Karly Meyer. April 8, 2017. Cutting Edge Advancements To

In the summer of 1854, London was coming out as one of the most modern cities in the world. With nearly 2.4 million people living in the area at the time, the city’s infrastructure itself was having a hard time providing for the basic needs of its residents. The biggest problem existing within the city at that time was its waste removal system, or for better terms, its lack of one. Human waste was piling up everywhere, from people houses to the rivers and drinking water. This situation was the perfect breeding conditions for a number of diseases, and towards the end of that summer, one of the most deadly of them all took over. It took the work of both a physician and a local minister in order to discover the mysterious cause of the

Regional differences in mannerisms were revealed as well, with Southerners carrying themselves “with an ethic of honor and pride.. more gracefully than men hardened by toil or preoccupied with commerce,” and Northerners as “cautious and too deferential” (pg. 149). Also, he notes that the farther west one traveled, the more open the local inhabitants’ faces were. Ethnic distinction is shown by the fact that the “uncontrolled physical energy of American blacks left many whites ill at ease” (pg. 149). Cleanliness was not specifically a priority to early nineteenth century Americans, as Larkin states that “Americans lived in a world of dirt, insects, and pungent smells” (pg. 150). Americans used chamber pots as to escape trips to the outdoors in the dark or cold. They would dump the remains wherever convenient. Bed bugs infested beds across America, with nearly everyone affected. Drinking was extremely popular, as in this era, “We drank more than we ever had before or ever would before” (pg. 153). Along with drinking came gambling, fighting, and heavy smoking. It “was deeply shameful in women” to be drunk, but was “tolerable and forgivable in men” (pg.

Another negative effect of the Industrial Revolution was the poor sanitary conditions in cities. When Friedrich Engels visited an English industrial city he stated in “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” that the streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse due to the lack of gutters or drains. This caused the main river of Manchester to look coal black and be packed with stinking filth. The factories also led to pollution and poor air quality due to the open air vents and chimneys which released the pollution from the factory into the air. Many people who lived in these poor cities or slums were either the working class or the poor that had to struggle through these unsanitary conditions.

In the early 19th Century the vast majority of housing for the working class was in a terrible condition, which were mainly due to overcrowding, poor ventilation and unsanitary environments. These issues lead to outbreaks of cholera on a number of occasions between the years 1813 and 1865. The Public Health Act was introduced in 1848, which required all local authorities to provide towns with hygienic sewage disposal and clean water supplies. Due to the presence of disease in slums, the Sanitary Reform Act was introduced in 1866. The act gave local authorities powers to inspect the cleanliness of homes in their district. (Naidoo and Wills, 2009). As stated by Berridge, Martin and Mold (2011), the Sanitary Reform Act aimed to address the problems with sewage, household waste and contaminated

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as the country grew and trade flourished, periodic epidemics struck regions of the nation as population density increased. Outbreaks of influenza, cholera took over the nation, and in the south, one of the most prevalent was yellow fever. Due to these diseases, a lot of public health policies were either created or changed to better suit the new issues arising. In this essay, I will argue that the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 brought upon many changes in the health realm in terms of public sanitation. In order to prove the epidemic s place in the history of health policies, I will be discussing the creation of the new sewer system, waste disposal techniques, and other projects created.

In American industrial cities, late 1800s, Poor neighborhood were not the best place to live. With poor living conditions, poor sanitation and crowded housing, many epidemics of infectious disease spread into the poor population and touched even the wealthy class. Cities such as New York were crowded and workers were living in tenements, which were often cramped, poorly lit and poorly aerated. Moreover, these tenements lacked of adequate plumbing, therefore waste was flooding in the public streets. Streets was crowded of waste and garbage. Population was poorly nourished and has a poor life hygiene like water pollution and poisoned food and milk. Accordingly, infectious disease was the common death reason. Big cities had known outbreaks of

Manchester is a city in England that experienced tremendous growth between the 1750’s and 1850’s. The population grew from 18,000 in 1750 to over 300,000 by the census of 1851. This growth called for more homes and factories to be built in order to support the growing population. With the constructing of more factories to support the rise in population came the growth of industry and manufacturing. The growth of the city, along with these factories, brought about several issues other than the manufacturing of valuable goods. The overcrowding from the population growth and the smog, smoke, and other toxic waste from the factories brought about the issue of pollution and bad living conditions. Pollution and the horrible quality of living was

