Longform article Mike Butler Sept 2025.

Introduction 
Outbreaks of disease and almost constant wars across the vast British Empire and beyond would take the lives of many young men that had managed to survive the traumas of a Victorian childhood where even the paint and wallpaper could kill you. It’s the Arsenic you know! (Barrie, House & Garden, October 2024)  
 

The era was one of the Great Stink when the smell of the Thames was so over-powering it closed parliament. Cholera outbreaks were commonplace, and people thought disease travelled in bad air, miasma they called it, a theory that had held sway since the days of Hippocrates in the 5th century BCE. This was eventually replaced by Germ Theory in 1880s thanks to the work of Koch. Pasteur, Jenner and a large number of others. 
 

Into this mayhem was born Joseph Crudgington, son of a Roman Road Market fishmonger in London in the April of 1890. A brother to his sister, Sarah, and shortly after and another brother, Alf. would arrive in their small, crowded terraced house, shared by cousins, uncles and aunts, in what today is the rather pleasant surroundings of Shoreditch Park. (Cunningham, no date).  
 
His birth took place in the latter years of the reign of Queen Victoria, who was to pass away on the 28th of January 1901, aged 81. Her great age was seen as exceptional. Some of the other great figures of the time had relatively short lives, the prolific and still much lauded author, Charles Dickens closed his very last chapter in the summer of 1870 at the age of 58. The average age of death of a working-class person in 1901 was just 45. 
 
Average life expectancy improved thanks in part to the work of Florence Nightingale who would herself reach 90 before passing in 1910. Her advice on hygiene in medical settings had slowly crept into everyday life. Child mortality had begun to fall as living standards had improved and science had begun to debunk centuries of myth. 
 
This was a rapidly changing world that young Joe had found himself born into, and he was to see many astonishing and rapid changes, none more so than in the age that ordinary workaday people would, including himself, live to due to changes in very structure of the society surrounding and supporting them.
 

Sanitation, Hygiene, The Workplace and Housing. 
In Victorian times and up until World War One (WWI). The raising of issues around Sanitation and Hygiene, Housing, and the Workplace would have a considerable effect on both average life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE). 
 
It should be understood that the concept of life expectancy and with it those of healthy lived years were not part of the debate. It was not, at least initially a welfare problem, it was a production problem.  Healthy workers were simply more productive for long periods. 
 
The idea of ordinary working people living longer and healthier lives for their own benefit is a post-World War Two idea. Philanthropy existed, but the benefit of that philanthropy had to be sold to the business owners and merchants involved.  
 
It was the success of the Cadbury Brothers with Bourneville and Wiliam Hesketh Levers’ Port Sunlight that would have led Victorian business owners to see the practicality of looking after their workers welfare in terms of production.

  
Sanitation and Hygiene 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A cholera outbreak had taken place in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in London’s West End in 1854. Removal of the pump handle, by physician John Snow had stopped the outbreak. This had proven to some that ‘bad air, or miasma was not the cause of all disease, water could also be a culprit. 
 

 

 

 

 

Oliver Cumming, co-chair of the John Snow Society and Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) states in the article, ‘“John Snow’s ground-breaking study of this cholera outbreak and his subsequent decision to demand the removal of the pump’s handle heralded the advent of epidemiology as a scientific discipline and basis for public health policy.” (LSHTM, July 2018). 
 
The Great Stink of 1858 was caused by a hot summer combining with the use of the Thames as a sewage outflow. Joseph Bazalgette was charged with constructing London’s first sewage system including a water treatment works that opened in 1864 at Beckton to the east of London. (Newham Unlocked, September 2025) 
 
During the Crimean War (1853-1865) it was noted that two soldiers would die from illness to one killed in battle. Into this stepped Florence Nightingale who was to prove statistically to the authorities of the day that sanitation and hygiene methods including regular hand washing between touching patients, could contribute to considerably improved outcomes.  
 
It had been a long and convoluted path that had led to hygiene playing a major role in saving lives, including mothers and young babies, the measure had been fought against by many for centuries, but proof and, with it, acceptance had arrived.  
 
