If one of the 102 people recorded in the 1911 Census as 100 years of age had been asked to identify some of the most striking changes in the course of their lifetime, then almost certainly several fundamental changes to the physical appearance of British towns would have come to mind immediately.
Towns and cities had expanded enormously; in terms of the sheer scale and extent, the changes to the built environment were profound. More specifically, striking new developments to the physical fabric of nineteenth century cities included:
If in county and cathedral towns the buildings used for ecclesiastical,
judicial and administrative purposes provided a measure of continuity in the
physical fabric, the new towns and cities of industrialising
The chimneys, spires, smoke-stained buildings, middle class suburbia, civic centres, canal wharves, docks, warehouses and railway sidings in unique combinations produced an urban texture, a built environment, which was distinctively different in style and scale to the skyline a century earlier.
In simple schematic terms, this is shown in the pre 1830 or pre-industrial city, which often developed around cross-roads, or in conjunction with prominent thoroughfares, to give access to workshops and traders' premises. The limited spatial extent of the pre-industrial city meant that though differentiated, sometimes vertically, elite addresses and low-status areas were never far apart. An embryonic middle class area might be apparent, and might be termed sub-urban in that though identifiably different, it was functionally connected with the principal urban area.
By about 1900, the specialisation of land use had
produced identifiably zoned areas. Consolidated suburban developments, often
linked to the city centre by tram, and in
The process of zoning, of developing physically and
spatially distinctive areas within nineteenth century cities was not
instantaneous but evolutionary. Based on
The 'housing shortage' was not something new. Engels claimed that 'all oppressed classes in all periods suffer more or less uniformly from it.' However, several factors coincided at the end of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth centuries to intensify the housing problem. Specifically these were:
Urban population growth was often dramatic in the nineteenth century, but
was particularly so in the fifty years before official registration of births,
deaths and marriages began in England and Wales in 1837 (Scotland 1855). In
each of the decades between 1800 and 1850, the urban population increase was
approximately 25%, often double the national rate (see table below: Indices
of population growth in
Two-thirds of the twelve largest cities in 1871 had experienced their most
rapid acceleration in the 1820s.
West Individual towns experienced some spectacular increases, for example,
seven parishes in
Urban population increase in the three decades of the 1800s, 1810s and 1820s was more than the total urban population in 1801. The excess of the number of families over the number of houses more than doubled between 1801 and 1871. Inevitably, then this led to:
Absorption of this population influx was generally within a confined area.
Commons and pasture land often encircled and constrained the physical extension
of British towns in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Customary and private property rights could not easily be removed, and
enclosure was often resisted. For example, in 18th century
Simultaneously, new streets (Burgess,
In physical terms this led to more intensive use of existing building plots. Teasdale's yard, Alnwick, 1774-1864 was not untypical. Similarly, court housing sought to maximise the 'plot loading', that is the proportion of the site which was built up. The higher the loading, the more rent that could be obtained from it. From a main street frontage, buildings were added in sequence along the boundaries of the plot, and with neighbours doing the same on their land, back-to-back housing was created.
Eliminating streets and reducing access to courts by narrow
alleys, achieved much the same effect as by building courts. Ashpits and privies were shared. Even
where a landowner sought to impose a well-planned and relatively spacious
layout to an estate this was often constrained by market forces, and resulted
in infilling and high building densities, as with the Eyre estates in
In
Cellars were dark and damp. Sometimes built as basements with habitation in
mind, others were constructed from the footings or foundations of buildings.
Typically with a maximum ceiling height of 6ft, and a floor area of 12ft x12ft,
these provided very congested, disease ridden space. In some towns and cities
they were relatively scarce; in others, such as
Ethnic and religious networks, often associated with the Irish migrations
before and after the Famine (1845-54), and Jewish migrations both in its early
phases, and after 1880, were each conspicuous cases where lodgers intensified
the overcrowding in central districts. But the indigenous English, Welsh
migrants to Merseyside, Highland Scots in west of
Migrants provided useful scapegoats for the environmental ills of early
nineteenth century
Immigrants were, indeed, part of the problem of a deteriorating built
environment. But contemporaries focused on the symptoms, not the causes of slum
life. Congestion and overcrowding in the central districts of towns and cities
throughout
Housing in close proximity to work
The informal or casual nature of hiring in the nineteenth century was crucial to the development of slums. For men, portering, messengering, carting, street selling and general labouring were major areas of irregular employment, for which engagement was customarily by the day, or even the half-day. Housing in close proximity to work opportunities was thus a crucial consideration for many, and thus contributed to greater densities of inhabitants. More specifically, the docks, building trades, gas industry, shoe and clothing trades, coal distribution and confectionery offered periods of intense seasonal activity followed by extended bouts of under or unemployment. For women, the rag trade particularly, but also box, broom, shoe and comb-making were subject to seasonal interruptions.
Mayhew estimated that for the 1840s and 1850s two thirds of Londoners were either irregularly employed or unemployed. Incomes interrupted by such periods of occasional employment necessarily meant that the lowest common denominator of affordable housing throughout the year formed the basis of a rent agreement, with fewer or more lodgers according to whether the household income needed topping up.
Real wages or earnings did not improve significantly in the early decades of
the nineteenth century. Indeed, even the most optimistic recent calculations
confine real wage advances for men to the years after 1827, years when the pace
of urban expansion was already well-established, and when rising rentals, perhaps
by as much as 33% in
The endemic nature of poverty - as reflected by investigations in the 1830s
to contain public expenditure on the relief of the poor, or in the 1890s when
Booth and Rowntree showed 30.7% of London's
population and 27.8% of York's population lived in poverty - was a central
cause of overcrowding, insanitary housing and environmental degradation in
British cities. The relationship between poverty and the urban environment can
be understood with reference to the nature of slum life in
Weak demand for housing impaired the quality provided. But a weak code of building regulations compounded the problem of defective housing supply. The existence of the London Building Act 1774, or of those for Liverpool in 1825, 1839 and 1842, or indeed of the 400 local Improvement Acts passed between 1800 and 1845 affecting 208 English and Welsh towns was an indication that building control was required urgently in the face of rapid physical expansion. However, these provisions applied only to new housing, not to existing properties, and ran into problems of weak monitoring, lax drafting and legal wrangles over their applicability to certain parts of the boroughs.
The introduction of effective building byelaws was deferred because:
The introduction of building byelaws reinforced a tendency
to produce geometrical patterns - mainly straight lines of terraced housing -
in nineteenth century towns and cities. Laying water and gas pipes, and
landowners' desire to maximise the number of plots available for development
were forces in the same direction, but building regulations encouraged this
further by requiring conformity to street widths, sewer connections, and the
absence of projections on to the pavement. Terraced houses in straight streets
became a central characteristic of the nineteenth century urban environment.
Individual estates such as the
In the policy vacuum concerning standards of construction in the first half of the nineteenth century, the building industry itself contributed to the 'housing problem'. Modest levels of start-up capital and the small scale nature of building meant almost anybody could style themselves as a 'builder', and though many who did had completed apprenticeships in related trades, as masons, carpenters, plumbers, or glaziers, for example, they often had very limited experience of the sub-contracting and financial requirements of more ambitious housebuilding projects. Accordingly the building industry, was dominated by small sized firms and perhaps more than any other was particularly prone to bouts of bankruptcy. This instability eroded builders' confidence, and with their imprecise assessments of demographic and income influences on housing demand, the building industry had a not inconsiderable impact on the buoyancy of the local economy. Even in the second half of the nineteenth century such housebuilding fluctuations were very pronounced.
