The Living People of England: 1720–1838

A Four-Part Historical Blog Series for After the Sun Sets Games

Between 1720 and 1838, England underwent one of the greatest transformations in its history. The country shifted from a largely agricultural, maritime society governed by landed aristocrats and wealthy merchants to an increasingly industrial nation of factories, railways, expanding cities, and new social classes.

London stood at the center of much of this transformation. It was a city of royal palaces and filthy alleys, immense fortunes and desperate poverty, international merchants and struggling immigrants. Its people came from across Britain, Ireland, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

For the After the Sun Sets Games Victorian London Vampire LARP, understanding these living populations provides a historical foundation for the mortals whom the Kindred encounter, employ, influence, and feed upon.

I have divided the history into four blog articles, each covering roughly thirty years. Each installment explores occupations, ethnic and cultural communities, class divisions, wealth, and daily living conditions.

The Living People of England, 1720–1749

The Georgian World: Merchants, Servants, and the Old Social Order

In the early eighteenth century, a person's birth, family connections, religion, and occupation often determined the course of their entire life. King George I began his reign in 1714, and the Hanoverian monarchy ruled a society that still measured respectability by property ownership, inherited titles, and established family names.

London was already one of Europe's largest cities, containing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants drawn from throughout the kingdom and beyond. Its streets were crowded with merchants, sailors, craftsmen, domestic servants, beggars, clergymen, soldiers, and wealthy gentlemen. Although London was England's center of politics and commerce, most people elsewhere still lived in villages, market towns, and agricultural communities.

The Upper Classes: Nobility and Landowners

At the highest levels stood the royal family, hereditary aristocracy, and great landowning families. Dukes, earls, viscounts, barons, and wealthy untitled landowners possessed considerable economic and political influence.

Their fortunes frequently came from agricultural rents, inherited estates, investments, colonial commerce, and financial arrangements with the government. The wealthiest maintained both country estates and London residences, particularly around Westminster and fashionable western districts.

A prosperous aristocratic household might employ dozens of servants, including cooks, chambermaids, footmen, coachmen, gardeners, and personal attendants.

These families attended fashionable assemblies, private gatherings, theatrical performances, and elaborate dinners. Marriage often consolidated property, wealth, and political alliances.

The Middle Ranks: Merchants and Skilled Tradesmen

Below the aristocracy existed an important and increasingly influential population of merchants, professionals, shopkeepers, and skilled craftsmen.

London merchants traded in textiles, timber, tobacco, sugar, wine, spices, and imported luxury goods. Some accumulated fortunes rivaling those of the nobility.

Other respectable occupations included attorneys, physicians, apothecaries, printers, booksellers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, and master craftsmen.

Many shopkeepers lived above their businesses, sharing the premises with apprentices, servants, and family members. A successful tradesman could afford good clothing, household furnishings, and possibly a servant, but his standing still depended on his business reputation.

Coffeehouses provided important meeting places for businessmen, writers, investors, and politically engaged gentlemen. These establishments circulated much of London's commercial and social information.

Laborers, Servants, and the Poor

Most working people had little wealth.

London required enormous numbers of laborers to transport goods, construct buildings, maintain roads, handle cargo, and provide services to its expanding population.

Common occupations included porters, dock laborers, watermen, stable hands, coach drivers, street sellers, laundresses, seamstresses, and domestic servants.

Domestic service was a major source of employment, particularly for young women arriving from the countryside. Servants often lived in their employers' homes, receiving food and lodging along with modest wages.

Agricultural workers outside London faced similarly uncertain conditions. Farm servants, tenant farmers, and day laborers relied on seasonal work, harvests, and landowners' goodwill.

Those unable to find work might depend upon parish assistance, charitable institutions, relatives, or begging.

Ethnic and Cultural Communities

Although most inhabitants of England were English, the population was far from culturally uniform.

Welsh and Scottish people traveled into England for trade, military service, education, and employment. Irish migrants were also present, particularly in major ports and commercial centers.

London contained established Jewish communities, including families of Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi heritage and Ashkenazi Jews with roots in central and eastern Europe. Their occupations ranged from trade and commerce to small-scale retailing and craftsmanship.

French Protestant refugees, known as Huguenots, had settled in large numbers during earlier decades. Their descendants and continuing communities played important roles in silk weaving, particularly around Spitalfields.

Black Africans and people of African descent were also present in London. Some worked as servants, sailors, or tradespeople, while others experienced enslavement or deeply unequal employment relationships connected with Britain's Atlantic empire.

Visitors and residents from Asia arrived through maritime commerce and the East India Company's activities. Though comparatively few, they became part of London's international population.

Wealth and Everyday Living

The differences between rich and poor were visible everywhere.

Wealthy families ate meat regularly, bought imported luxuries, wore fashionable fabrics, and lived in spacious residences. Their servants maintained the household, while family members enjoyed education and leisure unavailable to most people.

A working household might live in one or two rented rooms. Food commonly consisted of bread, porridge, vegetables, cheese, small quantities of meat when affordable, and inexpensive beer.

Clean water was not always readily available, sanitation was poor in many neighborhoods, and disease could spread rapidly.

For the poor, unemployment, illness, or the death of a wage earner could quickly destroy what little security the family possessed.

England at the Middle of the Century

By 1749, England remained a kingdom dominated by inherited privilege, but commerce was creating new opportunities for ambitious individuals.

Merchants increasingly possessed the money to purchase estates, educate their children, and enter respectable society.

The boundaries between wealth and social standing were beginning to change, even as the great majority continued to labor simply to survive.

The England of 1749 was still unmistakably Georgian, but the foundations of a new commercial society had already been laid.