The simple measures of cleaning hospitals, workplaces, hands and homes led directly to the recognised drops in child mortality in the early 1900s, and in women dying in childbirth. (Science Museum, October 2018)  
 
Housing 
With outdoor toilets and tin baths, a small scullery in which to wash the clothes and cook the food, cramped, overcrowded and noisy conditions Joe’s parents were glad when they were classed as ‘overcrowded’. This enabled them to move to a much bigger house in Leytonstone. 

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It was there that Joe met Margaret Savage, who would become his wife and constant companion for the next fifty years. He gained regular work, as a bus cleaner, at Leyton Green garage, a job that he would hold on to for over 45 years.   
 
This was only the beginning for the working classes across the UK as projects to clear away the overcrowded and badly maintained homes of the workers (slums) was about to begin in an age of unprecedented house building to create homes ‘fit for heroes’ from the impending first and second World Wars.
   

The Workplace. 
Early in the Victorian era the workplace was a dangerous place. Factories producing everything required for modern life in the British Empire had sprung up across the country and employed men, women and very young children. 

 
Building sites for constructing the homes, businesses and workplaces of the new working classes were scarring the landscape as far as the eye could see. Industrialisation was running full throttle as Victoria came to the throne in 1837 at 18 years old. 

 
It should be noted that there is a misconception around average life expectancy due to young children that failed to reach adulthood, as many as a quarter of children died in their first 12 years of life having an extreme effect on average life expectancy. (Horne, The Skeptic, March 2025.)  
 
It is still true that the Industrial Revolution saw a drop in average life expectancy from the agricultural Middle Ages. This was due to workplace accident and the employment of child labour. The average age of death was 42 amongst the factory workers, miners and other working-class manual trades. This was seen as collateral damage in the race for profit by the merchants of the cities who now had wealth undreamed of. 
 
Government was forced to act on the side of the workers. A list of factory acts from 1802 onwards improved conditions. The Factory Act of 1819 stopped children under 9 from working and restricted the working week of 9–13-year-olds to 48 hours.   
 
The Coal Mining Act of 1842 stopped children under 10 working in mining and banned women from working underground. By 1911 this had become no boy under 14 allowed underground, no boy under 16 was allowed to work at night and established an 8-hour day for miners. (BBC Bitesize, 2025)  
 
 
The decriminalisation of Trades Unions by a Royal commission in 1867 led to the forming of the Trades Union Congress in 1868 passing a resolution that stated,’ that it is highly desirable that the trades of the United Kingdom should hold an annual congress, for the purpose of bringing the trades into closer alliance, and to take action in all Parliamentary matters pertaining to the general interests of the working classes’. (TUC, 2025).  

 
Campaigning by the TUC led to more rights for workers, and Joe himself was a supporter of the unions through the Transport and General Workers Union throughout his working life. He would often be heard to say that ‘without the Unions we would still be working 24 hours a day, ten days a week!’   

The workplace that Joe entered as a young man just before WW1 at London Buses in Leyton was very different and much safer than it had ever been, things would continue to improve throughout his working life, and by doing so enhance his and his peers’ longevity. 
 
 
This all still matters in 2025, if we do not maintain sanitation, living conditions and workplace rights the health of the workforce is not maintained. This means people are less productive and less able to generate the wealth required to sustain themselves and a growing economy. Failing in this way only leads to more poverty and deprivation with failing life and health expectancies as a result. 
 

The Becontree Estate 
London before WW1 and through the interwar years had seen substantial amounts of local authority housing built across the London County Council jurisdiction, including the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch in 1900 under the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act. The Boundary Estate replaced some of the slum housing Joe Crudgington would have recognised from his childhood as the Old Nichol. (London Living History, June 2025) 
 
The crowning glory for the LCC would come a little later under the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919, more commonly referred to as the Addison Act from its creator Dr Christoper Addison, Housing Minister in the coalition government of David Lloyd George. 
 
