ON JUNE 20, 1837, King William IV died after a fatal bout of hayfever. His 18-year-old niece, Victoria, succeeded him to the throne. Among the many loyal subjects who rushed to celebrate the new reign were the 40,000 or so citizens of Bolton.

The public proclamation came on Thursday, June 29.

Church bells rang, cannon were fired and large crowds paraded in both the New Market Place (now the Town Hall Square) and its predecessor in Churchgate.

The Victorian Age started off well in our town.

The mood was not to remain uniformly joyful.

It was 1837 -- an election year.

Bolton had been returning two members to the House of Commons since the Great Reform Act of 1832. On July 25, 20,000 people crowded into the New Market Place to witness the nomination of the candidates.

There was much heckling and some brawling between partisans, but in the event the subsequent election passed off peacefully with Peter Ainsworth (Liberal) and William Boiling (Conservative) being returned.

Elections weren't always so orderly.

At the first contest in 1832 running battles between radical mobs and special constables reached such a peak that the cavalry had to be called in and the Riot Act read.

The successful Liberal candidate, Colonel Torrens, was hit on the head and knocked unconscious by a thrown brick.

Victorian elections were rowdy affairs. They were also extremely unrepresentative by our modern standards.

To qualify for a vote a man -- women didn't get the vote until 1919 -- had to own property above a certain value.

At the first election in 1832, only 1,719 votes were cast out of a population estimated at 43,686.

The majority had no vote, but they were very interested spectators and exercised their influence on election days.

Voters were intimidated, windows were smashed and dead cats were thrown at prospective MPs as they stood on the hustings.

It was all a recognised part of the democratic process.

Local democracy came to Bolton in 1838, when the town was incorporated and became a municipal borough with its own elected mayor and town clerk.

At first there was opposition from the trustees who had been appointed to supervise the enclosure of Bolton Moor and who had run the town since 1792.

For a while a strange dual system was in process.

There were two police forces, one run by the trustees and one by the borough.

Suspicious deaths were investigated by both the Borough and the County Coroner.

Many people refused to recognise the legality of the new Borough and refused to pay their rates.

In the first two years of its existence the town collected only £443 out of the £5,971 it was owed.

But in the end the opposition was won over and the council could set down to the serious business of improving the conditions of the working people.

And conditions were desperate.

When James Black, a local doctor, looked into the state of the poor in 1836 he discovered a death rate of 41.3 per thousand, with 50 per cent of all children dying before the age of three years and 10 months.

In 1844 there were 1,553 beds for 5,305 people, which comes to 3.5 people per bed. Mattresses were in short supply.

People slept on dirty straw, or on the floor. The River Croal was an open sewer and the middens stank all through the year.

Especially destitute were the handloom weavers who had seen their wages tail from 33s 6d (£1.67) a week in 1795 to 5s 6d (27p) in 1834, all this at a time when the price of bread was rising.

Against such a background it is hardly surprising that the discontent of the working people occasionally boiled over into violence.

Many people supported the Chartists, a popular movement, which demanded universal votes and shorter parliaments.

In 1839 the Bolton Chartists launched a three-day General Strike.

Again the cavalry trotted onto the streets of the town, and again the Riot Act was read to a stone throwing crowd. Thirty special constables were besieged in Little Bolton Town Hall. They bolted the doors.

The mob uprooted a street lamp and used it as battering ram to smash in the doors.

Murder might have been done, but one of the specials, Robert Haslam, seized an iron bar from a rioter and beat back everyone who tried to get in.

Rioting was a feature of life in early 19th century Britain, a fact to be born in mind when people talk about Victorian values.

There was misery, discontent, drunkenness and violence.

There were also, fortunately, plenty of public-spirited people who tried to make things better.

The water supply was improved by a big scheme of reservoir building after 1847.

The Croal was dredged and paved in 1860. By 1874 a Medical Officer had been appointed and the sewers were renovated until Bolton had the best system of drains in the country.

A public subscription paid for a new Infirmary, which was opened in 1883 and which was soon supplemented by a Fever Hospital on Hulton Lane.

Later, in 1899, the Corporation built the hospital, which many people still call Townleys.

Bolton was also an early supporter of the railway.

Early in the Nineteenth century canal charges were rising because of the Duke of Bridgwater's monopoly.

Bolton businessmen decided to find alternative ways to get their goods to Liverpool.

A railway line from that city to Manchester was in the offing so they decided to construct their own branch line, which would meet the main arterial near Leigh.

As it turned out the branch line, which opened to paying customers on August 1, 1828, was finished nearly three years before the main line.

Still, it was possible to steam along to Leigh at the astounding, unprecedented speed of 12mph!

By 1831 Bolton trains travelled to Liverpool, and 1838 to Manchester. By 1850 the town was fully connected.

With better organisation the town was better able to cope when hard times struck.

Some of the hardest came when the American Civil War cut off the cotton supply and put thousands out of work.

There was much misery but little violence.

The Corporation organised soup kitchens and employed the destitute on public works programmes.

One of them produced Queen's Park.

With better times came a mood of civic pride.

The old medieval church was pulled down and replaced by its modem successor, the whole thing being paid for by one man, Peter Ormrod, a cotton magnate who lived in Halliwell Hall.

The Prince of Wales opened the New Town Hall, designed by William Hill of Leeds, in 1873.

These two handsome buildings are examples of another sort of Victorian Bolton, a proud, hard-working centre of industry, which had confidence in itself and the future.

In 1877 Christ Church football team changed its name to Bolton Wanderers. The new team found a home at Pikes Lane, on what is now Deane Road.

Admission fees were 6d and 4d (3p and 2p) and you could get a season ticket for a guinea (£1.05).

The club flourished and became a limited company in 1894 and capital was raised to build a new super stadium at Burnden Park.

But late Victorian Bolton wasn't all sweetness and light. The anti-Catholic lecturer Murphy was attacked in 1868.

In 1871 there were anti-radical riots when George Odger and Sir Charles Dilke visited the town. And in 1883 an infuriated mob chased referee Sam Ormerod out of Pikes Lane and all the way to the railway station.

Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901, and was mourned all over the country.

In the town of Bolton, 160,000 citizens reacted to the news brought to them by the Bolton Evening News (est 1867).

Most of them were sad to see the old world change, but they remained optimistic about the future.

Of all Victorian values, faith in progress was probably the strongest.

Luckily for them they didn't know what was coming.