➊ Sanitation In The 19th Century
Alisjahbana, B. Nothing could be more deleterious Sanitation In The 19th Century the lungs Sanitation In The 19th Century the air-passages than the wholesale inhalation of Gods And Goddesses In Ancient Egypt foul air and floating carbon which, combined, form a London fog. A Sanitation In The 19th Century student, he was interested in wide range of subjects such as philosophy, Biology, Art, Culture, Music, Social studies Sanitation In The 19th Century. Ponce-De-Leon A. The New YorkerMay 23, Sanitation In The 19th Century.
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs. Part 1 of 3 - Knowing Your Place.
Even today, many neighborhoods or sections of some of the great cities in the United States reflect those ethnic heritages. During the final years of the s, industrial cities, with all the problems brought on by rapid population growth and lack of infrastructure to support the growth, occupied a special place in U. For all the problems, and there were many, the cities promoted a special bond between people and laid the foundation for the multiethnic, multicultural society that we cherish today.
The United States began as a largely rural nation, with most people living on farms or in small towns and villages. While the rural population continued to grow in the late s, the urban population was growing much more rapidly. Still, a majority of Americans lived in rural areas in Kansas Farming Mural in the U. Courthouse, Wichita, Kansas by Richard Haines, Many of those Americans had settled on the plains in the s. Abundant rainfall in the s and the promise of free land under the Homestead Act drew easterners to the Plains.
Unfortunately, their candidate did not do well, drawing only about eight percent of the vote. New machines for use in farming were invented in this period, but horses, oxen, and people still provided most of the power that operated the machinery. While farmers now produced cash crops, they were still remarkably self-sufficient, often making or trading for nearly everything required by their own families. Perhaps it is that self-sufficiency that gives rural life a special place, even today, in the minds of Americans. The late 19th-century United States is probably best known for the vast expansion of its industrial plant and output.
At the heart of these huge increases was the mass production of goods by machines. This process was first introduced and perfected by British textile manufacturers. In the century since such mechanization had begun, machines had replaced highly skilled craftspeople in one industry after another. By the s, machines were knitting stockings and stitching shirts and dresses, cutting and stitching leather for shoes, and producing nails by the millions. By reducing labor costs, such machines not only reduced manufacturing costs but lowered prices manufacturers charged consumers.
In short, machine production created a growing abundance of products at cheaper prices. Mechanization also had less desirable effects. For one, machines changed the way people worked. Skilled craftspeople of earlier days had the satisfaction of seeing a product through from beginning to end. When they saw a knife, or barrel, or shirt or dress, they had a sense of accomplishment. Machines, on the other hand, tended to subdivide production down into many small repetitive tasks with workers often doing only a single task. The pace of work usually became faster and faster; work was often performed in factories built to house the machines.
Finally, factory managers began to enforce an industrial discipline, forcing workers to work set hours which were often very long. One result of mechanization and factory production was the growing attractiveness of labor organizations. To be sure, craft guilds had been around a long time. Now, however, there were increasing reasons for workers to join labor unions. Such labor unions were not notably successful in organizing large numbers of workers in the late 19th century.
Still, unions were able to organize a variety of strikes and other work stoppages that served to publicize their grievances about working conditions and wages. Even so, labor unions did not gain even close to equal footing with businesses and industries until the economic chaos of the s. American History. American History Photo Galleries. The largest of the gas works were those of the London Gas Company at Vauxhall , which piped gas as far away as Highgate and Hampstead , 7 miles from Vauxhall. This had the unintended effect of raising prices, as the companies exploited their newly secure monopolies. The committees recommended various improvements including price reductions, better regulation, and consolidation. These recommendations were enacted first in the city with the City of London Gas Act of , and within a few years the provisions were expanded across most of London.
By the end of the s, there were just 6 gas companies in operation in London, compared to 13 in the s. In the last decades of the 19th century, electric lighting was introduced sporadically, but was slow to supersede gas. Le Mott and William Staite gave demonstrations of their respective electric lamps to astonished crowds at the National Gallery , atop the Duke of York Column , and aboard a train departing from Paddington station. It would take another three decades for this novelty to be installed on any permanent basis, delayed by the expense of electricity and the lack of generating facilities. Martin's Le Grand , using Edison carbon-filament incandescent light bulbs.
Several of modern London's major museums were founded or constructed during the 19th century, including the British Museum built — , [] The National Gallery built —8 , [] the National Portrait Gallery founded , [] and the Tate Britain , which opened in as the National Gallery of British Art. With the donation of the King's Library in , which comprised some , manuscripts, pamphlets, and drawings assembled by the late George III , a major extension of the Museum was needed. The Round Reading Room , which was built to occupy the vacant courtyard behind the main building, featured the second largest dome in the world when it was finished feet in diameter.
