Year 9 History

Industrial Revolution
Starter Sheets
Readings
Year 9 Hist- Industrial Revolution Lesson 1 Reading Activity –Britain before the
Revolution
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : empire, explosion of people, exported, parliament,
smallpox, vote, walk, workshop,
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ________________________________________________________________
10. What was the population of Britain in:
1750 ________________________ & 1900 ___________________________
11. What countries made up Britain in 1801
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12. Was life hard for the poor at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Why?
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Population About 7 million people lived in Britain in 1750, but it is hard to know the exact number because no one
ever counted. Historians have had to estimate by analysing church records. Between 1750 and 1900 the
population grew so fast that one historian called it “an explosion of people”. This was because of improvements in
agriculture called the Agricultural revolution. The population of Britain rose from 7 million people in 1750 to 37
million in 1900. In just 150 years the population of Britain had more than quadrupled!!
Government In 1750, Britain was made up of England, Scotland and Wales and was ruled by George II.
Parliament made the laws and were pretty much left to do most of the work but the King still had to agree with
their decisions before they became law. Parliament held elections every few years but in 1750 only 5% of men
could vote (these were the richest men) and women could not vote at all. Ireland had been conquered and became
part of the UK in 1801.
Health People didn’t know that germs caused disease. Basic operations, like removing an infected toenail, could
result in death because there were no painkillers or germ-free, clean, operating rooms. The big killer diseases
were smallpox and respiratory diseases, pneumonia, bronchitis, diphtheria and tuberculosis. The average age of
death in Britain in 1750 was about 30 years of age. For every 1000 babies born, over 150 would die before
reaching their first birthday and 1 in 5 mothers would die too!
Transport People got around slowly…very slowly. There were no aeroplanes, trains or cars. Most people rarely
left their village except to go to the local town on market day. Carriages pulled by horses were the most common
way of travelling but these could only be afforded by the rich, and roads were rare and bad. People who were
less well off travelled on carts pulled by horses but the poor would have to walk everywhere they wanted to go.
Work About 8 out of 10 people lived and worked in the countryside. They grew food and reared cattle and sheep.
They grew enough food to feed themselves and perhaps some extra to sell in the local town. Goods were made in
people’s homes or in small workshops attached to their homes. Some of the larger workshops in towns produced
high quality goods that were sold abroad. But even these businesses employed no more than 50 people.
Everything a village or town needed was made by hand or on very simple machines – buttons, needles, woollen or
cloth cloths, glass, bricks, pottery, candles and bread. Some towns were growing fast. Shopkeepers, chimney
sweeps, flower sellers, doctors, housemaids, builders, cobblers and street traders all made a living in these fast
growing towns.
Empire By 1750 Britain was becoming a major world power. The British controlled areas of land in many other
countries; parts of Canada, the West Indies, Africa, India and America were all under British control. Britain
imported Indian silk, jewels, pottery, ivory, tea, American coffee, sugar, tobacco and Canadian cod. Companies
sold these around Britain or they were exported to customers abroad. The goods made in Britain, like cloth,
pottery and iron, were sold abroad in huge numbers. All this trade made a lot of money for British companies and
provided plenty of jobs for British workers.
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 2 Reading Activity
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : agricultural revolution, coal, cotton, cotton gin, empire,
farming techniques, industrialisation, locomotives, population, purchase, rural, steam,
surplus, transport, urban
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. What did colonies provide? ______________________________________________
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11. Why were there more people in towns to work in the factories?
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12. What do you think was the most important cause of the Industrial Revolution? Why?
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Why the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain
Britain the Empire. Britain had settled in North America and had defeated France in the war against Napoleon
gaining colonies and good positions for trade which supplied valuable raw materials like cotton and markets for
their products. By 1850, Britain dominated world trade in manufactured goods, supplying two-thirds of the globe
with cotton from the industrial centres of northern England. It also dominated in related services such as shipping,
finance and insurance, with the result that London became the largest city in the world. By the turn of the century,
Great Britain under Queen Victoria ruled about 20% percent of the world's land-mass.
