This rapid growth reshaped the appearance, lifestyle, and culture of the cities by the 18th century. In this new environment, one’s social status was not an abstract concept but rather a reality demonstrated on a day-to-day basis. The large landowners usually kept impressive residences in the towns and lived in rich districts boasting wide streets, airy homes, and often possessing gardens. The wealthiest of this group spent their time dining on fine food, sporting the latest fashions in dress, riding in coaches throughout the city in order to flaunt status, reading books, or going to one of the growing number of social events such as the theater or opera. Dress often readily identified one’s economic and social position. For example, lawyers wore dark robes, and masons and butchers had special aprons. The upper classes possessed multiple outfits in a variety of fabrics with designs and colors for adornment. Middle class families consisted of merchants and professionals who, depending on their level of wealth, might also possess some land in the countryside. By 1700, London boasted about 20,000 middle class families, which made up approximately one-sixth of its population.
The growing cities had a voracious appetite for consumption, particularly amongst the upper and middle classes, the latter whose rituals settled into a pattern and often emulated the upper classes and maintained a sharp distinction from the lower classes. But the middle class also occasionally influenced the behavior of the upper class. For example, the adoption of calico clothing by the English middle class in the late 1600s began as a bourgeois fashion statement that eventually found its way into the royal court. And, while the middle classes did not dine in as fine a manner as their upper-class counterparts, meals nonetheless became more varied and rich. For example, breakfast was light and consisted of toast or some form of bread. By the early 18th century, the middle classes in Great Britain had adopted tea as the fashionable drink. Dinner was taken in the middle of the day and comprised roasted or boiled meat or poultry, pork, and vegetables. The dinner meal was also light, perhaps bread, cheese, cake, and pie. Beer was the main drink in London, and many families brewed their own. Children partook of beer, as it often was safer to drink than the water. Not surprisingly, the French retained a preference for wine. By the early 1700s middle-class houses had a number of rooms, pictures and mirrors in most rooms, and a variety of items such as coffee and teapots, several clocks, and some form of a china service.
By the late 17th century, literacy made great progress among upper - and middle-class residents of cities, despite the fact that the number of schools and trained teachers remained woefully inadequate until the late 18th century. Great Britain and the Netherlands led the way with well over 50% of men and 25% of women in the upper and middle classes being literate by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. France lagged behind, but about 50% of men and 27% of women could read by 1780. The growing evidence of an educated population is found in the cultural diffusion that accelerated in the 18th century. London displayed large numbers of printed advertising in public spaces by the late 1690s, and within a few years France and other regions on the continent had adopted the practice. Furthermore, Great Britain established procedures to license and control publications such as newspapers and magazines. The first London daily newspaper appeared in 1702. By 1780, more than three dozen British towns had daily publications, and Britain’s first literary magazine appeared in 1709. It is estimated that when Europe’s population surpassed 100 million in the 18th century, newspaper circulation had reached 7 million copies. Another example of the improved literacy level was the postal service. In 1660 mail was transported by boat between London and Amsterdam twice a week. Amsterdam in turn delivered postal materials overland to Hamburg, thus connecting a large portion of northwestern Europe. Likewise, in the early 18th century, Paris had commenced semi-weekly mail service to several towns in the French interior. By the time the Industrial Revolution was underway in the third quarter of the 18th century, improved roads and routes had cut in half the delivery time of mail. However, rapid and consistent movement of mail and improved communication required a massive effort to upgrade roads and develop other forms of transportation, a trend that did not begin until the late 18th century In the early 1700s, Great Britain’s roads were no better than they had been in Roman times some 1500 years earlier. The wet climate meant that for much of the year they were a muddy quagmire and impossible for any form of wheeled vehicle to traverse.3 Indeed, in 1731 John Metcalf raced a Colonel Liddell from London to Harrogate in the county of Yorkshire. Although he was blind and on foot, Metcalf completed the journey in six days and arrived two full days before Colonel Liddell, who had travelled by coach. Stories also circulated that men at times drowned in the large potholes in East Anglia. And, the city of Lincoln constructed an inland lighthouse to guide night travelers over the surrounding plain because the roads near the city were virtually impassable after dark. These conditions would prevail until the development of improved roadbeds, the construction of canals, and the arrival of the railway and telegraph systems.4
Below the middle class came the artisans and shopkeepers who, in the early 18th century, still organized themselves in a guild system over much of Europe. Below these groups were the servants and laborers. As many as four out of five poor women might become a domestic servant in the city until they married. At the bottom of the scale was the unemployed poor who became homeless when work became infrequent. The poor were easily identifiable in their drab, meager garments. Poor women in Paris wore poorly fitting woolen skirts, dark blouses, caps, stockings, and a pair of shoes that often did not fit properly. The poor often found themselves on the dark edge of society, just beyond the more comfortable neighborhoods of the upper and middle classes. They usually gathered in cramped quarters on narrow, dark, dirty, and damp streets teeming with humidity and foul odors or sleeping under bridges or in abandoned homes like animals, with no consideration of age or gender.
