Introduction

Living and working environments within London can vary a lot, as can our health. Our health and wellbeing, of course, are closely tied to the environments that we surround ourselves with.

But what of the people that lived here before us? What happened to us and our bodies as London changed and grew? During the Industrial period, we constructed an impressively new and diverse city. The metropolitan hub of a national distribution network transporting people, food and goods across Britain and overseas. But how did our bodies respond to working and living in this manufactured, uber-urban environment? And what imprint has industrialisation left on our health today? Is our health still shaped by the footprint of London past?

Each of the chapters here will provide an interactive journey through the history of how industrialisation changed the way people lived and the impact this had on their health.

Based on the evidence from the analysis of human skeletal remains from 22 archaeological sites across the country, we will look at the diversity of lifestyles people experienced before, during and after industrialisation, comparing life in the city to places outside. Focussing on the different environments people were living in and the huge expansion of London as an industrial city, we will explore whether these changes had good or bad impacts on our health and what this might mean for our future.

National sites in relation to London

We will compare the changes over time in our health in five key areas that impact us all today:

1. Accidents, fractures and physical trauma
2. Air pollution
3. Cancer
4. Obesity
5. Old age

We also looked at a range of sites from across London to compare how the different environments within the city impacted on the quality of our lives in the past.

Sites in London

Impact Radiographic Images Database

All the radiographic images used in this study can be accessed via our online searchable database.

Here you can access all the radiographs used in the impact project research. You will need a login to access the database. Please use the 'sign up' button to create an account. Once your account is approved, you will receive a confirmation email.

Access the database

This table lists all of the sites used in the Impact Project giving the sitecode and indicating if pre-industrial or industrial, London or non-metropolitan, time period parameter and for the London sites social status based on funereal contextual information.

Before we start, perhaps we should consider a question: what exactly is industrialisation?

Next: What is industrialisation?