ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the principal changes arising from industrialisation: what problems arose from the operations of the free market in working-class housing; what attempts were made to solve them and for what reasons; what was the experience in housing for working-class groups and how did this change over the period down to the first world war. The housing stock came under severe pressure in the French Wars, although the census data relating to houses for 1811 may be wildly inaccurate for reasons already given. However, James Cleland corroborates these, and the low rate of ‘empties’ and the slackness in the building cycle confirm the suggestion of a house famine. ‘Four per cent philanthropy’ also aimed to demonstrate that housing built to reasonable standards could be made to pay: that there was a class of ‘industrious poor’ prepared to meet the obligations of rent and reasonable tenant behaviour.
