Did Saltaire change for the better?

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Did Saltaire change for the better?

Introduction

Saltaire before Titus salt was just a small village. It was just a little settlement a little outside of Bradford. This was the total opposite of Salts dream and the current conditions of Bradford. He wanted to change Saltaire into a model village for his Salts mill and improve the working conditions from their current state. He decided to build the mill because of recent investment. He came across some alpaca wool. To anyone else this was useless because you couldn’t weave it right. He got a few engineers to help him come up with a way to improve it. He found out how to mix it and then weave it into fine cloth. This became very expensive and the queen even purchased some. He now began construction of his gigantic mill in 1850. He then found that people had to come form Bradford to work here so he decided to build his own housing. This consisted of 850 houses, 22 streets and 45 almshouses. To provide 45 almshouses was excellent, other villages would have 4 or 5 houses tops, 45 was a lot better. This shows how generous and serious about building his village. He then went on to construct a hospital and a tram shed.

The Hospital + Hygiene

 The hospital was built to give workers and their families medical care, a healthy workforce was an efficient workforce. It started off as two storeys but had a third in 1908, and another extension in 1925 to make a total of 24 beds. Nowadays it is a private rest home. The hospital also gave sickness benefit. If you were 13- 15 you paid 6 pence a month (old currency) and over 15’s paid 6 pence. There were other charges based per month and for when you were sick. On the 6th July 1863 Salt opened the baths and washhouses. There were 12 baths each for male and female, and a sort of spa/ Jacuzzi, back then it was called a Turkish bath. The baths opened from 8am to 8pm every day except Sunday. The washhouse though was only open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. People were provided with tools like a wringing machine, to help them wash and dry their clothes, as they couldn’t do this outside because Salt forbade the hanging out of washing lines because they were ‘unsightly’. When Saltaire was sold, the bath house was demolished and built into more housing which was later demolished because they weren’t liked. The washing line rule was also abandoned. Although Salt kept these tight rules and regulations, he still looked after the people inside it

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Religion

Titus salt was very religious so the first place to be built was the church, where him and his wife and kids are buried to this date. His first concerns were work and then religion. The congregational church was built in 1859 and cost nearly £16,000, which, even in today’s money is quite a lot. The church was purposely built so it faced the mill. This is because Titus believed that God helped the mill and gave him wealth and with each facing the other, God would see that his mill didn’t fail. While the church was ...

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