Overcrowding in 19th Century Britain

Overcrowding in 19th Century Britain The Problem of Overcrowding in 19th Century Urban Britain During the nineteenth century urban populations grew at an extremely fast rate as industrial growth drew people into the cities in the search for employment. This rapid growth caused a great deal of concern amongst Victorian politicians and authorities regarding law and order, but they were at first unaware of the far greater danger which was the poor sanitation caused by the speedy building of back-to-back housing created to accommodate this population growth. The main points I will be addressing in this essay will be a) how far the growth of population was the main cause of bad health caused by overcrowding, and b) how the authorities dealt with such health problems and how far they were successful. I have chosen this particular subject because it can be argued that it was the main problem of urban living in the nineteenth century, and other problems such as pollution, cholera outbreaks or infant mortality could be said to be caused or exacerbated by such overcrowding. By the time of the 1851 census, and for the first time in the nation’s history, more people were living in urban areas than they were in rural areas. Between each census from 1841 to 1881, the population of urban areas grew by an average of 25% and by 1881 the urban population was 70.2% of the total population of England and Wales.[1] In Manchester, the city where the cotton industry caused massive urban growth, the population had increased six times within sixty years by 1831.[2] In order to cope with such numbers building of houses was undertaken as quickly as possible, often in small areas of land, which meant that in poorer areas houses were built back-to-back in high density in order to accommodate as many people as possible. In order to save space, they were built without gardens, around dark courtyards with communal privies at the end of each street. Some buildings in Edinburgh had more than ten storeys, which meant that people had to carry water up many stairs – and often didn’t bother. In Manchester, the large numbers of Irish immigrants created pockets of poverty-stricken communities living amongst the factories and smoke where ‘several families might be living under one roof or even in â€Å"the pestilential atmosphere† of one room.’[3] In London, in the period before the underground railway, when people still needed to be able to walk to work, building programs took place close to the city areas without any plannin g from central sources. Thus areas such as Bethnal Green and Whitechapel suffered from gross overcrowding, and in Covent Garden, older buildings were converted into tenements and cellars to provide for the poor settlers who swept into the metropolis, particularly in the area known as ‘The Rookeries’ where refugees from the Irish famine had settled. In 1847 Dickens described the ‘disorderly crop of beginnings of mean houses, rising out of the rubbish, as if they had been unskilfully sown there.’[4] Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes, commissioned by the government to investigate sanitation in 1842 was undertaken through a system of interviews and visits carried out by Poor Law medical officers and commissioners. Its evidence revealed how many families lived in cellars, often several families at the same time, which were subject to flooding. In one example in Manchester, 40 people were discovered to be living in one cellar. Furthermore, unscrupulous owners of lodging houses, taking advantage of the need for housing, would put lodgers up in ‘poorly furnished, badly ventilated and overcrowded’ rooms.[5] Chadwick’s report revealed that mortality rates in urban areas were much higher than in rural areas, particularly amongst the poorer classes. In fact, the average age of death for labourers in districts such as Liverpool and Manchester was around 15 during the period 1839-40, indicating an extremely high infant mortality rate. Chadwick himself attributed these figures to squalid and overcrowded living conditions, although badly ventilated working areas and long working hours were also a contributory factor.