3.1

• pre-industrial britain had no drains, or swerage systems, no clean piped water and no effective measure to prevent the spread of disease.
• who was issued by the government and town councils regarding the removal of waste from the streets and emptying the privies?

  edicts and directives
• what was the bubonic plague?

  a highly infectious epidemic disease that was carried by fleas that lived on rats, and transmitted to people via flea bites
• there was some concentration of people in fairly crowded conditions in london and some provincial towns, the vast majority of people lived in ,thinly spread, rural areas.
• 1781-1871 the population of britain grew from approximately 13 million to over 31 million and by 1939 to nearly 48 million

  most rapid period of growth: 1811 - 1841
• population wasn't only growing, but also on the move: industrialisation created work in factories, mills and foundries so people flocked into the rapidly growing towns and cities to take advantage of the new job opportunities.

  • forced many to crowd together, living in substandard housing with little by way of clean water or adequate sanitation = public health catastrophe
• 1811 - 1841: death rate fell due to;

  • medical industry producing the vaccine that prevented smallpox killing so many people
  • the agricultural industry producing food that was better in quantity and quality
  • chemical industry producing soap that was cheap and readily available = people can keep themselves and their clothes cleaner than before
  • textile industry producing cotton cloth that was cheap to buy and easy to wash = helped people to keep clean
• 1811 - 1841: birth rare rose due to:

  • fewer people dying when young = more people survived into their 20s and 30s = more children
  • more babies living to adulthood = generation too would have more children
• 1811 - 1841: marriage rate rose due to

  • rural areas: farmers employed fewer live-in servants = easier for men and women agricultural labourers to begin life together so got married earlier
  • industrial areas: unskilled workers replaced skilled craftsmen who had to work 7-year apprenticeship = industrial workers could marry as soon as they had a job or even if they didn't
  • earlier marriages in the days before contraception = more babies
• 1801 : 33% of the population lived in towns

  by 1851 : 50% and by 1891 : 72%

  1900 : 4/5 british citizens were urban dwellers

  official national consensus held every 10 years from 1841 - estimated by contemporaries and later by historical statisticians

  • not uncommon for industrial centres in c19th to show increase in population of 1/3 at each count
• what was civil registration?

  before 1837, vicars were required to keep registers of baptisms, marriages and burials that had occurred in their parishes. a mobile population and the growth of nonconformity = registers became increasingly unreliable. in recognition of the need for accurate records for voting and taxation purposes; parliament legistlated for compulsory civil registration that was administered by the Poor Law unions

  • began July 1837 and certificates of births, marriages and deaths were issues as legal documents
• what did civil registrations of births, deaths and marriages reveal?

  • young, fertile and actively reproducing population in most urban centres
  • urban birth rates were continually above death rates and so natural increase from 1840s added to increase from internal migration
  • global rates too conceal as much as they inform
  • Manchester 1840s: 57% babies died before 5
  • epidemics of cholera, smallpox and scarlet fever recorded and their rate and geographical distribution were analysed by statisticians and used to push for reform in public health
• population.of some british towns and cities in thousands

  London: 1801- 775 -> 1841- 1948 -> 1871- 3254

  Edinburgh: 1801- 85 -> 1841- 166 -> 1871- 242
• the influx of thousand of people into small market towns and cathedral cities = catastrophic effect on the existing housing and sanitation provision = explosion of what Victorians called 'filth diseases'

  • e.g. typhoid, TB, scarlet fever, measles and cholera
• slums in medieval london and agricultural labourers had lived in conditions that were frequently no better than.those of the animals they tended

  • unique feature of industrial revolution: widespread, dense overcrowding ; urban communities responded first by using up and adapting existing 'vacant' living space and second by building new dwellings
  • cellars and attics were filled with working people and their families + used as workspaces
• what did Engels find out about living in industrial Manchester?

  prior to industrial revolution: rich poor and those in between lived in close proximity to each other in britain's towns and cities but in industrial britain the absence of affordable transport = industrial workers had to be housed close to the mills and factories where they worked, the middle class moved out beyond the pollution and smut-laden pall that covered the industrialising cities
• many of the new houses in the north were poorly built with floors being nothing more than bare boards over beaten earth. others were planned more carefully but the most careful planner could not legistlate for the number of families that would occupy a house designed for 1
• most housing of the c19th lacked drainage, sewerage and regular water supply.
• lavatories (privies) were usually outside in courtyards of alleys and emptied into cesspits. this was cleaned out by night-soil men who sold it to local farmers at a price per tonne.
• some houses had their own privies; ash privies where instead of flushing users would cover the contents with ash.
• some middle class had flushing privies but these flushed into a cesspit in cellar or into a closed sewer. had to be physically emptied
• water was needed for washing, cooking and drinking but it was in short supply and expensive. it's supply was also controlled by vested interests in the form of private water companies
• water companies sometimes took water from deep, natural underground reservoirs and springs but also from local rivers.
• middle classes had water piped to their houses but the poorer areas had to make do with standpipes and inhabitants frequently queued with buckets and saucepans to buy what they could afford when the water company turned on the supply. people who couldn't afford to buy water either didn't bother or took what they could from local wells and streams
• Pasteur developed germ theory


  1867
• In the first half of the 19th century, overcrowding and lack of sanitation and clean water led to disease being rampant and life expectancy of the working classes being low
• People living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions without easy access to a supply of clean water housed body lice, which spread typhus fever, resulting in many deaths
• Typhus epidemics occurred in north-west England in 1837 and 1839, with an outbreak in 1847 that killed 10,000 people
• Diseases that were endemic and often killers

  • Influenza
  • Scarlet fever
  • TB (white plague)
  • Measles
• Common diseases


  • Typhoid
  • Diarrhoea
• Cholera epidemics occurred in 1831-32, 1848-49, 1853-54 and 1866
• The 1831-32 cholera epidemic killed 31,000 people
• The 1848-49 cholera epidemic killed 62,000 people
• Miasma theory of disease

  Bad air
• Link between dirt and disease was unsure
• Miasma


  Poisonous gas where suspended minute particles of decaying matter that couldn't be seen by the naked eye
• Miasma


  • Characterised by foul smell
  • If you were breathing in a miasma, you were going to get ill
• Diseases spread because poisonous gases were carried from person to person and place to place in air
• Industrialisation created filthy, foul-smelling areas in most cities and in these cities were the most rampant epidemics common and death rates high
• Improving public health miasma theory

  1. Clean them up

  2. Improve housing and sanitation