Long hours in the factory left the women no chance to care for their homes properly. As a result their dark, cheerless rooms were dirty, untidy, and ill-kept. With no time for cooking, the family meals became too largely a matter of baker's bread. The children were dirty and half sick from neglect and the wrong sort of food. Bad enough as these conditions were for the strong and well, they were the more deplorable for the sick and the aged. The home atmosphere was not improved by the too frequent presence of the unemployed husband and father, spending his days idly in the nearest "pub" or in half-hearted attempts to improve the house-keeping. A by-product of the bad home conditions was the insecurity of the aged. There was, for instance, no room in the crowded tenements for aged parents, nor money to support them.
(from A History of England and the British Empire)
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