Urban Life

industrialization urbanization growth of the middle class

1. URBAN LIFE
The World of Cities
9.2

2. Disease in the Industrial Town
•Infectious disease was an expected, almost
everyday feature of nineteenth-century life.
Smallpox, typhus, typhoid, dysentery, diphtheria,
scarlet fever, tuberculosis and cholera were
among the many illnesses that made cities - the
industrial cities in particular - unhealthy places to
live. Overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor
hygiene and sanitation assisted in the cultivation
and spread of disease.

3. Disease in the Industrial Town
•It was inevitable that those most vulnerable to infection were the
poorest inhabitants living in the poorest conditions, although
wealthier citizens were not immune. Children were particularly
susceptible and childhood mortality rates across much of the
country were very high.
•In the nineteenth century, doctors' views of the causes of such
diseases were very different from our own. New ideas such as the
germ theory, which would come to dominate modern medicine, did
not gain instant credibility. Many espoused 'miasmatic' theories,
which proposed that an infectious atmosphere from decaying
matter - 'bad air' - could directly cause illness. The pungent
environments of the poorest inhabitants were therefore seen as
breeding grounds of disease.
•Not until 1870 did Pasteur clearly show the link between germs &
disease.

5. An unusually clean-
looking Father Thames
warns the City of
London that if it wants
to avoid an outbreak of
typhoid, as was seen in
Maidstone, it must stop
polluting him. 1897

6. Filthy river, filthy river, Foul from London to the
Nore, What art thou but one vast gutter, One
tremendous common shore?
All beside thy sludgy waters, All beside thy
reeking ooze, Christian folks inhale mephitis,
Which thy bubbly bosom brews.
All her foul abominations Into thee the City
throws; These pollutions, ever churning, To and
fro thy current flows.
And from thee is brewed our porter - Thee, thou
gully, puddle, sink! Thou, vile cesspool, art the
liquor Whence is made the beer we drink!
Thou too hast a conservator, He who fills the
civic chair; Well does he conserve thee, truly,
Does he not, my good Lord Mayor?

7. The Thames introduces its children - infectious diseases - to the
City of London, showing some understanding, at the time of the
'Great Stink', that the river was a danger to health. 1858

8. Lord Morpeth, introducer of the 1st Public Health Act,
throws it and other bills to the aldermen of the City of
London, portrayed as pigs. 1848

9. Look on London with its
Smells -/ Sickening Smells!/
What long nasal misery
their nastiness foretells!/
How they trickle, trickle,
trickle,/ On the air by day
and night!/ While our
thoraxes they tickle,/ Like
the fumes from brass in
pickle,/ Or from naphtha all
alight;/ In a worse than
witch-broth drench,/ Of the
muck-malodoration that so
nauseously wells/ From the
Smells, Smells, Smells,
Smells,/ Smells, Smells,
Smells -/ From the fuming
and the spuming of the
Smells.
1890

10. This is the water
that John drinks.//

…
This is the price
that we pay to wink/
At the vested
int'rests that fill to
the brink,/ The
network of sewers
from cesspool and
sink,/ That feed the
fish that float in the
ink-/ -y stream of
the Thames with its
cento of stink,/ That
supplies the water
that John drinks.//
1849

11. Life Expectancy
In 1842 the average age
of death for a member of
a laborer's family in rural
Rutland was 38; in
Manchester, it was 17.

12. In the Hospital
•1846: William Morton, a dentist, introduced anesthesia
to relieve pain during surgery.
•What did this allow?
•A: experimental surgeries
•Yet still dangerous: survive the operation - die later of
infection.
•For poor, hospital admission often = death sentence.
Wealthy treated at home.
•Later, Lister’s insistence on antiseptics and cleanliness
drastically reduced deaths from infection.

13. The plates of these dentures are made of
hippopotamus ivory, the anterior (front
teeth) are human teeth.
Two Full Upper Dentures c. 1830

14. Changing City Life - Later 19thC
•As industrialization progressed, cities came
to dominate life in the West.
•Basic layouts were altered.
•Best example: Paris 1850’s - Georges
Haussmann, architect.
•Tangled medieval streets & tenement
housing --> wide boulevards & public
buildings.

15. Changing City Life - Later 19thC
•Was this for beauty and health only?
•A: No.
–Put many ppl to work, decreasing social unrest.
–Wide boulevards harder for rebels to set up
barricades.
•Settlement patterns shifted.
–Rich --> suburbs
–Poor crowded into city-center slums

16. Changing City Life - Later 19thC
•Urban areas --> more livable
•Paved streets, gas (later electric) lamps,
police, f ire, better sewage systems
•Steel development --> soaring buildings
(later, higher ones called skyscrapers)
•However, still slums
–Some workers could afford better clothes, a
newspaper, or music hall tickets
–But went home to a small, cramped row house
or tenements in overcrowded neighborhoods

17. Changing City Life - Later 19thC
•Even with problems, city life attracted millions of
new residents
•Excitement & the promise of work
•Music halls, opera houses, theaters
•Museums & libraries offered educational
opportunities
•Spectator sports: like tennis, horseracing, boxing
•Parks: fresh air, walks, picnics

