Download THE DIFFERENCE OF CONDITIONS IN BRADFORD AND SALTAIRE

THE DIFFERENCE OF CONDITIONS IN BRADFORD AND SALTAIRE
INCREASING POPULATION
The living conditions of Bradford in the 18th century were
not exactly what you would call healthy. The population
suddenly, without warning increased. The number of
marriages dropped from 27 to 20. Jobs for children
(aged maybe 7 and onwards) became available in the
new factories and so people became less and less
worried about feeding their families. People began to
move into towns to work in the newly machined
industries.
PROBLEMS IN THE TOWNS
The increase of people in the towns became a steady
supply of workers for the new factories but also became
a problem.
HOUSING
Factory owners built houses for their workers to live in.
They wanted to provide reasonable housing for their
workers but didn’t want to spend much money. What
they did build had no gardens, very few windows. The
rooms were very small and since families were often
large the conditions were cramped.
SANITATION
Very few of the built houses had running water. People
had to fetch their water from a pipe from the end of their
street. There were no toilets and it was not uncommon
for the street to share one toilet. There would be 2-300
people at least to share one toilet. The toilet would not
be like the ones that flush, but would have a wooden
seat over a hole in the ground. This was called the ‘cess
pit’. From time to time men were employed to empty out
the pit with buckets but as the job was so horrid they did
it at night.
CHOLERA
Cholera was a disease that came spreading from India in
1830. More than half of those people who caught the
disease died. It had spread through the water that had
been contaminated by the germs of those who already
had the disease.
WOOL COMBERS
Wool combing was a dirty job in Bradford. Those who
had this job had to mainly work at home. Women and
children would go in the morning to work in the local mill
and return in the evening to a home full of thick fumes
and the unpleasant smell of oily wool. It was not really a
nice sight for the children or even the parents but this
happened everyday and so they would have been used
to it by now.
The workers wanted a pay rise and to get this they went
on strike. Doing this got them nowhere and the owners
reduced their wages until they were working half of their
normal wages.
In 1848, £2000 was allocated by Bradford City Council
to help wool combers emigrate because Samuel Lister
developed a machine that would comb the wool. His
machine cost £200 to make but sold for £1200 to mill
owners. The mill owners bought these machines and
thousands of mill owners were thrown out of work.
SALTAIRE
Salts mill was the first building to be built in Saltaire by
Titus Salt. It was the biggest mill in Bradford. Under only
one roof it had:- cotton, wool, silk and alpaca all waiting
to be turned into very expensive clothing. The mill was
officially opened on the 20th September 1853, Titus Salts
50th birthday. He held a huge party for 3,500 workers.
His workers had to travel 3 miles from Bradford to
Saltaire Mill so Salt began to build a village for them on
the other side of the railway line.
HOUSES IN SALTAIRE
Salt believed that good housing produced good workers.
Every one of his houses were well built , with a yard
outside and also a lavatory that was emptied regularly.
The workmen’s houses had a living room, kitchen and
upstairs 2 bedrooms. The houses of the supervisors had
a scullery, kitchen, living room, 3 bedrooms and a front
garden but the managers, designers and wool buyers
had the best houses.
Titus Salt had the streets named after members of his
family, for example: Albert Road, Ada Street and George
Street. By 1871 Salt had built 824 in which 4-500
workers lived.
WAGES
Salt paid good wages to his workers and did not lay off
his workers when the times were bad. His worsted wool
made good profits for him and a lot of people wanted to
work for him.
Titus Salt did not want anyone to copy his cloth because
it wasn’t easy to get regular supplies from South
America. So Salt and two of his trusted manufacturers
bought all the alpaca material when it came to England.
This meant that Salt could make all the expensive cloth
which rich people could afford.
Titus took some of his wool home to show his father and
was told not to buy any of it under any circumstances.
Titus had made a fortune by the mid 1840s and this was
because of mechanisation. One by one the process
which converted wool into worsted cloth was taken over
by big industrial machines. These machines weaved and
combed all the cloth and this meant that worsted could
be produced cheaply and could also be sold well and
quickly.
SPARE TIME
In their spare time workers would probably get lazy,
drunk and violent and because Titus knew this he
refused to allow pubs being built in Saltaire. He allowed
to have nursing homes, churches, schools and hospitals
being built but pubs were not on his list and not in his
head.
MANCHESTER
Manchester on the other hand had now been
transformed from a market town to a major industrial city.
The development of steam power and growth of factories
was the source for many people moving to Manchester.
They mainly moved for work but they also had to find
suitable living conditions, suitable work and this left
much to be desired. Not much attention was paid to the
safety in factories and many houses lacked sufficient
sanitation facilities. Manchester had now become the
obvious place to build textile factories. Large
warehouses had also been built to situate the spun yarn
and finished cloth. At this the towns population grew.
With Salford next door, Manchester had about 25,000
inhabitants by 1772 and by 19 this grew to 95,000
inhabitants.
Hira Zafar (9CMC/9Bronte)