Saltaire provided a standard of living that was far in excess of normal mid nineteenth century living conditions. Do you agree?

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Saltaire provided a standard of living that was far in excess of normal mid nineteenth century living conditions. Do you agree?

The aim of the coursework was to look at all the facilities that Titus Salt developed in Saltaire, in order to prove that people living and working there had a better standard of living than others working and living in other Industrial towns and cities.

 

Housing

The most important way that life was better for people in Saltaire was the quality of houses. For example all of the 824 houses in Saltaire had a living room, a kitchen and two bedrooms as well as a back yard and some had a small front garden.

All the houses in Saltaire had piped water and gas, and each had its own outdoor toilet. This is very different to other industrial cities of the time, such as Bradford, Liverpool and Manchester where most people would have a communal toilet per street and there was no running water or gas. We can see this in a source about Leeds in 1842: “To build the largest number of cottages on the smallest possible space seems to have been the original view of the speculators. Thus neighbourhoods have arisen in which there is neither water nor privies.”  This shows that lack of planning and space was one of the reasons as to why houses in industrial cities like Leeds and Bradford didn’t have these facilities. Titus Salt planned his town very well before building, and did not rush into it. He took into account this problem, which he had encountered in Bradford, and developed means of combating it. The gas was piped to each house from the mill and water was piped to each house from Salts own 500,000-gallon reservoirs via a series of underground tunnels that linked each house to together. This was a good idea because it meant that repairs could be made if, for example, there was a leak, and other improvements could be made without much trouble.

The streets in Saltaire were all well paved and were much wider than streets in other cities such as Manchester and Bradford. They were regularly cleaned and privies were regularly emptied which was quite different in comparison with other industrial cities. The Health of Towns Report stated that in Leeds “All the streets and dwellings … are stated to be more or less deficient in sewerage, unpaved, full of holes, with deep channels formed by the rain intersecting the roads … sometimes rendered untenable by the overflowing of sewers and other more offensive drains, with ash-holes etc., exposed to public view, and never emptied”  

Edwin Chadwick, who had taken an active part in the reform of the Poor Law and in factory legislation before he became secretary to a commission investigating sanitary conditions, said of Manchester: “Whole streets, unpaved and without drains or main sewers, are worn into deep ruts and holes in which water constantly stagnates, and are so covered with refuse and excrementious matter as to be almost impassable from depth of mud and intolerable from stench” . From this source we see that compared to the conditions in Manchester and similar industrial towns, Saltaire was a massive improvement. Another thing that Chadwick said was that “disease, wherever its attacks are frequent, is always found in connexion with … atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings … and that where those circumstances are removed by drainage, proper cleansing, better ventilation … where the removal of the noxious agencies appears to be complete, such disease almost entirely disappears.”  This shows that the conditions in other cities is what was responsible for disease and that the improved conditions in Saltaire meant that people were far less likely to get diseases, such as cholera, from contaminated water sources. He also said “…The annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation are greater than the loss from death or wounds in any wars in which the country has been engaged in modern times.”  This shows that lots of workers were dying from disease brought on by the conditions of the industrial cities, Salt realised that it was not in his interest for his workers to be dying.

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Dr. Duncan, an associate of Chadwick and the medical officer of health in Liverpool wrote in a correspondence to Chadwick; “... finding that not less than 63 cases of fever had occurred in one year in Union Court (containing twelve houses) I visited the court in order to ascertain, if possible, their origin, and I found the whole court inundated with fluid filth which had oozed through the walls from two adjoining ash-pits or cess-pools, and which had no means of escape in consequence of the court being below the level of the street, and having no drain. The court ...

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