Victorian Women and the Economies of Travel, Translation and Culture, 1830-1870

The years 1830-1870 on which the book focuses is a key period for examining the effect of changing travel practices upon gender relations. The coming of the railway afforded women new possibilities for travelling, with cheaper prices and safer conditions enabling more single women to travel independently. At the same time, steam-powered technology was facilitating the expansion of a new print culture that opened up more opportunities for educated women as writers, journalists, and translators, and thereby able to become active participants in a range of social and cultural debates – a participation which was particularly marked in the context of intra-cultural debates that depended upon access to and experience of other cultures. Women’s perspectives lent a unique angle on these exchanges, and it becomes clear throughout the study that the gendered nuances of women’s activity as travellers and translators brought new approaches to debates around cultural authority, imperial agenda, and national dominance that were resonant throughout writing of the period. Read more: victorian-women-and-the-economies-of-travel-translation-and-culture-1830-1870/

On this day in 1848 Charlotte and Anne Bronte visited London to meet their publisher and revealed their true identity. The Bronte sisters had been using the pseudonyms Acton Currer and Bell.

With rapid decision, they resolved that Charlotte and Anne should start, for London, that very day, in order to prove their separate identity to Messrs. Smith and Elder, and demand from the credulous publisher his reasons for a "belief" so directly at variance with an assurance which had several times been given to him. Having arrived at this determination, they made their preparations. with resolute promptness. 
There were many household duties to be performed that day; but they were all got through. The two sisters each packed up a change of dress in a small box, which they sent down to Keighley by an opportune cart; and after early tea they set off to walk thither--no doubt in some excitement; for, independently of the cause of their going to London, it was Anne's first visit there. 

A great thunderstorm overtook them on their way that summer evening to the station; but they had notime to seek shelter. They only just caught the train at Keighley, arrived at Leeds, and were whirled up by the night train to London. About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning, they arrived at the Chapter Coffee-house, Paternoster Row--a strange place, but they did not well know where else to go. They refreshed themselves by washing, and had some breakfast. Then they sat still for a few minutes, to consider what next should be done.

When they had been discussing their project in the quiet of Haworth Parsonage the day before, and planning the mode of setting about the business on which they were going to London, they had resolved to take a cab, if they should find it desirable, from their inn to Cornhill; but that, amidst the bustle and "queer state of inward excitement" in which they found themselves, as they sat and considered their position on the Saturday morning, they quite forgot even the possibility of hiring a conveyance; and when they set forth, they became so dismayed by the crowded streets, and the impeded crossings, that they stood still repeatedly, in complete despair of making progress, and were nearly an hour in walking the half-mile they had to go. Neither Mr. Smith nor Mr. Williams knew that they were coming; they were entirely unknown to the publishers of "Jane Eyre", who were not, in fact, aware whether the "Bells" were men or women, but had always written to them as to men.

On reaching Mr. Smith's, Charlotte put his own letter into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. "Where did you get this?" said he,--as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so
eagerly in vain. An explanation ensued, and Mr. Smith at once began to form plans for their amusement and pleasure during their stay in London. He urged them to meet a few literary friends at his house; and this was a strong temptation to Charlotte, as amongst them were one or two of the writers whom she particularly wished to see; but her resolution to remain unknown induced her firmly to put it aside.

The sisters were equally persevering in declining Mr. Smith's invitations to stay at his house. They refused to leave their quarters, saying they were not prepared for a long stay.  When they returned back to their inn, poor Charlotte paid for the excitement of the interview, which had wound up the agitation and hurry of the last twenty-four hours, by a racking headache and harassing sickness. Towards evening, as she rather expected some of the ladies of Mr. Smith's family to call, she prepared herself for the chance, by taking a strong dose of sal-volatile, which roused her a little, but still, as she says, she was "in grievous bodily case," when their visitors were announced, in full evening costume.

