A Perfect Wilderness 16^th of April 2002

of Foulness Simone Scully

19^th Century England History

Why Were the Cities so Unhealthy?

Leeds in 1885

Introduction

Between the years of 1750 and 1900, enormous changes happened all over Britain. Newer technology began to take over, mills and factories were being built, and new jobs (by the thousands), were being created. Towns grew faster then anyone could have imagined. People, who had once lived their entire lives in the countryside, working at home, on farms, or in small workshops, were leaving and moving to the cities. The cities! There, they could find new jobs in factories and mills, where the entire family could work and earn more money then they could ever could have in the country.

But jobs were not the only thing they would find.

Dirt, disease and early death were just as plentiful as jobs in these overcrowded cities.

Leeds was no different from any other big city. It was just as crowded and filthy as the rest of them, perhaps even worse. After all, it was one of the biggest industrial cities in Britain. One visitor to Leeds called it a “Perfect Wilderness of Foulness” and he was right. Leeds was a very grim place; a place where poor laborers were crowded together in muddy streets or airless yards. Many of them could not even afford the small, crowded back-to-back houses that were specifically constructed for workers. They were forced to live below ground in damp, dark cellars. Several families shared one privy that was never clean and continually overflowed. The small, narrow streets were covered in mud, waste and stinking, stagnant pools of water. The smell of the city was unbearable. Diseases, such as Tuberculosis and Cholera struck everywhere, killing thousands and thousands of workers. In 1840, those diseases were so terrible and murderous that the inhabitants of Leeds considered themselves lucky if they managed to live past the age of 19.

Housing and Health

The new factory workers, that continuously arrived in the cities, needed places to live. Not only did they need affordable houses, but also, they needed houses within walking distances from the factories. There was no means of transportation for these new workers to get to work, and they needed to be there early in the morning, usually around 6 o’clock in the morning.

Because houses were needed quickly, very few builders took the time to build them correctly. In the first part of the 19^th century, there was no building regulations or controls to make sure the houses were properly constructed. The builders only wanted to make a quick profit and “Who cared about how these poor workers lived?” The builders didn’t think that it was their job to help make the living conditions of the poor better. They only saw that the housing demand made it easy to take advantage of the poor and make some money for themselves.

Many of the houses built for the poor were built back-to-back, allowing very little ventilation. These ‘back-to-backs’ were small, cramped and only had two rooms. One of these rooms was used for cooking and washing, while the other one was for sleeping. Neither was of sufficient size, usually being about 140 square feet. The houses had cellars below ground, which were used for storing coal, food and animals.

In the center of the towns, the amount of land available for building was very small, and therefore the price was very expensive. The builders tried to fit as many houses as possible into small areas. They usually did so by building houses in cities (like Leeds) around yards, which could only be accessed by a narrow alley from the street.

Housing in these yards was cheap. However, they were most unhealthy places to live. They were airless from being enclosed, and were always covered in dirt, mud, and waste – that the inhabitants threw out into the yard because they had no good way to dispose their refuse. Like most houses for the poor, they were not equipped with any sort of drainage, and there was no way to rid the yards of dirt and filth.

But some of the poorest workers couldn’t even afford to rent these inadequate dwellings. They were forced to rent out small crowded cellars below ground. These cellars were dark, as there were no windows, and the only light came from candles. There was hardly any ventilation whatsoever in the cellar dwellings, nor was there any drainage, which caused these cellars to be damp all year long. All waste or dirt had to be hand-carried out to the street where it was dumped. Some of the cellars didn’t even have beds, simply straw on the floor for the inhabitants to sleep upon. The animals and food were kept in corners of the same room as the people. Rats, mice and other rodents also inhabited these dark, damp, crowded, unhealthy cellars.

Water and Waste

Most houses in the 19^th century did not have clean water piped into them. It was very rare to have fresh water connected to their house, especially to the house of a laborer. The councils in cities didn’t believe it was their job to worry about the poor not having clean water, as the poor didn’t really matter to them. The poor had very little political power in any case, and it was simply easier to overlook them, and ignore their needs. As for the builders of the houses, they only cared that houses were being built quickly and that they received their money. They certainly did not care whether the poor had clean water.

No one believed that it was their job to care about the poor.

Since the people had no clean water connected to their houses, they were forced to find water wherever they could. There were several ways they could do this. They could buyi clean water from the water-sellers (except that that cost money), they could collect rainwater in barrels, they could queue up at water standpipes with buckets and carry the water home, or, if they lived close enough to the river, they could collect water from it and carry it home.

What people didn’t know for a very long time was that dirty water carried diseases. Diseases that could and would kill them.

