Unit 12 - Public Health - Task 1

During the 1800’s the overall health of the public was extremely poor, children and babies were dying in their thousands, and adults would work in the most horrific of conditions. Families of 8 or 9 would live in 1 room where they all slept, ate and washed if they had the water to, the sewage was all over the place as there was no proper sewage lines, People had to bath in the same water they urinated in, they also had to drink this dirty water as it was the only water they had access to. The working conditions were even worse as some people had to work in bare feet when there was sewage covering their toes, there was no health and safety regulation acts so people would have accidents every day and they would breathe in the most dangerous chemicals while working in large factories such as the cotton factory. Children as young as 8 were in work to earn clothes and food for themselves and to have a bed to sleep in at night instead of the waste covered floor. Most families were sent to a work house where they worked 12-14 hour shifts in order to gain clothes, food and a bed to sleep in for the night. The families would be separated into men, women and children and they would work in different areas of the factory doing different jobs such as splitting ropes or breaking rocks, while living in the workhouse each family that were separated would have no access to their family members and birthdays weren’t even thought about because no births and deaths were recorded so the mothers and fathers would forget when they had their child and the child would be too young to know the date of its birthday. Most people would have died in the workhouse because they would be worked hard every day and some people would have accidents with the machinery and as there was no medical services the people would die of loss of blood or their wounds would get infected and they would have died of an infectious disease. As there was no medical service random women who had no training or have