Cruel Habitations (1974) looks at the pre-industrial background in which housing problems are rooted, with the decay of towns and the unsuccessful attempts to better their condition by public health reforms, by charitable agencies and by building societies – and with legislative action in Parliament towards housing reform.

"The book deals with the pre-industrial background in which housing problems are rooted, with the decay of towns and the unsuccessful attempts to better their condition by public health reforms, by charitable agencies and by building societies; and with legislative action in Parliament towards housing reform."--Page 4 of cover.

Cruel Habitations (1974) looks at the pre-industrial background in which housing problems are rooted, with the decay of towns and the unsuccessful attempts to better their condition by public health reforms, by charitable agencies and by building societies - and with legislative action in Parliament towards housing reform.

In this insightful new study, Andrew August examines the British working class in the period when Britain became a mature industrial power, working men and women dominated massive new urban populations, and the extension of suffrage brought them into the political nation for the first time. Framing his subject chronologically, but treating it thematically, August gives a vivid account of working class life between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, examining the issues and concerns central to working-class identity. Identifying shared patterns of experience in the lives of workers, he avoids the limitations of both traditional historiography dominated by economic determinism and party politics, and the revisionism which too readily dismisses the importance of class in British society.