The Industrial Revolution
Urbanization
Urbanization
Western Society:– 1800 – rural and agragarian– 1900 – urban and industrial
The Pogues: “Dirty Old Town”
Manchester, England
Listen … think
How do the lyrics of the song reflect the changes brought about by the Industrial
Revolution in England?
“Manchester from Kersal Moor”
William Wylde (1857)
Ancoats Mill, 1840’s Manchester
Same mill, 1976
The Industrial Revolution and Urbanization
• 1801 – 17% of Europe’s population lived in cities• 1851 – 35% • 1891 – 54%
European Urbanization
European cities with pop. Over 100,00:
• 1801 – 22
• 1851 - 47
Rate of Growth
• Manchester 40-47% per decade• Glasgow 30% decade for 3 decades
• So what?
• What if it were Brantford?
Urban Growth
Town of pop. 40,000Growing at 30% per decade:
In ten years – 53,000
In twenty years – 69,000
In thirty years – 90,000
Within your lifetime, you would not recognize the city you were born in
“Walking Cities”
• Rapid growth• No planning• No public transportation system• Workers lived near their
factories• Use of all available space
Lancashire
1969
Note - outhouses
Wigan
“Terraces” (Row Houses)
Shropshire
“Terraces”
Manchester
“Terraces”
Newcastle (1970)
“Terraces”
Newcastle (1972)
“Walking Cities”
• Use of every available space• Few parks or open areas• Narrow streets• No front yards• Small backyards• “terraces” (row houses)• Over-crowding:
– “six, eight, and even ten occupying one room is anything but uncommon”
- Doctor, Aberdeen 1842 gov’t report
Unsanitary• Open drains, sewers … if any (“privy pits”, “dung heaps”)
• Sewage had to be carted away
• Primitive toilet facilities – Manchester – 1 toilet for 200 people in w.c. district
• Sewage leaked in to cellars:– Cellar “full of night soil [human excrement] to the depth of three
feet … which had accumulated for years from the overflow of cesspools” – London construction engineer
– “to put it as mildly as possible, millions of English men, women, and children were living in shit” – 1840 gov’t report
• Filth was common:– Poor house admission requirement – a bath:
• One man protested that it was “equal to robbing him of a great coat which he had had for some years”
Infant Mortality
• English cities – 1830’s:– 20% of children died before age 5
The “Great Stink”
• a.k.a. “the Big Stink”
• London
• Summer 1858
• Causes:– Untreated human waste in the Thames
– Unusually hot summer
– Introduction of flush toilets• More water in cesspools = overflow
• Effects:– Interfered with gov’t and courts
– Gov’t faced with the problem
– Need for better sewer system
Death of HRH Prince Albert• Died of typhoid fever 1861, age 42
• Cause:– Water contaminated with fecal matter
• significance
Public Health Reform“The Silent Revolution”
• Edwin Chadwick:– Gov’t appointee– Poor Law reform (1834)– Health and poverty – urban living conditions
• “Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Britain” (1842):– 3 year study– Scientific – Definitively proved relationship between disease and filthy
environmental conditions– Published at his own expense
• Key ideas• 1848 – Britain’s first Public Health Law
The Bacterial Revolution:Following in Chadwick’s Footsteps
• 1860’s-1870’s• Louis Pasteur – germ theory• Robert Koch – bacteria and diseases• Joseph Lister – sterilization
Results …
Life expectancy in England:
1837 – 36
1901 - 48
In contrast … Paris
Baron Georges Haussmann• French civic planner• Hired by Napoleon III to redesign
Paris (2 general goals)• Specific goals:
– Safer– Better housing– Uniform building heights– Cleaner– Shopper-friendly– Tree-lined– Better traffic flow– Train stations– Streets too broad for rebels to barricade
• 12 grand avenues
• Re-designed Paris in the 1860’s
Avenue de la Grand Armee
Paris
Paris
Paris
Paris