Laiseez afire goverment

• Industrial Revolution


  Changes in industry in the 18th and 19th centuries that had a massive impact on almost every aspect of life in Britain
• British industries at the start of the 18th century

  • Generally small-scale and relatively basic
  • Most still production was centred on small workshops or in the homes of spinners, weavers and dyers (a cottage industry)
• Changes in agriculture


  • Better machinery
  • Selective breeding to produce larger animals
  • More food produced
  • Less people needed to farm
• Changes in agriculture


  Encouraged people to move to cities to work in the newly emerging factories
• Technological innovations


  • Spinning Jenny (machine that could spin several strands of thread at once)
  • Steam engine (could drive all sorts of machines)
• Technological innovations


  Meant production of goods like cloth could be achieved in factories rather than in the home
• Changes in people's working life

  • Jobs previously highly skilled (like weaving) now carried out in factories as low paid and unskilled jobs
  • For some an improvement with guaranteed year-round labour
  • For others lower pay and forced to move to cities
• Laissez-faire


  A policy of limited government involvement, allowing people to do as they choose
• Cottage industry


  Manufacturing of goods carried out in people's homes, usually in the countryside and in this period mostly cloth production
• Piece work


  Work paid for by the amount produced, usually carried out in people's homes (usually in cities)
• Suffrage


  The right to vote in elections
• Rotten borough


  A parliamentary constituency (area) with a tiny electorate (people who can vote) who are controlled by the landowner
• At the start of the industrial revolution, attitudes towards the poor were not very sympathetic
• Assistance for the poor was deliberately unpleasant, with workhouses forcing the most desperate to complete hard work in return for a little food and strict accommodation
• Campaigners like Charles Dickens and Charles Booth, and scandals like the Andover workhouse, slowly changed attitudes towards the poor by the end of the 19th century
• Charities like Barnardo's had been started to help poor children and councils started to tear down slums and build the first council houses like the Boundary Estate in London
• The rapid movement of people meant that the definition of constituencies was quickly out of date, leading to 'rotten boroughs' where low populations had the right to send MPs to parliament while cities like Manchester had no MP
• Only 2% of the population had the right to vote and voting was open to corruption
• In the early 19th century, protests like the peaceful gathering at Peterloo, Manchester were violently suppressed in the famous Peterloo massacre, making it hard for people to campaign
• In 1832, the government started to be more sympathetic to calls for reform and passed the Great Reform Act to get rid of some rotten boroughs and generally give 250,000 people the vote
• It was not until 1918 that some women and all men over 21 got the vote, but there was steady change as the movement of people to cities encouraged more people to protest
• Public health


  The health of the population as a whole
• Large numbers of people moving into cities meant that accommodation could not keep up, leading to poor quality housing in areas known as slums
• The cramped and dirty living conditions, along with poor sanitation and potentially dirty drinking water, meant diseases like Scarlet Fever and Cholera could spread rapidly
• Poor knowledge of disease made it hard for campaigners like John Snow and Chadwick to convince the government to take action
• When Germ Theory showed the link between dirt and disease, the government started to make changes and introduced a Public Health Act in 1875 and organised the building of new sewers in London
• Workhouse


  Run by the local councils, the poor could receive accommodation and food in return for work