2.3 Notes
• In 1750 only 15% of population lived in towns.
• In 1800 25% lived in towns.
• In 1850 over 50% lived in towns.
• Major urban centers like Manchester, Glasgow, and Bradford grew dramatically because they
were centers of manufacturing and industry.
• Improved transport meant large supplies of coal, raw materials, and food could be brought into
towns to further stimulate growth.
• Railways and junction centers meant towns practically built themselves.
• Industrial towns created a growing middle class: factory managers, bankers, lawyers, engineers
were all needed to support growing industries.
• Increasing demand for goods led to growth of large stores which needed managers and
employees.
• Improving literacy and a cheap press meant increased demand for quality newspapers which
mean need for journalists.
• Larger towns meant men needed to oversee civic affairs like welfare and provision of services.
• Upper middle-class housewives needed servants, and a domestic service industry grew rapidly.
• Population growth with rapid movement to towns mean there was a huge demand for housing.
• Some employers took care to provide decent housing for their workforce, but in the vast
majority of towns, housing was appalling.
• Building entrepreneurs bought cheap land near factories and placed as many houses as possible
on that land, often multi-storied and extremely close together.
• There was virtually no effort to have adequate clean water supplies or sewage disposal.
• Heating and ventilation largely ignored; whole families would live in a single room.
• In winter, tuberculosis and pneumonia were common, in summer cholera was common.
• In the 1830s, around half of all children in towns died before their 5th birthday.
• Tenement slum areas sprang up everywhere.
• Local government simply could not keep up with rapid growth of industrial cities.
• In 1835, the government passed the Municipal Corporations Act.
• Biggest drawback was that local governments didn’t have to improve living conditions unless
they wanted to. Few did.
• Many reluctant to pay increased taxes needed to improve living conditions of others. The rich
simply moved out of town into suburbs.
• Working-class dissatisfaction grew increasingly in 1830s and 1840s.
• Edwin Chadwick was a reformer of working conditions who published a Royal Commission
report in 1842.
• In 1848 the Public Health Act was passed after many cholera outbreaks across the nation, which
affected all classes.
• The act created a Board of Health in London that encouraged improvements to sanitation and
health conditions.
• Central government limited in imposing authority, no national pressure to improve housing
quality. That was left to local authorities which few exercised the power to improve.
• Many workers experienced appalling work conditions and exceptionally low pay.
• Average working day was 12-14 hours, 6 days a week, in dirty and dangerous environments.
• There were few breaks, and many factories had terrible sanitation.
• In many factories, children made up about 30% of the total workforce, started work from ages 6
or 7 and up.
• Suffered many serious injuries as it was easy for them to make mistakes.
• There were no health and safety regulations and machinery was not guarded. No compensation
for those injured or killed.
• Paupers – orphaned/abandoned children were often exploited, basically bought by factory
owners and signed contracts forcing them to work until adulthood.
• Some factory owners deprived their paupers of adequate food, play, education, and housing.
• Many became known as “factory cripples” with lifelong disabilities, and it took several decades
of pressure to address child labor.
• Skilled men could earn between £2 and £2.25 a week in designing, installing, and maintaining
machinery. This was more than enough to maintain a family.
• Unskilled men earned as little as 70 pence a week, not enough to maintain a family.
• Unskilled men depended on their wives and children in making up the difference.
• Women usually earned 35-60 pence a week, children even less.
• Unmarried women lived with their families because they couldn’t afford to live on their own.
