the socio-economic and administrative demands of the industrial age, and its development as a legal process in parallel with the rise of the modern bureaucratic state. At the heart of the project - and reflecting its position in identification inquiries - lies the unknown body itself. Using inquest records supported by newspapers and medico-legal literature as a methodological foundation, the thesis analyses the ways in which a range of agents - including coroners, law officers, medico-legal practitioners, the general public, and the press - engaged with the corpse during the investigation, and how their roles and responsibilities developed over the period.

This thesis examines Schubert’s reception in England between the year of his death in 1828 and the publication of Sir George Grove’s music dictionary in 1883, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450-1883). At the time of Schubert’s death, he was hardly known in England. Chapter I explores the introduction of his music to England and his early fame as a song composer. As songs had a firm place in a domestic setting, this section seeks to understand how the association with the home affected his image. It further investigates the effects of English nationalism on Schubert’s acceptance. Chapter II examines the performers and music societies as well as general cultural forces which fostered Schubert’s recognition as an equally gifted song and instrumental composer. Issues of performance standards in the acceptance of his instrumental pieces are also examined. Chapter III investigates the Crystal Palace and the particular roles of George Grove and August Manns in the proliferation of Schubert’s music. Their rediscoveries of numerous substantial scores and subsequent national and even world premiere performances, along with the accompanying programme notes and later reviews in periodicals, helped to shape Schubert’s image. Chapter IV considers canon formation in nineteenth-century England and Schubert’s placement in the canon. It then appraises contemporary writings on avant-garde composers including Franz Hueffer’s 1874 book, Richard Wagner and the Music of the Future: History and Aesthetics, and the influence these had on canon formation in terms of Schubert’s reception. Chapter V analyses Schubert’s image in contemporary English writings, particularly Grove’s article on Schubert in the Dictionary, and assesses the degree to which a relationship between Schubert’s works and biography was established in this period. It seeks to understand how biography impacted on his image and the way in which his works were received in England.

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This thesis examines the genesis and implementation of two provisions of the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867: rate equalisation and the appointment of central government nominees to local poor law bodies. It is contended that while the Act pointed towards the twentieth-century state in that it led to a growth in government and to redistribution of the public spending burden, a new type of gentlemanly safeguard against elected power underpinned these developments. A radical call for redistribution of wealth in the metropolis, coming largely not from the East End but from the west, the south and the City, played a significant part in the genesis of the Act's innovatory restraining step of appointing Poor Law Board nominees to metropolitan bodies. The aim, it is argued, was to dilute the representative base of these bodies as some of their poor law spending came within the compass of the new metropolitan common purse: a step taken in the same year that the representative base for parliament was widened by the passing of the Second Reform Act. The thesis examines the manuscript records of the major metropolitan movement for rate equalisation,analyses decision-making on the Act's largest and longest-running poor law body, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, in its first four years, and presents a census-based socio-economic comparative study of this board's elected and elite nominated managers. The role of central government (ministers and officials) in the state growth that arose out of the Act is also considered. The conclusion reached is that in the metropolis in the 1860s the conscious, planned and more centralised growth of poor law services, and the accompanying partial redistribution of wealth from richer to poorer areas, both arising largely as a result of insistent reformist and radical pressure, took place within a context of gentlemanly ingenuity in finding new ways of retaining influence and power.