Good geographical position. Britain was in a good position for trade being on the western side of Europe. At
home Britain had large deposits of coal and iron ore which industrialisation depended on. It also had rich farming
lands to supply food for a growing population.
The agricultural revolution in which farming techniques improved drastically providing a surplus of food but also
a surplus of labour as small farmers were forced from their lands.
A large population. The agricultural revolution and imports of meat from the colonies meant more food for the
people. Advances in medical knowledge and sanitation meant that fewer people died in infancy, and the average
lifespan also increased. Importantly, lower prices of food meant that people did not have to spend everything they
earned on eating and could therefore purchase other products.
The rise in Demand for cotton. Cotton clothes were cheaper, nicer to wear and easier to clean. Clothes were what
people bought after food. Increased demand led development of machines such as the cotton gin. However it was
the application of the steam engine to the textile industry that really drove the revolution and changed the face of
society.
The invention of steam was used in many industries including mining and transport. Coal was used to power the
steam engines and Britain had plenty. It meant machines replaced people in producing goods. People moved from
rural environments to urban environments.
Improved transport. Business owners in order to maximize their returns, invested their money improving the
transport of both coal and finished products. Canals, railways and roads all received significant investment. Steam-
powered vessels that did not rely on wind for their propulsion gradually replaced less reliable sailing ships, and
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 3 Reading Activity – Experiences of the
people
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : classes, education, factories, housing, middle,
professionals, upper, working class
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. _________________________________________________________________:
The Industrial Revolution made drastic changes on the lives of individuals.
Cross out the wrong word.
Two classes that benefited from it was/were the "middle" and “upper” classes.
These two classes was/were composed of people that had/have wealth and success. Even
though most could afford goods anyway, the prices lowered even more, so that those who
could not afford them before could now enjoy the comfort and convenience of the new
products being/been made.
The middle class was/were composed of businessmen and other professionals.
The larger the Industrial Revolution grew/grow, the more powerful these individuals
became/become. Individuals and groups formed/forms new libraries, schools, and universities
because their/there/they’re was/were a sudden need for education (possibly due to the
increase in population).
The middle and upper classes had/have better food and housing, which led/lead
to fewer diseases and longer living among these groups. Since these classes was/were
treated so well, their/there/they’re population grew and thus had/have minimal difficulty
living during the Industrial Revolution.

Punctuation exercise: put in commas, full stops and capitals.

in contrast with the middle and upper classes the "working" class was not well off
in the working class many were replaced in factories by machines but on the other hand many
also gained new jobs in factories working with machinery
the average adult worker worked quite often five to seven days of the week for more than
half the day per shift children as young as fifteen worked for minimal wages some of the
children became deformed or crippled due to their work which was often most workers
worked for relatively low wages due to their incapability to produce goods the women and
children were not paid as much as the men were
the housing was not desirable either for example there was frequent overcrowding. the
housing had unsanitary features which led to diseases workers who were desperate lived near
a factory
what also made life difficult during the industrial revolution was that there were limited
privileges such as few people voted nor were they allowed to do anything to improve their
working condition that was legal
the amount of carbon dioxide increased two-fold as people moved closer to factories hoping
to obtain employment resources started diminishing and the use of pesticides and hazardous
chemicals began to increase
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 4 Reading Activity – Life in Industrial towns
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : accommodation, back to back housing, cities, estimated,
hygiene, sanitation, sewerage, slums, stench
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. What percentage growth in population was there between 1695 and 1841? __________________
11. What problems do you think would arise? List 5
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12. What do you think poor people could have done to improve their lives?
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Life in Industrial Towns

There was a huge growth in the size of British cities. In 1695, the population of Britain was
estimated to be 5.5 million. By 1801, it was 9.3 million and by 1841, 15.9 million. As enclosure and technical
developments in farming had reduced the need for people to work on farmland, many people moved to the
cities to get accommodation and a job. These cities were not prepared for such an influx in such a short
period of time and cities suffered problems not witnessed anywhere else in the world at this time.
These cities needed cheap homes. There were few building regulations then and those that
did exist were frequently ignored. Therefore, a house was put up quickly and cheaply – and as many were
built as was possible. The Industrial Revolution saw the start of what were known as back-to-back terrace
housing. These had no garden and the only part of the building not connected to another house would be
the front (and only) entrance (unless you were lucky enough to live in the end of the terrace).
