Industrial Revolution

Health and Poverty in the Industrial Revolution

Sascha Alvares - 8.8 - 9542

 Content
Sr no. Index Page no.

1 Living conditions in the work house 3

2 Living conditions in the Towns 5

3 Living conditions of the poor 6/7

4 Diseases 8

• Sascha Alvares - 8.8 - 9542

The work houses
• People ended-up in the workhouse because they were too poor, old
or ill to support themselves.
• Lack of work or people with no home were provided care for them
when they became sick or old.
• The mentally ill and poor were often consigned to the workhouse.
Living conditions of the workhouses:
• The workhouse was like a small self-contained village.
• Apart from the basic rooms such as a dining-hall for eating, and
dormitories for sleeping, workhouses often had their own bakery,
laundry, tailor's and shoe-maker's, vegetable gardens and orchards,
and even a piggery for rearing pigs.
• There would also be school-rooms, nurseries, fever-wards for the
sick, a chapel, and a dead-room or mortuary. 
The Rules and regulation of the work houses
• Workmates have to get up at 6am every day and go to bed
at 8pm in the evening.
• Breakfast is served at 6:30, dinner at 12 and supper at
6pm.
• Every few days you might get a bit of bread and cheese,
or some meat to eat!
• If you swear, or are badly behaved during prayers, you are
locked up for 24 hours without food or water.
• For refusing to work you can be sent to prison for a month.
• Men, women and children are all kept in separate wings.
• Men and strong boys might have to break up stones.
• You work from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening with an
hour off for dinner between 12 and 1.
• Food is usually gruel (watery porridge) or broth (thin soup).
• For being late, or not working hard enough, people had
food withheld.
• If you try and run away you will be whipped in front of
everyone else.
• Everyone is split up from their family as soon as they enter
the workhouse.
• Children usually pick oakum (tearing old rope into
individual strands).
• Sometimes you have to crush bones up to be used for
fertiliser.
Urbanization -Villagers moved to towns/cities

Agricultural changes created unemployed farm

work. Mass rural to urban migration created
more workers in cities. Towns grew very
quickly as factories led to migration from the
countryside and immigration from different
parts of Europe and the empire.

• The increase in population and enclosure of

farms forced people to move to cities.
• Poor families lived in poorly constructed
apartments built by factory owners called
tenements in neighborhoods called slums.
• Many families shared cramped apartments
that lacked running water or sanitation.
• Hard factory jobs and disease led to short
life expectancies for urban workers.

Housing for the worker was cramped in, built

quickly and built with little regard for hygiene.
In many cities the result was that large slums
appeared.
The living conditions of the towns

There was no toilet, no running water –

sometimes not even windows or a
fireplace! Rooms were cold, badly
ventilated and running with damp. Worst
of all were the cellar and attic dwellings in
which the poorest families lived. Cellar
rooms flooded in bad weather and might
be an inch or so deep in stagnant water
the whole year round. Attic rooms were
cramped and stuffy, with no way of
escaping if the building caught fire.

Industrial Revolution - Population was

rapidly growing and brought poverty,
harsh living conditions; dangerous
working conditions, unsafe, unsanitary
and overcrowded housing for most
people. The rivers got polluted by the
factories systems and people were living
in slums.
The living conditions of the Industrial Revolution
Many people moved to towns during the Industrial Revolution that there were not enough houses. Builders and landlords ,
who was keen on making large profits, built thousand of new houses but they crammed as many people in as possible and
often used thecheapest building materials. Rents were hidh so wholr families had to live in a single room. Sometimes they
even took in lodgers to earn extra money. There was little privacy and infectious diseases spread easily.

Poorly built– housing for Overcrowding- houses were

the poor often badly built. built close together built so
With earth floors, single close together and fsmilies
brick walls and poor roofing often rented out one room in a
materials house.

Hygiene– it was hard for people wash Drinking water- most houses did not have
their clothes and themselves. Many piped warer. People had to get water from
people had body lice. Food storage cisterns, stand pipes, wells or rivers. The
was problem too. Disease like typhoid, waste of the town polluted all of these. This
typhus and diarrhoea flourished. Even meant that water-carried diseases like
royalty and rich were not safe. cholera could easily spread.

Rubbish – In many towns there was Sewage - this was a major problem as most house were
no effective system for collecting built without sewers or toilets. The houses usually shared
rubbish. The piles of rotting rubbish in a privy, which might be built over a stream or cesspit.
courtyards and streets were breeding Sewage leaked into the water supply. As the pits were not
grounds for disease. regularly emptied they often overflowed, particularly in
wet weather. They stank and were also a breeding
ground for disease.
Diseases during the Industrial Revolution
Disease was a constant threat during the Industrial Revolution. Changes in the way that people lived and the
conditions in which they worked led to disease being able to spread much more rapidly, and new forms of disease
emerged that were as deadly as any killer that had been before. Contaminated waste, sewage in the streets,
crowed spaces/areas, poor hygiene, dirty drinking water; poor cramped housing; lack of toilets; damp rooms,
rubbish, filth lining the streets and lack of understanding and knowledge caused many diseases.

Cholera Typhoid

Diseases &
killer Tuberculosis
Influenza
conditions
Pneumonia