The sisters had not understood that it had been settled that they were to go to the Opera, and therefore were not ready. Moreover, they had no fine elegant dresses either with them, or in the world. But Miss Bronte resolved to raise no objections in the acceptance of kindness. So, in spite of headache andweariness, they made haste to dress themselves in their plain high-made country garments.

The-Life-of-Charlotte-Bronte-Volume-2

Bronte sisters/chapter-coffee-house

Bronte sisters/ Smith, Elder & Co. -

Gawthorpe Hall

‘March 19th, 1850.

‘Dear Ellen,—I have got home again, and now that the visit is over, I am, as usual, glad I have been; not that I could have endured to prolong it: a few days at once, in an utterly strange place, amongst utterly strange faces, is quite enough for me.

‘When the train stopped at Burnley, I found Sir James waiting for me.  A drive of about three miles brought us to the gates of Gawthorpe, and after passing up a somewhat desolate avenue, there towered the hall—grey, antique, castellated, and stately—before me.  It is 250 years old, and, within as without, is a model of old English architecture.  The arms and the strange crest of the Shuttleworths are carved on the oak pannelling of each room.  They are not a parvenue family, but date from the days of Richard III.  This part of Lancashire seems rather remarkable for its houses of ancient race.  The Townleys, who live near, go back to the Conquest.

‘The people, however, were of still more interest to me than the house.  Lady Shuttleworth is a little woman, thirty-two years old, with a pretty, smooth, lively face.  Of pretension to aristocratic airs she may be entirely acquitted; of frankness, good-humour, and activity she has enough; truth obliges me to add, that, as it seems to me, grace, dignity, fine feeling were p. 449not in the inventory of her qualities.  These last are precisely what her husband possesses.  In manner he can be gracious and dignified; his tastes and feelings are capable of elevation; frank he is not, but, on the contrary, politic; he calls himself a man of the world and knows the world’s ways; courtly and affable in some points of view, he is strict and rigorous in others.  In him high mental cultivation is combined with an extended range of observation, and thoroughly practical views and habits.  His nerves are naturally acutely sensitive, and the present very critical state of his health has exaggerated sensitiveness into irritability.  His wife is of a temperament precisely suited to nurse him and wait on him; if her sensations were more delicate and acute she would not do half so well.  They get on perfectly together.  The children—there are four of them—are all fine children in their way. 

 

They have a young German lady as governess—a quiet, well-instructed, interesting girl, whom I took to at once, and, in my heart, liked better than anything else in the house.  She also instinctively took to me.  She is very well treated for a governess, but wore the usual pale, despondent look of her class.  She told me she was home-sick, and she looked so.

‘I have received the parcel containing the cushion and all the etcetera, for which I thank you very much.  I suppose I must begin with the group of flowers; I don’t know how I shall manage it, but I shall try.  I have a good number of letters to answer—from Mr. Smith, from Mr. Williams, from Thornton Hunt, Lætitia Wheelwright, Harriet Dyson—and so I must bid you good-bye for the present. 
 

p. 449

Write to me soon.  The brief absence from home, though in some respects trying and painful in itself, has, I think, given me a little better tone of spirit.  All through this month of February I have had a crushing time of it.  I could not escape from or rise above certain most mournful recollections—the last few days, the sufferings, the remembered words, most sorrowful to me, of those who, Faith assures me, are now happy.  At evening and bed-time such thoughts would haunt me, bringing a weary heartache.  Good-bye, dear Nell.—Yours faithfully, ‘C. B.’
 

gawthorpe-hall-

Charlotte Bronte visiting Hathersage in Derbyshire.

