Thinking Allowed - 23/12/2009

The new bourgeoisie played an enormously important role in the history of industrial and imperial Britain. The extent to which cousin marriage proliferated in the 19th century relates to the central question as to which people were going to lead Industrial England. Close-knit families in Victorian England delivered enormous advantages. They shaped vocations, generated patronage, yielded vital commercial information and gave access to capital; no wonder that marriage within the family, between cousins or between in-laws, was a characteristic strategy of this new bourgeoisie. Laurie Taylor discusses private life in 19th-century England with Adam Kuper, the author of Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England, and Catherine Hall, professor of modern British social and cultural history at University College, London.