London’s population in 1900 was around 6 million, where did they all live?!

Question

I’ve seen maps of London at around this time and it is tiny compared to what it is now. Was the population density a lot higher? Did there used to be taller buildings? It seems strange to imagine so many people packed into such a small space. Ty

In: 7459

Answer 1

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Answer 2

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Answer 3

Many people even lived on London bridge itself almost like it was its own little suburb https://youtu.be/u5CguqywlBk

Answer 4

I’m currently listening to “The Victorian City” by Judith Flanders (an anthropologist) and she goes into detail about this. Certain areas of London were extremely densely packed, with rows upon rows of slums, and people sleeping ten to a room. There would be a family of five living in a room, then a man or even a young child renting a corner from them. It was crazy! I highly recommend the book, it’s endlessly fascinating.

Answer 5

I live in a 1880s terraced house in suburban London, there’s only two of us but it feels a bit small. The 1921 census shows a couple and six children lived and I genuinely can’t work out where they all slept.

Answer 6

Just watch Call the Midwife (based on 1950s East End London). People would have like 8 kids in a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment.

Answer 7

Large parts of London were basically equivalent to Favellas, whole families crammed into incredibly dense, low quality housing

Answer 8

Where the hell do they all live now? I’ve read a figure of 20 million in the “greater London area” (?) and as an Australian living in a country almost the size of America with a population of 26 million, I have no idea how this is possible lol

Answer 9

In some houses people would sleep in shifts. If only five people fit on your mattress but you’re squeezing in ten, the night shift workers would get back at dawn when the day shift people were getting up and they would trade places. It was really just a place to rest between your 12 hour shifts at the factory.

Answer 10

This is a bit older than 1900s, but if you visit the Shambles in York, you can get a sense of how much more narrow the streets were and how cramped together housing was before cars.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shambles