Anatomy of a Victorian Family

Abstract

Queen Victoria had been on the throne for 43 years when Ernest Gowers was born, and the British Empire was still expanding. The coal industry, the problems of which were to preoccupy him for many years, was at its peak during Victoria’s reign, starting to decline at the turn of the century Gowers was in his last year at Cambridge and at the threshold of his career when Queen Victoria died in 1901. His Civil Service career spanned the introduction of the welfare state, two world wars, the Great Depression and the decline and then nationalisation of the coal industry. After an early, rapid rise through the administrative ranks, he went on to hold a wide range of Civil Service positions before retiring in the late 1940s. But in practice he did not stop working until 1965, when he was in his mid-eighties. Few Civil Service contemporaries matched him as a generalist and few, if any, continued to work for as long as he did.