Industrial Revolution in Great Britain

The Industrial Revolution was a period of time that made huge impact on the rest of the world. New machinery, new practices, and new social classes emerged during this period. It started in Great Britain and there are several factors that contributed to it. Diseases started to emerge on this country because of the bad working conditions workers had to face on industries. Diseases spread, and because of this the health of the citizens was affected. The purpose of this blog is to show the major impact diseases had during this revolution, including its causes and effects.

Factors that contributed industrialization

Several factor contributed Great Britain’s industrialization. The following are factors related with industrialization taking place in Great Britain.

• Agricultural Revolution changed agricultural practices.
• The population grew. Peasants moved to towns, creating labor supply for factories.
• Entrepreneurs found new ways to make profits.
• Natural resources were plentiful in Britain.
• Markets gave British manufacturers a ready outlet for their goods.

*Urbanization occurred in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. There was an increase of population in the cities and agricultural jobs became less important.

Contributions to the Industrial Revolution

Some of the most important inventions or events that occurred during industrialization are the following:

• Agricultural Revolution (event)
• Cotton Gin
• Steam Engine
  

• • Cause	Invention or event	Effect
    Removal of seeds from cotton fibers was a complex work to do with the bare hands.	Cotton Gin was invented by Eli Whitney.	Growth in production of cotton. More land was devoted for cotton production. Increase in textile industry. Increase of slavery.
    Goods were manufactured by people and very slow.	Steam Engine was invented by James Watt.	Mass production of goods in factories. Used for mining, shipping, and spinning mills. Commonly used in factories.
    Abundance of agricultural technologies (change in agricultural practices). Expansion of farmland.	Agricultural Revolution	More agricultural productivity. Urbanization. Industrialization.

Timeline of the Industrial Revolution

1760s: Steam engine was improved.

1764: Spinning jenny was invented.
1793: Cotton gin was invented.

1780: Process of industrialization in Great Britain emerges.

Better iron quality.

1782: Steam power used to spin and weave cotton.

1787:Water powered-loom was introduced by Edmund Cartwright.
1833: Factory Act
Cause: Bad working conditions in factories, including for children.

1840: Great Britain

1850: Railroads crossed much of the country.

Great Britain becomes the world's first industrial nation.
Great Britain’s population had almost doubled.

The new inventions were more efficient as earlier practices. Now these were used in factories.

The map below shows the industrialization taking process through Europe:

Diseases

Diseases also had a major impact on Great Britain, since the use of machinery was a drastic change. The process of industrialization led to diseases, as typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, scrofula, among others. These diseases were the cause of many deaths during the Industrial Revolution. As the cities became more populated, the problem became worse.

Typhoid		Causes	Effects
It is contracted from contaminated food and drinking water, and from infected shellfish taken from sewage-contaminated sea and river waters.	Social	Cities were growing and so was the population, people often drank water from the rivers, and industries were contaminating the whole environment.	A lot of people died, but also people got more resistant to those diseases after some time and there were now ways of treating typhoid and other diseases.
	Political	The political leaders didn’t take care of the healthy problems in the factories and they allowed owners to keep them in bad conditions and factories were polluting the environment.	By 1840s there were some changes in legislations and new laws were made to make the companies and factories more conscious about the environment and regulate themselves to pollute less.
	Economical	As the economy was growing better for the more advanced nations, they kept using resources without control and making new factories to increase their production and income, so more factories were made and there was more pollution making more people get sick and so on.	Companies were asked to make changes in their filtration and storage techniques. Industries moved to more rural areas. Economy kept getting better, but not as much as in the beginning.

Cholera		Causes	Effects
It is contracted from contaminated food and water containing the “Vibrio Cholerae”	Social	People used rivers as a source of drinking water, so the disease spread with ease; factories of all kinds used water energy and contaminated rivers.	Epidemics like the ones of 1831-1832 and 1848-1849 that broke out in Great Britain, usually affecting more poor areas, were a lot of people died.
	Political	They saw the economy as a way to obtaining more power in their countries and prevail more in power, so they didn’t care of the contamination they were creating.	They made some little changes in constitutions and legislations, so companies took more care of the environmental factor.
	Economical	Factories were allowed to throw stuff like sewage to the rivers, so they contaminated the water. This was allowed because people’s only concern was economy and not nature.	The economy remained almost the same; the only thing that change was that the factories make changes in their infrastructure, so they harmed less the environment than before.

In this cartoon we can see that "Death" is dispensing the water, infected with cholera.

“It’s symbolizing that in drinking the water they were basically drinking death (as the cartoon says it’s “Death’s Dispensary”. The pumps were dispensing death), and that they were doing it naively. Even if they did know though, it’s not like they actually had much of a choice.”
“this cartoon suggests that the water being pumped would have some drastic effect on the people that drink it practically to do with life and death, but the people wouldn’t know it.”
“The cartoon suggests that the water was passing out diseases that would kill people. That is the reason why Death is pumping the water out.”

Conclusion

During the period of Industrial Revolution diseases spread easily because of the contamination that industries were creating and because there was a bigger concentration of people in the cities, so the diseases passed easily from one person to the another. The most common way of getting sick was drinking the water from rivers, because factories didn’t care about the contamination during that period, the only thing that mattered for them was the economy and making profit. It was until 1840s and 1850s that there was starting to be a change in the politics forcing the industries to improve their infrastructure and their filtration and storage techniques to keep cleaner the environment.

Bibliography

«Industrial Revolution.» 13 de 10 de 2009. Cholera| Industrial Revolution. 01 de 04 de 2013 <http://industrialrevolution.wordpress.com/category/cholera/>.

«Saburchill.» s.f. Industrial Revolution: Urban conditions. 01 de 04 de 2013 <http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/039a.html>.

School History. «School History.» s.f. Disease during the Industrial Revolution. 01 de 04 de 2013 <http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/IndustrialRevolution/disease.htm#.UXdLgKJTCSo>.


Trueman, Chris. «History Learning Site.» s.f. Diseases in Industrial cities in Industrial Revolution. 01 de 04 de 2013 <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/diseases_industrial_revolution.htm>.