閱讀前先看 Before you read
- 主題
- How industrialisation reshaped cities
- 文章重點
- The Industrial Revolution produced the first urban majority in history, but rapid migration overwhelmed sanitation, causing public-health crises that drove reluctant reform from the 1840s onward.
- 難度
- 中等 · Intermediate
- 建議時間
- 18 分鐘
重要單字
- sanitation — systems for keeping a place clean and healthy / 衛生設施
- migration — movement of people to a new area / 遷移
- epidemic — a widespread outbreak of disease / 流行病
- mortality — the rate of death / 死亡率
- waterborne — carried by water / 水傳播的
- threshold — a level above which something applies / 門檻
30 秒快速理解 30-second summary
Britain became the first urban-majority society between 1750 and 1900. Manchester ballooned from 25,000 to over 300,000 through migration. Overcrowding caused cholera outbreaks. Chadwick's 1842 sanitary report and Snow's 1854 cholera study eventually pushed Parliament toward the 1848 Public Health Act and slow reform. By 1880 city death rates had fallen, but still trailed rural rates.
逐段練習 Read paragraph by paragraph
1
段落 1 — A new kind of society
The Industrial Revolution that began in northern England in the late eighteenth century did more than introduce new machines. It produced the first societies in human history in which most people lived in towns. In 1750, fewer than fifteen per cent of the British population lived in places of more than 10,000 inhabitants; by 1850, the figure was over fifty per cent, and by 1900 close to eighty. Comparable shifts soon followed in Belgium, Germany and the north-eastern United States.
本段重要單字 (3)
- inhabitants — people who live in a place / 居民
- comparable — similar in size or extent / 可比的
- shifts — changes from one state to another / 轉變
Quick Check · 隨堂小測
What does the writer mean by "the first societies in human history in which most people lived in towns"?
- Britain was the first place where towns existed at all.
- Britain was the first society where the urban population became the majority.
- Most British people had always lived in towns.
看答案 · Show answer
答案：B — Britain was the first society where the urban population became the majority.
The figures (15 per cent in 1750, over 50 per cent by 1850) show this is about the urban share of the population becoming the majority for the first time.
2
段落 2 — The explosive growth of industrial centres
The growth of particular industrial centres was extraordinarily fast. Manchester, a market town of around 25,000 in 1772, had passed 300,000 by 1850, almost entirely through migration from the surrounding countryside and from Ireland. Liverpool grew at a similar pace, driven by the Atlantic cotton and slave trades that fed the Lancashire textile mills. Such expansion outran the housing, sanitation and water supply that any of these towns had originally provided for a much smaller population.
本段重要單字 (3)
- migration — movement of people to a new area / 遷移
- mills — factories with machinery / 工廠
- sanitation — public hygiene systems / 衛生設施
Quick Check · 隨堂小測
How did Manchester reach over 300,000 by 1850?
- Through a high local birth rate.
- Through migration from the countryside and Ireland.
- Through annexation of nearby villages.
看答案 · Show answer
答案：B — Through migration from the countryside and Ireland.
The text says the growth was "almost entirely through migration from the surrounding countryside and from Ireland", not local births.
3
段落 3 — Disease and overcrowding
The consequences were grim. The German social investigator Friedrich Engels, observing Manchester in 1844, described streets so narrow that air did not circulate, courtyards shared by hundreds of families and a single privy, and a death rate among children that, in the worst districts, exceeded that of rural villages by a factor of three. Cholera epidemics, unknown in Britain before 1831, swept through industrial towns repeatedly during the 1830s and 1840s, killing tens of thousands. The waterborne origin of the disease was not understood until Dr John Snow's investigation of a Soho outbreak in 1854.
本段重要單字 (3)
- privy — an outdoor toilet / 戶外廁所
- cholera — a serious infectious gut disease / 霍亂
- waterborne — carried in water / 水傳播的
Quick Check · 隨堂小測
According to Engels, child mortality in Manchester's worst districts was:
- about the same as in rural villages
- three times that of rural villages
- lower than in rural villages
看答案 · Show answer
答案：B — three times that of rural villages
The text states the child death rate "exceeded that of rural villages by a factor of three" — i.e. three times higher.
4
段落 4 — Reluctant reform
Public-health reform followed reluctantly. Edwin Chadwick's 1842 Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population shocked Parliament with its evidence that filth, not vice, drove urban mortality. The 1848 Public Health Act allowed local boards to be set up where mortality exceeded a national threshold, and large cities began the slow business of building sewers, paving streets and supplying piped water. By 1880 the death rate in major British cities had fallen substantially, although it would not match the rural rate until well into the twentieth century. The pattern that began in Lancashire — rapid migration, overwhelmed infrastructure, public-health crisis, eventual reform — has repeated, with local variations, in newly industrialising regions ever since.
本段重要單字 (3)
- filth — dirt and squalor / 髒污
- vice — immoral behaviour / 惡習
- threshold — a level above which action begins / 門檻
Quick Check · 隨堂小測
What did Chadwick's 1842 report argue?
- That moral failings of the poor caused urban deaths.
- That dirty environmental conditions, not bad behaviour, drove mortality.
- That cholera came from abroad.
看答案 · Show answer
答案：B — That dirty environmental conditions, not bad behaviour, drove mortality.
The text says the report showed "filth, not vice, drove urban mortality" — environment, not morality, was to blame.
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