The medieval houses, not to mention their backyards, were now often in poor condition. The hygienic conditions improved with the construction of an alluvial sewage system based on the English model from 1867. More and more houses were connected to the drinking water network, especially after the construction of a pipeline from Vogelsberg in 1873. In the course of industrialisation after 1870, numerous workers flocked to the city who quickly found cheap housing in the dilapidated buildings. Large parts of the old town were now considered to be the residential area of the proletariat and poorer petty bourgeois, where poverty, prostitution and crime were rampant.