The poor people lived in the oldest part of the city, near the downtown district. The building
material used was the cheapest a builder could find. The finished homes were damp. The poor families
struggled to survive in crowded slums. The buildings they lived in were called tenements. They often had no
windows, heat or inside bathrooms, and as many as 10 people slept in one small room. None of these homes
was built with a bathroom, toilet or running water. You either washed in a tin bath in the home with the
water being collected from a local pump or you simply did not wash. Many didn’t wash as it was simply
easier.
Sanitation and hygiene barely existed and throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries the great fear was a cholera, typhus or typhoid epidemic. More than half of all babies died
before their first birthday. Cities had no sewers and garbage was thrown into the street. Toilets were
cesspits. When these were filled they had to be emptied and what was collected was loaded onto a cart
before being dumped in a local river. This work was also done by the night-men. Local laws stated that
their work had to be done at night as the stench created by emptying the cesspits was too great to be
tolerated during the day. The streets where the poor lived were poorly kept. A doctor in Manchester
wrote about the city:
"Whole streets, unpaved and without drains or main sewers, are worn into deep ruts and holes in
which water constantly stagnates, and are so covered with refuse and excrement as to be impassable
from depth of mud and intolerable stench.“
Fresh water supplies were also very difficult to get in the poor areas. With no running water
supplies, the best people could hope for was to leave a bucket out and collect rainwater. Some areas were
lucky enough to have access to a well with a pump but there was always the chance that the well water
could have been contaminated with sewage from a leaking cesspit. Those who lived near a river could use
river water. However, this is where night-men emptied their carts full of sewage and where general
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 5 Reading Activity – Life in Industrial
towns
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : communal, cottages, decreased, pre-industrial, middle
class, transformed, workhouses
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns. Highlight 5 verbs.
6. Highlight 5 adjectives
7. Highlight 3 adverbs
8. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. Why did factory owners fine workers who went home for festivals? ________________
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11. Why didn’t the poor play sport? ___________________________________________
12. What years were the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution?
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Working in new industrial cities had an effect on people’s lives outside of the factories as well. As
workers migrated from the country to the city, their lives and the lives of their families were utterly
and permanently transformed.
For many skilled workers, the quality of life decreased a great deal in the first 60 years
of the Industrial Revolution. Skilled weavers, for example, lived well in pre-industrial society as a kind
of middle class. They tended their own gardens, worked on textiles in their homes or small shops, and
raised farm animals. They were their own bosses. One contemporary observer noted, “their dwelling
and small gardens clean and neat, —all the family well clad, —the men with each a watch in their
pocket, and the women dressed in their own fancy, —the Church crowded to excess every Sunday, —
every house well furnished with a clock in elegant mahogany or fancy case. . . . Their little cottages
seemed happy and contented. . . . it was seldom that a weaver appealed to the parish for a relief. . . .
peace and content sat upon the weaver’s brow”. But, after the Industrial Revolution, the living
conditions for skilled weavers significantly deteriorated. They could no longer live at their own pace
or supplement their income with gardening, spinning, or communal harvesting. For skilled workers,
quality of life took a sharp downturn: “A quarter [neighbourhood] once remarkable for its neatness
and order; I remembered their whitewashed houses, and their little flower gardens, and the decent
appearance they made with their families at markets, or at public worship. These houses were now a
mass of filth and misery“.
In the first sixty years or so of the Industrial Revolution, working-class people had
little time or opportunity for recreation. Workers spent all the light of day at work and came home
with little energy, space, or light to play sports or games. The new industrial pace and factory system
were at odds with the old traditional festivals which dotted the village holiday calendar. Plus, local
governments actively sought to ban traditional festivals in the cities. In the new working-class
neighbourhoods, people did not share the same traditional sense of a village community. Owners fined
workers who left their jobs to return to their villages for festivals because they interrupted the
efficient flow of work at the factories. After the 1850s, however, recreation improved along with the
rise of an emerging the middle class. Music halls sprouted up in big cities. Sports such as rugby and
cricket became popular. Football became a professional sport in 1885. By the end of the 19th century,
cities had become the places with opportunities for sport and entertainment that they are today.
