Urbanization

People moved from countryside to city at unprecedented scale. In 1750 only about 15% of British people lived in cities. By 1900 it was over 75%. London grew from 1 million in 1800 to 6.5 million in 1900. Manchester grew from a small market town to a city of 750,000 in the same century.

Cities grew faster than infrastructure could support. Working-class neighborhoods featured:

• Overcrowded tenement housing, often with entire families in single rooms

• Inadequate sewage and water systems

• Frequent epidemics (cholera outbreaks in London 1832, 1848, 1854)

• Coal smoke that turned skies and lungs black

• High infant mortality