The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain, is largely responsible for the way we live our lives today. It set into motion the modern economic and industrial practices that govern the behaviors of our society. The end result of all this seems to be positive. However, there was a great negative social cost incurred at arriving where we are today.
The slow conversion to modern industrial society began in the cities. New mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries spurred on a changing social order and caused a migration from agrarian life in the countryside to the creation of a mass urban society (Kagan 766). New railroads, canals and roads let people leave their birthplace much more easily and migrate (Kagan 768). By mid eighteenth century half the population of England already consisted of town dwellers (Kagan 767). A tremendous new strain was put on the resources of the cities as they were not ready for the huge population influx. Just a few of the deficiencies included inadequate housing, water supply, sewers and an inadequate food supply. This caused rapid spread of disease in the new booming slums. The poorest laborers usually lived in dungeon like cellars. Their possessions usually consisted only of the tools of their trade, shabby wooden cupboards and chairs, a stove, a plank to place eating dishes on and dirty straw mattresses and scraps of blankets. The walls of the dwelling were usually coated with filth, the furniture worm eaten, the mattresses damp and disease infested and the smell of rotting garbage permeated everything (Kagan 779). Friederich Engles affirmed this with his personal account of a part of Manchester where laborers lived in 1844, "the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen's Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride of lime.