ABSTRACT
The later eighteenth century is regarded as the beginning of a dark age under the blight of a growing industrialism, while the earlier part of the century is considered a golden age, one of those periods when English working-class prosperity was at its height. The social history of London obstinately and emphatically refuses to adjust itself to this formula. The growth of London from a medieval walled city into the “great wen” had its own effect: an endless maze of passages, alleys and courts, overcrowding of houses and people, haunts of fever and disease, with insanitary cesspools, foul atmosphere and ill ventilation, the iniquitous window taxes darkening the home. In London and the other large towns thus affected the part of the population which succumbed first was the children. The problems were recognised and many individuals in many different spheres of society had directed themselves to their solution.
