Mervin and Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying-Typhoon coming on. After Turner 1840-2000

A racial or quasi-racial view of the poor was not the only one. Liberals, believing in the 'levelling-up' theory (That the labourer would emulate the artisan) dwelt upon the possibility of teaching even the lowest the virtues and satisfactions of self-help. The liberal elite put their faith in the new persuasive power of the museums alongside schools and public parks. The birth of museums became a complement to prisons. The museum then, as now, provided a mechanism for the transformation of the crowd into an ordered and, ideally, self-regulating public.