Why were towns and cities in the 19th century so unhealthy?

Answer 1

Why Were 19th Century Towns And Cities So Unhealthy

There were many reasons why towns were so unhealthy in the 19th century. These reasons include that houses were built so crowded together in narrow, terraced streets, also there was no law against houses being built properly.

The start of the 19th century brought many new changes to Britain. Problems occurred in Ireland and many saw it in their interest to move to more industrialised cities and towns, here they saw new opportunities and leaped to the prospect of a more luxurious lifestyle and this in-turn contributed to the growth in Agriculture and Industry. Despite this being a good thing for Britain it also lead to the growth and over-crowding of many towns and cities. Population figures for Britain's main cities and towns increased at an alarming rate. Due to the huge increase of people flocking to industrial cities, houses had to be built small and were cramped tightly together as near as possible to the large industrial sites.

In many, cities such as Liverpool, out of 160,000 only half lived in acceptable houses whilst 55,534 people were crammed in to 1,982 courts containing 10,692 houses. But this poor disgusting lifestyle was not for all, those who were successful and rich, often heads of firms, would live in the suburbs of towns and each of the decent sized houses possessed a small garden. All of these factors resulted in the shockingly young ages of death, as in Liverpool a labourer would only be expected to live to the age of 15, and other cities were hardly any better, like Manchester labourers were only expected to live to the age of 17 and even higher class people only lived a couple of years longer!

Disease was spread from person to person, family to family, and house to house extremely quickly. The houses were so cramped in fact that James Smith in 1845 doing a report on sanitary conditions in Leeds wrote this "by far the unhealthiest localities of Leeds are close squares of homes or yards as they are called." A yard is a space in between back to back housing, which is where the privies and in most cases a water pump. He then continued on to say, "The ashes, garbage and filth of all kinds are thrown from doors and windows of the houses upon the surface of the streets." It may be perceived that because the way in which the housing was built in the 19th century it would mean that all people would be able to afford to be housed, but unfortunately this was not the case. Many of the poorer families and workers at this time, in Leeds and many other towns and cities, were unable to earn enough to be able to afford to pay rent for a home. This left the only other alternative to living on the streets being crowding below ground in the cellars of the cramped, dirty and poorly ventilated houses. This was one of the quickest ways in which disease was spread, and so many of these poor people living in disgusting conditions died. In this day and age we take many different things for granted, things we just could not live without. During the 19th century, very few people had access to clean running water, some people queued for water at stand pipes in the street and carried it home in buckets, pans and kettles, others brought clean water from water-sellers, or collected rain water, and others even collected it in buckets from the river. "Clean" water was nowhere near "clean" compared to the standards we are accustom to today, it was not filtered, nor was it full of minerals. Drinking water was very dangerous; it was full of disease and infections. People chucked their excrement's in the river, people washed in the river, even dead bodies were buried next to rivers, and all the dirt and disease from these things lead to many deaths, and in 1831, 1832, 1848, 1853 and 1866 huge epidemics of cholera, which unknown to Britain's population was spread extremely quickly through dirty water. Water was either running through dirty pipes or came from an unclean source such as the Thames. In a yard there were water pumps, which were very unsanitary, and there were privies.

A Privy is the modern day equivalent to a toilet. It consisted of a small hut with no door, a seat with a circular hole in the middle which led down into a cesspit to hold the excrement. One privy could be shared by a whole yard. Excrement was collected by a "night soil-man" who was paid by landlords to remove their tenants waste. Some landlord didn't want to pay to have this vital job taken care of and so cesspits were allowed to overflow onto the streets, which then caused yet more disease and consequently more people died. The main factor that contributed to all the deaths was disease, in this time cholera was the main form of disease in Leeds. Cholera was spread through contagion in water, grime and waste.

The first recorded person to die on the 26th May 1862 was a two year-old child who lived in Blue Bell Fold, Leeds. The small child began to vomit, got diarrhea, its skin turned a blue black color and its eyes sunk into its face. Its skin went cold. All the parents could do was watch in Horror as their baby slowly died. This baby was the first of some thirty thousand people to die from cholera between 1831 and 1832. Other diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid, typhus, scarlet fever and measles killed tens of thousands of people in the 1830's and 1840's.The doctors of this time didn't have the medical knowledge to know that germs were spread through contagion and not through 'Miasma' (Bad Air) as many medical minds believed. Even when the doctors found out the disease was spread through dirty water the councils were slow to react. To stop an epidemic like this ever happening again we have vaccinations when we are young preventing us from getting many killer diseases, bodies are buried 'six feet under' to stop contagion from happening. The affects of this epidemic were dire and hundreds of lives could have been saved. If only councils accepted that the disease was not spread through miasma but through contagion. If only the builders had spent more time thinking about the welfare of others and not their money. If only the streets had been clean and dry.