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Victorian London (Living conditions (Pollution (coal was used to do…
Victorian London
Living conditions
Pollution
coal was used to do everything from heat houses to power machines in factories. The burning of coal created smoke, which led to terrible pollution in the cities.
Disease
typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera all existed in the cities of England. Cholera reached England for the first time in 1830, and there were further major epidemics in 1832 and 1848. Overcrowding, housing of a low standard and poor quality water supplies all helped spread disease.
Poor quality housing
houses were built very close together so there was little light or fresh air inside them. They did not have running water and people found it difficult to keep clean. Houses often suffered from damp due to their thin walls and roofs made out of cheap materials. Many households had to share a single outside toilet that was little more than a hole in the ground.
Overcrowding
Due to a large numbers of the population moving to the cities, there was not enough houses for all these people to live in. Low wages and high rents caused families to live in as small a space as possible. Sometimes multiple families lived in one room.
Lack of fresh water
people could get water from a variety of places, such as streams, wells and stand pipes, but this water was often polluted by human waste.
Waste disposal
Gutters were filled with litter and the streets were covered in horse manure, collected by boys to sell to farmers. Human waste was discharged directly into the sewers, which flowed straight into rivers. In London, Parliament often had to stop work because the smell from the Thames became too much.
Poverty
The poor were often sent to work houses. The conditions were kept deliberately meagre so that people would not choose the workhouse rather than taking the lowest paid work outside the workhouse.
May people were not prepared to pay higher taxes to help the poor. They believed it was their own fault that they were poor so why should they be made to pay?
Many millions of Britons lived in terrible squalor. They lived in cold, damp, badly built, draughty slum houses. Overcrowding was rife which led to the spread of disease. The huge social problems of alcoholism and violence befell many of the people in these communities. This was the case up and down the land in the burgeoning cities of Britain.
Working conditions were also dreadful - people got low pay for long hours working in factories, mines and mills. Work was hard and often dangerous with little regard given to safety procedures and safe working conditions.
Education
There were some good schools for boys, for example, grammar schools and public schools. Only richer families could afford to pay the school fees, though some schools gave free places to poor boys.
Poor girls did not go to school when the Victorian age began meaning they had little education. Girls from wealthy families would usually be taught at home by a governess. Sometimes, wealthy girls may have attended boarding schools too.
At the start of the 19th century very few children went to school. Most poor children worked. If they went to school, their families lost the money they earned.
Class
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The middle class, who ran the businesses, were ambitious and growing in wealth.
The Victorian period was very prosperous for the middle class. Middle-class people also owned and managed vast business empires. The middle-class population at the very start of the Victorian era was limited to a few.
The poor - in the villages, in the towns, and working as servants in the homes of the rich – were very poor.
The working class was the worst affected class in the Victorian times. Lack of money resulted in a negligible food supply. For some working families, the living conditions were so pathetic that they required their children to work in order to bring home some extra income to survive.