During the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions were, by far,
worst for the poorest of the poor. In desperation, many turned to the “poorhouses” set up by the
government. The Poor Law of 1834 created workhouses for the destitute. Poorhouses were designed
to be deliberately harsh places to discourage people from staying on “relief” (government food aid).
Families, including husbands and wives, were separated upon entering the grounds. They were confined
each day as inmates in a prison and worked every day. Yet, despite these very harsh conditions,
workhouse inmates increased from 78,536 in 1838 to 197,179 in 1843 . This increase can only be
viewed as a sign of desperation amongst the poorest of the poor.
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 6 Reading Activity – Children of the Revolution
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : apprentices, deformities, diseases, fines, machines, minimum,
shifts, shillings, strapping, wages,
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. How many hours did people work a day? ___________________________________________
11. What punishments were given?
__________________________________________________
12. Why are you glad you are not a factory worker in the Industrial Revolution?
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Nine factory working abuses

This is the kind of information you would get if you read an older textbook such as "History Alive"
(1968) or "Machine, Money and Men" (1969):
1.Long working hours – normal shifts were recorded as 12 to 14 hours a day, with extra time required
during brisk times when trade was good. Workers were often required to clean their machines during
their mealtimes. It was claimed that employers changed the clocks to get a few minutes extra out of
their workers every day.
2.Low wages – a typical wage for male workers was about 15 shillings (75p) a week, but women and
children were paid much lower wages, with women earning 7 shillings (35p) and children 3 shillings
(15p). For this reason, employers preferred to employ women and children. Many men were sacked
when they reached adulthood and had to be supported by their wives and children.
3.Cruel discipline – frequent ‘strapping’ (it was claimed that children had been thrashed to death).
Women and children were easily bullied. One witness claimed that he had seen an iron bar driven
through the cheek of one girl. Other alleged punishments included hanging iron weights around
children’s necks, hanging them from the roof in baskets, nailing a child’s ear to the table, and dowsing
them in water butts to keep them awake.
4.Fierce systems of fines – fines were imposed for things like talking or whistling, leaving the room
without permission, of having a little dirt on a machine. It was claimed that employers altered the
time on the clocks to make their workers late so that they could fine them. Some employers required
their overseers to raise a minimum amount each week from fines.
5.Deformities – many children who were forced to stand for long hours grew up with conditions such
as knock-knees and bow legs.
6.Accidents – forcing children to crawl into dangerous, unguarded machinery - often when they were
so tired they were falling asleep on their feet - led to many accidents. It was said that 40 per cent of
accident cases at Manchester Infirmary in 1833 were factory accidents.
7.Health – cotton thread had to be spun in damp conditions at 70ºF. Going straight out into the cold
night air led to many cases of pneumonia. The air was full of dust, which led to chest and lung diseases
and loud noise made by machines damaged workers' hearing.
8.Parish apprentices – orphans from workhouses in the south of England were "apprenticed" to
factory owners, supposedly to learn the textiles trade. They worked 12-hour shifts, and slept in
barracks attached to the factory, in the beds just vacated by children about to start the next shift.
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 7 Reading Activity
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words: landowners, migrants, reforms, textiles, unemployment,
unskilled, working conditions
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. What percentage were working class?
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11. Why were the lives of textile workers especially hard?
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12. What role, if any, do you think the government should have taken to improve working
conditions in the new industrial factories, mills, and coal mines?
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Children of the Revolution

The working class—who made up 80% of society—had little or no bargaining power with their
new employers. Since population was increasing in Great Britain at the same time that landowners were
enclosing common village lands, people from the countryside flocked to the towns and the new factories to
get work. This resulted in a very high unemployment rate for workers in the first phases of the Industrial
Revolution.