The act allowed local authorities to buy up land for housing outside of their political boundaries and so enable the LCC to buy up 3000 acres of land, mainly in Dagenham, then Essex, so that it could build what would become the Becontree Estate. (London Archives, 2025)  
 
 
Initially planned as a project to clear a lot of the overcrowded and badly maintained housing (slum clearance as it was termed) in London’s Eastend, it also took on the pledge of building ‘homes fit for heroes’ after the end of WW1. 
 
The Becontree Estate would comprise some 27,000 new homes over 3,000 acres of land built between 1921 and 1935. Due to his service in the Royal Navy during WWI Joe, Mag and their two daughters, Floss and Joyce, were offered a new home on Kemp Road, part of the Becontree Estate, and would move in during July 1927.  
 
This was a world away from both Joe and Mag’s childhoods in Shoreditch and Wapping, even the house in Leytonstone did not have an indoor bathroom and toilet. To them the upgrade was obvious, and they soon settled into life in their new home. 
 
There were, and still are, many criticisms of the Becontree Estate project, initially there were very few public buildings, very limited schools and only small parades of local shops and no social facilities, just rows and rows of cottage style houses. 
 
 
By the 1950s higher standards in workplaces, better wages, lower rents, and after WW2. The election of the Atlee Labour government and the beginnings of the Welfare State and the NHS. Free education including college and university places and the chance for working people across the UK to thrive. Included in all this was the New Towns project. 
 
Stevenage and the New Towns Act of 1946 
The Atlee government had recognised the need to rebuild the UK from the grassroots after WW2. Part of the problem was most of the cities had decaying and bombed out infrastructure including housing.  
The decision was made with the New Towns Act 1946 to build satellite towns around major cities housing around 60,000 residents. The first, near London, would be Stevenage in Hertfordshire. (Stevenage Borough Council, July 2024) 
 
Others would include Harlow, Crawley, Welwyn Garden City and Basildon. Outside the south-east of England new towns would include Cumbernauld, East Kilbride and Bracknell. 

Thirty-two new towns were built in total containing over one million new homes for 2.8 million people, comprising some 5.5% of the UK socially rented housing total. (UK Parliament, 2025), 

With the improvements that followed in in urban planning, incorporation of outside spaces, development of sports and social provision as well as advances in health would see increased longevity across the UK population, and by 1950 the average UK life expectancy for men had passed 65.  

 
This was an important milestone as the qualify age for the state pension for men had been set at 65, it was lower at 60 for women. This meant that many more men were increasingly qualifying for a state pension, in a system that had last been reformed in the 1940s. Would it be able to cope? 
 
The BBC, Smog, and the New Elizabethans. 

BBC Radio launched in 1922 and BBC television in 1936, radio had the upper hand until the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. The number of TV licences shot up from 763,000 in 1951 to 3.2 million in 1954 the coronation of Elizabeth II was seen as pivotal as millions crammed into spaces with TV screens to watch the event. (Baird, I. June 2013) 
 
Joe and his family would have watched the Coronation in the comfort of their little house in Kemp Road, Dagenham. Joe had been given a TV on his leaving the Navy after service in WW2. That little black and white TV was to outlast Joe himself. 
 
Life was becoming more comfortable by each passing year for the working people of the United Kingdom and in 1955 Joe, at 65. retired from Leyton Green bus garage having worked there for 45 years. He would get a full state pension, this for a married couple was £3.25 per week.  
 
I the August of 1952, Joe’s youngest daughter Betty, then 20, had married Norman, her childhood sweetheart from school. On getting married Norman had moved into the house in Kemp Road, so his wage helped cover the drop in Joe’s income.  
 
Modern amenities of the age such as a twin tub washer, a vacuum cleaner and other gadgets of the age were bought, often from Perkins in Hackney, a shop that provided them for weekly payments, commonly known as the ‘never-never’. The consumer society had begun, although today’s Amazon generation would have found it difficult to recognise it as such. 

