Read the following information about the Industrial Revolution. Google the concepts in bold and be ready to define them!

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the 1760s. The textile business was one of the first to move into factories. Before the 1760s, cloth was made mostly by people working in their homes.

In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution Spreads throughout Britain. Lots of factories were built as it was the case of the textile industry. Stream was used for power to make machines work.

People moved from the countryside to the town in order to work in the factories. Factories needed thousands of people to work and the owners built houses near the factories for them. But the houses didn’t even have toilets and a lot of people lived in one room. By 1851, half of the population of the country was living in London. People used to throw the rubbish into the streets, so the towns were dirty and unhealthy. Thousands of people died from diseases such as cholera.

Pollution: smoke from factory chimneys polluted the air. The steam used for power was produced by burning coal to heat water. It resulted in black smoke.

Many workers were children. They worked…

  • in mines as “trappers” who had to trap the doors
  • Some others carried the coal on their backs in big baskets.
  • Other children worked in cotton mills and many were killed by the machines.
  • They also worked in match factories. They put the matches into a chemical which caused their teeth to root and some died because of breathing that chemical.
  • In the countryside, they worked as “bird scares” from 6 in the morning until the night!