ABSTRACT
The social upheaval created by the Industrial Revolution coincided with an enormous and continuous population explosion which must have stretched resources to, or even beyond, the limit in the industrialised areas. Industrialisation and mechanisation, which had begun in the eighteenth century, expanded at a phenomenal rate in the century that followed. Factories and iron and steel foundries sprang up rapidly, as did engineering works, dye works, breweries, distilleries and soap works. The water supply was polluted by factory effluents and untreated human sewage, which was the cause of many outbreaks of lethal diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Many workers, condemned to appalling working and living conditions, were also exploited financially, and some suffered such extreme deprivation that they lacked even the bare necessities of life. In the nineteenth century, only fifteen additional hospitals were established in the British Isles for maternity cases and these were mainly in the big centres of population.
