Coketown is based on Preston, an industrial town in the north of England, which Dickens visited during his life. While there, he witnessed workers holding a strike to protest their conditions.
The novel is set not long after the end of the Industrial Revolution in England. The Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century and transformed the British economy from one of artisanal labor to a more mechanized, factory-based system. Workers had few rights, and unions began forming in the eighteenth century to demand better pay and conditions. However, draconian legislation prevented workers from taking significant collective action against abusive employers until the late nineteenth century. In 1854, the year in which this book was written and is set, labor unions were not fully protected under U.K. law, and picketing would remain illegal until the 1870s.
During the 1850s, the British economy was extremely strong. Mass production, in combination with successful trade and imperialism, enriched the country and made higher quality goods available to more people. However, the benefits of industrialization remained largely in the hands of the wealthy few. Despite the prosperity of the country, the vast majority of the British population was working class or poor.
Coketown is a mill town, here meaning a town built around a handful of textile factories. Textiles were, at this time, one of the nation’s most significant exports. Factory owners, like Bounderby, held a tremendous amount of wealth and power. Factories were dangerous, required long hours from their workers, and paid poorly. They were also unregulated in terms of pollution, allowing dangerous chemicals (like the “ill-smelling” dye in Coketown’s river, or the “low hanging serpents” of its industrial smog) to seep unregulated into the housing districts of these mill towns. In mill towns the buildings where workers lived were constructed by the factories, and so were often made of cheap material, and of unsound quality.