 SMOG and the Clean Air acts 
The air however was far from breathable, one of the big down sides was the expansion in properties had pumped more gas from coal fires and factories into the air. Unusual weather conditions had trapped this gas, made up nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxide, ozone, smoke and other particulates settle over most of London from the 5th to the 9th of December. (Brittanica, Aug 2025).  
 
It hospitalised many, and killed the frail, ill and elderly. Consequently, the first Clean Air Act was passed in 1956, prohibiting the use of cheap coal and promoting the use of smokeless fuels (coke) in domestic fires and burners. The environmental clean-up of the results of the Industrial Revolution had begun. 
 
The average life expectancy in 1950 had risen to 67.66 years, jumping five years from the 1940 figure. This would be in no part due to reduced conflicts, people were getting healthier, more educated and more aspirational.  
 
Hollywood, Windrush, Mopheads, Moondust and Mayhem. 
Welcome to the 1960s 
 
With affluence on both sides of the Atlantic growing exponentially various its signs became more obvious. New time saving devices for the home. The increase in entertainment choices and the rise of the teenager showed a change in socio-economic trends and values. Chubby Checker taught the Brits to Twist and Elvis found his pelvis in the mid-fifties, and it was certain that when it came to any form of entertainment the USA was king. 
 
Not all of this was welcome and in 2018 article in the USA based Saturday Evening Post reflecting back on the era quoted one unnamed New York Times critic from 1957  who said “The abolition of child labor[sic] and the lengthening span of formal education have given us a huge leisure class of the young, with animal energies never absorbed by tasks of production.” (Saturday Evening Post, February 2018).  
 
By the time the 60s came around, the UK had their own versions. Skiffle Bands, Tommy Steel and Cliff Richards were assailing the newly invented ‘pop’ charts.   
 
The arrival of the Pill in 1961 was to give women a freedom over their bodies they had not previously had. The concept of ‘family planning had arrived. 
 

Another development was the women’s equality movement that from a workplace viewpoint led to protests for equal pay and the Labour Minister in Government, Barbara Castle bringing in the 1970 Equal Pay Act, forcing employers to pay women the same wage for the same job.   (TUC-pay act, 2025).  
 
It was the ‘freeing up’ of sex that came to the rescue of Joe’s daughter Betty and her husband Norman’s marital dilemma.  They had spent some eleven years of marriage trying to have a baby but failed and failed again.  better than his own father was.  
 
By 1964 babies were being put up for adoption through agencies such as the Salvation Army. Betty and Norman had qualified to adopt, and in May 1964 they took possession of a much-wanted son. 
 
The removal of babies from unmarried mothers was justified by all manner of authorities from parliament to the churches and religious orders through to charities for mothers and children. How controversial this is seen today is a matter of debate and opinion, back in the 1950s and 1960s it was simply the fact of the matter. (Adoption UK, June 2022.) 
 
The contradiction between the ‘free love’ ideas of the late 1960s youth and the attitude of wider society could not have been more starkly illustrated.  
 

The UK of from the mid 1940s onwards was booming, it was said you could walk out of one job, have lunch, then start another.  The shortage of workers pushed the UK government into action. 
 
It turned to the Commonwealth and in 1948 the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. People from across the West Indies had come to help rebuild Britain and take up the slack of all those unfilled jobs in the Labour market.  
 
Around half a million people arrived in the UK from 1948 to 1971 to work in transport, the civil service, the health service, supporting a rebuild in an often ungrateful nation that looked down upon them and the efforts they were making.  
 
The people coming in were often over-qualified for the jobs they were taking, but their skills and abilities were overlooked by the very people they had come here to support. They faced some very difficult treatment, discrimination was rife. (Historic England, 2025.) 
 
Competition between the two super-powers of the day, the United States and the Soviet Union operated on at least two levels the most worrying of which was the Cold War and the fear that would explode into nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction with each pointing more and more powerful missiles at each other and respective allies. 
 
The second was a space race that until the mid-sixties the Soviets seemed to have the upper had put the first satellite in orbit, Sputnik 1 in October 1957. Soviet Russia also beat the USA with the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin in April 1961 in Vostock 1.    
 
