Living Conditions In Urban Areas

Question 1

What type of housing did Britain start building from the 1700s and what were they like?

Answer 1

Back-To-Back Hosuing
- cheap housing
- shared a rear wall and side walls
- built efficiently but lacked quality
- 4m wide
- one room deep
- foundations were 3 bricks deep
- lacked natural light

Question 2

What were courtyards?

Answer 2

• communal areas for washing, toilets and access to property

Question 3

How much was rent for ‘back’ houses and ‘front’ houses?

Answer 3

• Back: 1s 10d per week
• Front: 2s 6d

Question 4

What were cesspits?

Answer 4

• Places where communal privies were emptied into which were essentially open air pools of sewage
• Poorly constructed and the waste would sink into the surrounding ground and contaminate the local water supply, leading to serious illnesses like cholera

Question 5

When at where was the first major outbreak of cholera and how many deaths were there?

Answer 5

• 1831 Sunderland
• 32,000 deaths in one year

Question 6

Where were attempts made to improve the living conditions of workers?

Answer 6

• Saltaire, West Yorkshire (Titus Salt)
• Was the exception

Question 7

By how much did the population in urban areas increase by each decade between 1801-51?

Answer 7

27%

Question 8

What did urban governments lack?

Answer 8

• the administrative wherewithal (money) tocontrol building, dispose of sewage or provide clean water.

Question 9

What act began to reform local government in 1835 but how was this limited?

Answer 9

• The Municipal Corporations Act
• ‘Councils if they wished could take over social improvement such as proper drainage and street cleaning’
• short-term effect was very limited

Question 10

Who could access fresh water?

Answer 10

Richer classes
- fresh water was at a premium

Question 11

What did families often have to do with their water?

Answer 11

Recycle it
- in London, fresh water came from the Thames which is also where sewage was deposited

Question 12

What did slaughterhouses do to sewers?

Answer 12

• Slaughterhouses filled open sewers with offal and blood and factories pumped their dangerous waste products in them too.

Question 13

What did Chadwick’s 1842 report show?

Answer 13

• 687 streets inspected in Manchester
• 248 unpaved
• 112 ill-ventilated
• 252 had stagnant pools of effluence or piles of rubbish

Question 14

How many people did typhus kill each year?

Answer 14

4000