How bad could 1800s London be? | Premier History

London. A sprawling modern city filled with wealth and opportunity. But it hasn't always been this way. Poverty and sickness plagued it for centuries. Do you think you could have lived in 19th century London? In this episode, let's find out. At the start of the 1800s, London's population was about one million. As you can see, its eventual expansion over the preceding 100 years led to an explosion in the population to over 6 million. People came from all over Europe and Britain to call London home. But with this brought problems with housing and sanitation. London in this period really was a tale of two cities. With wealth and promise in the west, to poverty and sorrow in the east. Depending on where you lived could mean all the difference. Disease was rife, particularly in the east. Your standard 19th century diseases included cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid fever. Oh yes, plenty of those. Meanwhile in the affluent west, the mortality rate was much lower. But the crazy thing is, the overall life expectancy in during the middle of the century was about 37 years old. The sanitation situation didn't help much. Cesspools were used and when sewage systems were eventually introduced, much of the human waste washed into the Thames River. In the east, rotting food and human waste would pile up on the streets, unable to be washed away due to the lack of drainage and water. While the main problem in the west was the huge amount of horse manure, with an estimated 1,000 tonnes a day from roughly the 300,000 horses used in the city by the end of the century. This problem was just as bad in the wild west. Check this out. Fog was also a constant in London. Referred to as pea soup because of its greenish yellow colour and thickness, it was caused by the burning of coal in factories and to heat homes. The geographical location of London in the Thames Valley caused the fog to hang around for long periods of time. You sound like you're from London. It's not a secret that England has a lot of accents. Even in an area as small as London, over just a few suburbs, can make all the difference in how people's accents sound. Well some of it's from the ermine, some of these tallies knocked up. A few lads actually, so you can get your mince pies from some of this joey clobber, if you know what I mean. Yeah, no, not really. That was Cockney rhyming slang, which derives from east London, whereas in the upper class west London they sound like this. The west is where you would have found Queen Victoria, when she ruled over Britain between 1837 and 1901. Whereas probably east London's most famous resident was Jack the Ripper, when he tormented the area in 1888, killing five women and evading capture. Let us know in the comments section the famous Londoners that you know. Many man-made marvels were created during this period, with Big Ben, Tower Bridge and the London Underground to name a few. There is no doubt that you would have survived 1800s London much easier living in the west. But London was ever changing, and at the start of the 20th century, two world wars would bring the city closer together and close the divide between east and west. Thank you for watching, please hit that subscribe button and leave a thumbs up.