Victorian Splendour: Slums and Starvation

Nineteenth century England saw a rapid growth of population and urbanisation, stimulated by the Industrial Revolution. The elite became wealthier and the poor became poorer. In many ways, the lower classes hadn’t been in this dire a situation since the Middle Ages. Peasant cooking had been largely forgotten and the daily pottage, which had sustained people as a staple food for centuries, had disappeared from the table. Eliza Acton noted in her book, Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), that soups or pottage were hardly eaten. The poor didn’t have the means to heat up the dish, and often they didn’t have access to the ingredients to make a soup. This was an era marked by slum housing, hard labour, starvation and disease.