Most of the water collected by the people was dirty!

The streets in the poor sections of the cities were built without drains to take away waste water. The land near rivers, on which the poorer houses were built, was so low that it was practically impossible to lay drain pipes. Sometimes the builders would make deep holes in the ground for the waste water to drain into, but these drain holes quickly blocked up and became pools of filth.

In many of the poorer districts, the yards and alleys near the houses were covered in dirty, stinking,stagnant pools of water. Robert Baker, a surgeon and factory inspector from Leeds, wrote the following after visiting a poor laborer man’s house in Leeds (1842):

“…The water in front of the house has collected from various sources. The yard has never been dry since he came to it. There is a stump-hole, a great depth in one corner, made by the landlord, to take away the water, but it is full of deposit…”

Everywhere the smell was terrible. Many of the inhabitants could hardly stand it. These smells did not only come from the waste water, but also from the privies themselves. The privies were not plentiful and several families had to share them. An Observer in Leeds described what they looked like in the following way:

“… They are open to view in front and rear and are inevitably in a filthy condition”

A filthy condition was right! There were not many privies, and several families had to share them. To make matters worse, the privies were seldom cleaned, they were not emptied regularly and, because they were not connected to sewers. they would fill up and would overflow everywhere. The land-lords often let the privies overflow simply because they didn’t like to pay the night-soilmen to come and empty the cesspits (area below the privy where the sewage was collected). However, the pipes which carried clean water often ran close to the cesspits. The pipes were often cracked and deteriorated and the overflowing cesspits would pollute the clean water which was being piped to a standpipe.

Dirt and Disease

The 19^th century was a catastrophe from a hygiene point of view. The cities were covered in dirt, waste, and mud. It is no wonder that many people died from diseases. Disease was the biggest killer of all time in the 19^th century. There were several diseases, and all of them struck in great epidemics, killing thousands. Cholera, Tuberculosis, Typhoid, Typhus, Scarlet Fever and Measles were the most deadly. Tens of thousands of people died between the 1830’s and 1840’s during those epidemics.

It was mostly the poor, who suffered from these diseases, simply because they were trapped in the most filth. Cholera was very common. In 1831 and 1832, Cholera attacked Britain. The first Cholera epidemic killed 31,000 people. It returned again in 1848, 1853 and 1866. Cholera killed more quickly than some of the other diseases, but it was a very painful death. It started with diarrhoea and vomiting. After a few hours, the victim’s body turned blue-black in color, and their eyes sank into their head. The skin went cold, and the victim struggled for breath then died.

Today we can prevent these diseases, but at the time, they didn’t know how. They didn’t have our medical knowledge. The people knew, vaguely, that there was some sort of connection between dirt and disease, but they didn’t know about germs. Instead, doctors believed sewers and dirty streets released a poisonous gas, “Miasma” which was the cause of the epidemics.

Doctors worked for a very long time before finding the connection between drinking dirty water and the disease, Cholera. And even after they did find the connection, many cities’ councils were slow to change their ‘filthy’ ways.

It cost a lot of money for the councils to provide the poor laborers with clean water and sewers, and it meant that they had to raise the taxes on the middle-class people who were never very happy about spending their money on the poor.

Conclusion

All over England, the average life expectancy for a laborer was very short. The life expectancy in Leeds was 19, in other places it varied but depending on the size and how much manufacturing took place there. Yet, none of them were particularly high.

Why was it like this? Why were the cities so unhealthy? Why did people live such short of lives?

Why?

There are four main reasons why the 19^th century, supposedly a time of great opportunities, was so deadly:

1. Greed : the rich didn’t want to take care of the poor. They didn’t care for anyone except themselves. To help the poor meant spending money, and “why would someone want to do such a thing?”

2. Ignorance : No one knew that drinking dirty water led to death from diseases such as Cholera. All they knew was that they had to get water from somewhere. No one knew the connection between filth, germs and disease. The people during the 19^th century didn’t know… and their ignorance led to neglect of basic sanitation, then disaster.

3. Lack of oversight and regulation : The Government didn’t pay enough attention to the poor. There was no regulations for housing, sanitation and basic needs. This was because the poor were not fairly represented, and were always overlooked.

4. Change: The 19^th century was a time of enormous changes. The industrial revolution caused people to migrate, in search of money. Even if the Government had been less ignorant and greedy, it would have still been very hard to manage the cities during this time of great growth and change.

The people left their homes and small businesses that had been in their families for several generations because they could no longer make a living. They couldn’t survive in the countryside, there wasn’t enough money. But once in the cities, they couldn’t survive either, only this time, it was because of disease.

Which was better? Either way, they ended up dying.