How did urban life change in the nineteenth century?

WWHILE HISTORIANS MAY DEBATE whether the overall social impact of industrialization was generally positive or negative, there is little doubt that rapid urban growth worsened long-standing overcrowding, pollution, and unhealthy living conditions, and posed a frightening challenge for society. Only the full-scale efforts of government leaders, city planners, reformers, scientists, and reform-minded citizens would tame the ferocious savagery of the industrial city.

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King CholeraThis 1852 drawing from Punch tells volumes about the unhealthy living conditions of the urban poor. In the foreground, children play with a dead rat and a woman scavenges a dung heap. Cheap rooming houses provide shelter for the frightfully overcrowded population. Such conditions and contaminated water spread deadly cholera epidemics throughout Europe in the 1800s. (© The British Library Board, P.P. 5270 vol 23, 139)