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Most of the village inhabitants we farmers, often living and working with their amilies on the nearby fields. They were self-sufficient with a constant supply of food(though limited in variety), providing sustenance for their village through their work: the life of a 18th century worker was not brutal and could not necessarily be described as a hardship, though physically demanding as both mining and farming required large amounts of energy. Both mining and farming were done without the aid of machinery . e. g by hand or horse power.
This links into agriculture at the time because the farmers in the fields were working to provide food to the specific area they lived in making agriculture in 750 incredibly localised; the mill, fields and forest were constant, longstanding pieces of their scenery and it must of be difficult to picture anything but what they had seen everyday. By the the 19th century the drastic changes that were possibly unforeseen by the British public had taken place. Large factories had materialized across the country and the objective of those factories was to produce products that would yield a feasible profit. nfortunately ensuring the safety and health of their workers wasn’t a priority. Children and adults alike lost limbs, flesh and fingers to the machines. To keep control of an increasingly large workforce unconventional means of mantaining coontrol were put in place. Workers were beaten with leather whips and straps and a strict system of fines were implemented because in some cases a minimum amount of money needed to be attained through fines for the employers. Families were often separated and while working they faced emotional and physical abuse that cut deeper than any knife could.
Child Labour was already being practised before and during the Industrial Revolution although in the 1 800’s the severity of the problem increased as the abuse they faced was beyond inhumane. Fields were rare sights in overcrowded cities and food became widely distributed. Most tasks were no longer the burden of humans but the command of machinery. The Threshing Machine by Andrew Mielke made the separation of grains from their stalks less laborious and increased efficiency.
The changes in both working conditions and agriculture were drastic as working conditions went from demanding to horrific, and agriculture from localised to widely distributed. Essentially both of the changes did not really positively affect the average citizens of Britain, in fact their health and well being worsened and hey were left in a situation that was dearth of comfort and health. Living Conditions and Population Living conditions in 1750 were not amazing, nor 5 star worthy but they were satisfactory to an extent.
This is because the more wealthy working class families lived together with their cattle or livestock in a one or two roomed hutch of wottle and daub(clay, horse hair,thin stick. ); the worst lived in mud hovels that were little better than clay when wet. There was an abundance of firewood in nearby forests and bushes so it was easy to keep warm. And by working in agriculture or mining it would be reasonable to suggest that most eople were in good physical shape although it is known that the poorer/est workers were malnourished as their diet consisted of potatoes and .
The living conditions of an average worker varied depending on the generosity of the aristocrat/ nobleman in charge of their land ,but even so an mid-eighteenth century workers standard Of life was arguable, they Were living life to an extent but weren’t really reaping its rewards. 1 50 years later the population of Britain’s industrial towns had steadily been increasing and new homes were needed. Substandard “back-to-back” houses were built to accommodate for the rising opulation.
Whole streets of 140+ people used one communal toilet and as time went by more and more waste would pile up and eventually sewage would overflow and the deep “drains” that were set up to accommodate for the waste were little more than holes in the marshy ground; waste was often discarded straight into the street, along with horse manure that was collected and sold to farmers, the waste was often deposited in the River Thames. The houses were built without foundations or drains on waterlogged land which adds to the fact that they were structurally unsound which meant that many of the houses collapsed.