Charlotte Bronte is usually associated with the village of Haworth in Yorkshire as this is where most of her novels are set. But possibly her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, seems to be set in the small village of  Hathersage in Derbyshire. In the summer of 1845 Charlotte visited this village in the heart of the Peak District. She was 29 and had come to stay with her old school friend Ellen Nussey at the Rectory. 
Charlotte arrived by stage coach which stopped at the George Inn. Local historians are keen to point out how she used her visit to great effect in collecting impressions for her famously passionate novel, published a couple of years later. In Chapter 11 we find Jane newly arrived and waiting nervously in The George to meet her new employer; the dashing Mr. R. 
" A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day… ": 
It was on one of the tombstones in the graveyard of St. Michael’s Church that Charlotte saw the local family name ’Eyre’ which she chose to adopt for her heroine. During her stay she took the opportunity to explore, walking on the moors and visiting many of the houses scattered around the area. One of these houses, the crenellated North Lees, is said to be the model for Thorn Field Hall, home of Mr. Rochester and the place where he and Jane fell in love. The George Inn which still stands on the main street has been welcoming travellers for over 500 years, first as an alehouse, and, since 1770, as an inn. homesteadbb.free-online.co.uk/derbys
www.george-hotel

Public transport in Victorian London

During Queen Victoria's reign, London's population grew at an astonishing rate and the central area became increasingly congested. The development of cheaper, horse-drawn public transport enabled more people to travel than ever before and this influenced the growth of the suburbs.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, public transport in London was expensive and offered passengers little choice. Short stage coaches ran regular services to the City from outlying villages like Camberwell, Paddington and Blackheath. Hackney carriages had a monopoly in the City, where they alone were permitted to set down or pick up passengers on demand. Travelling by short stage or hackney coach was expensive and could only be afforded by the better off, the most wealthy of whom owned their own carriages. Another key route was the river, where traffic continued as it had for centuries. Wherry boats or river taxis could be hailed from various parts of the riverbank. The vast majority of working people could not afford to use public transport at all and so were obliged to live within walking distance of their work.

An artist impression of Shillibeer's Omnibus, 1829.

Horsebuses

In 1828 George Shillibeer, a London coachbuilder, visited Paris where he was impressed by the efficiency of its new horse-drawn bus service. The following year he imported the idea to London and began operating a single horse-drawn omnibus, connecting the suburbs of Paddington and Regent's Park to the City. This service was quite revolutionary: Shillibeer's omnibus ran to a strict timetable, regardless of whether it was full; it picked up and set down passengers anywhere along the route; and fares could be paid on board, unlike the short-stage coaches, which had to be booked in advance. The omnibus was pulled by three horses and carried 22 passengers, who sat inside protected from the weather. The fares of sixpence and one shilling were less than those charged by hackney cab and short-stage coach. Even so, travelling on Shillibeer's omnibuses was not cheap, and they were used mainly by the middle classes.

Nevertheless, the service proved very popular and other operators set up in fierce competition. Soon there were 90 omnibuses on the same route, sometimes racing each other to pick up the most passengers. After many complaints the operators set up an Omnibus Association, with Shillibeer as Chairman, to regulate the busy route. The operators realized that the number of passengers was limited so the Association agreed to reduce competition by restricting the number of omnibuses to 57, running at 3 minute intervals, with inspectors to enforce the new rules. The Association was London's first coordinated attempt to provide a regular bus service.

In 1832 the monopoly of the hackney carriages was removed, allowing horse buses to operate in the City. Within two years there were 620 licensed horse buses in London and by 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, when business was booming due to an influx of visitors to London, this total had more than doubled and the number of routes had increased to 150. Service intervals varied from 5 to 20 minutes in Inner London to an hour or longer in the outlying suburbs.

Whilst many different omnibus companies existed, in 1856 several operators were taken over by the new London General Omnibus Company (LGOC), originally a French operator. After a year spent buying out rivals the LGOC had a fleet of 600 omnibuses and was the largest bus company in the world. Other larger operators included Thomas Tilling and the London Road Car Company. Major companies began to cooperate, forming associations to regulate buses, restricting their numbers, setting timetables and sharing revenue between owners.ltmcollection/resources/Public+transport+in+Victorian+London

Anne Bronte 192nd birthday.

