How Great an Effect Did Urbanisation have On a Scottish Society Between 1880 and 1939?

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How Great an Effect Did Urbanisation have On a Scottish Society Between 1880 and 1939?

Urbanisation affected the lives of ordinary people in many ways.   In the 1880s people in Scotland lived as much in the countryside as in towns and cities.  But by 1939 most people lived in cities and towns.  This fact alone shows that urbanisation played a huge part in changing Scottish Society.   By 1939, 63.4% of a population of over five million lived in the cities.  This meant that urban growth caused problems of crowded housing, and social problems such as health and safety.  Between 1880 and 1939 many people lived in over crowded and squalid housing.  Because of the rapid increase of workers to cities, tenement blocks were built, these buildings of four or five stories contained one or two roomed homes.  In 1911 over half the country’s urban dwellers inhabited one or two roomed homes.  These accommodations produced conditions in which privacy was impossible and disease spread rapidly. Sanitation was appalling. Suburbs improved because of the Police act in 1892 and a public health act in 1897, which increased the power of local Government  

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           After the first world war, housing acts provided authorities with Government help, these were council housing of two or three story properties where families had their own front doors, bathrooms and toilets.  However, in the 1930s overcrowding was still a big issue compared to England.  

Over the period 1920 and 1939 the cost of living fell by a third, allowing people with jobs to enjoy improvements, which they could afford.  The mass production of clothes, foot-ware and food helped, as well as shorter working hours, a better diet and health and welfare provisions.  

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