The following paper will argue that the industrial redevelopment of urban centers across Europe in the latter half of the 19th century led to housing shortages just when masses of rural migrants were pouring into cities. Lack of government regulation on residential housing combined with segregation by the wealthy citizens who abandoned the inner city residences for suburban homes, left the working class migrants only limited housing options which led to overcrowding and slum conditions. These processes and resulting circumstances forced the poor rural migrants streaming into these cities to endure traumatic experiences, physical hardships, and living conditions that brought a tremendous shortening to their life spans.
Similar to Fredrick Engels’s Manchester of 1844, described in detail in his publication The Conditions of the Working-Class in England, industrialization brought masses of rural migrants into the city and crowded together into tenement housing left by the wealthier citizens who had moved west to newly built suburbs (Lees & Lees, 2007). With little government regulation, urbanization via industrialization meant an assortment of ad-hoc market forces shaping the landscape of the city, and for the working class this meant residential segregation and inequality in the living spaces available to them (Lees & Lees, 2007).
Those who were forced to live close to their places of work in the new industrial cities faced tremendous physical hardships as they were forced to inhale pollutants from a variety of sources (Lees & Lees, 2007). The industrial plants filled their lungs with smoke, the streets teemed with bacteria from animal and human refuse, and the water from the rivers contained large quantities of chemicals dumped from the factories upstream (Lees & Lees, 2007). Because of all these factors, inhabitants of industrial cities had shortened life spans, with cities such as Glasgow showing 27 years old as an average age of death for males in 1843 (Lees & Lees, 2007).
All across Europe in the 19th century increasing urban populations were correlated with shortening life spans of the citizenry who dwelt there (Lees & Lees, 2007). It’s imperative to note, that not all urban dwellers faced these dire circumstances, as the more wealthy citizens could afford more space in their homes and better food and water from which to sustain their health (Lees & Lees, 2007). Further, it was only the working classes that had to expose their bodies to the extreme toll wrought upon them by the industrial plants (Lees & Lees, 2007). All of this allowed for the wealthier citizenry of Europe’s cities to far outlive the working classes who toiled away their lives in the factories of the bourgeoisie (Lees & Lees, 2007).
Beginning largely in the second half of the 19th century, the city of Paris was flooded by rural migrants looking for a job in the new industrial metropolis (Platt, 2010). This mass migration of people upon the city of Paris was met with hostility as the city was transforming into two segregated places (Platt, 2010). The inner city was being vacated by many of the well-to-do of Paris to the newly forming suburbs, leaving the poorer citizens behind who could not afford the transportation costs to commute to their workplaces within the city (Platt, 2010). The inner, older city was being remodeled by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann and in the process housing of the poorest citizens was being razed, displacing an estimated 350,000 inhabitants (Platt, 2010). This mass reduction of housing caused a surge in rental fees which forced many poor families to the outer eastern quadrants of Paris to either share accommodations in very cramped apartments or to live in the makeshift shantytowns being erected throughout Paris (Platt, 2010).
Along with Haussmann’s restructuring came a housing boom of slums in the form of poorly constructed lodging houses, prohibited subdivisions that lacked even basic infrastructure, and other various forms of shacks (Platt, 2010). These ill conceived and illegal structures were tucked away and out of view of the street facing façades of Haussmann’s newly reshaped Paris, and were stimulated in their growth by Louis Napoleon as he helped to steer capital into Parisian real estate as a financial asset, which helped once again to increase rents and decrease the quality of housing at the expense of the working class (Platt, 2010).
Haussmann’s urban restructuring had later shown to reduce health risks in affluent neighborhoods, though it was later known this was mostly due to the vast improvements and implementations of a citywide sewer system, his methods nonetheless helped to freeze any discussion of the housing shortage in Paris for nearly a century (Platt, 2010).
Disease stalked the great urbanizing industrial cities of Europe, killing both the rich and the poor, as the densely populated centers were perfect vectors for epidemics to break out and spread quickly throughout the population (Lees & Lees, 2007). But again, the poorer citizens fared worse as overcrowded rooming houses were especially hard hit from typhus, tuberculosis, and cholera during the 19th century (Lees & Lees, 2007).
