Title: What Was It Like to Live in 18th-Century England? - Ancestry Blog
Headings: What Was It Like to Live in 18th-Century England?
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What Was It Like to Live in 18th-Century England?
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Content: Cities were dirty, noisy, and overcrowded. London had about 600,000 people around 1700 and almost a million residents in 1800. The rich, only a tiny minority of the population, lived luxuriously in lavish, elegant mansions and country houses, which they furnished with comfortable, upholstered furniture. Their calendars included dinner parties, opera, and the theater. Many had inherited their great fortunes and never knew what it was to have to work, cook meals, or empty their own chamber pots. Fashion was important in upper society: Upper-class women wore stays, which were bodices with strips of whalebone, and hooped petticoats under their dresses. Men wore knee-length “breeches” with stockings, waistcoats, and frock coats over linen shirts, as well as buckled shoes. Three-cornered hats were popular, too—and wigs. Schools were not compulsory, but many upper-class boys attended school, and some girls from well-off families did, too.