Conditions in urban Britain 1832-46

Question 1

How much did the population of Britain (excluding Ireland) grow between 1801 and 1851?

Answer 1

It went from 10.5 million to 20.8 million

Question 2

Why do we exclude Ireland from this count?

Answer 2

Because there was no official census in Ireland in 1801 and the population decreased between 1841-51 due to the famine

Question 3

What can most of the population growth be attributed to?

Answer 3

The rapidly expanding urban areas

Question 4

Define urban growth

Answer 4

Towns and cities becoming larger

Question 5

Define urbanisation

Answer 5

An increasing % of the population becoming town dwellers

Question 6

What were the two main factors in social change at this time?

Answer 6

Urban growth and urbanisation

Question 7

Give a statistic to show the extent of urbanisation between 1831-51

Answer 7

In 1831, the populations of Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester each stood at 200,000. By 1851, there were 60 towns and cities of that size

Question 8

What was the downside of this urbanisation?

Answer 8

Such large and rapid increases in population put immense strain on existing urban structures that for the most part failed to cope

Question 9

Give a statistic to show the extent of urbanisation by 1846?

Answer 9

Almost half the population lived in urban rather than rural areas

Question 10

Describe Liverpool’s growth between 1821-31?

Answer 10

Its population grew by 46% 2/3 of whom were migrants from rural Britain. This was a pattern across most growing urban centres

Question 11

What did population growth and rapid urbanisation mean?

Answer 11

The crowding together of large numbers of people in the towns and cities

Question 12

How did the middle class deal with this?

Answer 12

The wealthier segragated themselves off in big houses in the leafy suburbs and trades and crafts people lived in neat terraced houses not too far from the town centre

Question 13

Where did the vast majority of those in urban areas live?

Answer 13

In hastily built, overcrowded and cramped back to back terraces or tenement dwellings, close to the smoky, smelly industrial centre, with an entire family in one room. They had few basic facilities, a limited water supply, and primitive sanitation

Question 14

Describe tenement housing

Answer 14

Overcrowded, draughty and lacking basic hygeine, there would be a single privy erected for each tenement block

Question 15

What was the biggest threat to health in urban areas?

Answer 15

The lack of proper sanitation

Question 16

Describe the primitive sanitation at the time

Answer 16

On earth privy would be shared by several families. Even when water closets were installed in middle class areas, they drained into open gutters at the side of the road

Question 17

What was an earth privy?

Answer 17

A soil pit - a lavatory without water running through it

Question 18

What was the consequence of the inadequate housing and the dirty streets?

Answer 18

It caused significant health problems, creating conditions ripe for the rapid spread of diseases

Question 19

Where were incidents of disease worse?

Answer 19

In the old district towns like Glasgow and York

Question 20

How bad did disease get in 1832 Exeter?

Answer 20

Out of a population of 28,000, there were 1,200 cases of cholera

Question 21

What caused 40% of deaths in urban towns?

Answer 21

Endemic infectious diseases like Typhus, whooping cough, dysentry and measles

Question 22

What was life expectancy like for urban dwellers?

Answer 22

Short, with appoximately half of all children dying before their 5th birthday

Question 23

What happened to mortality rates at this time?

Answer 23

Despite having fallen steadily since 1750, they rose again during the 1830s and 40s

Question 24

Why did Christian beliefs about being buried on holy ground make matters worse?

Answer 24

Because church graveyards began to overflow and people were buried in unhygenic conditions

Question 25

What did this stimulate?

Answer 25

The development of specially designed cemeteries, which were constructed through private investment or municipal authorities on the edge of towns

Question 26

What did many towns and cities develop into at this time?