As a result, the new factory owners could set the terms of work because there were far
more unskilled labourers, who had few skills and would take any job, than there were jobs for them. And
since the textile industries were so new at the end of the 18th century, there were initially no laws to
regulate them. Desperate for work, the migrants to the new industrial towns had no bargaining power to
demand higher wages, fairer work hours, or better working conditions. Worse still, since only wealthy
people in Great Britain were eligible to vote, workers could not use the democratic political system to fight
for rights and reforms. In 1799 and 1800, the British Parliament passed the Combination Acts, which made
it illegal for workers to unionize, or combine, as a group to ask for better working conditions.
Many of the unemployed or underemployed were skilled workers, such as hand weavers,
whose talents and experience became useless because they could not compete with the efficiency of the
new textile machines.
For the first generation of workers—from the 1790s to the 1840s—working conditions were
very tough, and sometimes tragic. Most laborers worked 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, with no paid
vacation or holidays. Each industry had safety hazards too. Under such dangerous conditions, accidents on
the job occurred regularly. Injured workers would typically lose their jobs and also receive no financial
compensation for their injury to pay for much needed health care.
Life in the factory was most challenging for the first generation of industrial workers who
still remembered the slower and more flexible pace of country life. Factory employers demanded a
complete change of pace and discipline from the village life. Workers could not wander over to chat with
their neighbors or family as they would have done while working in the country. They could not return to
the village during harvest time to help their families, unless they wanted to lose their jobs. Instead, they
were no longer their own bosses; foremen and overseers supervised a new working culture to insure that
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 8 Reading Activity – Effects of the Revolution
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : environmental, industrialised, polluted, rural, textile industry,
urbanisation
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. Underline the following words: environmental, industrialised, polluted, rural, textile industry,
urbanisation
11. How many people lived in rural areas before the Industrial Revolution? ____________________
12. Why did Manchester become the quintessential industrial city?
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13. What does the writer mean by “From this filthy sewer pure gold flows.”
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Urbanization
One of the defining and most lasting features of the Industrial Revolution was the rise
of cities. In pre-industrial society, over 80% of people lived in rural areas. As migrants moved from
the countryside, small towns became large cities. By 1850, for the first time in world history, more
people in a country—Great Britain—lived in cities than in rural areas. As other countries in Europe and
North America industrialized, they too continued along this path of urbanization. By 1920, a majority
of Americans lived in cities. In England, this process of urbanization continued unabated throughout
the 19th century. The city of London grew from a population of two million in 1840 to five million forty
years later.
The small town of Manchester, England also grew rapidly and famously to become the
quintessential industrial city. Its cool climate was ideal for textile production. And it was located
close to the Atlantic port of Liverpool and the coalfields of Lancashire. The first railroads in the
world later connected the textile town to Liverpool. As a result, Manchester quickly became the
textile capital of the world, drawing huge numbers of migrants to the city. In 1771, the sleepy town
had a population of 22,000 . Over the next fifty years, Manchester’s population exploded and reached
180,000. Many of the migrants were destitute farmers from Ireland who were being evicted from
their land by their English landlords. In Liverpool and Manchester roughly 25 to 33 percent of the
workers were Irish..
This process of urbanization stimulated the booming new industries by concentrating
workers and factories together. And the new industrial cities became, as we read earlier, sources of
wealth for the nation.
Despite the growth in wealth and industry urbanization also had some negative effects.
On the whole, working-class neighbourhoods were bleak, crowded, dirty, and polluted. Alexis de
Tocqueville, a French traveller and writer, visited Manchester in 1835 and commented on the
environmental hazards. “From this foul Drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to
fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most
complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is
turned almost into a savage.”
Nowadays most of the populations of industrialised nations live in cities but with the arrival of the
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson 9 Reading Activity – Effects of the
Revolution
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : agricultural, economic, household, monotonous, repetitive,
specialisation , transformed,
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. What became sharply separated after the Industrial Revolution?
___________________________________________________________________
11. How did the nature of work change from a farm to a factory?
___________________________________________________________________
12. In what ways are work in a factory similar today as in the Industrial revolution times?
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Working Class Families and The Role of Women

The Industrial Revolution completely transformed the role of the family. In traditional,
agricultural society, families worked together as a unit of production, tending to fields, knitting
sweaters, or tending to the fire. Women could parent and also play a role in producing food or goods
needed for the household. Work and play time were flexible and interwoven. Industrialisation changed
all that. The same specialisation of labour that occurred in factories occurred in the lives of working-
class families, and this broke up the family economy. Work and home life became sharply separated.
