Urbanizzazione

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Inglese
Download:	123
Data:	02.07.2007
Numero di pagine:	1
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

The growth of towns: in 1851 more than half of britain’s inhabitants were living in towns.The new industrial cities were Glasgow,Manchester,Liverpool;but nevertheless De Tocqueville in 1835 described Manchester like “a filthy sewer” but from its “pure gold flows”.This cities attracted the poor and the unemployed (in this period there was agricultural decline),because they offered the change of work to the poor,for young people a large choice of husband and wife;to criminal,anonymity, for all people they offered independence and adventure. Poverty: the poor were over 120000 and they were domestic servant that worked 80-hour weeks for only one halfpence per hour.More young woman between 15 and 22 years old were prostitutes.Somebody collected dog excrement to sell to leather tanners.or they were the “mudlarks”and walked barefoot into the Thames to find wood or coal. Slums: the poor lived near the city centres because hadn’t got means of transport.Their houses were decayed and often in one room lived two or even families, and there wasn’t sanitation or water. In winter these rooms were freezing and dark , the floors “filled with puddles of water and liquid filth”. In summer the houses were like ovens and “the stench from the ash pits became unbearable”. For that more people prefered slept on the flags out the houses. Lodging houses: however this houses were better than the “low lodging houses” .Here slept the homeless for a penny or two. They slept on a heap of dirty straw.