Streets improvement photograph
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115a Upper Priory Court
Late 19th century Britain faced environmental challenges of epic proportions. The rapidly increasing population of industrial workers often occupied poor social housing and were exposed to levels of urban pollution that could bring contagious diseases to undernourished working-class families.
For those migrants who travelled from the countryside to find work in the rising Birmingham metropolis, the patterns of agricultural life and food production must have seemed a distant memory. According to the Medical Officer of Health ‘nature, geography and the soil had done a great deal for the for the health of Birmingham and … the governmental authorities of the town had done very little’. As town mayor between 1873 and 1875, Joseph Chamberlain led a campaign to improve the central areas of the city by rebuilding streets and providing cleaner water.Archive photographs of the ‘Streets Improvement’ era show us a glimpse of what Birmingham reformers confronted - wretched conditions in which some families lived, with little clean air, pure water or fresh produce.
