By Lynne Ann Hartnett, Villanova University
By 1851, England was the first nation in the world where a majority of its population lived in urban areas, up from about 17% at the beginning of the century. London’s population had stood at one million in 1800. The city’s population growth saw a sixfold rise over the next century. Opportunity beckoned and so did disease.
Separation of Social Classes
Crowded together in tenements, working-class families lived, worked, prayed, and socialized in the poorest sections of the rapidly expanding industrial cities. Workers needed to live close to the factories where they worked because they walked. Public transportation was much too expensive for most of them.
The Industrial Revolution—and rapid urbanization—also led to a physical separation of the various social classes in London, and elsewhere, that hadn’t previously existed. The middle and upper classes increasingly avoided poorer areas of the city, seeing them as enveloped in prostitution, drunkenness, and crime. Factory owners and parliamentarians viewed these social ills as indicative of the poor’s inherently corrupt nature, and not as signs of being underpaid or there being a lack of public services and protections. Even charity came grudgingly and with strings attached.
Spread of Diseases
Crowded cities also meant poor ventilation, growing piles of rubbish and waste, and contaminated water that brought typhoid and diarrhea. Dark, damp, overcrowded apartments facilitated the spread of such airborne illnesses as influenza, pneumonia, and tuberculosis.
Hundreds of poor neighbors would queue up before a single outdoor water tap for drinking water, baths, and cleaning. The water would be turned on only a few hours a week and one might have to wait hours to fill their buckets. Also, private toilets didn’t exist in poorer sections of the towns. This led to filthy conditions, a loss of dignity, and the spread of disease among tenement residents.
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Death by Cholera
In 1849, the investigative journalist Henry Mayhew visited a neighborhood in southeast London, known as Bermondsey, where thousands of residents died of cholera that year. In this part of town, the poor relied upon drinking water contaminated by human waste and rotting animal carcasses. Mayhew described the area as a “foul stagnant ditch”.
Cholera was a regular by-product of dirty, crowded urban life, and it was assumed that the disease spread via contaminated air. But in 1854—at the height of a new outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people—the English physician John Snow proved that cholera was spread by water, not the air. He traced the contamination to a water pump at Broad Street in the Soho district. Human excrement from the cesspools that littered the street appeared to have seeped into the water supply. Once the Broad Street pump was proven to be the source of the contagion, it was sealed, and the outbreak halted.
John Snow’s discovery proved the salutary effect that responsible civic administration could have on public health. And Parliament became more interested when its own members began to feel vulnerable.
The Great Stink
In 1858, a spell of unusually hot weather coincided with increasing flows of raw sewage into the River Thames. The effect was to produce a smell so terrible that Parliament shut down, for a time. This became known to posterity as the Great Stink.
As curtains in the House of Commons were soaked in chloride of lime, parliamentarians approved the construction of a new sewer system for the city and an embankment along the Thames to regulate the water flow. By 1866, most of London was connected to a sewer system that made the city better smelling and healthier.
Shiny City Life
Another development to revolutionize city life were streetlamps. By 1807, gas lamps lined London’s streets and lit up the capital.
The world’s first underground railway, which opened in 1863, also transformed city life. Rail transport eased the urban gridlock of a rapidly expanding population trying to get around town. On opening day, an estimated 30,000 people made the 18-minute journey between Paddington and Farringdon, aboard wooden carriages fitted with gaslights.
One of the most popular forms of recreation among the urban working class, especially men, was the pub. To compensate for overcrowded tenements, communities formed in the streets and in the local pubs.
Museums, libraries, theaters, and opera houses also proliferated, as did the game of football (soccer in America). Although it had been played in England for centuries, rules became more standardized by the mid-19th century. And the new rail networks enabled teams and spectators to travel to sporting events both locally and in other cities. The game became a national obsession.
Common Questions about Industrialization in England
The middle and upper classes in London increasingly avoided poorer areas of the city, seeing them as enveloped in prostitution, drunkenness, and crime. Factory owners and parliamentarians viewed these social ills as indicative of the poor’s inherently corrupt nature, and not as signs of being underpaid or there being a lack of public services and protections.
Crowded cities meant poor ventilation, growing piles of rubbish and waste, and contaminated water that brought typhoid and diarrhea. Dark, damp, overcrowded apartments facilitated the spread of such airborne illnesses as influenza, pneumonia, and tuberculosis.
In 1858, a spell of unusually hot weather coincided with increasing flows of raw sewage into the River Thames. The effect was to produce a smell so terrible that Parliament shut down, for a time. This became known to posterity as the Great Stink.
