Hello Professor Swafford and fellow classmates. My name is Kevin Cronin. I am currently a junior, and an English major. This is my first semester at New Paltz. I recently graduated from Orange County Community College in Middletown New York. Victorian era London has always held a significant fascination in my mind, due to the works of Charles Dickens. His detailed descriptions of the class based system, in the Victorian era, breath life into a period of time dominated by heavy industrialization, poverty, and technological advancement.

One aspect of Victorian era London that I was intrigued by was the rapid population growth. As Bruce Robinson states “In 1743, Bethnal Green had a population of 15,000; by 1801, 22,000 people lived there, making it as large as Oxford and Cambridge combined”. This boom in population helped London become the booming city it is today however, it also created slums and miserable living conditions for the lower classes. Victorian era London, like many other major cities from history, was a double edged sword producing both positive, and negative outcomes.

Works Cited

Robinson, Bruce. “London: ‘A Modern Babylon’” BBC News. BBC, 17 Feb. 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.