Between 1840 and 1900 living conditions in towns improved, how did the work of the government, local councils and individuals bring this about?

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Between 1840 and 1900 living conditions in towns improved, how did the work of the government, local councils and individuals bring this about?

In this assignment I am going to look at how the living conditions within towns improved between 1840 and 1900.  Whilst looking at this I will be explaining how the government brought the 1875 artisans dwelling act into force, I shall also be looking at the links between the different groups and show how each one depended on the other and I will evaluate the roles and contributions of all the groups throughout my essay.

In 1840 the streets conditions were covered in dirt, starting from plastic all the way to human waste running down open sewers. There was no education for people unless it was paid for and it wasn’t cheap, also poor clothing and food, and in those days there was no free medical care so many people who got a serious illness mainly didn’t have the money to cure it and because there was no free education people couldn’t gain any experience in order to get a better paid job. In those days people were broken up into different classes, the higher up you were the higher life expectancy you had. Mainly there were three classes, the working class, the middle class, and the upper class.

In 1840 homes there was no indoor plumbing; there were toilets outside for public use instead. Homes were cramped and people lived in the basements and the main living area, this was helping to the growth of population rise and overcrowded cities. But in the 19th century the sewage system wasn’t designed to hold all the extra sewage, so at times all the sewage would back up into people’s basements, filling the house with smell while people had to live in it.  Most people had no indoor heating, so many people were cold, and this would have contributed to illnesses like colds, hypothermia and pneumonia. Many cases would not have been treated as mentioned before there was no free medical care. In the lower classes people wouldn’t have enough money to pay for quality cloth so many people had very poor and weak clothing. All of this had a big impact and public health, because with no indoor plumbing meant that human waste had to be chucked into the streets, if there wasn’t an outdoor toilet near you and these were the streets where people would walk down day to day. Also there was no rubbish pick up so everyone’s rubbish just piled up and up, probably next to their houses. All of this was cause by the government’s policy of “laissez faire”. This means that it was only the government’s duty to pass laws, help wars, and solve crimes. They did not interfere in their people’s lives. They didn’t think that it was their duty to feed or cloth their people or to provide shelter, medical care or education for them.

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Although in the 19th century the population had doubled, a disease called cholera hung over England in 1848, no one knew a cure for this or where it came from. Local government was trying their best to create a solution to cholera but many attempts failed. A man called Joe Bazalgette was working hard to understand how everyone was catching cholera. People began to think that the disease was caused by bad smell, they called this the miasma. Cholera was deadly and people who caught it were probably dead within 48 hours, Bazalgette investigated the existing sewers, as he didn’t believe ...

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