3. industrial britain (1750 - 1900) Flashcards
britain’s population from 1750 to 1900
6 million -> 37 million
which new machinery was introduced & what impacts did they have?
steam engines and textile machinery -> mass production in huge mills and factories
better farming machinery -> more food was produced, fewer people needed to work on farms
new railways and steam trains -> transported people and goods around the country, improved food supply to towns and allowed townies to get to the countryside easier
what was all the new machinery powered by?
coal, which was mined on a large scale
why did people move from the countryside to towns?
-changes in farming meant there was less work, with lower wages, in rural areas
-growing industrial towns in the north, offered new jobs in the factories
distribution of people in rural & urban areas
1750
-20 per cent of the population lived in urban areas
1881
-68 per cent of the population lived in towns and cities
working conditions in factories & mines
-long working hours (eg: over 12 hours a day)
-accidents were common
-working conditions were smoky and dusty, causing respiratory diseases
the british empire
by 1900, britain’s colonies made up a quarter of the world’s population
new ideas
-people were still religious but the churches influence was in decline
-literacy rate was improving & more people were reading newspaper
-by 1900, many people had accepted the theory of evolution
-in 1861, louis pasteur published his germ theory, which proved that germs that cause disease
why was the newspaper in higher demand?
there was growing literacy
______ educational act
1870:
ensured that some basic education was available to all children under 10
democracy (who could vote?)
-in 1832, some middle-class men were granted the vote
-no women could vote
-people had a lassiez-faire attitude
-in 1867 vote was extended to working class men
housing
-back to back houses
-packed houses onto small plots of land
-hard to ventilate -> damp -> TB
lodging houses
-single people rented out rooms in lodging houses, large houses that had been divided up into smaller rooms
-sometimes families stayed in lodging houses while they found a house of their own to rent
lodging houses conditions
-dirty & overcrowded
-people packed into a single room & shared beds/slept on the floor
-typhus spread
cellar dwellings
-small and damp spaces under other people’s houses, with no sunlight at all
-sometimes flooded with rain or sewage from the street above
where were the working class living?
crowded slums in the city centre, close to work
where did the rich live?
spacious villas in the country/suburbs
food
-fresh food could reach towns because of railways
-workers’ housing had limited facilities for cooking and storing food safely
-wages of unskilled workers were low, they struggled to buy enough food to feed a family
-workers had bread, potatoes and weak tea (tea leaves would be used multiple times) -occasionally they might have bacon or offal
-this was an unbalanced diet -> malnutrition
why was the quality of food poor?
-there were no laws regulating the quality of food
-some butchers and street sellers sold meat from diseased animals
-food adulteration was a widespread practice (eg: copper was added to butter to alter its colour) -> diarrhoea and food poisoning.
waste
-privies
-some people had their own privy because they had their own yard
-back-to-back houses had to share a privy, sometimes between ten houses or more
-privies were connected to cesspits
-landlords paid night-soil men to empty the cesspits & take the waste away to sell to farmers
-if landlords didn’t pay, cesspits overflowed into the streets and yards
-the middle & upper class started to use water closets in the early 19th century these were linked to sewers which went to rivers
water
all water was unsafe throughout the 19th century: water from the rivers was contaminated by human waste & rainwater had fallen through the smoke from factories
-piped water into homes was not usually available in working-class areas
-water companies supplied water to be shared between a court or a street, accessed by a water pump
-many landlords were unwilling to pay more than the minimum fee to the water companies, so the water was only available for a few hours per day
-some people collected rainwater or got water from the towns river if there was no water
when did cholera first arrive in
Britain?
1831
symptoms of cholera
-vomiting
-diarrhoea
-rapid dehydration
how did cholera spread?
through contaminated water
