Chiefly pl. working classes. [WORKING ppl. a., CLASS sb. 2.] The grade or grades of society comprising those who are employed to work for wages in manual or industrial occupations.
1813. R. Owen, New View Soc., 5. The poor and working classes of Great Britain and Ireland have been found to exceed twelve millions of persons.
1844. H. Cockburn, Jrnl. (1874), II. 83. What are termed the working-classes, as if the only workers were those who wrought with their hands.
1875. Act 38 & 39 Vict., c. 36 § 5. The accommodation of … as many persons of the working class as may be displaced.
1890. Act 53 & 54 Vict., c. 69 § 18. The provisions of section eleven of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1885,… shall have effect as if the expression ‘working classes’ included all classes of persons who earn their livelihood by wages or salaries.
b. attrib., as working-class family, house, vote.
1869. W. T. Thornton, On Labour, III. v. 316. The error is one of a sort which leading unionists, and working-class leaders generally, are peculiarly prone.
1884. in A. Cawston, Street Improv. London (1893), 105. Those working-class houses that you have bought up and repaired.
1895. Q. Rev., Oct., 558. This majority, as we have shown, is mainly due to the Metropolis and to the great centres of industry, in which the working-class vote is practically omnipotent.
1913. Times, 14 May, 5/5. Leaving the 3,000 working class families which form the population to get bread where they can.
