URBAN LIFE

The World of Cities

9.2

Disease in the Industrial Town

• Infectious disease was an expected, almost everyday feature of nineteenth-century life. Smallpox, typhus, typhoid, dysentery, diphtheria, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and cholera were among the many illnesses that made cities - the industrial cities in particular - unhealthy places to live. Overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor hygiene and sanitation assisted in the cultivation and spread of disease.

Disease in the Industrial Town• It was inevitable that those most vulnerable to infection were the

poorest inhabitants living in the poorest conditions, although wealthier citizens were not immune. Children were particularly susceptible and childhood mortality rates across much of the country were very high.

• In the nineteenth century, doctors' views of the causes of such diseases were very different from our own. New ideas such as the germ theory, which would come to dominate modern medicine, did not gain instant credibility. Many espoused 'miasmatic' theories, which proposed that an infectious atmosphere from decaying matter - 'bad air' - could directly cause illness. The pungent environments of the poorest inhabitants were therefore seen as breeding grounds of disease.

• Not until 1870 did Pasteur clearly show the link between germs & disease.

An unusually clean-looking Father Thames warns the City of London that if it wants to avoid an outbreak of typhoid, as was seen in Maidstone, it must stop polluting him. 1897

Filthy river, filthy river, Foul from London to the Nore, What art thou but one vast gutter, One tremendous common shore?

All beside thy sludgy waters, All beside thy reeking ooze, Christian folks inhale mephitis, Which thy bubbly bosom brews.

All her foul abominations Into thee the City throws; These pollutions, ever churning, To and fro thy current flows.

And from thee is brewed our porter - Thee, thou gully, puddle, sink! Thou, vile cesspool, art the liquor Whence is made the beer we drink!

Thou too hast a conservator, He who fills the civic chair; Well does he conserve thee, truly, Does he not, my good Lord Mayor?

The Thames introduces its children - infectious diseases - to the City of London, showing some understanding, at the time of the

'Great Stink', that the river was a danger to health. 1858

Lord Morpeth, introducer of the 1st Public Health Act, throws it and other bills to the aldermen of the City of

London, portrayed as pigs. 1848

Look on London with its Smells -/ Sickening Smells!/

What long nasal misery their nastiness foretells!/ How they trickle, trickle, trickle,/ On the air by day

and night!/ While our thoraxes they tickle,/ Like the fumes from brass in

pickle,/ Or from naphtha all alight;/ In a worse than

witch-broth drench,/ Of the muck-malodoration that so nauseously wells/ From the

Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells,/ Smells, Smells,

Smells -/ From the fuming and the spuming of the

Smells.1890

This is the water that John drinks.// …

This is the price that we pay to wink/ At the vested int'rests that fill to the brink,/ The network of sewers from cesspool and sink,/ That feed the fish that float in the ink-/ -y stream of the Thames with its cento of stink,/ That supplies the water that John drinks.//

1849

Life Expectancy

In 1842 the average age of death for a member of a laborer's family in rural

Rutland was 38; in Manchester, it was 17.

In the Hospital• 1846: William Morton, a dentist, introduced anesthesia

to relieve pain during surgery.• What did this allow?• A: experimental surgeries• Yet still dangerous: survive the operation - die later of

infection.• For poor, hospital admission often = death sentence.

Wealthy treated at home. • Later, Lister’s insistence on antiseptics and cleanliness

drastically reduced deaths from infection.

The plates of these dentures are made of hippopotamus ivory, the anterior (front

teeth) are human teeth.

Two Full Upper Dentures c. 1830

Changing City Life - Later 19thC

• As industrialization progressed, cities came to dominate life in the West.

• Basic layouts were altered.

• Best example: Paris 1850’s - Georges Haussmann, architect.

• Tangled medieval streets & tenement housing --> wide boulevards & public buildings.

Changing City Life - Later 19thC

• Was this for beauty and health only?• A: No.

– Put many ppl to work, decreasing social unrest.– Wide boulevards harder for rebels to set up

barricades.

