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London's famous for a lot of stuff- Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, and about 365

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days of rain every year. but in the 19th century it was famous for something even [man grimaces under an umbrella]

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more unpleasant than rain. slums .yep the history of the slum starts way back in

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18th century .as the Industrial Revolution got into full swing factories

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started springing up in cities including London. and since the new jobs were in

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the factories the factories were in the cities, [city shown]

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people started flooding into the cities. alright so far so good .well

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unfortunately despite this booming jobs there wasn't nearly enough housing to

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accommodate this massive influx of people. which led to overcrowding to the

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point that multiple families were living in the same room. it's one thing to say

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how do you doodle to your neighbors every now and then but to see them every [faces crowd doorway]

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waking second, that's a bit much. and it's not as if people were crowded

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into nice places either. because housing was so scarce rent was way way

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overpriced. and because housing was in such high demand landlords didn't put

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much effort into keeping the places in good condition. which resulted in [man smirks in run down apartment]

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apartments that were chock full of dirt and disease. yummy.

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there were some other factors that conspired to make things even worse.

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everyone with money moved out of the crowded cities and into the suburbs

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though when city planners suggested tearing down entire neighbourhoods to [suburban house shown]

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make room for stuff like railways, it wasn't as if the poor factory workers

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could do anything about it ,because well who cares about people's lives when you

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can have fast shiny trains, right? with even less housing all of the existing

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problems were compounded. to make matters worse for slum dwellers the Victorians [crowded, poorly built houses shown]

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with power or influence weren't exactly sympathetic to their plight .Victorians

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tended to think the slums were inhabited by uncivilized folks. people like thieves

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or prostitutes but were such moral failures that they deserve to live in

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overcrowded hovels like a bunch of working-class sardines, which is where

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writers like George haw came in. he didn't just describe the awful [faces frown in a sardine can]

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conditions that existed in the London slums, he also emphasized that the vast

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majority of the people living in them were poor workers. pas explained that

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overpricing and corruption made these folks unable to improve their situations

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and live decent lives. in other words things were a bit more complicated than [group of workers pictured]

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the dominant theory, the poor are bad and deserved to be poor. with the problems of

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the day acknowledged and better understood, it was easier for social

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reformers to push for solutions, eventually leading to a brighter future

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in London. a brighter future that continued to have the you know a lot of

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rain. [woman shelters under umbrella]

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