Then in the May of 1961 US President Kennedy laid down a challenge to the USA’s NASA to get a man on the Moon by 1970. Kennedy himself said, ‘ I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth,’ 
 
On the 20th of July 1969, Neil Armstrong, stepped on to the surface of the Moon and spoke the immortal line, ‘That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. The USA had, in the end, won the space race.  
 
Joe, watching with his family in Dagenham was rather unimpressed. Asked what he thought of it, Joe is said to have looked up from his football coupon, took off his glasses and stated, ‘Silly buggers, spent all that money going there for nothing, then having to come all the way back again!’ 

 
Fririday 21st August 1970, the house in Kemp Road was seeing a lot of visitors, Floss, her husband Albert, Joyce with husband Johnny in tow. Betty’s cousin June, her husband George and their eldest daughter Karen, other friends and neighbours.  
 
It took ten hours for the ambulance to arrive, by which time Joe was delirious and the family worried. An hour after getting him to the hospital he had died, a victim of an insect bite that had turned to blood poisoning, Sepsis we now call it. He had reached the age of 80.  To bring Joe’s story to an end. He was my grandfather, my mother was his daughter Betty, and I am the child that Betty and Norman adopted in 1964. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The socio-economic changes he had seen, the introduction of pensions, legal changes to allow some women the vote, the establishment of universal suffrage, the Labour Party, Trades Unions, the welfare state, education for all, the NHS, local authority housing and a complete modernisation of the British way of life. 
 

 

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Welcome to the 21st century 
 
The average UK life expectancy in 2010 for men reached 85 and for women 89, we had come a very long way even from 1970, and the expectation was that average life expectancy would continue to increase.  
All the factors that caused early morbidity seemed to being addressed. Smoking was in major decline and was becoming socially unacceptable. The drinking of alcohol to excess was also now being frowned up and local gyms were beginning to pop up along with YouTube videos and other on-line resources to help you exercise more often to maintain a healthy and youthful appearance.  
 
Since the Clean Air Act in 1956 we had also got better understanding of environmental issues, lead in petrol, aerosol sprays and the ozone layer, particulates from diesel fumes and replacing gas and fossil fuels with nuclear, solar and wind power. 
 
Then came the banking crisis in 2008, the Brexit vote of 2016, a nationwide housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the resignation of three Prime Ministers in between 2019 and 2022. The UK was in turmoil and living standards generally were falling. 
 
During his as PM time Boris Johnson had presented his levelling up agenda and he was the first to include the pledge to increase healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035 and to close the gap on average life expectancy between the poverty stricken and the more affluent.  Average life expectancy figures for the UK up until 2010 had shown consistent rises across all social groups since WW2 with average life expectancy rising from 77.74 in 2000 to 80.4 in 2010 according to World Bank figures. 
 
The chart below shows a large dip around the Covid lockdowns of 2020, but a rise on arrival of the vaccine. From 2010, average life expectancy has stalled with no sign a resumption of upward rises.  
 
 
 
Based on World Bank figures 
 
The Labour Party on election in 2024 were quick to include the pledge to increase healthy life expectancy and to close the gap for the poverty stricken against the most affluent by 2035. 
 
The problem with this pledge is they are simply running out of time. The gap in average life expectancy between the poor and the rich is growing, the rate of increase overall has stalled.   
 
Alarmingly, for the most poverty stricken the rates of both average life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have begun to drop. As an example, we can look at the figures for east London and the individual boroughs in that area.    
 
 
 
The chart above illustrates the five London Boroughs with the lowest life expectancies. Combine this with the educational performance of Barking and Dagenham, the Borough has the poorest attainments when it comes to degree level education and the highest number of people leaving education with no qualifications. (Trust for London, 2021) 

 
A pattern emerges, one that has a long history, the East End of London generally has had a poor record in education and low attainment across the Becontree Estate has always been one of the criticisms of the project.   
 
The over reliance on Fords, now long gone, and an industrial base that has shrunk away in the last five decades has left many working for low pay in less-than-ideal housing conditions. 

