The book The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts gives an honest account of a village in Manchester in the first 25 years of the 20th century. The title is a reference to a description used by Friedrich Engels to describe the area in his book Conditions of the Working Class. The University of Manchester Press first published Roberts' book in the year 1971. The more recent publication by Penguin Books contains 254 pages, including the appendices. The author gives a firsthand description of the extreme poverty that gripped the area in which he grew up. His unique perspective allows him to accurately describe the self-imposed caste system, the causes and effects of widespread poverty, and the impact of World War I as someone who is truly a member of a proletarian family. His main contention is that prior to the War, the working class inhabiting the industrial slums in England "lay outside the mainstream of that society and possessed within their own ranks a system of social stratification that enclosed them in their own provincial social world and gave them little hope of going beyond it. " After the War, the working class found new economic prosperity and a better way of life, never returning to the lifestyle prevalent prior to the War.
Roberts was born in 1905 to a working class family in a Salford slum. He took a position as an engineering apprentice following his completion of school. Following his apprenticeship, he was unemployed for three years, utilizing this time to study languages. After becoming a teacher, Roberts wrote many award winning stories, plays, and scripts. Roberts became a farmer for sixteen years before beginning a career teaching in prisons. Roberts...
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...in British history. The Classic Slum is the most credible source on the lifestyle in the Edwardian slums and the impact of World War I because Roberts is able to give a firsthand account.
WORKS CITED
Roberts, Robert. The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1971.
Suttles, Gerald D. Review of The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century, by Robert Roberts. Contemporary Sociology. Vol. 4, No.1. (Jan., 1975). Pp. 33-34.
Waites B.A. "The Effect of the First World War on Class and Status in England, 1910-20," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 11, No. 1. (Jan., 1976), pg. 34.
Whiteside, Noel and James Gillespie. "Deconstructing Unemployment: Developments in Britain in the Interwar Years," The Economic History Review, Vol. 44, No. 4. (Nov., 1991), pp. 665-682.
The third person omniscient point of view in The Street by Ann Petry helps show Lutie Johnson’s feeling of victimization. A parasitic relation is revealed between herself and the setting. Lutie Johnson’s perception and relationship with the urban environment is established through extremely vivid imagery and personification.
Moraze, Charles. The Triumph of the Middle Classes. Cleve land: The World Publishing Company, 1966.
One of Johnson’s main point of discussion is the formation of the city of Manchester. The development of the city over the course of century played a crucial role in sculpting the social classes of the time period. The lack of planning that went into the development of Manchester caused its citizen to “alter their subsequent decisions” (Johnson 199). “Small shifts in behavior quickly escalate into larger movements,” as investment banker took over businesses driving the impoverish to the outskirts of the city (Johnson 199). The interaction between people diverged into two categories: those made between the wealthy and those made between the impoverish. This distinction continued through the preceding decades; as the city grew, so did the line between that separated the wealthy and
Levine, Linda. “The Labor Market During the Great Depression and the Current Recession”. 19 June 2009. 6 March 2010. < http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40655_20090619.pdf>.
Getzke, David W. “Gentrifying the British Public House, 1896-1914” International and Working Class Labour. No.45 ( Spring 1994)
rapid growing cities was conditioned urban unemployment in England and Paris.One of the main problem was that Paris was attackted by migrants and the half of population were form outside of city,”housing problems 30%increase in the number of houses and population increases by nearly 100% in same period”(lecture 5).As such, different social classes would tend to settle down according to the relevant strata forming large simulated “enclaves” which exhibited the distinctive characteristics of their inhabitants. In this view, one of the most vivid examples of the territorial class division is the East and West Ends of the 19th century London. The former was associated with the underclass and poor immigrants arriving at the capital in search of quick earnings. The latter would, on the contrary, be identified with wealth and prosperity since most of its residents belonged to the called bourgeoisie. It is needless to explain that the territorial class division would shape the city in a highly peculiar manner. Thus, the East End would symbolize the stranglehold of poverty and depravity. Apart from the evidently unpleasant connotations, its image would likewise involve an objectively frightening implication due to the enormously high criminal rates. The West End would, on the contrary, be identified with wealth and relative
In this passage, the author Elizabeth Gaskells shows, through the point of view of George Wilson, a millworker, the difference between the working class and the upper high class during the 1840s in England. She criticized the upper class and sympathized the working class. Gaskell uses several specific elements such as point of view, selection of detail, dialogue, and characterization to create a social commentary.