It was in the middle of the 19th century that thoughts concerning the spread of disease were associated with the moral degradation and overall filth and vice of the working class as viewed by the wealthier citizens of urban centers (Green, 1995). With such rhetoric in hand, city officials took aim at the tenement slums built up throughout the burgeoning cities and razed them to the ground, thinking these acts would keep at bay the ravages wrought by the periodic epidemics that swept through the dense cities, taking with them large portions of the city’s population (Green, 1995).
This of course only made the situation worse for the struggling working classes as they now had even fewer choices of lodging with exceedingly more expensive rents due to decreases of supply brought about by the demolitions (Green, 1995). London, like so many other great industrial European cities during the 19th century, was no exception to this urban planning debacle (Green, 1995). Slum clearances and increasing migration of rural peasantry into London had an astounding effect on the growing densities of working class housing, which reached as high as 140 people in a single lodging house in the 1851 as recorded by a census enumerator, though typically between 50 and 100 lodgers were to be found (Green, 1995).
The new industrial era required ever increasing transport of goods between nations into the sprawling metropolis, and so roadways needed to be widened to accommodate the efficient passage of goods (Green, 1995). In both Paris and London this caused many to have to relocate, and with no other working class residential buildings replacing them, densities would further increase (Green, 1995).
The explosion of economic growth in London, which had drawn so many labourers from the countryside to its massive industrial workshops, was also responsible for the drop in housing stock available to the working classes as warehouses and railways were constructed over top of the least wealthy neighborhoods of London (Green, 1995). From the period of 1859 to 1867 alone 37,000 people were displaced from by the construction of railroads in London (Green, 1995).
The construction of docks was also a major source of reduced housing stock for London’s working classes, removing thousands of homes (Green, 1995). Another factor increasing rents was a change of residential function of urban housing stock to that of office suites (Kaelble, 1986). This phenomena of urbanization, occurring in London during the 19th century, helped to subtract the already low numbers of affordable housing available to the increasing numbers of working class residents (Kaelble, 1986).
Throughout all the demolitions and restructuring, the residences of the poor were continually targeted in the Eastern and Southern sections of London (Green, 1995). The Northern and Western areas of London contained wealthy landowners who were able to avoid all such construction due to their powerful political connections within the governing body of the city (Green, 1995).
Rents all over London rose as housing was demolished or converted to make way for industry’s needs, and the only new housing being constructed was on the periphery that could only be accessed by expensive transportation methods (Kaelble, 1986). Because of this the working class had to compete with ever growing multitudes from their own social class as well as those of middle class origin (Kaelble, 1986). The lack of affordable transit also helped to keep the working classes situated within the core of London, as the majority of industry was located there (Kaelble, 1986).
In conclusion, the changing form of industrializing urban centers in Europe into vast metropolises able to manufacture goods along with the importing and exporting of inputs and finished products that came went hand in hand with such enterprises came at a great cost to the working class. The housing stock of the inner city was greatly reduced in quantity by the railroads and warehouses that destroyed many houses to free up space for their construction, by the road widening within cities that would better facilitate that transport of goods, and by the razing of the tenement working class housing accused of harbouring disease as slums by the governing upper classes. The great reduction in housing stock brought great increases in land prices and spurred the creation and renovations of the leftover housing stock into poorly built and subdivided shantytowns. This was the housing forced upon the multitudes of rural migrants streaming into the industrial European metropolises, who had to live in very dense numbers because of the high rents and limited choice of accommodations within reach of their new jobs. This mass concentration of people in such cramped living quarters became a powerful vector for disease bringing death to many from cholera, tuberculosis and typhus. The wealthy upper classes left the misery of the inner city slums to take up residence in their newly built suburban homes, and with them went any concern by the governing powers of these great cities, who left the masses of working class men, women, and children to fend for themselves.
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