As the number of factories grew people from the countryside began to move into the towns looking for better paid work. The wages of a farm worker were very low and there were less jobs working on farms because of the invention and use of new machines.

Thousands of new workers were also needed to work machines in mills and foundries and the factory owners built houses for them.Cities filled to overflowing and London was particularly bad.

At the start of the 19th Century about 1/5 of Britain’s population lived there, but by 1851 half the population of the country had set up home in London. London, like most cities, was not prepared for this great increase in people. People lived in crowded houses. Rooms were rented to whole families or perhaps several families. If there was no rooms to rent, people stayed in lodging houses.

The Industrial Revolution concentrated labour into mills, factories and mines, facilitating the organisation of trade unions to help the interests of working people. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffer the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard to replace, and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining.