Chester had no manufactures. Its population had grown rapidly of late, as that of Liverpool had grown, the poorer classes being the prolific part of the community; but it had no share in the industrial revolution, it did not employ its women and children in factories, and it was in some respects better than Leeds, Warrington, Manchester, or Carlisle. It is a good illustration of a town growing rapidly without manufactures, and of a community divided by the old walls into two quite distinct sections, a rich and a poor. Such had been the drift of things in England apart from the industrial revolution; but it is the latter which furnishes the best illustrations of a poor prolific populace, of a growing struggle, and of the attendant typhus fever. Fever in the Northern Manufacturing Towns, 1770-1800. The prosperity of the first two-thirds of the 18th century had been attended with a very small increase of population. From 1700 to 1750 the numbers in England are estimated to have grown no more than from about six millions to six millions and a half. The fecundity of many rural parishes was swallowed up by emigration to the American and West Indian colonies, by the army and navy, and by the great waste of life in London and some other towns. The increase was nearly all north of the Trent, while the old weaving towns of the south-west had actually declined. Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wilts were the most crowded counties in 1700. During the next fifty years, the greatest increase was as in the following rough estimate[255]: Increase 1700 1750 per cent. Lancashire 166,200 297,400 78 West Riding of Yorks. 236,700 361,500 52 Warwickshire 96,600 140,000 45 Durham 95,500 135,000 41 Staffordshire 117,200 160,000 36 Gloucestershire 155,200 207,800 34 In the counties where population had increased most, much of the increase was still rural or semi-rural. Defoe describes how the land near Halifax was divided into lots of from two to six or seven acres, hardly a house out of speaking distance from another, at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth, or kersey or shalloon. Every clothier kept one horse at least, to carry his manufactures to the market, and nearly every one kept a cow, or two or more, for his family. The houses were full of lusty fellows, some at the dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the cloths, the women and children carding or spinning, being all employed from the youngest to the oldest: not a beggar to be seen, nor an idle person[256]. We have no accounts of the health of this population, except Nettleton’s statistics of smallpox in and around Halifax in 1721 and 1722, given elsewhere, and the “epidemic constitutions” recorded by Wintringham at York during the same period, and by Hillary at Ripon.