This short piece of writing will be describing and explaining why and how the living and working conditions were so appalling in 19th century Bradford.
A quote from the poet George Weerth in 1842 gives a graphic idea of what life was like in Bradford 19th century. He gives quite a detailed verse saying in one part that ‘you think you have been lodged with the devil incarnate’ (Bradford health-General, no date) this gives the impression that he would rather be residing or is the same as hell because of the immense disease and vile stench. He compares Bradford to Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester. The reason for these horrendous conditions was the adaptation of industrialisation and urbanisation. Industrialisation was when people moved to the cities, and machines produced things instead of by hand. When industry started to adapt, Bradford started to become worse, in 1800 Bradford had 1 spinning mill 50 years later it had 129 mills. This huge growth in industry and population had some catastrophic effects on Bradford. In 1769 the waterframe was invented, it was powered by water but, it was not a very good machine as with water there are floods, droughts, and foul smells from rivers. One of the main problems came when the use of steam came into force, as coal mills sprang up extremely fast, this transformed human relationships (capitalism).
Many of the factories were dominated by women and children, as women were easily controlled and received less than a quarter of the wages that males received. In 1830 in John Woods spinning mill (which was the biggest spinning mill in Bradford) had 528 workers, 489 were women and 38 men. As the industry expanded, even more the openings of wool houses and dye houses came, later then came more shops and houses, they were built anywhere and everywhere. These houses were one up and one down, had no kitchen, no water and no toilet. People bought water privately in