London was a massive metropolis. Just in 1750, it had a population of 675,000. By 1880, the population was 4 million. Even though it did not have any major factories, it was still a magnet for immigrants. It was a city of clerks, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, workers, soldiers, servants, laboures, street sellers, and beggars.$^0$
There five types industry with large employment numbers in London. Clothing and footwear, wood and furniture, metals and engineering, printing and stationery, and precision products(for example, surgical instruments and watches).$^0$
During WW1, London manufactured cars and electrical goods. The number of factories increased until it accounted for one third of all jobs.$^0$
In the late eighteenth century, factories employed large numbers of women. However, due to later technological advancements, the factory jobs gradually went away and these women were forced to work within households.$^0$
In 1861, there were 250,000 domestic servants in London. Many of these were women.$^0$
Another change occurred when, in the twentieth century, many women moved from the domestic industry to the wartime industries and offices.$^0$
Large numbers of children were pushed to low paying work, often by their familles.$^0$
This ended after the Compulsory Elementary Education Act in 1870 and the Factories Acts in 1902. After these acts, children no longer participated in industrial work.$^0$
During the population boom of London, the amount of crime increased. In the 1870s, it was estimated that there were 20,000 criminals. Police were afraid that order would break down, philanthropists were worried about public morality, industrialist were afraid that their working population would no longer be hard working and orderly. As a result criminals were observed, their population counted, and their ways of life investigated.$^0$
In order to achieve order, the authorities enforced strict penalties for crimes, and offered work to the “deserving poor”.$^0$ These were poor people who, the authorities, considered deserving.
Many criminals were actually poor people that lived by stealing. They stole lead from roofs, food from shops, lumps of coal, and clothes drying on ledges.$^0$
As hundreds of thousands of people began to pour into London during and after the industrial revolution, there was a need for housing for these people. Factories did not provide this housing, instead land owners built tenements. These were cheap, unsafe, rundown, overcrowded apartment houses. They were built in the poorer sectors of the city.$^0$
Poverty was not uncommon, even in the country-side, but it was incredibly concentrated and very visible in the city.$^0$
For a while, many of the richer people living in the city wanted the slums to be cleared. But eventually, it became clear to more and more people that proper housing for the poor was needed.$^0$
This concern was due to a few reasons: