Dickens's Oliver Twist takes place in London, England during the Victorian era. The Victorian era is said to have begun when Queen Victoria was crowned queen in 1837 and ended in 1901 when she died.
London was an overcrowded, filthy city during the Victorian era. Between the years 1851 and 1901, London's population went from 2.5 million to 6.5 million. It had the largest population in the world. The overcrowded city caused a lot of diseases to run rampant.
There were many factories in London. They produced power for their machinery by burning coal in big fireplaces. The coal produced a thick cloud of smoke that was sent out unfiltered into the streets. This resulted in black soot that settled practically everywhere and polluted the air.
The rich people of the city traveled in carriages that were pulled by horses. Therefore, there were a lot of horses in the city. Although street cleaners were paid to clean up some of the manure, the streets were full of it.
Disease was also spread by the poor quality of the drinking water in the city. Many people threw their raw sewage into the streets. The sewage ran off through gutters into the Thames River. The citizens in London got their drinking water from the Thames River.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette found a solution to this problem when he provided better sewers for the city. He also banned companies from taking drinking water from areas of the Thames that were extremely polluted. They also had to filter all of the water that they sent to the public that came from the river.
Because of all of the factories in London, the employers had to worry about building houses for their employees. The houses were built near the factory and they were very small and cheaply built. They had two to four rooms and many as many as three families shared one house in order to save money. There was no indoor plumbing and a whole street would have to share one outdoor water-pump and an outhouse.