 
Overcrowding once more is becoming an issue and affected the poorest populations in those boroughs most during the pandemic forcing BBC data journalist Christine Jeavans  in July 2021 wrote, ’Dying too young: Maps show little has changed in 170 years’, 
 
Professor Sally Sheard of the University of Liverpool being quoted in the article as follows. "And that's exactly what we've seen with Covid - the highest rates have been in areas that still have problems with overcrowding." In reference to how maps of child deaths in the 1850s almost duplicate the worst affected areas under Covid. (Jeavans, C. BBC, July 2021) 
 
Tower Hamlets, the inner London east borough has some of the highest population densities in relation to housing not just in the UK but across Europe, Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham and Newham all have extensive pockets of overcrowded accommodation. These areas showed the highest rates of Covid according to Christine Jeavans data.  
 
These are factors that were recognisable to people in Joe Crudgington’s time growing up in the early part of the 20th century and are to major extent resurfacing due to successive governments since 1980 being obsessed with free market economics and the unrealised expectation that wealth will ’trickle-down.‘ 

     

One of the current players in this regard is Nigel Farage of Reform who is on record from 2012 in saying that he would be more comfortable with the UK moving to an insurance-based health system. (Guardian, November 2014) 

en with recent drops in the life expectancy of the least affluent in the UK. All UK groups have higher average life expectancies than their US counterparts. Farage is therefore wrong in his assumption that that an insurance-based system would provide better value. (The Conversation, April 2025.) 

The Pension Dichotomy. 
The Intergenerational Fund claimed in a 2022 report that there are some three million pensioner millionaires in the UK. (if.org, June 2022)   
 
The fact that various organisations brought extreme pressure on the government to restore it, shows that the opposite argument from Age Concern that there are 1.9 million pensioners living in poverty shows we have a problem. (Age Uk, May 2024).  
 
There are two issues here, one of image. Most people see pensioners as poorest groups there is still a tendency to think of the ‘elderly’ as people that made sacrifices, fought in wars and generally suffered hardships like Joe Crudgington and his comrades certainly did in both WWI and WWI 
 
The reality is that generation have now mostly passed on. Most current pensioners are the group that were encouraged to buy their council houses, and many are sitting on huge profits that they could release to help sustain themselves. 
 
The other is a simple misunderstanding. Most people are of the opinion that they pay into their own pensions through the National Insurance System. This is a myth, the current NI and taxpayers are paying for the current state pensions, not their own. A reality check here, most people do not know how the benefit system works, most people do not see the state pension as a benefit. 
 
There is also an emotional response, we do not think of older people in society as capable, ration human beings, able to think and act for themselves, we all conjure up an emotive ideal of a lttle old nan or grandad who has difficulty heating there home and feeding themselves, that is often far from the case.     
 
To make the necessary changes to the state pension would require the public to have a much better understanding of the way the state pension system works.  
 
The opposite is also true, there are many that never bought property in the 1970’s or 1980s, they continued to rent either because they were too low paid or they had other priorities. This could include caring for older or disabled relatives. A sizable number of the 1.9 million pensioners in poverty will be people such as those, and they do deserve better. 
 
The simplest way is to recognise both groups, the very well off pensioners who certainly do not need Winter Fuel Allowances and some that would not even miss the state pension itself should perhaps have that pension means tested. 
 
As a measure it would free up funds that could go to the pensioners at the other end of the scale.     
 
There is a tendency to attack those on Universal Credit in the mistaken belief that these people are all without work, but figures from January 2024 showed that 38% of the claimant count were in some form of employment. 
 
A further contradiction arises here, and it is one that affects a large proportion of East London residents. We can add to that 38% any number of people across the area anyone that works for the minimum wage of just £12.21 per hour, we then have what are referred to as the ‘working poor’.  
 
These people are travelling by bus and tube across London to work and their fairs are subsidising the Freedom passes of all disabled and elderly people, the young person's Zip card and the over 60s oyster card, none of these passes are means tested. This means that some of those millionaire pensioners are riding free at the expense of the working poor in London.      
 
