Manchester was a small, rural town in 1800 and a huge industrial metropolis by 1900. The largest cause of this growth was simply the Industrial Revolution, but more specifically, the urban area exploded in population first because of the technological advances in the cotton and textile industry that produced new factory jobs, advanced agricultural techniques that required less farm labor, the diversification of industry around the textile factories, and the ability to ship cotton and textiles all over the world. Remarkably for the time, Manchester grew despite not being on water that allowed it to be a port and was largely grown through railroads.

The Factory Act of 1833 was primarily concerned with regulating the hours of children working in factories in urban Britain. Child labor was common practice throughout the Industrial Revolution, and the Factory Act sought to limit the abuses of child labor by limiting children younger than fourteen to no more than eight hours of labor a day and children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen to no more than twelve hours of labor a day.

Between 1750 and 1900, the nature of the family unit in European society changed dramatically. Far fewer people were staying in one community their whole lives, so they were removed from the constraints of social obligation. This led to more people having sex outside of marriage and led to a massive spike in the number of “illegitimate” children.

Georges-Eugene Haussmann is most widely remembered for the massive project of renovation that he undertook to reshape the urban layout of Paris. He was commissioned to do so by Napoleon III and set out a massive restructuring of Parisian avenues, public works, parks, and buildings. The modern city of Paris is still very much in his image.

The temperance movement spread around Britain in the nineteenth century as many religious leaders and middle-class women began to speak out against the evils of alcohol. Many women believed that alcohol was responsible for many of social ills such as the mistreatment of women, the idleness of some men, and the fact that so many young children were growing up on the streets or without a father. Despite early success of the temperance movement, prohibition movements never spread in Britain like they did in the United States.

Poor Laws had been common in British society since the fourteenth century and were generally designed to provide economic relief for the poorest members of British society; however, by the 1830s, the cost of maintaining Poor Laws had spiralled to the point where the elite of British society were no longer comfortable with them. The New Poor Laws were designed to dramatically reduce the cost of providing for the poor by making life in the workhouses so arduous that only the really desperate would seek aid. Unsurprisingly, they were met with widespread disdain.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) is a renowned scientist famous for developing the germ theory of disease. Pasteur discovered that microorganisms could contaminate food and water, and that these contaminations could spread diseases to humans. This discovery was of particular importance to the process of urbanization, as many of the burgeoning cities of Pasteur's era had little infrastructure to deal with waste or food safety. Pasteur's ideas proved the need for the development of public health infrastructure to bring down the dizzying death rates of urban areas due to disease. Pasteur also developed many processes for dealing with microorganisms, such as some the earliest vaccines and the eponymous process of pasteurizing food and drink via heating, pasteurization.

The process of curing rubber is called “vulcanization.” The purpose of vulcanization is to make rubber more durable and malleable, which allows it to be used for a wider variety of purposes. The technique of vulcanization, which involves the addition of sulfur, was developed in the nineteenth century by Charles Goodyear.

The nineteenth century in Britain witnessed the explosion of the Industrial Revolution, but it also witnessed the growth of a movement to reform political and social injustices exacerbated by the industrialization. The first successful attempt to regulate factory conditions was passed in 1819. It prohibited children younger than nine from working in factories and set a maximum twelve-hour work day for children aged between nine and sixteen.

In 1867 Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and in doing so revolutionized the nature and destructive capabilities of warfare. It was the first highly powerful explosive that could be safely contained and detonated when required. It allowed for rapid innovations in weaponry, particularly in artillery. Nobel is said to have been distraught at the realization of his invention and founded the Nobel Prize as a way to contribute some positive energy to the world.