Re: Georgiana's establishment

Supposedly one of the big reasons for sending children of either gender to schools in and around London was to make sure they spoke with the proper accent. I don't have a source for that at hand, but that's one of the standard answers for that question.

It's also worth pointing out that the cities in the north were not so large at the time of P&P. The populations of places like Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield doubled—sometimes tripled—between 1811 and 1831. Even in 1831, London's population was about 1.7 million, whereas Birmingham was less than a tenth of that. A larger place is simply going to have more resources, like the best teachers. As industrialization swelled the populations of those other cities, though, the class lines were starting to blur, so someone conscious of class was less likely to send their children off to be educated in a place like Birmingham.