Why the population in Britain grew so quickly after 1750
Monday 21st June 2010
Essay
By Christopher Herbert 9X
During the 1750’s the population rocketed upwards. Why was this? Well in this essay I will describe the reasons why this happened to the population in Britain. Before this time they measured the number of people using church records, but not everyone used the registries as it was time consuming and frankly a waste of time. So they used a census which is a form compulsory for the public to fill in. This measured what people owned and who was living within the household. Now days this is still used and happens every ten years. There was a massive increase from 7 million to 37 million and with this explosion in the growth of the amount of people in Britain and for sure there must be solid reasons behind this. Was it because of the birth rate? The factories? Or even simple things such as fresh fruit and vegetables or putting tax on alcohol. In this essay I have learnt a great amount about population increase and I hope it will do the same for you

My first reason is that of the fruit and vegetable increase. With farmers having more land they were therefore allowed to produce more fruit and vegetables and with much of too much for them and their family they decided to sell the fruit and vegetables to the willing to pay public. This gave many towns people a much improved healthy lifestyle to live with. Many people now beginning to buy all of the products they would live longer thanks to the help of the freshly grown fruit and vegetables. A small difference like this and it can make a big variation on the before life.

Many things affected the healthy living of this time and another example is the mass production of basic cleansing soap. Since the first making of soap, it was a very dear price for the people living in this time. But suddenly one year soap was lowered in price making it more available for the public market and therefore the country’s population started to cleanse using cheaper soap to wash with. Many main germs were prevented due to the price decrease and thanks to that many people grew older and were living their lives in a safer and cleaner life.

Sobering up. Now days to sober up are because of maybe unusual behaviour due to alcohol, because it’s affecting your lifespan or even just for their jobs and the requirements. During the period of time between 1750 and the 1900’s alcohol such as cheap gin was very popular to everyone and a major craze became about for this gin alcohol. As a result of the constant selling of alcohol many people became seriously ill and lots of people died due to this event which scared the government as this was not good for their reputation. The government came up with a genius idea to put tax on the gin that was sold within the Britain. After the tax had been introduced to gin the craze of it died down and for that reason fewer people could afford to consistently to purchase the alcohol gin. Within a short period the population raised due to many people that were not suffering from chronic illnesses in connecting to gin.

Hospitals are today very high tech with fancy machinery to solve the simplest of problems. Say if you accidently lost your finger now they would try to sew it back on but then they would just cover it up with bandages. This all changed between 1750 and 1900 as medicine grew in many forms on so countless levels. After few years doctors were more into operations but it was very dangerous as infection was extremely high with the cleanliness. They had to do something as more people were dying of infection than the amount of people they’d saved using surgery as an option. Soon there was an incredible breakthrough in medical science as a man called Joseph Lister discovered antiseptics to prevent infection circulating the body and causing it to turn septic. Also anaesthetics was also found so many more people could undergo surgery but under anaesthetics subsequently being safer for the patients surgery but to also help the surgeons performing as they can achieve much more while the patient is temporally under anaesthetics. This was not the only major discovery for the population to rise as a vaccination against smallpox (a giant widespread disease at the time) was also exposed to the public and this alone saved many upon many more lives. With this simple vaccination against smallpox it could stop you from dying. Soon it became as popular as C.D’S today. Eventually it became a compulsory injection to attend to and with one little jab it saved millions. During the time period I am learning about industrial revolution is a very widely known part of history. Once more families heard about factories opening in the more urban areas they packed their bags and moved to the cities. The factories needed more children but were not all well paid jobs. Some families had a great idea to earn themselves some more money; if they sent off all their children to work they would earn more money to spend on the welfare of them and their children. Not many people had children at this point as some people saw them as a waste of space and money. Not now. Many already married couples had many more babies and when between the ages of 4-6 they could start their work at the factories earning them that little bit more money for food and supplies. Even younger people were marrying earlier so they could take advantage of all the time they would have to make more babies to work in the factories. This is when there was a massive increase in the birth rate.
Overall there were many small reasons that meant the population to rise but once put together they made a great change to Britain of 1705- 1900’s. These are only some of the reasons but there were many more such as school compulsory, councils cleaner up cities, and even the invention of cotton pants. From 1750 it was 7 million people in the Britain and at the end of 1900 it grew to a 37milion which is a colossal amount to grow. Think of today there are many more medicines out there and much cleaner towns than then and the population is in 2001 (which was the last census) it came in at just under 59 million. Overall the vast increase I think was mostly caused by the factor which was the factories and the revolution of them that had such an effect on the population and it’s still rising today. In conclusion small things can make a big difference to the lives we live.