Urban Living Conditions in Industrial Britain (OCR GCSE History B (Schools History Project)): Revision Note

Summary

The cities of industrial Britain grew rapidly and in an unplanned and chaotic way. Housing was built quickly and cheaply. The focus was on fitting as many people into the cities rather than on their quality of life.

Fresh food was difficult to obtain, even for wealthy people, and diets were poor. Clean water was even more difficult to obtain and often polluted by human excrement. These factors combined to make Britain's early industrial cities deadly places to live.

Housing in industrial Britain

• Land was expensive and demand for housing was very high

  • Builders and landowners crammed as many houses into the cities as possible

  • The houses were built quickly and cheaply

  • There were no building regulations

• Houses were often built in rows or terraces and back-to-back

  • This meant they were joined to a neighbouring house on three sides and were poorly ventilated

  • Whole families lived in single rooms where they would cook, eat and sleep

  • It was common for several people to share a bed

  • These were the ideal conditions for diseases to spread quickly

Food in industrial Britain

• Unlike most poor people in medieval and Early Modern Britain, poor people in Britain's industrial cities could not grow or forage their own food

• They were poorly paid and could rarely afford enough food, so hunger was common

• The diet of the industrial working class was also poor and mainly consisted of potatoes and bread

  • This did not provide the vitamins and minerals needed to fight off infections or for children to grow up healthy

• Without fridges or tins to preserve food, it often went bad and caused food poisoning

Clean water in industrial Britain

• Clean water was even more of a problem than food for working people living in industrial cities

• Water was collected from pumps situated in the street that were supplied by water companies

  • These companies charged for the service

  • This was sometimes paid by landlords

  • If it wasn't and people could not afford the charge, they would fetch water from rivers or streams or collect rainwater from roofs

• Regardless of where the water came from, it was usually dirty and dangerous to drink

  • Water companies often pumped water from a polluted river

  • Rainwater ran off dirty rooftops and gutters

• People cannot go without drinking for long, so even dirty water was drunk out of desperation

  • This had deadly consequences

Waste in industrial Britain

• Human excrement was the main reason water was so deadly in Britain's industrial cities

• The only sewers in towns were for taking rainwater from streets to rivers and streams

• People continued to use privies above cesspits that had to be regularly emptied - just as they had in medieval and the Early Modern Periods

  • With cities now having populations in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, in London's case, the system did not cope

  • City streets became covered with excrement and overflowing cesspits

• The invention of flushing toilets, known as water closets, made the situation even worse

• These became very popular with the wealthy between 1800 and 1830

• The waste was flushed directly into local rivers

  • This led to the rivers, where water companies piped much of their water from

  • The water supply was filled with diluted human excrement