The Workingman in the Nineteenth Century

This collection of documents gives a picture of the life of the workingman in the nineteenth century - his conditions of work, his housing, diet, health, and recreations, the way he viewed his problems (and was viewed as a problem by the upper classes), and his gradually developing interest in unionism.

The sources are mostly contemporary accounts drawn from books, newspapers, and evidence supplied to the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital.

Thedocuments are lively, often amusing, always very revealing of the life of the ordinary people.