Victorian Chorley
Sometimes, things happen to us without us really noticing. How often have we looked at our house and garden and decided that they are clean and tidy, only to realise a week or so later that our rooms are covered in dust and our flowerbeds full of weeds? Things can happen unnoticed on a global scale as well; consider the rise of information technology and the internet, or the onset of climate change. Both have huge implications for humankind, but have apparently just appeared and grown in significance in an unchecked, unplanned way. Something as far reaching came about in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the industrial revolution transformed first Britain, then the rest of the world. Over the course of fifty years or so, the population of the UK massively increased, and at the same time, the majority of people found themselves living in towns and cities rather than rural areas, and working in factories rather than agriculture. This enormous demographic change occurr