Friedrich Engels and Manchester

Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen, Prussia on the 28th of November 1820. Born to an Anglo-German Industrial family (Engels was the eldest son of a wealthy German cotton manufacturer)he was sent to work in his father's Victoria Mill factory in Weaste, Manchester in 1842. He was appalled by the child labour, the Despoiled environment and overworked employees whom existed within the confinements of poverty to such an extent that he took notes and sent a series o articles to his at-that-time acquaintance, Karl Marx chronicling the conditions amongst the working class in Manchester.

In 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England was published. It contains detailed a descriptionsand analysis of the terrible conditions endured by the English Working Class. He compiled his Magnus Opus from his own observations, along with detailed contemporary reports. He argues the industrial revolution mad workers worse off. He shows that in large cities death rates for workers are higher than the counterpart statistics of the countryside. In major cities,like Manchester mortality rates from infectious diseases were four times as high as those of the surrounding countryside, after the introduction of mills and factories. It is considered by many to be a classic account of the condition of the industrial working class.