Located in Lancashire, Manchester is a prime model of how the new industrial city attempted to cope with the conditions for its working classes. By 1830, Lancashire boasted 550 cotton textile factories employing more than 100,000 workers, of which a third were children, some as young as six years old. Children’s wages were nearly nonexistent, at times only one tenth that of adult workers. In the employers’ minds it made sense to hire as many young people as possible in order to have a larger return on their investment. Unscrupulous factory and mine owners placed harsh and dangerous demands on these young workers, such as crawling underneath unsafe equipment to loosen cotton that might impede operation of the equipment.
For the most part, Manchester workers lived near the factory or mine in the inner city, whereas the owners and other wealthy citizens might dwell in the suburbs in a more posh lifestyle. Workers homes were often built by the factory owner but normally they were small, of poor construction, and crammed with as many persons as possible. The houses were damp, and rainwater and moisture seeped through the thin walls. The only escape from these conditions might be in the basements of buildings, but even these cellars became residences for subtenants as the population grew. Mold was everywhere and contributed to the ill health of inhabitants. Privacy was nonexistent. People worked in shifts and shared beds. It was not unusual for a dozen persons to sleep in one room. Fresh water was not readily available. Perhaps up to 100 people might share the same privy or toilet, often a large, deep hole dug in the courtyard or a ‘‘midden’’ or heap against the wall. In one district of the city more than 7,000 persons shared 33 privies.28 Conditions were appalling at every turn. Streets became sewers and open drains and were often littered with animal and vegetable wastes, and the stench of such conditions was unbearable.
Manchester’s working classes often had a difficult time surviving. As late as 1889 a report based on interviews with working men stated that 40% of this group had irregular employment and that more than 60% could be described as very poor or having wages below the subsistence level. A main problem was the large number of workers who performed casual and seasonal labor. The majority of workers in these categories were warehousemen, general laborers, and transport men. Manchester also had a high percentage of immigrant labor. By the mid-19th century at least 15% of the city’s population was Irish, with some of the poorer sections having nearly half. Italians also migrated to Manchester. One area of the city was known as ‘‘Little Italy.’’ The residents there formed the largest portion of the city’s casual work force— street vendors, construction workers, and domestic servants—laboring long hours in good times but being the first laid off when economic conditions deteriorated.
Besides the hygiene problems found in the workers living areas, other poor health conditions existed in the early history of industrial Manchester. The workers burnt coal to stay warm, and the smoke from these domestic fires combined with the belching smoke from factory chimneys to create a stagnant air mass, which in turn resulted in acid rain. A plethora of respiratory illnesses often swept over the city— bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia. The elimination of sewage did not make great strides until later in the 19th century. The communal cesspits and ash pits often overflowed and ran freely during rainy periods. City regulations required that these pits be emptied and the contents carted away, but the task was so overwhelming that it was infrequently accomplished. There were numerous accounts of middens overflowing into the basements where people resided, and little effort was made to resolve the problem. Even after the turn of the 20th century, Manchester had only about one third of its privies as water closets, and those that existed prior to that date ran directly into the river system used to obtain drinking water, often resulting in summer outbreaks of cholera (many decades after London’s ‘‘Great Stink’’). Contemporary observers noted that the height and weight of middle-class family members was visibly greater than the scrawny and thinner bodies of the working class. While not necessarily the norm, as late as the 1870s the life expectancy of some working men might be as little as 17 years. These same observers lamented that such less than desirable living conditions ultimately led many poor people to seek outlets such as crime, prostitution, drunkenness, and sexual misconduct.
Manchester officials did not totally ignore these obvious ills that plagued the city. More hospitals opened their doors after 1850 and approaches, such as isolation, attempted to eliminate the more serious infectious diseases such as small pox and scarlet fever that had particularly ravaged the working classes. In the 1850s, Manchester initiated a sanitary commission devoted to public health and sanitary reform. A dedicated effort was made to educate the populace through the publication of pamphlets (although many of the poor people were illiterate) and the delivery of public lectures. Progress was slow, particularly in the city areas where the poor formed the heart of the population. Between the 1850s and the 1890s, more reservoir water became the norm for drinking purposes and the incidence of cholera and typhoid declined precipitously, although people often had to wait in long lines at street standpipes to obtain fresh water. Tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments continued to be a serious health problem into the 20th century, as no adequate air filtration systems appeared in the factories until much later. A high infant mortality rate persisted, and the chief cause of death in young children was diarrhea caused by the slow transition to better sanitation facilities and poor diet. The initial sewer systems appeared in the late 1860s, when the city’s first appointed medical officer closed most of the cellar residences and established public bath houses. In addition, new housing standards appeared that mandated a certain number of windows for ventilation and attempted to create litter-free backyards and alleys. The city provided funds to overhaul 500 poor dwellings a year between the years 1885 and 1900, and that number grew to 2000 annually afterwards. By 1900 Manchester, long considered the black spot of British urban and industrial life, finally began to shed that negative label.29
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