18. A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884

19. Shifting Social Order
•Main cause: changes brought by the Industrial
Revolution
•Classes used to depend mainly on relationship
to land - nobles & peasants, with only a
relatively small middle class which occupied
secondary position
•With the spread of industry came a more
complex society

20. The Upper Class
•By the late 19th C the upper class was not
just nobles, but superrich industrialists
•Rich industrialists = “nouveau riches”
–“New rich”
•Some gained titles by marrying into nobility
•All felt they should be treated like nobility
•UC held the top jobs in military & govt

21. The Middle Class
Owners and Managers of Great Businesses and Banks
Small entrepreneurs, professional people
Shopkeepers school teachers, librarians,
White collar workers
Secretaries, retail clerks, lower level bureaucrats in business and government.

22. Middle Class Anxiety
•Small businessmen resented power of great
capitalists.
•Afraid of large companies.

23. Working Class Struggles
•Harsh conditions needed reform: low
wages, long hours, unsafe conditions, &
constant threat of unemployment
•Initially, govt and employers tried to silence
protests
–Strikes and unions were illegal
–Demonstrations were crushed

24. A capitalist lives a pampered existence, while below him
the workers toil in terrible conditions. 1843

25. Working Class Struggles
•By mid-century, slow progress
•Mutual aid societies
•Men & women joined socialist parties or
organized unions
•The mass of workers in larger, more
complex societies, could no longer be
ignored

26. Working Class Struggles
•By late 1800’s, most western countries had granted
universal male suffrage
•Unions, reformers, working class voters forced govts to
pass regulating legislation for factories & mines
–No children under ten, later, no children
–No women in mines
–Limited work hours
–Improved safety
–1909 Britain, coal miners got 8 hour day, setting standard for
other industries, countries
•Eventually, govts started setting up programs for old-
age penisons and disability insurance

27. Rising Standards of Living…
•Even though:
–Unskilled labor earned much less,
–Women earned less than half that of men,
–& farm laborers lagged seriously behind,
•The overall standard of living for workers
improved.
–Varied diets, better homes, less expensive clothing,
medical advances
–Some workers could even afford living in suburbs,
commuting on cheap subways & trams
•Still, the gap btwn workers & the MC widened

28. Beginning of a Consumer Society
•Department stores
•Retail chains
•New packaging techniques
•Mail order catalogues
•Advertisements

29. Consumerism
•By the end of the century there was a new
expansion of consumer demand.
•Lower food prices= more $ to spend on
other goods.
•Urbanization= larger markets

30. Population Trends and Migration
•¼ of the world’s population – Europe
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31. Late Nineteenth Century
Urban Life
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32. Women’s Experiences in the late 19
th

century
•Gender defined social roles.
•Availability of new jobs.
•Working Class women
•Many members of the middle class had come to believe
in separate spheres - the idea that women belonged in
the home and men belonged in the workplace. One of
the most influential symbols of the new vision of
womanhood was Queen Victoria. She publicly relished
her role as a devoted wife and mother, seeming like a
perfect example of new middle class virtues.

33. Life for Middle Class Women
•Cult of Domesticity
•Did not work.
•“Center of Virtue”
•Religious and Charitable Activities.

34. The Woman Question
•The Industrial Revolution had made it possible for
women to work and to support themselves and their
families.
–Husbands, however, still had control of women’s
children and property, education was unattainable for
most, and employment was scarce and low paying.
•The women’s movement was far from united. Middle-
class women and working-class women led very
different lives.
–Many of the working-class were more concerned with
economic issues than with the right to vote.

35. The Woman Question
•Despite the many aspects of women’s rights, the
“question” was posed as a suffrage issue.
•After World War I (1918) women over thirty
gained the right to vote in Britain. By 1928, they
had the same voting rights as men. (21 years old).
•Women in the U.S., Germany, and the Soviet
Union also gained the right to vote after the war,
but they would have to wait a long time in places
such as France, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland.

36. Women’s Social and Political Union
•Emmeline Pankhurst Radical feminist
•With her daughters Christabel and Sylvia.
•Lobbied for the extension of the right to
vote.
•Violent tactics
•Many imprisoned.

37. Moderate National Union of Woman
Suffrage
•Great Britain
•1908- 500,000 members in
London
•Millicent Fawcett
•Her view was the Parliament
would grant women the vote
only when convinced that
women would be respectable
and responsible in their
political activity.

38. Growth of Schools
•Basic education for all children in public
schools
–The three “R’s”: reading, writing, &’rithmatic
•Purpose = better citizens & a literate workforce
•Ideals = punctuality, obedience to authority,
disciplined work habits, & patriotism

39. Growth of Schools
•Primary education improved as more students
attended & teachers were better educated
themselves
•MC sons attended secondary school
–Latin, Greek, History, & Math
•Purpose = job training or prep for higher
education
•Girls who attended did so to marry well &
become better wives & mothers