The worker’s houses were usually near to the factories so that people could walk to work. They were built really quickly and cheaply. The houses were cheap, most had between 2-4 rooms. Victorian families were big with 4 or 5 children. There was no running water or toilet and a whole street would have to share an outdoor pump and a couple of outside toilets. Most houses in the North of England were “back to backs”, which means that they were built in double rows with no windows at the front, no backyards and a sewer down the middle of the street. The houses were built packed close together, with very narrow streets between them. Most of the new towns were dirty and unhealthy. The household rubbish was thrown out into the streets. Housing conditions like these were a perfect breeding grounds for diseases. More than 31,000 people died during an outbreak of cholera in 1832 and lots more were killed by typhus, smallpox, and dysentery.
Chimneys, bridges and factory smoke blocked out most of the light in the towns. A layer of dirty smoke often covered the streets like a blanket. This came from the factories that used steam to power their machines. The steam was made by burning coal to heat water. Burning coal produces a lot of dirty, black smoke.
Gradually, improvements for the poor were made. In 1848, Parliament passed laws that allowed city council to clean up the streets. One of the first cities to become a healthier place was Birmingham. Proper sewers and drains were built. Landowners had to build houses to a set standard. Streets were paved and lighting was put up. Over time houses were knocked down and new were built. However, these changes did not take place overnight. When houses were knocked down in 1875 the poor people had little choice but to move to another one. Few could afford new housing.
The nature of work changed as a result of division of labour. Many factory workers were children. They worked long hours and were often treated badly by the supervisors. Sometimes the children started work as young as four or five years old. A young child could not earn much, but even a few pence would be enough to buy food.
The coal mines were dangerous places where roofs sometimes caved in, explosions happened and workers got all sorts of injuries. There were very few safety rules. Cutting and moving coal, which machines do nowadays was done by men, women and children. The younger children often worked as “trappers” who worked trap doors. They had to sit in a hole hollowed out for them and hold a string which was fastened to the door. When they hear the coal wagons coming they had to open the door by pulling the string. This job was one of the easiest down the mine but it was lonely and the place they sat was usually damp and breezy. Older children were doing other jobs such as carrying loads of coal on their backs in big baskets.
In 1842 the Government passed The Mines Act, forbidding the employment of women and girls and all boys under the age of teen down in the mines. Later it became illegal for a boy under 12 to work in a mine.
While thousands of children worked down the mine, thousands others worked in the cotton mills. The mill owners often took in orphans to their workhouses, they lived at the mill and were working as hard as possible. They spent most of their working hours at the machines with little time for fresh air or exercise. Even part of Sunday was spent cleaning machines. There were some serious accidents, some children were scalped when their hair was caught in the machine, hands were crushed and some children were killed when they went to sleep and fell into the machine.
Children often worked long and exhausting hours in factories. In match factories children were employed to dip matches into a chemical called phosphorous. This phosphorous could cause their teeth to rot and some died from the effect of breathing it into their lungs.
Although in 1832 the use of boys for sweeping chimneys was forbidden by law, boys continued to be forced through the narrow winding passages of chimneys in large houses. When they first started at between five and ten years old, children suffered many cuts, grazes and bruises on their knees, elbows and thighs.
Lots of dirty, ragged children roamed the streets with no regular money and no home to go to. The children of the streets were often orphans with no-one to care for them. They stole or picked pockets to buy food and slept in outhouses or doorways.
Some street children did jobs to earn money. They could work as crossing-sweepers, sweeping away through the mud and horse droppings of the main paths to make way for ladies and gentlemen. Others sold lace, flowers, matches or muffins etc out in the streets.
Poor families who lived in the countryside were also forced to send their children out to work. Seven and eight year olds could work as bird scares, out in the fields from four in the morning until seven at night. Older ones worked in gangs as casual labourers.
It took time for the government to decide that working children ought to be protected by laws as many people did not see anything wrong with the idea of children earning their keep. They also believed that people should be left alone to help themselves and not expect others to protect or keep them.
By about the 1820s, income levels for most workers began to improve, and people adjusted to the different circumstances and conditions. By that time, Britain had changed. The economy was expanding at a rate that was more than twice the speed at which it had grown before the Industrial Revolution. Although vast differences existed between the rich and the poor, most of the population enjoyed some of the fruits of economic growth. The widespread poverty and constant threat of mass starvation that had troubled the pre-industrial age reduced in Industrial Britain
