Industrial Cities and Working-Class Life

British industrial cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds grew at an accelerated pace during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as massive migration from the countryside radically transformed the distribution of Britain's population. Manchester became the emblematic symbol of the new industrial city, nicknamed "Cottonopolis" for its specialization in cotton textiles, multiplying its population several times over between 1770 and 1830. This accelerated urban growth far outpaced the capacity of traditional municipal infrastructure, and working-class housing became overcrowded in densely populated neighborhoods that frequently lacked adequate sewerage, clean water, and waste collection; "back-to-back" housing, common in British industrial cities, maximized housing density at the expense of proper ventilation.