[6] Chadwick’s report did raise awareness, yet many people, in particular the Conservative Party, did not support his recommendations, and the pressure group set up in 1844, the Health of Towns Association, found very little was being done in towns and cities to counteract the effects of poor sanitation. The attitude of laissez-faire was strong, and many authorities were opposed to sanitary reform for economic reasons. The evidence shown by Chadwick would seem to show an obvious correlation between overcrowding and poor health. However, the association between dirt and disease was not yet fully understood at this time. Outbreaks of cholera in the 1840s and 50s were the subject of much debate over its likely causes and very little was understood about how the disease was spread. It was noted, however, that the worst cases of cholera seemed to prevail in areas of towns where there was very poor sewerage or drainage, and Dr John Snow tried to demonstrate through scientific experiment that disease was water-borne. However, Snow met with huge opposition within the medical profession, and it was not until 1883 that his theory was proved. Thus, although people like Snow and Chadwick tried to encourage cleanliness amongst the working classes, very little effective work was done by the authorities. Chadwick did not suggest curative methods in his report. He declared: ‘engineers were needed for the task at hand not the medical profession’[7] He was more concerned with preventative measures, ensuring towns had regular supplies of clean water, and that houses had adequate drainage into proper sewers. However, this is not to say that medicine did not play a role in the developments that eventually led to improvements in town and city health. Medicine did in fact play a very important role in the improvements in housing. At the beginning of the century very little was known about the causes of disease, and doctors had very little equipment with which to carry out research. Surgery was extremely primitive and carried out in what we now know as unhygienic conditions. It was not until 1865 that Louis Pasteur proved his germ theory: that these micro-organisms could cause decay and disease. Robert Koch built on Pasteur’s work by showing that different types of germs caused specific illnesses, and that the answer to curing disease was to destroy the specific germ. It was Koch who, in 1883, identified the germ that caused cholera. From Pasteur and Koch’s work, vaccines began to be developed in the 1880s.[8] It was due to these discoveries, and the work of Dr. John Snow, that the authorities finally realised that it was necessary to make radical changes in the drainage and water systems in towns and cities. In 1866, the year after Pasteur had made proved his germ theory, the Sanitary Act was passed, forcing towns to appoint sanitary inspectors. Local government became responsible for public health, and eventually Public Health Act 1872 was formed, creating separate bodies each headed by a Medical Officer of Health. Despite these developments, it took a long time for housing to improve. Back-to-Back housing was still being erected in Leeds and Bradford up until 1937, despite some building regulations and strong calls for their demise.[9] In rural areas, especially around the mining towns of Wales, house building was still very hasty without due care for health, as is evidenced in this report on the area by Merthyr Tydfil: ‘If a new colliery is opened in an upland valley 200, 300 or 400 houses are built very rapidly, and they inhabited long before they are dry.’[10] However, some cities, such as Bury and Liverpool, forbid the building of back-to-backs in the 1860s. To sum up, the problem of overcrowding in urban and industrial Britain in the 19th century was one that was not widely recognised by the authorities in the early part of the century. Housing was created to accommodate vast numbers of industrial workers who flooded into the cities, and the speed at which they were built meant that little care was taken to provide adequate drainage and disposal of sewerage. Reformers such as Chadwick saw that there was a distinct connection between overcrowding and mortality rates, but it was not until scientific and medical advances proved that germs and bacteria carried by dirty water supplies caused diseases such as cholera that the government took any adequate action. The main sources I have used for this essay are Taylor, Best and Briggs. Taylor does not provide the highest academic level of text, but his clear chapters separated into different economic and social subjects, and his use of primary sources provides useful factual information. Best is one of the recognised authorities on Victorian Britain and he provides a detailed account of life in mid Victorian England. Briggs is also highly regarded as an expert in this field, and his detailed historical research provides a good, detailed overview of specific British cities during this period. Bibliography Best, Geoffrey, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75, Fontana Press, 1990 Briggs, Asa, Victorian Cities, Penguin, 1990 Taylor, David, Mastering Economic and Social History, Macmillan, 1988 Wilson, A. N., The Victorians, Arrow, 2003 1 Footnotes [1] Best, Geoffrey, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75, Fontana Press, p.24 [2] Briggs, Asa, Victorian Cities, Penguin, p.89 [3] ibid, p.92 [4] quoted in Briggs, A, p.346 [5] Taylor, David, Mastering Economic and Social History, Macmillan, p.303 [6] ibid, p.307-8 [7] Taylor, D., p.310 [8] ibid, pp.319-20 [9] Briggs, A., p.156 [10] quoted in Best, G., p.39