Answer 26

Great cultural centres

Question 27

Describe the structural and cultural improvements that occured at this time

Answer 27

The city fathers commissioned magnificent public buildings and commercial business and professional institutions established state of the art HQs in city centres - wealthy benefactors built museums and laid out in beautiful public parks

Question 28

Give an example of one of these magnificent public buildings

Answer 28

The Town Hall in Birmingham in 1834

Question 29

Give some examples of these state of the art HQs

Answer 29

The Liverpool Medical Institution in 1837 or the Royal Institution of Edinburgh in 1836

Question 30

Who were these developments for?

Answer 30

They did not ease the lot of the workers, they were for the social and political aggrandisement of the new elite, the wealthy middle class in the smart residential areas

Question 31

What was there an absence of in city centres despite their spleandour?

Answer 31

Infrastructure that catered for the needs of the whole population

Question 32

Using Glasgow as a case study, explain how British cities were a double edged sword at this time?

Answer 32

On the one hand it was referred to as ‘the second city of the empire’ with its vibrant culture and great commercial and industrial wealth, yet in the 1840s it had some of the worst housing conditions in Europe, with its squalid lodging houses for the labouring poor, with its filthy, unhealthy living conditions bringing in diseases like cholera, typhus and typhoid, which killed thousands every year

Question 33

What were the industrial towns feeling the effects by the 1830s?

Answer 33

The effects of immigration from Ireland and internal immigration from the Scottish highlands

Question 34

Why did Scottish highlanders begin to leave?

Answer 34

There were either too many people tilling the same infertile land to make a living or they were evicted by the landowner to make room for his sheep in a period called the highland clearances

Question 35

Where did people pour into following the highland clearances?

Answer 35

The overcrowded slums in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Question 36

When did Irish immigration numbers rise?

Answer 36

They rose dramatically following the famine in 1845, as they tended to come over to escape the hard times at home

Question 37

Where did most of the Irish that came to Britain settle?

Answer 37

London, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow

Question 38

What kind of much needed labour did they provide?

Answer 38

They swelled the working class ranks as textile operators or railways navigators/labourers

Question 39

What kept the flax mills in Leeds working?

Answer 39

The influx of the Irish

Question 40

What was the downside of these migrants coming in from Ireland?

Answer 40

The problems that developed in the towns stemmed from the fact that the migrants transfered their poverty stricken rural existence to the towns

Question 41

When did the poor begin to benefit from the railways?

Answer 41

The majority didn’t benefit until later in the century, when it was used by them to seek work further afield

Question 42

What did the fact that transport was not an option for the poor at this time mean?

Answer 42

It meant that they walked to their destination. Given the long hours of work and the inflexible shift system, this meant that it was imperitive to live close to the factory

Question 43

What did this mean?

Answer 43

It meant there were rows of cramped back to back housing to accommodate the workers. They had to be close to the industrial centre and its smoky atmosphere, smells and noises, leading them to form new working class areas spreading out on one side of the town

Question 44

What were transport facilities like in the towns?

Answer 44

They were privately owned and catered to the needs of the wealthy

Question 45

What came into service in 1845 Glasgow?

Answer 45

The first horse drawn omnibuses

Question 46

Why did the omnibuses not benefit the poor?

Answer 46

Because they were used by clerical and non labouring workers to travel to and from work

Question 47

What does Mathias say about the way industrialists solved their problems caused by urbanisation?

Answer 47

He said that they solved their problems more efficiently than local government, police and public administration solved theirs

Question 48

What does Mathias say about the difference between rural and agricultural wages?

Answer 48

He ways that wages were higher in the urban manufacturing industry, but this pattern was broken by short, intense periods of cyclical unemployment

Question 49

What was there little public provision for according to Mathias?

Answer 49

The loss of earnings as a result of sickness, accident or old age

Question 50

How did the poor increase their own social problems according to Mathias?

Answer 50

They created them by translating their old spending social and spending habits and conventions into their new environment

Question 51

What was the urban families only protection against distress according to Mathias?

Answer 51

The weekly wage; there were no gardens, smallholdings or payments in kind, everything needed to be purchased from wages