The great complex of museums at South Kensington began with the purchase of a vast tract of land known as Albertopolis at the instigation of the Prince Consort and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of The rest of the land belonging to 'Albertopolis', on the site currently occupied by the Natural History and Science Museums , was used to host the International Exhibition. By the end of the century the museums were complemented by the Royal Albert Hall opened in , the Royal College of Music opened , and the Imperial Institute opened In addition to the museums, popular entertainment proliferated throughout the city. At the beginning of the century, there were only three theatres in operation in London: the "winter" theatres of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden , and the "summer" theatre of Haymarket.
A loosening of these restrictions in the early years of the 19th century allowed small theatres to open which could only put on plays interspersed with musical numbers. To skirt the strict regulations, theatres like the Old Vic were established outside the boundaries of London to produce new plays. In , Parliament repealed the Licensing Act , ending the duopoly of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres, while the Theatres Act allowed straight plays to be produced in all licensed theatres. The music hall was a form of live entertainment which developed gradually during the first half of the 19th century.
These were disreputable establishments, which led some public houses to offer Song and supper rooms as a respectable middle-class alternative. Song and Supper Rooms of the s and 40s offered patrons, for a surcharge, the opportunity to dine and drink while enjoying live musical acts of a higher caliber than the "Free and Easies". By there were music halls across the city, with the greatest number concentrated in the East End around had been established in Tower Hamlets by midcentury. Two of the largest and most famous music halls were in Leicester Square — the Alhambra and the Empire — both of which were also notorious for the prostitutes who plied their trade in the galleries. In , Home Secretary Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police as a police force covering the entire urban area, with the exception of the City of London , which formed its own police force under a separate jurisdiction in Corruption was rife among this early batch of recruits, so much so that five-sixths of the original force had been dismissed within four years.
With London's rapid growth, towards the middle of the century, an urgent need arose to reform London's system of local government. Outside of the City of London , which resisted any attempts to expand its boundaries to encompass the wider urban area, London had a chaotic local government system consisting of ancient parishes and vestries , working alongside an array of single-purpose boards and authorities, few of which co-operated with each other. Drainage in the city was handled by 7 different Commissions of Sewers , and in a one-hundred square yard area of Central London there were four different bodies responsible for the pavement and upkeep of the streets.
The MBW was London's first metropolitan government body. The Metropolitan Board of Works was not a directly elected body, which made it unpopular with Londoners. This was the first elected London-wide administrative body. In , the county was subdivided into 28 metropolitan boroughs , which formed a more local tier of administration than the county council. Parliament also took a more proactive role in public health and healthcare during the latter part of the century. Only two of these, in Central London and the Poplar and Stepney District, were fully realized, with the other four districts using reconstituted facilities from the old infirmaries because of cost overruns.
One of the first tasks of the Metropolitan Board of Works was to address London's sanitation problems. Sewers were far from extensive, and the most common form of human waste disposal was cesspools , some , by mid-century, which were often open and prone to overflowing. The combination of cesspools and the raw sewage pumped into the city's main source of drinking water led to repeated outbreaks of cholera in , , , and [] and culminated in The Great Stink of The cholera epidemic was the fourth in the city's history, but also the last and the least deadly.
Following the Great Stink of Parliament finally gave consent for the MBW to construct a massive system of sewers. The engineer put in charge of building the new system was Joseph Bazalgette. In one of the largest civil engineering projects of the 19th century, he oversaw construction of over miles or km of tunnels and pipes under London to take away sewage and provide clean drinking water. When the London sewerage system was completed, the death toll in London dropped dramatically, and epidemics were curtailed.
Bazalgette's system is still in use today. While the problems of disposal of sewage and human waste were much improved by the late 19th century, there also remained problems of sanitation on the streets of London. Chadwick attributed the spread of disease to this filth, advocating improved water supplies and drains, and criticising the inefficient system of labourers and street sweepers then employed to maintain cleanliness. The result was the passing of the Public Health Act , which placed the responsibility for street cleansing, paving, sewers, and water supply on the municipal boroughs rather than on property owners. The weakness of the Act was that it did not compel the boroughs to act, but merely provided the framework for doing so.
More comprehensive and forceful legislation was passed by Parliament with the Public Health Acts of and The last Act compelled the boroughs to provide adequate drainage, required all new housing to be built with running water, and required all streets to be equipped with lighting and pavements. These authorities were more comprehensive than their predecessors, equipped with teams of medical officers and health inspectors who ensured food safety standards were met and actively prevented outbreaks of disease.
Atmospheric pollution caused by burning cheap soft coal created the city's notorious pea soup fog. Air pollution from burning wood or coal was nothing new to London — complaints about the city's dirty atmosphere exist as far back as the 13th century [] — but the population explosion and industrialisation of the 19th century aggravated both the severity of the fogs and their lethal effects on Londoners. The fogs were at their worst in the month of November, but occurred frequently throughout the autumn and winter.
