Victorian Social Reform in Britain :: European Europe History

Victorian Social Reform in BritainWhen considering the changes brought about in the kind policy of Great Britain, in the decades today either side of 1900, one must look at the state s industrial history. The position as the world s premier(a) industrial nation had been cemented by the mid nineteenth century, achieved in part, as it was the first nation to industrialise. However, the headlong embrace of laissez- faire capitalism ignored the social infrastructure, and the emigration from the depressed agricultural areas to the industrial areas caused immense strain on the poorly-planned towns and cities. At the dawn of industrialisation, there were those who expressed concern about the wellness and hygiene of the dense industrial areas, notably Freidrich Engels, whose study of Manchester and London in 1844 collated in Conditions of The Working Class in England painted a sincerely yours dismal picture of urban squalor and hopelessness. Such is the Old townspeople of Manchester, a nd on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true result of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single govern, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If each one wishes to see in how little space a human race being can move, how little air - and such air - he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and stock-still live, it is only necessary to travel hither. (Engels.F. 1844 p.84 ) The publication, in 1842, of the Report on the hygienical Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain elicited, and perhaps foresaw, the protests of disbelief. Edwin Chadwick was responsible for the stem and also invoked the image of the un known country as Henry Mayhew afterward did to bring to public attention the abysmal conditions with which the labouring poor had to contend. His head teacher concern appeared to be with the miasma emanating from decaying matter the poisonous exhalations which were the source of their physical, good and mental deterioration. At the height of the cholera epidemic, the flushing of the sewers in order to film the miasma, actually aggravated the problem by further contamination of the piddle supply, in the face of the advice which stated that the disease was spread by germs and infection.