The Industrial Revolution: England

The Industrial Revolution: England

1700 / The Start

London is considered to be England’s largest cities and one of the two real cities in all of Europe, with a population of 750,000 people (1750).

England’s religion was Anglican (Church of England).

Other than that, England is mainly consists of rural villages with populations of 200-400 people. 75% of Englishmen lived in these types of villages.

People moved at a slow pace & had little access to information beyond the village.

Houses within these villages were small w/ earthen floors, poor lighting & ventilation.

Family operated as both a social unit and economical unit.

Home & work life were closely integrated, as most economic activity took place at/ close to home.

All household members, including young children, were required to arduously work throughout the entire day.

Sons and fathers farmed and tended to livestock livestock. Daughters and mothers cleaned, cooked, sewed, and performed other domestic chores. Very traditional.

Having enough land to farm food or to rent was the key to economic survival. There were even traditions specifically based on land which guided living.

Marriages were arranged by parents to maintain/ better the economic status of their children.

Men could wait until their 30s to marry, which is after they inherit land from their parents. If a woman had no land to offer, she had to leave dowry. Daughters had to pass land they inherited to their husbands.

All land was given to the primogeniture, the eldest son. Younger siblings would receive cash or wait for their brother to die.

Every village had a public area called the commons, which was available for growing crops, gathering firewood, hunting, pasturing etc. Poor farmers could depend on the commons to earn a marginal living.

Most English peasants/ farmers owned their own land.

Most people married and had babies before their 20s. Marriages tended to last for 15 years, since mothers would die during childbirth. Remarrying was common.

⅓ of babies died before turning one and ½ of children grew to be 21. Life expectancy was slightly over 40 years of age.

The English had a distinct social class system (not social/legal Estates).

Most English were poor farmers

There were few in the middle class, similar France’s bourgeoisie, who primarily lived in London.

There were rare aristocrats, who owned large tracts of land by the countryside.

Transportation was slow and trading was not easy due to the system of dirt roads the villages had in place.

Villagers don’t travel beyond 25 miles from their birthplace.

People made their own food, clothes, furniture, tools, & homes

Wandering peddlers came to sell & deliver news

There were two sources for fuel: firewood & coal

There was a coal mining operation in nearly all villages.

Coal pits belonged to the owner of the property where the coal mine is.

1745

No section of the country is over 90 miles from sea & there are many navigable rivers that crisscross through the countryside.

The Oxford Canal was built in 1745, which yielded a 300% annual return for its investors for over 30 years. The price of raw materials was then decreased because of this revolution in transportation. Coal was being transported from mines to towns for half the price of the previous horse wagon transportation.

Canal = A manmade channel of water that allows for easy transportation.

1750

Soap, diet, sanitation, etc causes England’s population to grow.

The Bubonic Plague has been eliminated due to disposal of sewage.

1760

New mechanical farming inventions and productive farming practices are developed, such as…

Jethro Tull’s (English agriculturalist) Seed Drill, planting seeds at equal distance and depth, covering it fully with soil. Farmers would not have to manually plant by hand anymore.

Crop Rotation, which is growing a different series of crops in one area.

New fertilizers & livestock breeding techniques were formed too.

Parliament, pressured by land owning farmers who want more land, to release a series of laws called the “Enclosure Acts”

This allowed landowners to buy common land from the government.

1773

Richard Arkwright (the first millionaire/ the father of the factory) invents the Water Frame, a new machine, runned by water, that spins cloth faster than what could be done in a farm cottage (the domestic system). The first textile factory (cloth producing factory) was thus created, power generated by water.

1774

Many poor families lost their jobs due to the Enclosure Acts and women cannot compete with the textile factories. As a result, these families are able to work at the factory.

The owners of the new factories are called “Capitalists,” for they had the money to purchase raw materials, building, the water frame, and to pay their workers a fixed wage to make a profit.

1780

The unemployed begin to move to communities riddled with factories to find work. Since housing is a popular demand, tenements are built