• Settlement patterns shifted.– Rich --> suburbs– Poor crowded into city-center slums

Changing City Life - Later 19thC• Urban areas --> more livable• Paved streets, gas (later electric) lamps,

police, f ire, better sewage systems• Steel development --> soaring buildings

(later, higher ones called skyscrapers)• However, still slums

– Some workers could afford better clothes, a newspaper, or music hall tickets

– But went home to a small, cramped row house or tenements in overcrowded neighborhoods

Changing City Life - Later 19thC

• Even with problems, city life attracted millions of new residents

• Excitement & the promise of work• Music halls, opera houses, theaters• Museums & libraries offered educational

opportunities• Spectator sports: like tennis, horseracing, boxing• Parks: fresh air, walks, picnics

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884

Shifting Social Order

• Main cause: changes brought by the Industrial Revolution

• Classes used to depend mainly on relationship to land - nobles & peasants, with only a relatively small middle class which occupied secondary position

• With the spread of industry came a more complex society

The Upper Class

• By the late 19th C the upper class was not just nobles, but superrich industrialists

• Rich industrialists = “nouveau riches”– “New rich”

• Some gained titles by marrying into nobility

• All felt they should be treated like nobility

• UC held the top jobs in military & govt

The Middle Class

Owners and Managers of Great Businesses and Banks

Small entrepreneurs, professional peopleShopkeepers school teachers, librarians,

White collar workersSecretaries, retail clerks, lower level bureaucrats in business and government.

Middle Class Anxiety

• Small businessmen resented power of great capitalists.

• Afraid of large companies.

Working Class Struggles

• Harsh conditions needed reform: low wages, long hours, unsafe conditions, & constant threat of unemployment

• Initially, govt and employers tried to silence protests– Strikes and unions were illegal– Demonstrations were crushed

A capitalist lives a pampered existence, while below him the workers toil in terrible conditions. 1843

Working Class Struggles

• By mid-century, slow progress

• Mutual aid societies

• Men & women joined socialist parties or organized unions

• The mass of workers in larger, more complex societies, could no longer be ignored

Working Class Struggles• By late 1800’s, most western countries had granted

universal male suffrage• Unions, reformers, working class voters forced govts to

pass regulating legislation for factories & mines– No children under ten, later, no children– No women in mines– Limited work hours– Improved safety– 1909 Britain, coal miners got 8 hour day, setting standard for

other industries, countries

• Eventually, govts started setting up programs for old-age penisons and disability insurance

Rising Standards of Living…• Even though:

– Unskilled labor earned much less,

– Women earned less than half that of men,

– & farm laborers lagged seriously behind,

• The overall standard of living for workers improved.– Varied diets, better homes, less expensive clothing,

medical advances

– Some workers could even afford living in suburbs, commuting on cheap subways & trams

• Still, the gap btwn workers & the MC widened

Beginning of a Consumer Society

• Department stores

• Retail chains

• New packaging techniques

• Mail order catalogues

• Advertisements

Consumerism

• By the end of the century there was a new expansion of consumer demand.

• Lower food prices= more $ to spend on other goods.

• Urbanization= larger markets

Population Trends and Migration

• ¼ of the world’s population – Europe

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Women’s Experiences in the late 19th century

• Gender defined social roles.

• Availability of new jobs.

• Working Class women• Many members of the middle class had come to believe

in separate spheres - the idea that women belonged in the home and men belonged in the workplace. One of the most influential symbols of the new vision of womanhood was Queen Victoria. She publicly relished her role as a devoted wife and mother, seeming like a perfect example of new middle class virtues.

Life for Middle Class Women

• Cult of Domesticity

• Did not work.

• “Center of Virtue”

• Religious and Charitable Activities.

The Woman Question • The Industrial Revolution had made it possible for

women to work and to support themselves and their families. – Husbands, however, still had control of women’s

children and property, education was unattainable for most, and employment was scarce and low paying.

• The women’s movement was far from united. Middle-class women and working-class women led very different lives. – Many of the working-class were more concerned with

economic issues than with the right to vote.

The Woman Question• Despite the many aspects of women’s rights, the

“question” was posed as a suffrage issue.

• After World War I (1918) women over thirty gained the right to vote in Britain. By 1928, they had the same voting rights as men. (21 years old).

• Women in the U.S., Germany, and the Soviet Union also gained the right to vote after the war, but they would have to wait a long time in places such as France, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland.

Women’s Social and Political Union• Emmeline Pankhurst Radical feminist

• With her daughters Christabel and Sylvia.

• Lobbied for the extension of the right to vote.

• Violent tactics

• Many imprisoned.

Moderate National Union of Woman Suffrage

• Great Britain• 1908- 500,000 members in

London• Millicent Fawcett• Her view was the Parliament

would grant women the vote only when convinced that women would be respectable and responsible in their political activity.

Growth of Schools• Basic education for all children in public

schools– The three “R’s”: reading, writing, &’rithmatic

• Purpose = better citizens & a literate workforce• Ideals = punctuality, obedience to authority,

disciplined work habits, & patriotism

Growth of Schools

• Primary education improved as more students attended & teachers were better educated themselves

• MC sons attended secondary school– Latin, Greek, History, & Math

• Purpose = job training or prep for higher education

• Girls who attended did so to marry well & become better wives & mothers