Consumer Behavior and Purchase Decision Making Process

Consumer behavior and purchase decision making process Every day we need to make a decissions – buy or not to buy anything. There are many things which helps us to make decissions like location, mood, advertisments and other. Consumer behavior is the mental and emotional processes and physical activities people engage in when they select, purchase, use, and dispose of products or services to satisfy particular needs and desires. A consumer goes through several stages before purchasing a product or service: 1. need; 2. information gathering/search; 3. evaluation of alternatives; . purchase of product/service; 5. post purchase evaluation. In my opinion, in this process there are two main steps – information gathering and evaluation of alternatives. These steps help to understand how much you need the product and how good it is. The buying process starts with comming needs. A need can be activated through internal or external stimuli. A need can also be aroused by an exter nal stimulus such as sight of a new thing in a shop while purchasing other things. Need is the most important factor which leads to buying of products and services.Need infact is the catalyst which triggers the buying decision of individuals. After need arousal, the consumer tries to solve it and gathers the sources and information about the product. Depending upon the intensity of need, it produces two states of individual. The first state is called heightened attention when the consumer becomes more receptive to the information regarding the item he needs. If a consumer needs to purchase a refrigerator, he will pay mere attention to fridge ads and the remarks made by friends and associates about fridges.If need is more intense, the individual enters a state of active information search and he tries to collect more information about the product, its key attributes, qualities of various brands and about the outlets where they are available. There are a lot of consumer information so urces like family, friends, advertisements, mass media, salesman. In my opinion, it is hard to arrange in the order wich one is the best source where get information about product. All these sources have pluses and minuses.If I prefer get information from family there is possibility that I do not get info about technical stuff. Or if I choose only salesman advice he can aggrandize about product advantages. That is why I recommend to take information as much as possible from every source. Having collected the information, the consumer clarify and evaluate the alternatives. There is, unfortunately no simple and single evaluation process used by all consumers or even by one consumer in all buying situations. Consumers can make choices based on their emotions and feelings.They elicit from memory their overall evaluations of products and choos the alternative for which they have the most positive feelings. One of the most current process of evaluation is to judge the product largely on a conscious and rational basis. Various considerations form the part of judgment such as product attributes, importance, weights, brand image, utility function for each attribute, and attitude and other. After evaluation of various alternatives, he takes the decision to buy or not to buy.Ofcourse, people can make choice on the spur of the moment, often without prior problem recognition. But I recommend going through all theese five steps focusing on information gathering and evaluation of alternatives. And always remember that the best impression about product you can get only after you try it. Izmantota literatura: http://www. managementstudyguide. com/consumer-decision-making-process. htm http://uwmktg301. blogspot. com/2010/01/evaluation-of-alternatives. html http://www. slideshare. net/Annie05/consumer-buying-behavior-and-decision-making-presentation

White Peoples Perceptions on Divorce Essay - 1096 Words

White Peoples Perceptions on Divorce White peoples perceptions on divorce differ from those of Asian origin. From living in a multi- cultural community it has become apparent to me through my experiences that divorce has become more socially acceptable amongst white people then Asian people. I want to test and explore possible reasons behind these evident changes in attitudes. I would also like to investigate the impact factors like secularisation and legislation have had on Asian perceptions of divorce. The stigma that existed with divorce in the past, ceases to exist in todays society because divorce is an accepted norm. There is also a gap in relevant sociological research into†¦show more content†¦Ronald Fletcher gives one reason for rising divorce rates, however, there are numerous more, such as the reasons given by Bryan Wilson. Wilson argues that the stigma and shame that existed with marriage in the 19th century ceases to exist in todays society. According to Wilson, divorce has now become more socially acceptable because of a change in attitude as part of a process of s ecularisation. He states that religious ideas of marriage have lost their influence, and authenticates this claim by stating that less then half of marriage ceremonies are religious, and of those that are, neither the bride or groom are frequent church attendees. Wilson talks about the impact of secularisation on peoples perceptions and acceptance of divorce. Wilson, in his research, defines secularisation as being the process whereby religious thinking, practise and institutions lose their social significance. Rising divorce rates are a sign that society is becoming more tolerant of divorce and secularisation is seen as being one of the main factors for this. However, secularisation has affected Asian communities differently. It does not appear to be a dominant feature in Asian communities. Religion is stronger in southern Asian families. However, Wilson fails to acknowledge this. His research can onlyShow MoreRelatedAmerican Culture : The People s Way Of Life Essay1747 Words   |  7 PagesAmerican culture shows that the more stake a person has in this culture the less he or she cares about ethics and morality. And the policies they make dictate the path of the society. American Culture is deeply embedded in our society. Culture is a people’s way of life. Therefore, the American culture shows the way Americans live. Morality refers to the proper behavior and includes distinction of intentions. On the other hand, ethics mostly deals with feelings and whether the people having the feelingsRead MoreThe Bad Image Of Black Athlete1522 Words   |  7 PagesThe bad image of black athlete is one of the most important problems today. African American athletes are not that different from white athletes; however, media betrays a bad image of them for some unknown reasons. 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