From Delancey Place, April 19:
Today's selection -- from This Mortal Coil by Andrew Doig. The Industrial Revolution, which transformed the world more than any phenomenon before or since, led to a population explosion, most of which happened first in Britain’s cities:
"Crowded cities have been hubs of disease from the start of civilisation. Access to clean water for drinking, cooking and washing, and disposal of human waste are particular problems for city dwellers reliant on rivers and rain. While water acquisition and disposal might be manageable for cities with populations of no more than a few tens of thousands, relying on natural watercourses could become hopelessly inadequate when city population densities and absolute numbers began to rise rapidly. Typhoid and typhus, in particular, became widespread when poor, undernourished people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were packed in slum housing in the first industrial cities."Britain was the first country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, transforming the country with steam power, machine tools in factories, and new methods to produce iron and chemicals. Britain thus stands as an excellent historical example of how premature death soared as a result of industrialisation, and how infectious diseases like typhus and typhoid were slowly brought under control. The problems that first arose in Britain often show up in other countries undergoing the same switch from an economy based on agriculture to one based on industry. The cities of Liverpool and Manchester in Lancashire are particularly informative as they became the most advanced manufacturing and port cities in the world in the first half of the nineteenth century.
"The first precise census in the UK was undertaken in 1801, recording data on the numbers of people, occupations, baptisms, marriages, burials and houses. The total population was 10,942,646, with 30 per cent living in towns and cities. Most people worked on the land, as they had always done, though dramatic changes in the ways they lived had already started to take place....
....MUCH MORE
