“On these streets and alleys, hordes of urchins eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, fending for themselves while their parents worked 14-hour days in the factories and docks…Infant mortality was higher in 1900 than in 1800, as increasing numbers of families sought work in the cities. In the East End, nearly 20 per cent of children died before their first birthday. Poor families lived ten to a room with no clean water for washing and drinking… Dead animals littered the streets. Excrement and rubbish often blocked the drains. Diseases such as diphtheria, cholera and measles flourished…A third of households were without a male breadwinner and women were forced to go out to work, leaving children as young as six to look after their younger siblings…Older children ran errands, swept the streets, cleaned windows or helped to make matchboxes and paintbrushes. It was poorly paid, exhausting work, especially for malnourished children, but their contribution — small as it was — could help buy a little stale bread. According to Erica Davies, director of the Ragged School Museum in East London: ‘These children tried very hard to survive while facing overwhelming odds.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017054/Britains-Slumdogs-The-ragged-filthy-East-London-children-just-100-years-ago-living-life-grime.html

I am sure their mothers (and fathers, when they were around) were also malnourished and exhausted.

I also agree that it would be wonderful to have this lecture on video! (I’m in Canada too).

To answer Linda – access to water was extremely difficult in areas such as this where large families living in very overcrowded conditions, often up to twelve in one room, in multi occupancy houses, shared one tap in the common courtyard. The air and everything they touched was was thick with coal dust and other heavy pollutants making keeping clean almost impossible. Finding enough money for food to feed the family and pay the rent was mother’s priority. That they survived at all is a miracle, and some didn’t, women could die of exhaustion, and men could as well.