To be sure, until the advent of the Industrial Revolution, life for the vast majority of Europeans was a hardship that focused on survival and remained concentrated in rural areas that had witnessed little change since the collapse of the Roman Empire a thousand years earlier. People adhered to traditional economic patterns that had been handed down orally from one generation to the next. The essential unit of society was the village community, with its inherent conservative nature. Agriculture was the dominant livelihood, and little real modification in farming practices had occurred until the Agricultural Revolution on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. The three field system still employed the use of manure, rotation of crops, and letting a field lay fallow as the primary means to enrich the soil. Cattle served as the primary source of meat for humans and fertilizer for the crops. The traditional and patriarchal family continued to be the basis of European society throughout this period and retained its ancient focus on the welfare of the collective whole rather than the individual. Childcare remained an important responsibility, but many children died in childbirth or at an early age. In the 17th century perhaps as many as 20% to 25% of all children died within the first year of birth. Of those children surviving the first year, it is estimated that half died by the age of 20. As the Industrial Revolution approached, the average number of children per household declined. However, peasant families often tended to have more children than their urban counterparts because of the necessity for additional hands to do the work on the farm. From 1650 to 1700, upper class families usually averaged six children. That number dipped to three in the first half of the 18th century and averaged two in the period 1750 to 1800. Later marriages contributed to this trend as men deferred marital age until 27 to 28 and women until 25 to 27. This development came about as breadwinners waited to establish their economic independence and resulted in a self-imposed means of birth control. Illegitimacy also remained relatively low for a large portion of the 18th century. Estimates for France are 1% and Great Britain 5% until 1750. In the German states the rate was about 2% in 1700 but increased five times over the course of the century. Rates for other countries increased to perhaps 20% by the end of the 18th century as the traditional family structure strained under the beginning throes of industrialization and as the old rural communities experienced the loss of population to the urban areas.
In the lower classes, rearing children created much more anxiety than in the upper classes. During the 17th century, approximately 10% of women died in childbirth. Children remained a health risk, not only for themselves but also for the mothers, and a burden on the family at large during hard times if there were many mouths to feed. Indeed, infanticide by what was claimed to be accidental suffocation was not uncommon. As the 18th century progressed, some steps were taken to protect children. In the Austrian Empire, for example, a 1784 law forbade children under five from sleeping in bed with parents. Furthermore, foundling homes sprang up across Europe and became depositories and hospitals for unwanted children. It is estimated that perhaps one-third of all children born in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution ended up in such an institution. With little regulation of their operations, it is not surprising that the mortality rate for children in foundling houses could be as high as 50% to 80%.
Even as conditions improved by the mid 18th century, life on the margin remained exceedingly difficult. The better economic times of the 18th century did not translate immediately into any improvement in the lower classes. Food production increased, but that did not eliminate sporadic shortages. Wages rose throughout the 18th century, although the rise in prices diluted its positive impact. With the increasing demand for food and manufactured goods by the 18th century peasants who could sell their agricultural surplus at city and town markets and artisans who could successfully peddle their wares fared much better than peasants with meager holdings or city day laborers. These unfortunate souls often lost their land and livelihoods and wandered in the countryside seeking food, or ended up in the cities boosting the number of urban poor.
The upper and middle classes worried constantly about the number of poor in their midst. Throughout the 18th century, for instance, it is estimated that France had as many as 200,000 seasonal workers who migrated throughout the country. The numbers of beggars and vagabonds put an added financial stress on European governments. At times ten percent of Europe’s urban population was on public welfare. One solution was to put these persons into workhouses that served as workshops, hospitals, and, on occasion, prisons. These institutions rarely achieved their stated purpose of finding individuals some measure of work because many of those entering the overcrowded workhouses were sick and died within a few months. The cost to governments could be staggering. Great Britain witnessed a 60% rise in the cost of its workhouses in the period 1760 to 1785. Even American cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia sponsored similar institutions in the later 18th century to deal with the problem of the growing number of urban poor.5
The cities on the eve of industrialization remained dangerous, filthy, and experienced to a lesser degree the social woes that would attract efforts for reform in the nineteenth century. As the number of physicians grew, they found themselves having not only to convince a skeptical public of their value but also to fend off the likes of blood-letters, midwives, and charlatans who advocated unscientific remedies to a variety of ailments. Professional societies, government sponsored licensing, and widespread vaccination did not occur until the late 18th century. Thus, city dwellers, particularly the lower classes, continued to die in large numbers from following unsanitary practices, wearing dirty clothes, constant exposure to human and animal excrement, taking home remedies, and not understanding the basic health benefits of cleanliness. Bathing, for example, actually declined until after the Industrial Revolution began. Public baths were viewed as sources of disease, and private bathing was associated with making contact with impure water. Even the upper classes refrained from bathing for a great part of the 18th century, choosing instead to change bed linen and clothes and use cosmetics to mask the horrific stench and smell of daily living. Death therefore was always at the doorstep as influenza, typhus, smallpox, and dysentery continued to take their toll on the population throughout the 18th century.
World History
