According to information and data, the air quality during the Industrial Revolution was incredibly poor, disease was rampant, and water sources were contaminated. During the Industrial Revolution, most of Britain's drinking water came from rivers. As sewage and garbage were often discharged into the rivers, they also became a breeding ground for disease. As residents drew water daily from pumps connected to these polluted rivers. Since cities did not have modern plumbing and toilets at the time, human excrement was all over the streets. Due to limited space, most of the places where the workers live are crowded and dirty. Since there was no medical coverage, the workers had no way to get effective treatment when they fell ill, so most of those who contracted the plague lost their lives. Workers generally work around 10-14 hours, and factories do not give workers enough protection, so they are exposed to a lot of toxic materials. The workers were treated extremely poorly, which led to the subsequent workers' movement.
Capitalism makes money by squeezing the cost of labor. Most of the workers at that time were peasants who were unemployed because of the industrial revolution. Their main food was potatoes and bread, and vegetables were usually not fresh, as was meat. There was not even enough to eat, and the same for clothing. The British Empire needed sky-high quantities of cheap goods to seize the global market, and only the low-cost production of goods by machine industry could crush the handicraft industry that had existed for thousands of years in India, China and other regions. Therefore, they could only rely on reducing production costs to strengthen their competitiveness. The industrial revolution led to a class division and the gap between the rich and poor became wider. The survival rate of children from wealthy families is twice as high as that of poor families.
At that time, entertainment was scarce, so most workers would choose to drink alcohol after work, and over time, they developed the habit of drinking. Alcohol had a significant impact on their family relationships as they spent a quarter of their income on alcohol abuse.
The average weekly household income for farming families in the 1830s and 1840s was only 11 shillings and sixpence. The average income of a miner's household is 29 shillings, while the average income of a manufacturing worker's household is 33 shillings.