In 1700s about 6 million people lived in England and Wales; less than the number living in London today. Then, London, with half a million people, was the only big city. Most people lived in the countryside in small villages. They worked at home, making goods in the slow traditional way, usually by hand. Some men were carpenters, blacksmiths and weavers. Others were farm labourers who worked on the land growing crops to feed their families. Women worked in the home, looked after animals, cleaned sheep fleeces and spun wool into yarn for clothes.
The fastest means of travel was by horse which was expensive and uncomfortable. Few people travelled beyond their village. The cost of transporting goods and raw materials made trade difficult. The Industrial Revolution which began about 1760 in the cotton industry changed all that.
Machines which speeded up spinning and weaving needed power to drive them and this was provided by rivers and water wheels. The machines were installed in large mills, or factories, and people went to work in them instead of working in their own homes or villages.
New towns with cheap but bad houses, provided by the employers, sprang up around the mills.
In 1775 James Watt , a Scotsman, invented a steam engine which was soon used in factories throughout Britain. A way was discovered of smelting iron by using coke. This moved the iron industry from the rapidly vanishing woodlands of the south of England where heat was supplied by burning wood to the midlands where coal was plentiful.
Britain became known as the workshop of the world. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain because unlike many lands - it was not ravaged by war. It had a plentiful supply of iron ore and coal and soon developed a canal system for carrying raw materials to and manufactured goods from the new factories. The railways eventually superseded the canals and made a more efficient transport system. Britain had plenty of cheap labour and capital (money) was available. The long years of peace had made its merchants rich, so they had money to invest.
This was a period of dramatic change and had an enormous impact on the way people lived and how they worked. From being a small rural country, Britain became one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world.
Population in England & Wales 1750-1801
By 1801 when the first census was taken there were 9 million people, many of whom lived and worked not in villages, but in towns.
By 1851 when the next census was taken there were 18 million people, even though the average age of death was only 30.
The rapidly growing population was concentrating in the new industrial towns built near the great coalfields of South Wales, the Midlands, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Tyneside and Clydeside.
Coal was the raw material necessary for the new steam powered machines which produced goods quickly and cheaply, but large numbers of people were needed to work them.
