Slums In 19th Century Essay

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Slums are squalid and overcrowded urban streets or districts inhabited by very poor people. All slums have different living conditions. Housing in slums is built on land that the occupant does not have legal ownership to and without any urban planning or obedience to zoning control. In slums, misconduct and bankruptcy are high. These settlements lack water, sanitation, garbage systems, storm drainage, street lighting, paved sidewalks, and roads for emergency access.
In a typical slum within Victorian London, there was overcrowding in which people lived in the worst conditions imaginable. The air smelled gruesome from coal-fired stoves and there was hardly any sanitation. Large amounts of rubbish were dumped into the Thames River, which added …show more content…

Manchester quickly became the textile capital of the world, which attracted many immigrants to come to the city. Many immigrants were destitute farmers from Ireland that were evicted from their land by their English landlords. Throughout Liverpool and Manchester, about a quarter of the workers were Irish. Even though there was growth in wealth and industry urbanization, the working-class neighborhoods were bare, packed, and polluted (webs).
Bethnal Green and The Old Nichol were two other places in which slums were formed. Bethnal Green was a place with little manufacturing and run-down working-class housing. In the late nineteenth century, Bethnal Green became a place full of poverty and crowding. The Old Nichol, which was located between High Street, Shoreditch, and Bethnal Green, was known as the worst slum of the East End. (The Victorian Web).
What caused so many people to pile into cities was the number of people working on farmland was reduced because of advancements in farming, which caused people to move to the cities looking for jobs. Most cities were not ready for such an increase in population (History Learning). Therefore, people were forced to move to urban parts of the city and dwell