A Brief History Of Social Housing In England In The Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century towns and cities in England began to expand rapidly due to the growth of industrialisation on a grand scale. An expansion which had been bought on by the Industrial Revolution of the the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This explosion in labour intensive mass production and mining lead to a mass movement away from mainly agrarian cottage industry forms of employment for the working population to one of an urban industrial form of employment in the factories, mills and mines that were springing up all over the country. In growing towns and cities like Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow.

But as the urban populations began to raise so too did the problems associated with the poor quality of housing available to the workers. Apart from a couple of notable exceptions like Port Sunlight on Merseyside built for workers at the Lever Brothers soap factory and Bournville in Birmingham built for the workers at the Cadbury`s factory that were designed and built with the health and welfare of their workforces at the very forefront of their thinking. Most housing for workers was in cheap low quality high density multi-occupancy houses and neighbourhoods. With usually little or no natural light or facilities. This combined with poor wages and the general poverty of the working poor lead inevitably to the spread of diseases and other medical and social problems.

All of this worried the middle classes. Not because they cared for the welfare of the working classes (Some more liberal minded souls probably did), but they feared the spread of the diseases and social problems to their own leafy suburbs. This fear lead to pressure being put on the national government to reluctantly act and to take steps to alleviate this growing problem.

This pressure eventually lead to the first of the 19th Century housing acts being passed by Parliament. This was the `Nuisance Removal and Contagious Diseases Act of 1846`. The provision of the act was to assist in the control of urban diseases such as cholera which emanated from foul water supplies. On the whole though this act was ineffective for various reasons such as opposition from local authorities and was amended in 1848. But the amended act was just as ineffective.

The next act off the statute book was the Nuisance Removal Act 1856. This act introduced the expression `unfit for human habitation` for the first time. The acts aim was to encourage improvements in the housing stock. It`s effects were limited though due to lack of money and lack of any statutory control.

The most important and far reaching act to come of the statute book was the Artisans and Labourers Dwelling Improvement Act 1876. This empowered local councils for the first time to take out loans from the Public Works Loan Commissioners ( a provision that had been enacted by the Labouring Classes Dwelling Houses Act 1866) to compulsory buy up areas of slum housing in their authority area in order to clear and rebuild.

The final housing act of the 19th century The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, built on the 1875 act by allowing councils to buy up surrounding agricultural land and vacant urban land to build housing on. The management of such housing then being vested in the local council.