England in the nineteen-thirties was a very bleak and dark time for the working class and unemployed citizens. In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, describes the overlooked injustices that happened in in Northern British industrial towns. Orwell depicts his experiences and views on social class and English society. The book is an eye-opener to the challenging hardships that many of the working class gentry faced during the years of the depression; Things such as, horrible housing, social injustices, and a lack of consideration from the government. The primary focus of part one, was to inform the middle class people that the unemployed were victims or a corrupt society, government, and economy.
We visited Brixton Village in London for the case study, and we explored if it has been exposed and affected by gentrification. And if so, how has the urban vernacular been affected by gentrification in context to it’s heritage. In the case of Brixton Village, gentrification is interpreted as the process by which upwardly mobile urbanites ‘discover’ an area, open new trend businesses and displace the people who have been living and working there for years.
In the book, How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, the living conditions of the tenements in New York, in the late 1800’s. It discusses the poverty and terrible conditions in which the people had to live, and talks about the acts that were passed to try to improve the conditions. It shows that even though acts were passed that it took many many years for the regulations to actually be upheld and abided by. Tenement owners would charge double the value for half the space of a tenement and would still sometimes evict renters for going behind on payments leaving them stranded in the streets. There was also very little plumbing, which lead to a lot of disease and filth. During this time many children didn’t live past infancy due to malnutrition or disease. The goal of the book was to expose the conditions of New York’s slums to New York’s upper and middle class. In the book, many ethnic groups are talked about, but there were a few that stood out.
In conclusion, “the Road to Wigan Pier” has helped tackle unemployment and poverty rates in Northern England. This report has shown George Orwell political arguments and his rich detailed description of working class lives in 1930s which has helped readers today to understand, and also imagine how Northern England was in the 1930s. In addition, the book allows George Orwell to express his thoughts on the left book club and socialism. Overall, George Orwell created an honest picture of how life was for working class individuals living in Northern England in 1930s.
It is useful to consider Ferguslie Park, a small housing estate in Paisley built as a series of projects between 1926 and 1966, that reached at its peak 3,500 dwellings with a population of 13,500. By the end of the 1960s, Ferguslie Park’s fortunes went into reverse. This was mirrored by a matched decline of the areas mains employers such as textiles, ship building and car manufacturers. Ferguslie Park was also socially isolated, a factor reinforced in public housing allocation policies which had the result of concentrating the poorest families within the local community. By 1988, local population had decreased to 5,600, 39% of households composed of single parents and unemployment exceeded 30%. (Scotland.gov.uk 1998)
The decline of the staple industries was also the main reason for the bitter industrial relations which developed in post-war Britain. During the war actually industrial relations had improved. Trade unions reacted patriotically to the outbreak of...
Social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into divisions of power and wealth within a society. Social stratification relates to the socio-economic concept of class, consisting of the upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each class may be further subdivided into smaller classes through the main indicator is occupation. This is the most practical and most effective means of encompassing the wide variety of economic and social elements that go to make up a person’s class through their education, status, income and power. Evidence shows that wealth is distributed unequally and that incomes vary from small to huge. The old idea of Britain’s class structure was comprised as a triangular shape; with increasing amount of people at the bottom towards the base as a majority of people were unskilled manual workers which provided a strong industrial based manufacturing sector. This model implied a hierarchy showing people who had high levels of income, status and power at the top. However, there has been a dramatic shift in Britain’s industrial structure as people have now gone onto tertiary or service sector jobs. Therefore, I am going to discuss why Britain’s class structure has become fragmented evaluating the statement ‘Social class is a thing of the past. It no longer exists’ from all four theories Marxism, Max Weber, functionalism and postmodernism.
The infrastructures are frequently self- built from wood, cardboard, plastic, waste roofs and brick. Most of them are without windows, doorways, adequate ventilation, and are often small living spaces that are shared with one or two other household families. The floors are made of earth. These places are not livable for human beings nevertheless, slum dwellers have no other alternative. Slums are a severe failure because they lack infrastructural conditions that affect slum dwellers physically, socially and emotionally. Some solutions including demolition and upgrading have been practiced but often failed, because they don’t include the existing community. If one solves the housing conditions, then it’s no longer a slum.