"Anne, dear gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she was her aunt's favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown, and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes, fine pencilled eyebrows and a clear almost transparent complexion. She still pursued her studies and especially her sewing, under the surveillance of her aunt." (Ellen Nussey)

Anne's studies at home included music, which she always enjoyed, and drawing. Later, she began more formal studies at Roe Head School.

Little is known about the next year, but by 1839 Anne was actively looking for a teaching position. She left home on April 8, 1839, and travelled alone, at her own request, to Mirfield. There she began work as a governess at Blake Hall, the home of the Ingham family.

Anne seems to have assessed her situation quickly and accurately, and determined that she would make the best of it. An early letter home was summarized by Charlotte in a letter to Ellen Nussey:

"she expresses herself very well satisfied–and says that Mrs Ingham is extremely kind... both her pupils are desperate little dunces–neither of them can read and sometimes they even profess a profound ignorance of their Alphabet–the worst of it is the little monkies are excessively indulged and she is not empowered to inflict any punishment " (Barker, p. 308)

Anne obtained a second post: this time as a governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia, at Thorp Green, a wealthy country house near York

Anne probably left home for Thorp Green on May 8, 1840. She could not know it at the time, but for the next 5 years she would spend no more than 5 or 6 weeks a year with her family, during holidays at Christmas and in June. The rest of her time would be spent with the Robinsons at their home Thorp Green, or on holiday with them in Scarborough. While living with the Robinsons, Anne first saw York Minster, which she found moving and inspirational. She also visited the seaside at Scarborough, and loved it for both its beauty and the benefits to her health. Her employers were satisfied with her work, and as Bessy and Mary Robinson grew older, Anne became close to them. Of all her sisters, Anne spent the most time away from Haworth, establishing fond associations elsewhere.

 

St. Nicholas Cliff  c. 1935 An aerial view of the Scarborough locality most familiar to Anne, though, shown here some 86 years after she died. The Grand Hotel, which replaced Wood's Lodgings; and Christ Church, where Anne's funeral was conducted, are indicated. The Grand Hotel's three story 'down-the-cliff extension' is clearly visible. An almost identical extension was added to Wood's Lodgings in 1842 - the year of Anne's third visit to the resort. The Spa bridge, where Anne took many walks, is on the  left, with the Rotunda museum just beyond it (extreme left). In the foreground are the South Sands, where Anne loved to walk beside the sea, and that inspired some of the concluding scenes of her novel, Agnes Grey.

mick-armitage/anne/scarboro

 

There is no question that she missed her home and family. "Lines Written at Thorp Green", vt. "Appeal", was written only a few months after her arrival there. It speaks of "loneliness" and "repining"; the identity of its longed for visitor has been much speculated upon. "Home" pleads for the "grey walls" of Haworth rather than the beautiful grounds of Thorp Green. Yet while Anne repeatedly writes of her depression and unhappiness, these are not her only emotions. In "Retirement" , she turns from "earthly cares" and "restless wandering thoughts" to seek comfort in God. In "In Memory of a Happy Day in February" and "Music on Christmas Morning", she rejoices in her religious belief. She exults in the beauty and wildness of nature in "Lines composed in a Wood on a Windy Day".

The sisters went instead to York, where Anne showed her sister the York Minster. Emily, however, was more interested in playing at the Gondals than in any of the sights Anne wanted to show her. Emily describes the trip in her diary paper of July 31st, 1845.

