The nineteenth century saw the population of Leeds soar from 53,162 in 1801 to 428,572 in 1901. New industries began to make their impact upon the town. The woollen and flax industries were still active until the 1870s and 1880s but as the century developed old industries like engineering expanded and new industries such as ready-made clothing emerged.

Diseases; cholera in 1832 and 1848 and typhus in 1847 took a heavy toll in the poorer areas. Robert Baker, the Leeds town surgeon, produced a series of reports which graphically identified the problem whilst Leeds-born Richard Oastler, the ‘Factory King’, launched his national campaign for factory reform in the Leeds press.

Many of those affected by the squalor and poverty were Irish immigrants, fleeing their homeland following the potato famine of the 1840s. In the 1880s a new wave of immigrants, this time Jews escaping the pogroms of eastern Europe, arrived in the town. Most of these newcomers settled down to work in the ready-made clothing industry. Over the years the council slowly began to come to grips with these problems. It felt confident enough to build a Town Hall as an example of its civic strength in 1858 and which Queen Victoria opened that year.

If most of its workers lived in back-to-back houses, Leeds could nevertheless boast some fine architecture. Amongst which were the New Infirmary opened in 1868, the Grand Theatre ten years later and in 1874 the Yorkshire College of Science which eventually became the University of Leeds in 1904.

In 1893 Leeds became a city, boasting an effective tramcar service, libraries, parks, schools and one of the finest shopping centres in the North, famed particularly for its arcades.