Joe Crudgington would recognise the working poor, the destitute and the homeless on the streets of London today. What I think he would find hard to accept is that some people that have considerable wealth at their disposal are able to freeload off the backs of those individuals whilst they get left further behind. 
 
Somehow we have got our priorities somewhat muddled, the problem is how do we unmuddle them?  How do we carry out a priority reset without some people feeling hard done by? 
 
In the UK we have been travelling the same well-worn path for nearly fifty years, wealth and opportunity have not dripped down.   We are now seeing advances that had been made, and almost seemed permanent, slowly reversing. (Guardian, Sept 2019)  
 
Problems from the past are reappearing. We need to reset, put back in place some of the things that led to past successes. Build new council houses. Invest in community, Build better advice and guidance systems to address diet, exercise and healthy eating programmes. Invest in education more in the poorest communities to achieve long term growth. 
 
Then we may make inroads into that government target of closing the gap between the poor and the affluent in terms of life expectancy and improve healthy life expectancy. 
 
References 
 Adoption UK, (June 2022). A look back on adoption during Elizabeth II reign. Available at: https://www.adoptionuk.org/blog/a-look-back-at-adoption-over-queen-elizabeth-iis-reign 
Age UK, (May 2024). Poverty and financial disadvantage in later life. Available at: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/siteassets/documents/reports-and-publications/reports-and-briefings/money-matters/poverty-and-financial-disadvantage-in-later-life-briefing-2024.pdf 

Baird, I. (June 2013), The Queen’s Coronation, 1953. The day that changed television. Available at: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/celebrating-the-60th-anniversary-of-the-queens-coronation-30th-birthday-countdown/ 
Barrie, House & Garden, (October 2024). The poisonous history of interior design. Available at:https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/the-poisonous-history-of-interior-design 
BBC Bitesize, (2025). Impact of government acts improving factories. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zkxrxyc/revision/5 
Brittanica, (Aug 2025). Great Smog of London. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Smog-of-London 
The Conversation, (April 2025.) Americans die earlier at all wealth levels... Available at: https://theconversation.com/americans-die-earlier-at-all-wealth-levels-even-if-wealth-buys-more-years-of-life-in-the-us-than-in-europe-253620 

Cunningham, (no date). The Lost Streets of Shoreditch Park. 

Available at: https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/records/the-lost-streets-of-shoreditch-park 

Guardian, (November 2014). Films shows Nigel Farage calling for move away from state funded NHS. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/12/film-nigel-farage-insurance-based-nhs-private-companies 
Guardian, (September 2019). UK faces Victorian age of inequality, says TUC general secretary. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/05/uk-faces-victorian-age-of-inequality-says-tuc-general-secretary 

Horne, M. (July 2025). What age was ... considered old in Medieval Europe? Available at: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2025/07/what-age-was-actually-considered-old-in-medieval-europe/ 
Historic England, (2025). Racism and Resistance. Available at:  https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/another-england/a-brief-history/racism-and-resistance/ 
if.org, (June 2022), Over three million pensioner millionaires revealed. Available at:  https://www.if.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/pensioner_millionaires_FINAL.pdf 

Jeavans, C. BBC, (July 2021). ’Dying too young: Maps show little has changed in 170 years’. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57730353 
London Living History, (June 2025). Visiting The Site Of One Of Victorian London’s Worst Slums. Available at: https://livinglondonhistory.com/visiting-the-site-of-one-of-victorian-londons-worst-slums/ 
London Archives, (2025). A Brief Guide to Housing. Available at: https://www.thelondonarchives.org/your-research/lcc-housing-records 

LSHTM, (July 2018). John Snow memorial pump marking historic cholera outbreak reinstalled... Available at: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2019/john-snow-memorial-pump-marking-historic-cholera-outbreak-reinstalled-its 
Newham Unlocked, (September 2025). The Greenway or Bazalgette’s Northern Outfall Sewer. Available at: https://www.newhamheritagemonth.org/records/northern-outfall-sewer/ 

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