The slums of London are still slums today. In the Victorian Era, the overcrowding of homes and streets were that way pretty much as soon as the homes were constructed. There was no clean water around for people to bathe or drink. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to use the bathroom (all types) in the streets. Homes were extremely overcrowded and had little to no ventilation.
Without clean water, sickness ran rampant. People were always on top of each other. Homes were not built on foundations like we have today. Instead, they were built on the ground. Sometimes the ground was already moist before the walls of a home were built. The homes were so poorly built that at times there would be falling stairs and other parts of the home would be falling apart.
The buildings were built in areas called courts, sometimes named after the builders themselves, all around the city. Homes with basements usually were full of human waste that made it unbearable to tolerate. Everyone that lived in the slums barely had enough money to buy food. It was just enough to keep them from complete starvation. Sickness ran rampart throughout everyone that lived (if you call it living) in the slums. With wages so poor, women tended to work in prostitution to earn money to feed themselves and children.
There was an attempt to clean up the slums, known as the slum clearance legislation of 1875, but it didn’t happen the way it was planned. The homes that were built were for a single middle-class families, but ended up housing several working-class families on each floor. This created the suburban slums. With the suburban slums, came more problems of drunkenness and prostitution brought much closer to the upper class areas. Unfortunately, conditions aren’t much different in London today.
Humanities101 