Organisational changes within the building industry also
affected the nature of the built environment. From the 1790s, the emergence of
general contractors became more numerous. These were larger firms with a
permanent workforce, and though they did not replace immediately the former
reliance on a master craftsmen or master builder, by the 1820s and 1830s they
had become an established feature of the building industry in
What distinguished these general contractors was that to cover the overheads and wages of a permanent workforce, they constantly built houses, in anticipation of demand. The presence of an increasingly speculative element introduced a more dynamic mode of organisation, analogous to factory production, and jeopardised that element of stability which craft producers had provided, replacing it with more aggressive competition, cost-cutting, and the prospect of large numbers of unsold houses. Risk and uncertainty became endemic features of building supply.
Housing quality suffered in this volatile business climate. Builders skimped to maximise profits, paid low wages and obtained sub-standard work and shoddy materials. There were no inspections, no appeals to industry watchdogs, and until late in the century, no minimum standards. The widespread use by the 1830s of the pejorative term 'jerry-builder', denoting the temporary nature of many working class dwellings, was an explicit acknowledgement that the builders themselves contributed directly to the creation of a built environment which was storing up problems for future generations.
The origins of sanitary reform may be traced to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but the number and nature of investigations in the 10 year period 1834-1844 added a further impetus. In turn, the poor law enquiry in 1832 with its report in 1834, the emergence of a systematic approach to recording the causes of death (as well as the number of births and marriages) in 1837, the sanitary enquiries of Drs. Kay, Arnott and Southwood Smith in London in 1838, the Select Committee on the Health of Towns (1840) and a Royal Commission Inquiring into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts (1844), and the publication of a widely-distributed official report by Edwin Chadwick in 1842 into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (with a supplement on burials in towns published in 1843) each produced quantities of evidence which established a link between the sanitary conditions of housing and levels of mortality.
Gradually, unevenly, and somewhat reluctantly this produced an acceptance by
the state in the Public Health Act 1848 for a measure of responsibility to
safeguard the health of the nation. It was not a coincidence therefore, that
embryonic building regulations and local improvement acts were presented to
parliament during the 1840s and 1850s in increasing numbers as towns and cities
sought to obtain local powers to restrict environmental damage. Directly and
indirectly, the accretion of public health enquiries and reports, such as the
informative ones by Joseph Dare in
Chadwick's Report in 1842 was established on four central principles which revealed much about contemporary and subsequent thinking about the urban environment.
Health depended to a considerable degree upon geography - life expectancy of
a person who lived in the country was contrasted with
|
Average age at death according to location and social class 1 |
|||
|
Location |
Gentry |
Tradesmen |
Labourers |
|
|
35 |
22 |
15 |
|
Bethnal Green |
45 |
26 |
16 |
|
|
38 |
20 |
17 |
|
|
34 |
23 |
18 |
|
|
44 |
27 |
19 |
|
|
49 |
38 |
21 |
|
|
40 |
33 |
28 |
|
|
52 |
41 |
38 |
It would be simplistic to argue that the cholera epidemic of 1831-32, or a new statistical awareness, or a new generation of councillors in the wake of the reform of municipal government after 1835 prompted changes in public health provisions. Probably it was an amalgam of these and other factors. Though the Public Health Act 1848 created a Central Board of Health which survived only until 1854 amid personal opposition to Chadwick and local council antagonisms to central government, it reflected a widespread acceptance that the previous uncontrolled development of the built environment could not be tolerated in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, as Joseph Dare's Annual Reports of the Leicester Domestic Mission, 1846-77 make clear, the environmental problems which resulted from decades of neglect could not be reversed in a matter of a few years.
The Chadwick Report established the precepts upon which approaches to dealing with the urban environment, specifically housing, were subsequently constructed. Epidemic and endemic disease was 'caused or aggravated or propagated chiefly amongst the labouring classes by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings.' That these could be counteracted by 'drainage, proper cleansing, better ventilation' informed approaches to slum clearance, building standards, housing reform and park provision as space and light became important objectives in public policy during the second half of the nineteenth century.
