ABSTRACT
Urban society was developing distinctive characteristics that distinguished it from the countryside and from earlier towns. Mill-workers housing spread out in many directions, with satellite towns and villages built around available water-power, and ancillary trades thriving on the factors of production that the city brought together. Though king cotton was a central driver of the economy, Manchester developed a wide range of industries, ranging from engineering to chemicals and financial services. Scottish housing was widely acknowledged as the worst in the industrialising world, the product of low wages, remnants of a feudal system of land dues that encouraged high-density building, and rapid urban growth on small pockets of land. With the rise of the middle classes in suburban homes in the middle decades, domestic servants were a major status symbol, living in back rooms or garrets, or sometimes even in back-blocks or over stables.
