Topic 6: The Growth of Factory Towns and its Effects

Sources:
“The Urban Pattern” by Simon Eisner, Arthur Gallion and Stanley Eisner (Page 99 - 102)
Some other sources

# How Factory Towns Appeared:

 Number of factories increased and people from the

countryside began to move into the towns.
 Factories or the factory area became the heart of the
city or town.
 Railroads and ship routes joined at the factories and
acted as the nerves of the city or towns to supply
fuels in the factories and to carry goods from the
factories to abroad.
 People began to concentrate at the factory
surroundings and factory town appeared.
 In factory towns, amenity of urban life sacrificed to
the requirements of industrial production.

# Effects of Factory Towns:

> Housing:
 Population was increasing.
 People crowded into already crowded houses and houses became slums which was called Mechanical Slums
situated in the shadow of the factory.
 Rooms were rented to whole families or perhaps several families. If there were no rooms to rent, people
stayed in lodging houses.
 The worker's houses were usually near to the factories so that people could walk to work.
 They were built really quickly and cheaply and-
 Most had four and five floors and between 2-4 rooms - one or
two rooms downstairs, and one or two rooms upstairs.
 There was no running water or toilet.
 A whole street would have to share an outdoor pump and a
couple of outside toilets.
 Most houses in the North of England were "back to backs"
(built in double rows) with no windows at the front, no
backyards and a sewer down the middle of the narrow streets.
 The houses were built crammed close together, with very
narrow streets between them. Most of the houses were
crowded with five or more people possibly crammed into a
single room. Even the cellars were full. 
 Most of the new towns were dirty and unhealthy. The
household rubbish was thrown out into the streets.
 Housing conditions like these were perfect breeding grounds
for diseases.

> Pollution:
 Chimneys, bridges and factory smoke blocked out most of the light in the
towns.
 A layer of dirty smoke often covered the streets like a blanket. This came
from the factories that used steam to power their machines. The steam
was made by burning coal to heat water. Burning coal produces a lot of
dirty, black smoke.
> Company Towns:
 Company towns sprang up at the mining and lumber sites to fulfill the supply of labors in the mining and
lumber sites.
 Workers lived in deplorable shacks and shanties (hut) with a single earning member.
 Mining companies provided shelter, foods and clothing to the workers.
 Life in the company town was fulfilling, but never curtained for congestion and pollution.

 There were classes of houses for the owners or

higher professional with better living environment.
 Theses were usually segregated form the labor’s
houses.

Md. Sohel Rana

Chairman
Department of Urban & Regional Planning (URP)
Pabna University of Science and Technology (PUST)
Email: sohelrana1017051@gmail.com