The Great Exhibition and Nightingale

The Great Exhibition had opened its doors to visitors from across Britain and the world, and it took place in Hyde Park, London, inside a specially built glass and steel hall called the Crystal Palace. It was one sign among many of a country confident in its industrial strength.

That same confidence built lasting institutions. The Nightingale Training School for nurses opened at St Thomas' Hospital, London, the first school of its kind anywhere and a lasting foundation for modern nursing.

Elsewhere, Parliament and industry both kept moving. A law of 1847 limited the hours women and children could be made to work in factories to ten a day. The Great Western Railway became known for being the first major railway built in Britain, opening up faster travel across the country. Ireland fared worse in these same years: the famine in Ireland followed the failure of the potato crop, which many had depended on for much of their diet, and it drove large numbers of people to leave the country.