"Anne and I went our first long Journey by ourselves–leaving Home on the 30th of June–monday–sleeping at York–returning to Keighley Tuesday evening sleeping there and walking home on wedensday morning–though the weather was broken, we enjoyed ourselves very much except during a few hours at Bradford and during our excursion we were Ronald Macelgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosobelle Esraldan, Ella and Julian Egramont Catherine Navarre and Cordelia Fitzaphnold escaping from the Palaces of Instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans" (Barker, pp. 450-451)

After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hallappeared in 1848. Anne's life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was 29 years old.

digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bronte/bronte-anne 
scribblemaniac/the-sisters-side-trip-to-beautiful-york/ 
york-minster-pictures/
oldukphotos.com/graphics/EnglandPhotos/Yorkshire,

Alone in the city. Part 6

'Punch' cartoon, 1894: Train travel increased women's opportunities for independence 

The letters document key life events, such as Roper's engagement and first pregnancy, but they also record a multitude of incidental experiences, of journeys, meetings and conversations, which constitute the everyday in any historical period. Roper did not move widely around the city - her experience was defined by a limited number of routes, for a specific range of purposes.

In relating these journeys in her letters, however, she generates a different story of Victorian society from the one of confined womanhood that we so often hear about, and a new way of understanding women and the city in this period. In a postscript to a letter dated 4 January, 1856, Amelia revealed to her friend:

'When I had gone to the station on Tuesday, the train had gone so I walked to town. I had not gone far when a gentleman in a four-wheel chaise offered me a ride but I was like you bashful and said no. If you had been [there] I should [have] said yes.'

'It speaks of embarrassment, apprehension, and possibility.'

This apparently throwaway anecdote tells us so much. It shows a young woman who travels alone into the city and who takes decisions about her journey. It also describes an encounter with a male stranger. There is an exchange, a refusal and a momentary reflection on the alternative outcomes. It speaks of embarrassment, apprehension, and possibility.

Anyone who lives in or visits cities today is familiar with the need to negotiate social space and to read the identities of passing strangers from their dress and appearance. This was also the world of the Victorian city. Women of all kinds were part of this complex social environment, with its changing class and gender relations. The unpublished letters of Amelia Roper offer the historian unprecedented access to the everyday experience of this world.

About the author

Professor Lynda Nead teaches history of art at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Victorian Women, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality and Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth Century London.

Published: 2004-11-05  bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain

It was not considered quite proper for "genteel" unmarried young women to travel on public coaches unescorted. Part 5

It was not considered quite proper for "genteel" unmarried young women to travel on public coaches unescorted (Lady Catherine is even more severe: "I cannot bear the idea of two young women travelling post by themselves").

After the marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither Jane announced her change of mind and left the house hurriedly in the Bigg-Wither carriage, accompanied by Cassandra, Alethea and Catherine, fleeing to her brother James and his wife Mary at Steventon. Alethea and Catherine bade a tearful farewell to the Austen sisters; Jane forcefully persuaded James to take her and Cassandra back to Bath the next day, refusing to tell James and Mary what the trouble was. By no way, Jane could have travel alone or with Cassandra, back to Bath. 

One of the most prominent features of the time period was the propriety expected between members of the opposite sex. This was the beginning of the social restrictions that were one of the defining characteristics of the Victorian period, which directly followed the Regency period. A young unmarried women should not be alone with a man without a chaperone; likewise, women were never to travel unescorted.  annemace.net
  

BUT Agnes Grey is traveling alone
 

""But the morning brought a renewal of hope and spirits. I was to depart early, that the conveyance which took me, (a gig, hired from Mr Smith, the draper, grocer, and tea-dealer of the village) might return the same day. I rose, washed, dressed, swallowed a hasty breakfast, received the fond embraces of my father, mother, and sister, kissed the cat, to the great scandal of Sally, the maid, shook hands with her, mounted the gig, drew my veil over my face, and then, but not till then, burst into a flood of tears.