The arrival of railways in towns and cities in the 1830s and 1840s produced an urgent need for city centre access. Passenger revenues produced over 60% of all income in the 1840s for the major railway companies. Shared termini worked harmoniously in Birmingham and Liverpool, largely because of interlocking directorships in the firms concerned, but companies generally were loath to surrender their corporate identity, and also their operational autonomy.
Competition for access produced several effects on the built environment. These included:
In general, the main physical impact of railways on the heart of the city centre and upon the Victorian property market was over by 1870. The land claims and facilities staked between 1840-70 were sufficient to enable railway companies to expand their business without recourse to further significant bouts of land acquisition before 1900.
With the acquisition by railway companies of 5-9% of the central area by
1914, any beneficial effects of demolishing insanitary slum housing were more
than offset by the impact of rising land prices and reduced proximity to work available
to urban working classes in Victorian cities. The acquisition of splendid glass
and wrought iron railway stations such as St. Pancras,
In Georgian Britain, new areas of pleasant housing adjacent to the city centre were created in most towns for an upper-middle and middle class - Rodney Street and Abercromby Square in Liverpool, New Walk in Leicester, the Blythswood estate in central Glasgow, and the New Town in Edinburgh are typical of examples to be found in many British cities. The numerous Regent Roads, Terraces and Crescents, in British towns and cities are witness to this distinctive phase of building.
While their proximity and exclusivity offered initial advantages, this, too, was the weakness of middle and upper-middle class residential developments since these areas were soon leap-frogged by less salubrious housing developments. For example, Everton (Liverpool), an early nineteenth century exclusive suburb, was overwhelmed in the 1840s by terraced housing for manual workers; the Gorbals (Glasgow) experienced a similar loss of social status, though at a slightly later date. As a result, middle class suburban developments c.1815-50 were consciously developed to provide a physical environment insulated from the developing public health and related problems of the rapidly expanding cities.
This was achieved by:
The process of suburbanisation was based also on a mentality or behavioural code which emphasised domestic privacy, sexual propriety, class or social distinctions, and standards of civility, sobriety, thrift and cleanliness. These 'Victorian values' owed much to the discipline urged by the church, schools, and institutions such as the poor law and hospitals, and to the increasing separation of spheres - the distancing of family and home from work. Reinforcing these distinctions in physical space was the material wealth of a middle class both more powerful and numerous as a result of economic growth. Thus suburbanisation was not simply about housing and the physical extension of the city; it was about a value system which strengthened middle class social cohesion. The suburb was a spatial device which inoculated the middle classes against the hazards of the city without requiring them to relinquish political control over it.
So the elements of social and residential segregation were already evident by mid-century. As maps of Liverpool in 1848 show, the areas of poorest quality housing and social deprivation in the central districts, and the more spacious Bedford Square area in the angle contained by Crown Street and Upper Parliament Street were already evident, as was specialised and zoned land use. By mid-century, the combined effect of unprecedented population growth and urban expansion, low wages, and pressure on city centre space from railways and commercial interests, together with the supply side influences associated with the building industry, produced environmental hazards which went beyond some vague limits of acceptability to an increasingly powerful urban middle class.
To view suburbs simply as a direct and inevitable consequence of congested slum housing would be mistaken. They were the product of other complex forces - of changing values regarding privacy and domesticity, and of changing preferences for material comfort. Residential segregation was therefore taking place from the beginning of the nineteenth century for independent reasons, though the direction of one development reinforced the direction of the other - the intensification of slums reinforced the move to the suburbs, and the move to the suburbs reinforced the problems of the central districts. These individual housing decisions characterised the first half of the nineteenth century; what happened in the second half of the century was that the apparatus of the town council was mobilised to address the problems of the slums from the perspective of the suburbs.
1 - General Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Classes of Great Britain, 1842, p.153