Why were towns so dirty during the Industrial Revolution? Flashcards
Why did factory owners have to build houses for workers?
Since most people lived in the countryside before the ID and with factories being built, people rushed from the country to find work.
Why were these houses built so badly?
Factory owners did not care about the conditions their workers would live in and wanted to save as much money as posible. Because of this, they were built as cheaply as possible and to save land, they were also built back to back and really close to eachother.
What was another thing the rich did not care about when building facilities for the poor?
Toilets - there was a much larger ratio of people than toilets in the area they lived in.
What consequence did the amount of toilets have on hygene and there not being sewage systems for the poor?
People would have to excrete in a cesspit. Since these were expensive to empty, the landowners sometimes would not bother to empty them. This meant that sewage would sometimes flood the lavatories.
Since toilets could flood with sewage and because the poor lived very close to eachother, how rapidly could disease spread?
Very rapidly
What effect did having many people living in one house have if one person caught illness?
Because the houses for the poor were very small, if one person had illness, it could spread in a matter of hours.
Where did the poor use water that came from a specific place to wash clothes, wash themselves and drink?
The local river or pond.
What did people believe about the spread of illness?
They thought it spread through smells (known as the miasma theory)
What effect did the miasma theory have?
Because people believed in it, they did not research into it and no cures could be made from refering to the theory.
How many children died before reaching five years old in 1840
1 in 3