The gig rolled on–I looked back–my dear mother and sister were still standing at the door, looking after me, and waving their adieux: I returned their salute, and prayed God to bless them from my heart: we descended the hill, and I could see them no more""

 

And Anne Bronte was traveling alone
 

Charlotte was traveling alone

 and even talking to a gentleman

Charlotte's return from this short visit to her friend, she travelled with a gentleman in the railway carriage, whose features and bearing betrayed him, in a moment, to be a Frenchman. She ventured to ask him if such was not the case; and, on his admitting it, she further inquired if he had not passed a considerable time in Germany, and was answered that he had; her quick ear detected something of the thick guttural pronunciation, which, Frenchmen say, they are able to discover even in the grandchildren of their countrymen who have lived any time beyond the Rhine. EG-Charlotte

And so her journey back to Haworth, after the rare pleasure of this visit to her friend, was pleasantly beguiled by conversation with the French gentleman; and she arrived at home refreshed and happy.

Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of English parents and guardians. From Vilette. Part 4.

Vilette :
 ""My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and daring-- perhaps desperate--line of action. I had nothing to lose. Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past, forbade return. If I failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer?""
Read  Vilette: villette/e-text/section2

Charlotte Bronte travelling alone to Brussels. The first time her father, Emily, Mary Taylor were her companions. But the second time she traveled alone. Part 3.

                                    The London & Birmingham Railway’s Euston Square Station in 1838

Towards the end of January, the time came for Charlotte to return to Brussels. Her journey thither was rather disastrous. She had to make her way alone; and the train from Leeds to London, which should have reached Euston-square early in the afternoon, was so much delayed that it did not get in till ten at night. She had intended to seek out the Chapter Coffee-house, where she had stayed before, and which would have been near the place where the steam-boats lay; but she seems to have been frightened by the idea of arriving at an hour which, to Yorkshire notions, was so late and unseemly; and taking a cab, therefore, at the station,

she drove straight to the London Bridge Wharf, and desired a waterman to row her to the Ostend packet, which was to sail the next morning. She described to me, pretty much as she has since described it in Villette her sense of loneliness, and yet her strange pleasure in the excitement of the situation, as in the dead of that winter's night she went swiftly over the dark river to the black hull's side, and was at first refused leave to ascend to the deck. "No passengers might sleep on board," they said, with some appearance of disrespect. She looked back to the lights and subdued noises of London--that "Mighty Heart" in which she had no place--and, standing up in the rocking boat, she asked to speak to some one in authority on board the packet. He came, and her quiet simple statement of her wish, and her reason for it, quelled the feeling of sneering distrust in those who had first heard her request; and impressed the authority so favourably that he allowed her to come on board, and take possession of a berth. The next morning she sailed; and at seven on Sunday evening she reached the Rue d'Isabelle once more; having only left Haworth on Friday morning at an early hour.

Mrs. Gaskell describes the Capter Coffeehouse as it was in those July days.

It had the appearance of a dwelling-house two hundred years old or so, such as one sometimes sees in ancient country towns; the ceilings of the small rooms were low, and had heavy beams running across them; the walls were wainscoted breast-high; the stairs were shallow, broad, and dark, taking up much space in the centre of the house. The gray-haired elderly man who officiated as waiter seems to have been touched from the very first by the quiet simplicity of the two ladies, and he tried to make them feel comfortable and at home in the long, low, dingy room upstairs. The high, narrow windows looked into the gloomy Row; the sisters, clinging together in the most remote window-seat (as Mr. Smith tells me he found them when he came that Saturday evening), could see nothing of motion or of change in the grim, dark houses opposite, so near and close, although the whole breadth of the Row was between. building history/inns/coffee-houses

Women and Urban Life in Victorian Britain By Lynda Nead. Part 2

Current views concerning Victorian femininity continue to be dominated by the 19th-century concept of domestic purity and the associated figure of the ideal woman, the 'angel in the house', carrying out her mission as wife, mother and daughter.

But we should not allow this particular conception of Victorian femininity to blind us to the existence of different, sometimes conflicting, versions of female respectability in this period. Are we really to believe that upstanding women of the Victorian middle classes did not travel alone in the city? That they did not walk to visit friends and relatives, or travel on the omnibus or underground railway?

'Respectability was not as clear-cut as Victorian domestic values would suggest.'

