Conditions In Cities Flashcards
Name some dirty towns at the time?
Sheffiel, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham and Bolton
Why had the towns become such horrible places to live?
Once a factory or two had been built people would flood in from the countyside for a job. The factory owners then had to build houses for these workers which were built quickly and cheaply and crammed together. They were built back to back. There was no planning or quality control and some houses were even built without foundations.
What happened with one factory owner and when?
In 1842, one factory owner went to visit his workers in their newly built houses that he rented to them and found that they had all blown down after a storm the night before.
What did Sheffield look like in 1750?
Looked like a peaceful place just a bit bigger than a village. There is a chirch at the centre of it. Fields surround the town with some farming with cows, haystacks and horses.
What did Sheffield look like in the middle of the nineteenth century?
It looked a lot dirtier; all smoky and polluted. Factories and terraced housing dominated the town.
What changed with the amount of people in towns?
In 1801, only eight towns in England, Wales and Scotland had more than 50,000 people living there which were Birmingham, Bristol, Endinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester. By 1900, there were over 60 towns.
How many people usually lived together?
Usually 5 or more people living in one small room, which they rented from the local landlord or the factory owners themselves.
How many people were found sharing one room in 1847 and where?
40 people in Liverpool
What were the problems with sewage?
No houses had inside toilets so they would use a bucket in the corner of the room which would be emptied in the streets or outside the door now and again until there was enough to sell to the farmers as manure.
Sometimes there was a street toilet, a deep
whole with a wooden shed over it, but this would be used by 30 or 40 other families.
Sometimes a pump provided water but it often came from the local river or pond which would be filthy.
There were no rubbish collections, litter bins, street cleaners, sewers or fresh running water.
What was the condition of the rivers?
Sewage would trickle down the streets and into the rivers however most families washed their clothes, washed their bodies and drank from the same rivers.
What were the death rates at the time?
In 1840, one in every five children died before their first birthday and one in three died before they reached five.
In Leeds, the average age of death for a working class man was 19 and in Manchester it was 17.
What were the diseases at the time?
Typhoid was spread in infected water; tuberculosis was carried around by germs coughed into the air; typhus was carried by lice and, in 1832, a new killer disease arrived from abroad - cholera, caused by germs that lived in contaminated water.
What were the death count because of cholera in Britain at the time?
1832 32,000 deaths
1848 62,000 deaths
1854 20,000 deaths
1866 14,000 deaths
What did people not know at the time?
That germs caused disease
What was happening in laboratories?
Far away in laboratories, some doctors had started to make the connection between germs and disease but in the streets of Britain’s newly expanded towns people continued to live their lives surrounded by filth and germs.
