Why Did the Population Grow in Britain Between 1700 and 1950

Topics: Demography, Industrial Revolution, United Kingdom Pages: 2 (618 words) Published: November 9, 2008
Between 1750 and 1900 the population of the United Kingdom went up drastically, giving it the name of population explosion. The government started to take a census of the population at this time. From this information we can see the population of Britain went from around 6million in 1750 to 40 million by 1900. There were many effects that caused this; improvements in agriculture, hygiene, medical care, peoples health, the industrial revolution and young marriage. These changes in industry, medicine and social lives were the causes of the fall in death rate and the rise in the birth rate and these two factors along with immigration brings up the population of a country. However net immigration was at a very small rate and so this was not the cause for the population explosion, if anything more people were leaving the United Kingdom (Irish were immigrating to America.) Due to warmer weather and improvements in machinery, (seed drill, fertilisers and cross breeding of animals) farmers produced more food for people. This was the agricultural revolution. This then reduced the risk of famine, starvation or malnutrition. By improving peoples diets the death rate was reduced, helping the population to grow. From 1750 younger people started to get married earlier than normal. This left more time in their life to start a family and therefore increasing the birth rate of the country. Huge improvements were made to the medical world. To start with in 1796 Dr.Jenner came up with a vaccination for smallpox, one of the big killers. In 1870 it was made compulsory and suddenly it disappeared. By introducing this vaccination less people died of smallpox, leading to a fall in the death rate. After 1750 improvements were made to the care of pregnant women. Some hospitals introduced maternity beds. Doctors also introduced anaesthetics to dull the pain. This led to a rise in birth rate as more babies were born, but also a drop in death rate as lots of women usually died in...
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