It is time to take the angel out of the house and place her back on the pavements of the city - not as a victim, but as a confident pedestrian. Evidence of the everyday presence of ordinary women on the city streets can be found in many historical sources from the period.

Women were evidently quick to exploit the new opportunities offered by technology and industrialisation. One lithograph from the 1860s (London Transport Museum) depicts King's Cross, one of the original stations of the underground railway. The focus is on the architecture and the engine, but the incidental details of the figures on the platform show women of respectable dress and appearance, on their own, travelling independently across the city. Indeed, female use of the underground was so extensive that the Illustrated London Newswelcomed the publication, in 1868, of a new railway map which 'appears to be exactly that for which the British matrons are urgent'.

Kings Cross station, Metropolitan Railway, 1863 ©

But respectability was not as clear-cut as Victorian domestic values would suggest. The urban crowd brought together strangers of all classes in greater numbers than ever before and offered unprecedented opportunities for social interaction. So we can begin to imagine women as far more active and independent participants in the social and economic world of Victorian cities. Certainly there were dangers in the city (as there still are) but there were also immense possibilities and sources of pleasure and excitement.
bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_out

I am always surprised, when I read how free, without male escort, the Bronte Sisters could travel by train or by carriage through the country and abroad. I always thought it was not allowed in the Victorian period. I'll search the Internet for an answer. What was the situation in the period 1800 - 1900 when a woman wanted to travel? Part 1

First some information about the public transport in the period 1800-1900.

The railways moved goods, foods and people faster than canals or horse drawn wagons. They were the greatest factor in transforming Britain into an industrial nation. They were a huge employer of people either on the railways, building new tracks or being a goods delivery service. Government legislation was affected as suddenly Members of Parliament could get to London with relative ease from far flung country regions.

The lives of millions were changed as suddenly the masses were able to travel further than ten miles in one direction. Now all could manage rare day trips to the new coastal seaside.

 

 

Left - The Railway Station 1862 by William Frith.  (Paddington, London, UK)

Carriages were divided into categories called classes and the 1st class rail carriage was designed like a horse drawn coach. It had foot warmers, oil lamps and closed sides and roof. 2nd class carriages were roofed, but open sided. 

 

To Brighton and Back for 3s and 6d by Charles Rossiter.

3rd class carriages were simple unroofed trucks without seats. In third class, passengers could be blistered by sparks and choked. In the open sided carriage illustrated above an umbrella and a parasol are used for protection. The man protects his top hat from flying sparks and another man dons a blanket to keep off the chill and dusty smoke. 

By 1846 all carriages had to be roofed by law. 

Victorians/A Symbol Of Victorian Progress

The Omnibus

“Omnibus” is a Latin word meaning “For all”. These buses (yes, that’s what they are, horse-drawn buses!) were popular from the early 19th century until the early 20th century, when the first motorised buses took their place. Horse-drawn omnibuses were either one or two-decker buses pulled by a pair of horses along fixed omnibus lines within crowded cities, and they were an effective way to move large numbers of people quickly around a city along a predetermined and fixed route.

they-go-together-like-a-horse-and-carriage-the-variety-of-horse-drawn-transport/

Keighley railway station.

The Bronte Sisters traveled by train from the station of Keighley. They walked to the station or travelled by the town gig. 
 

First opened in March 1847 by the Leeds and Bradford Extension Railway (although rebuilt on the present site in 1883),^[1] the station is located on the Airedale Line 17 miles (27 km) north west of Leeds. It is managed by Northern Rail, who operate most of the passenger trains serving it. Electric trains operate frequently from Keighley towards Bradford Forster Square, Leeds and Skipton. Longer distance trains on the Leeds to Morecambe Line andSettle to Carlisle Line also call here.

Keighley is also the northern terminus of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. This is a heritage branch-line railway run by volunteers that was originally built by the Midland Railway and opened in 1867. 

More: information/history/