Industrial Britain and the people's health, c.1750-c.1900 - OCR BLiving conditions - housing and food

Working-class housing was crowded together near the factories and other places of work. The conditions varied, but much accommodation was extremely unsanitary and unhealthy. Workers’ diets were poor as they could not afford much fresh or nutritious food.

Housing

Back-to-back houses

Landlords and builders took advantage of the lack of building regulations. They packed as many houses as they could onto small plots of land. Some better-off working-class people rented ‘through’ houses, which had their own outside spaces.

However, many houses were built in terraced rows that were joined to the row behind. These back-to-back houses were often built around an enclosed yard. The poorest families rented this kind of accommodation. They often had just one room downstairs and another upstairs.

Houses like this were very difficult to ventilate, so they were often damp, which caused chest infections. Diseases such as tuberculosis thrived in these conditions.

Lodging houses

Single people tended to rent out rooms in lodging houses. These were large houses that had been divided up into smaller rooms. Sometimes families stayed in lodging houses while they found a house of their own to rent.

Many lodging houses were dirty and overcrowded, with people packed into a single room and sharing beds or sleeping on the floor. It was very difficult to keep bodies or clothes clean, so fleas and body lice were common. This caused typhus to spread.

Cellar dwellings

These were small and damp spaces underneath other people’s houses, with no sunlight at all. They sometimes flooded with rain or even sewage from the street above.

Food

The diet of the urban working class was unhealthy for a number of reasons.

Diet

• In the second half of the 19th century, the railways started to have a real impact on the food supply. However, in the first half of the century, it was difficult to get enough fresh food (eg fruit and vegetables) into the towns to feed the growing population.
• Workers’ housing had limited facilities for cooking and storing food safely.
• The wages of unskilled workers could be very low, so they struggled to buy enough food to feed a whole family.
• Workers relied on basics such a bread, potatoes and weak tea, with the tea leaves used multiple times. Occasionally they might have bacon or offal if they could afford it. This was a fairly unbalanced diet and caused malnutrition.

Quality of food

• There were no laws regulating the quality of food.
• Some butchers and street sellers sold meat from diseased animals.
• Food adulteration was a widespread practice. For example, milk was sold mixed with chalk and water to make it go further. Copper was added to butter to alter its colour.
• This led to diarrhoea and food poisoning.