Introduction

This book endeavours to elucidate the main causes of the rapid growth of population in England in the 18th and early 19th centuries, with special reference to the period 1750-1815. The growth of population was European and therefore many of the causes of that growth were also European. But on the Continent of Europe war and civil disorder held back advance in many spheres and changes of many kinds became earlier and more rapidly effective in this country. It seems, then, allowable to study, in the first instance, the rapid increase of population, as other phases of the industrial revolution have so often been studied, in the country of its origin. The impression conveyed by many writers on the early 19th century is that the industrial changes and the ineptitude of English local government had worsened health conditions and in particular had led to the prevalence of typhus and cholera.