Walking the Low Road: The Pursuit of Scientific Knowledge in Late Victorian Working-Class Communities

Abstract

For late-century Victorians, science was everywhere part of the culture, but current studies are mainly concerned with the cultural elite. This is because the formal high of official schooling, expensive reading materials, and memberships in prestigious scientific societies required both time and money, both of which were in short supply in the laboring sector. In contrast, this article looks at an alternate path: the road. It is the road of unofficial schooling, cheap reading materials, local clubs, and shared community resources that served up ample opportunity to satisfy working-class scientific curiosity and intellectual hunger. As part of both common knowledge and as an intellectual prop for working-class emancipation, the facts of science and the authority that went with thorn were appropriated at varying levels by the working-class community. Science was a fundamental component of leisure, self-improvement, and political ideology, as working men, women, and children took the low road to greater participation in the life of the nation. Defining and mapping the low road is crucial for current scholarship in the history of science, which neglects working-class issues, and for working-class history, which neglects the relevance of science in the formation of modern social and political ideologies.