2Y: Urban Britain Flashcards
Where did people live who worked in factories?
What type of houses were they?
- People who worked in factories usually lived in houses close to the factories.
- These houses were owned by the factory owners and built as cheaply as possible.
- Tiny Terraced houses were built back to back to save space.
What happened when more people came to the cities? Where did they live?
- As more people came to the cities accommodation became scarce and there were often a number of families sharing a small house.
- These shared houses were called ‘tenements’.
What was the name given to poor urban areas where workers lived?
Poor Urban areas where workers lived were called ‘slums’.
What were the living conditions within the slums?
Disease was widespread – TB killed many. Cholera was the most feared of all. In 1849, it killed 50,000 people in Britain.
What kind of toilets and water were available in these houses?
- These houses had no indoor toilets or running water.
- Numerous families would share an outdoor toilet and a water tap in a common courtyard.
What kind of sanitation facilities were available in these areas?
- The sewerage piled up leading to a stinking smell until ‘night soil men’ eventually carried it away in large tubs.
- Most areas had no street lighting and drains were open where rats roamed in the middle of the street.
How did people wash their clothes?
- People used local rivers to wash their clothes but this was usually polluted by dead animals or human sewerage.
What did poor people eat?
- The poor were close to starvation and lived on potatoes, bread and, on rare occasions, very small amounts of bacon.
Middle Class Homes: Where did the factory and mine owners live? What were the houses like?
- Mine owners and factory owners lived in large, luxurious homes in exclusive parts of the city.
- They had gas lighting, carpets and furniture. As well as living quarters for their servants.
What did Middle Class people eat?
- They enjoyed a rich variety of food.
- Evening dinner usually was soup and a fish course, a main course of beef, chicken or ham. Plum cake with tea and coffee followed for the ladies, while the gents drank a strong wine called port.
What happened to clothes during the Industrial Revolution?
- Cotton replaced wool during the Industrial revolution.
- Factories mass-produced cloth much cheaper than before, so the cost of clothing decreased.
Who benefited from the clothes advances in the industrial revolution?
- This made little difference to the working people, who usually had one set of working clothes and a set of ‘Sunday clothes’.
- Rich people benefitted greatly from the cheaper clothes.
- Women wore ‘evening gowns’ full of colour.
- Men wore colourful clothes but their clothes became simpler and less colourful from the 19 c. onwards.
How did public health improve slowly as the 19th century progressed?
- Agri Revolution produced better food so people had a better diet and this improved their health.
- Public Health Act of 1848 – Set up boards of health. Streets were cleaned, sewerage was coverage and water supplies were improved.
What medical discoveries improved public health? (3)
- Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria cause disease. He discovered a way to pasteurise milk to kill bacteria.
- James Simpson developed a way to put people to sleep before operations by using Chloroform.
- Joseph Lister used an antiseptic spray on wounds to prevent infection.
What kind of education did working class children receive?
- Working-class children received very little education.
- They had to work and had no time for school.
- Education was not free and could not be afforded.
- Factory owners did not want the poor educated because they might demand better rights from their employers.