The tenements where immigrants lived were unacceptably tiny and unsanitary. The East Side was packed at the rate of 290,000 per square mile at one point, while the greatest crowding of Old London was at the rate of 175,816 (12). Due to this overpopulation, diseases spread rapidly and killed thousands of unprotected tenants. Tenements also lacked fresh air because they did not have windows, which contributed to the fast advancement of cholera until around 1869 (14). One of the homes that Riis visited had “half a dozen persons washing, cooking, and sorting rags, lay

During the 1800’s the way people lived was not quite how we live today. Although some may argue that the way they lived back then was so much easier it actually caused a lot of humans to perish. Not only did they die from diseases, but also because there was a lack of sanitization. “Industrial growth brought with it a host of environmental pollution problems”, (Document 3). Imagine living in an environment with trash and waste just being dumped into the streets, compared

Many visitors discovered the working and living conditions of the suffering people. “If you visit a factory, it is easy to see that the comfort and welfare of the workers have never entered the builder’s head” (Doc 7). A women’s rights advocate in 1842 implies if you haven’t seen the city conditions, then you can’t appreciate how your belongings are made. People are furthering looking into how workers are being treated since they are working around fourteen hours straight every day of the week ingesting the fumes from the contents their working with. A medical journal presents that life expectancy is lower than rural areas for industrial jobs; In Manchester, an artisan would only live until their late teens, while in Rutland, an artisan would live until their late thirties (Doc 8).

In the Report on the Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, Edwin Chadwick discussed diseases, filth, overcrowding, bad ventilation, and short lives of the laboring classes (Doc 5). Furthermore, individuals spoke against safety and health conditions in factories across Europe. Illnesses were widespread and children suffered from disease as well. Tocqueville (Doc 3) and Tristan (Doc 6), a guest and a ladies' rights advocate from France respectively, remarked on the “physical and moral degradation of this class of the population”, claiming that the factories were creating harmful pollution to the environment and poisoning the people with unsafe contamination; however, the conflict between the French and the English might just have made them enhance and amplify this issue, exaggerating the actual health problems the factories produced. Similarly, Chadwick was plagued and daunted by the foul, filthy work regions of the laboring classes (Doc 5).

This created overcrowding, disease, and the need to build more shelters to accommodate everyone. This in part, was the reason cities such as Manchester grew so large. However, the living conditions of urban cities in Europe were utterly abysmal. Disease ran amok in the streets, infecting people quite easily. For example, the city of Paris had narrow streets and buildings practically stacked on top of one of each other, leading to the same problems that most European cities at the time had. According to Edwin Chadwick, public health reformer who authored Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, “Diseases caused or aggravated by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings, prevail among the laboring classes.” In this statement, Chadwick encompassed just about every problem with these large urban areas. He also provided the effects of the problems associated with the horrid living conditions, for instance the effect of education would be much more “temporary”, and the population would not be as influenced by morality. Edwin Chadwick was a socialist, which should definitely tip the reader

The issues tied with the expansion of Manchester included health concerns, working conditions, and living conditions which was met with positive and negative reactions. Health conditions during the Industrial Revolutions were of second importance to many. Cities were hotspots for disease. Cities were quite filthy and not well ventilated and many animal and plant matter decomposed and created an almost suffocating atmosphere (Doc. 6). Due to the poor sanitation of cities many people who lived in urban centers fell ill and died due to disease.

London is in a state of dire need of sanitation. There is rubble from bombings amid the “vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron”(2). Electricity and plumbing seldom function and many people live in hunger and filth. Scarce food rations are served. The Party however, shows no concern nor makes any notable effort to improve the living conditions. The Party is also neglectful towards a population called the Proles, who are the lower class citizens. They were “left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina”(61). Because they were not seen as a threat to the Party, the Proles were disregarded. Not only this, they were degraded. The Party claims that “Proles and animals are free”(62), which compares the abilities of the Proles to that of animals.

At the same time, Britain became more industrialized, towns started to grow and became over populated especially factory towns. Houses in these factory towns were close together, and because of this the living conditions in these houses were overcrowded, damp and dirty. People ate, slept and cooked in the same places. There were no sewers so there was human waste everywhere, because of the