Men earned money for their families. Women took care of the home and saw their economic role
decline. While many factory workers were initially women, most of them were young women who would
quit working when they married. In stark contrast to the various changing tasks that a farmer
performed in pre-industrial society, factory workers typically completed repetitive and monotonous
tasks for 10 to 14 hours each day.
Industrial working-class families, though not working together, did serve an economic
purpose of raising money to support each other. As we have seen, children often worked to earn some
income for the family. In difficult circumstances, mothers struggled to make ends meet and keep the
family out of the poorhouses. Jane Goode, a working-class mother, testified before the British
Factory Commission in 1833. The history of her family shows the worries and stresses of a mother
struggling to survive. Her life shows the unfortunately common death rate of infants. Jane Goode had
twelve children, but five died before the age of two:
I have had five children that have all worked at the factory. I have only one that works
there now. She is sixteen. She works in the card-room. She minds the drawing-head. She gets 5
shillings 9 pence. She pays it all to me. She has worked there nine years. She has been at the drawing-
head all the while. She got 2 shilling when she first went. She was just turned seven. . . . Mary did not
work here [at the factory] long. She went in about fourteen or fifteen. She was married last summer.
She is thirty next June. She went on working at Elliot and Mill’s and other factories till she married.
Anne was just turned seven; she worked here four years, then she went to Mr Elliot’s, and worked
there till she was married, two years ago. She is nineteen next June. John was not eight when he went
in; he is now twenty-two. . . . I have had twelve children altogether. I thought you were asking only of
those who worked at the mill. There were five that died before they were a quarter of a year old. . . .
Mr Samuel Wilson (now dead) came to Derby to get my hand, and I engaged with him with my family. I
did it to keep my children off the parish [welfare].
Year 9 Hist - Industrial Revolution Lesson Reading Activity – Effects of the Revolution
1. Write down the heading. ________________________________________________
2. Number the paragraphs.
3. Circle the metalanguage words : aristocrats, domestic servants, middle class, merchants,
retail, society, white collar,
4. Write down the words you don’t know the meaning of or find difficult to spell.
___________________________________________________________________
5. Highlight 5 nouns.
6. Highlight 5 verbs.
7. Highlight 5 adjectives
8. Highlight 3 adverbs
9. Write down 3 things you have learnt from reading this passage.
a. ___________________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________________
c. ___________________________________________________________________
10. What is a middle class person?
___________________________________________________________________
11. What jobs did they do?_________________________________________________
12. How could you tell if someone was middle class?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

The Emerging Middle Class

Gradually, very gradually, a middle class, or “middling sort”, did emerge in

industrial cities, mostly toward the end of the 19th century. Until then, there had been only
two major classes in society: aristocrats born into their lives of wealth and privilege, and low-
income commoners born in the working classes. However new urban industries gradually
required more of what we call today “white collar” jobs, such as business people, shopkeepers,
bank clerks, insurance agents, merchants, accountants, managers, doctors, lawyers, and
teachers. [Middle-class people tended to have monthly or yearly salaries rather than hourly
wages.]
One piece of evidence of this emerging middle class was the rise of retail shops
in England that increased from 300 in 1875 to 2,600 by 1890. Another mark of distinction of
the middle class was their ability to hire servants to cook and clean the house from time to
time. Not surprisingly, from 1851 to 1871, the number of domestic servants increased from
900,000 to 1.4 million. This is proof of a small but rising middle class that prided themselves
on taking responsibility for themselves and their families. They viewed professional success
as the result of a person’s energy, perseverance, and hard work.
In this new middle class, families became a sanctuary from stressful industrial
life. Home remained separate from work and took on the role of emotional support, where
women of the house created a moral and spiritual safe harbor away from the rough-and-
tumble industrial world outside. Most middle-class adult women were discouraged from
working outside the home. They could afford to send their children to school. As children
became more of an economic burden, and better health care decreased infant mortality,
middle-class women gave birth to fewer children