Sulphur dioxide and soot emitted from chimneys mixed with the natural vapour of the Thames Valley to form a layer of greasy, acrid mist that shrouded the city up to feet 75 metres above street level. Conditions for pedestrians were extremely dangerous: in , nineteen deaths were attributed to accidental drowning from victims who fell into the Thames, canals, or docks during foggy weather. Charles Dickens Jr. As the east wind brings up the exhalations of the Essex and Kentish marshes, and as the damp-laden winter air prevents the dispersion of the partly consumed carbon from hundreds of thousands of chimneys, the strangest atmospheric compound known to science fills the valley of the Thames. At such times almost all the senses have their share of trouble.
Not only does a strange and worse than Cimmerian darkness hide familiar landmarks from the sight, but the taste and sense of smell are offended by an unhallowed compound of flavours, and all things become greasy and clammy to the touch. During the continuance of a real London fog—which may be black, or grey, or more probably orange-coloured—the happiest man is he who can stay at home Nothing could be more deleterious to the lungs and the air-passages than the wholesale inhalation of the foul air and floating carbon which, combined, form a London fog. There was wide awareness of the deleterious health effects of extended fogs in London, particularly upon those suffering from respiratory illnesses.
Pollution and a smoky atmosphere prevailed at all times of year because of industrial activity and the sheer concentration of domestic fires: an estimated 3. The smoky atmosphere meant that skin and clothing were quickly dirtied just by walking on the street. In the debates surrounding the passage of this Act, it was estimated that a working class mechanic in London paid five times the cost of purchasing his shirt to launder it. The grass of the Royal Parks took on a permanent soot colour, as did the sheep that were then allowed to graze in Regent's Park and Hyde Park.
Concerns over smoke pollution gave rise to private Smoke Abatement societies in London and throughout Britain, which championed different measures for controlling smoke pollution. One of these measures was smoke-prevention technology — an exhibition of such devices was staged in London over an week period by the Smoke Abatement Committee in The exhibition attracted , attendants and displayed all manner of smokeless furnaces, stoves, grates, and alternative industrial equipment. Many famous buildings and landmarks of London were constructed during the 19th century including:. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. London-related events during the 19th century.
Part of a series on the. Further information: Port of London. Further information: Economic history of the United Kingdom. Further information: St. Giles, London. Further information: Trams in London. Further information: History of the London Underground. Unfinished Empire. Bloomsbury Press. A vision of Britain through time. Retrieved 19 November Bartholomew The Pocket Atlas and Guide to London. The Great World of London. British Library. Retrieved 4 March Retrieved 18 October Retrieved 19 October The Million-Peopled City. Retrieved 5 November Dickens's Dictionary of London. Victoria County History.
Retrieved 22 October The Guardian. Retrieved 27 October The London Compendium Revised ed. Retrieved 18 September Retrieved 9 December Hand-Book of London. Retrieved 11 December Retrieved 17 December University of North Carolina Pembroke. Retrieved 10 December Lubbock Retrieved 27 September Pollard The Economic History Review. The Economic History Review, Vol. JSTOR MaritimeDigital Archive Encyclopedia. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Martin's Griffin. Economic History Review.
Blanchard, H. Kains Jackson The British Library. Retrieved 7 June Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands. Retrieved 29 March The London Compendium. Victorian London. Retrieved 30 March London: The Biography. Museum of London. The People of the Abyss. Retrieved 4 December Retrieved 27 March Mary's, Islington, Middlesex, London". Retrieved 9 March The Leisure Hour. Chapter III, Barrett London and Londoners in the Eighteen-Fifties and Sixties. Gordon The Horse World of London. Retrieved 22 December Cruchley Cruchley's London for A Handbook for Strangers.
Institution of Civil Engineers. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 17 October Ellis' British Railway Engineering Encyclopaedia. London's Metropolitan Railway. Retrieved 2 October Retrieved 13 October Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 April The London Encyclopaedia 3rd ed. ISBN Retrieved 25 December Retrieved 18 December Engineering and Technology. Retrieved 5 March Survey of London Vol. Old and New London Vol. Chapter XL, — Electricity Council. Crossing the River. Retrieved 1 January Curiosities of London. London County Council. Wonders of World Engineering.
London: Amalgamated Press. Survey of London: Vol. London Metropolitan Archives. The National Archives. Retrieved 2 December Retrieved 6 December Retrieved 5 December Archived from the original on 4 December Retrieved 30 July Old and New London. Retrieved 21 March
Atlanta: Sanitation In The 19th Century for Sanitation In The 19th Century Islamic Empire Dbq Analysis and Prevention. He says that ironically Sanitation In The 19th Century first countries that were able to get out from under their debt burdens were the ones that had borrowed Sanitation In The 19th Century commercial markets, not from aid agencies. Rockefeller, Jr. Kline Nolan