ABSTRACT
From the 1840s or earlier, contemporary commentators had drawn attention to the deleterious effects of industrialisation, such as the ill-health and poor housing endured by many workers. This theme was taken up by historians and became a long-running debate between two schools of thought: one, characterised as the pessimistic, consisting of those who agreed with the contemporary analysis and thought that industrialisation was negative, or only weakly positive, for living standards; the other, the optimistic, consisting of those who thought the opposite.
