Industrial Britain 1745–1901

About five times

HintWork with an easy total: start with 100 people, then say what the same country looks like when it holds 200.

The whyStart with 100 people, 20 of them in towns. Fifty years later there are 200 people and 100 in towns: five times as many town dwellers, though the country itself has only doubled. That is why Manchester, Leeds and Bradford ran out of housing, clean water and sewers so quickly — the urban share and the total were climbing at once.

coal

HintThe black rock that burns far hotter than wood, and Britain had plenty of it near the surface.

The whyCheap, plentiful fuel is a large part of why the change started here. Steam engines, iron smelting and gas lighting all depended on it, and canals then railways moved it cheaply.

James Watt

HintA unit of power is named after him, and he went into business with Matthew Boulton in Birmingham.

The whyHis separate condenser stopped the cylinder being cooled and reheated on every stroke, which cut fuel use dramatically and made the engine practical for factories.

Steam engines did not need flowing water

HintThe old mills had to sit where a fast current turned their wheel; the new machines carried their own source of motion.

The whyOnce power came from burning fuel, factories could cluster near the coalfields and near workers instead of on riverbanks. That is why Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield grew so fast.

Cholera

HintIt spread through sewage-tainted drinking supplies, and John Snow traced one outbreak to a Soho pump.

The whySnow mapped the deaths and took his evidence to the St James's parish board, who ordered the Broad Street pump handle removed in September 1854. Almost nobody believed him: the General Board of Health still blamed bad air, and Snow died in 1858 with his theory rejected. What forced action was the Great Stink of that same summer, when the reeking Thames drove MPs to fund Joseph Bazalgette's London sewers in weeks. The water-borne explanation was only widely accepted after a further outbreak in east London in 1866.

The 1833 Factory Act

HintIt banned under-nines from textile mills and, crucially, sent paid inspectors round to check.

The whyIt capped 9 to 13 year olds at 48 hours a week and required two hours of schooling a day. Earlier laws had said similar things but had nobody to enforce them.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway

HintIt linked a great port to the cotton town it served, and Stephenson's Rocket won the trials to run on it.

The whyWithin twenty years Britain had thousands of miles of track. Railways forced towns onto one national clock, carried fresh milk and fish into the cities, and invented the day trip.

It treated them as property rather than as people

HintAsk which column of the ledger a life was written into, and what else sat in that column.

The whyThe Zong case of 1783 turned on exactly this. The ship's owners claimed insurance for around 130 enslaved Africans thrown overboard in 1781, and the English court heard the matter as a dispute over lost cargo rather than as a killing. Reports of the hearing gave the abolition campaign one of its sharpest arguments.

1807

HintIt ended the buying and shipping of enslaved people, but slavery itself stayed legal in the colonies for another twenty-seven years.

The whyThe Slavery Abolition Act was passed in August 1833 and came into force on 1 August 1834 across most of the empire. Even then freedom was not immediate: enslaved people aged six and over became apprentices still bound to the same estates until 1838. Caribbean rebellions and Black British campaigners such as Equiano mattered as much as Wilberforce in Parliament.

The East India Company

HintA private trading business with its own army, which began by buying cloth and spices and ended up ruling millions.

The whyA commercial firm holding tax powers and soldiers is one of the strangest facts of empire. After the rebellion of 1857 the British government took over directly, beginning the period called the Raj.

Peterloo

HintJournalists coined it by joining the name of the field to a famous battle four years earlier.

The whyCavalry charged a crowd of around 60,000 at St Peter's Field and about eighteen people died. The bitter nickname mocked Waterloo: soldiers charging their own people rather than an enemy.

About one in five

HintThe Act moved seats to the new cities but kept a property qualification, so most working men were still shut out.

The whyFurther Acts in 1867 and 1884 widened it again, yet no woman could vote in a general election until 1918. Every extension had to be argued and campaigned for.