During the 18th and early 19th century a number of factors conspired to undermine the city's economic fortunes. Although the city appeared to prosper during this time - the population having risen to 20000 by 1821 - the undoubtedly splendid trappings of its most wealthy citizens, either local families or newcomers attracted by the 18th century spa, masked an underlying economic problem whose victims, the urban poor, are rarely seen in paintings of the City dating from this period.

The growing economic importance of its neighbours (particularly Kidderminster, Stourport, Bridgnorth and the area around Coalbrookdale) led to a reduction in the volume of goods being shipped from and through Worcester, and this prompted the development of alternative routes across the Severn from both sides of the river. While the local landed gentry and merchants, together with a growing professional class of lawyers, doctors and financiers, were able to thrive in an economy where money could be made as easily outside the city as it could within it, local investment during the 18th and early 19th century was concerned primarily with constructing large mansions (for example the 18th century Blanquettes and Perdiswell Halls either side of Barbourne Brook - now demolished), grand town houses (of which the buildings in Britannia Square and at Lark Hill are fine surviving examples) and in restoring the city's churches, rather than in diversifying and developing its manufacturing base or improving the city's infrastructure.

While these projects generated work to mitigate the impact of the decline in river and waterfront employment, providing a quality of built environment that enabled it to prosper as a minor spa town during the late 18th century (a role taken over by Great Malvern in the 1830s with great impact on Worcester's property values), a large section of the urban population was still dependent on the clothing industry for their livelihoods - providing a paltry return for their labour which reflected the stiff competition from other more favourably placed manufacturing centres.

By this time Worcester had become specialised in glove-making (the Fownes factory on City Walls Road, now a hotel, being one of the few surviving buildings, the centre for this lying between present day Deansway and the waterfront in St Andrew's parish, with the old medieval buildings here and along Newport Street and Dolday becoming the core of the urban slum which characterised the area in the late 18th, 19th and early 20th century. Little sign of Worcester's gloving industry remains today, however, although St Andrew’s spire retains the nickname the Glover's Needle, in recognition of the numerous craftsmen and their families who lived in the parish, while the poverty of the time is appropriately, though subtly, witnessed by the fact that St. Alban's church retains nearly all of its medieval fabric - its parishioners being too poor to afford any grandification works - whereas the city's other medieval churches now exhibit predominantly 18th and 19th century architecture. The cathedral alone had £7000 spent on it between 1712-15, and while this heritage provides the city of today with a grand vista of church spires and architecture, it has also left an inheritance of extensive repair and maintenance bills whose size is a continuing problem for those now responsible for looking after these structures.

The poverty of the 18th century town did not go unnoticed, however, and became an issue which the local Whig professional classes tried to address. It was in part to try and reduce local unemployment that in 1751 Dr Wall and his 14 mainly Whig partners founded the Worcester Porcelain Works adjacent to the waterfront on Warmstry Slip (the site was later taken over by Messrs Flight Barr & Barr), and by 1788 Robert Chamberlain, one of the many famous Worcester Porcelain painters, had set up a rival works (Chamberlain & Co.) at Diglis, on Severn Street - the site of the present Royal Worcester works (the 'royal'' warrant obtained in 1789). By the early 19th century a number of other factories had started producing porcelain in the city, most notably Grainger's at St Martin's Gate, James Hadley's on Bath Road, and the Locke works on Newtown Road.

The appointment of the pioneering Bishop Isaac Maddox to the Diocese in 1743 heralded an important development for Worcester's impoverished workforce since, together with Dr Wall, he helped form the city's first infirmary in a building on Silver Street. This building, which still survives today, housed 30 patients and was one of only seven such institutions outside of London at the time (the poor having been cared for by the monastic orders until Henry VIII's Dissolution). This building was clearly inadequate to meet the health needs of the city's growing population and funds were raised to build a bigger facility, the Worcester General Infirmary, within its own grounds on Salt Lane (now Castle Street), which opened in 1771. It was in this hospital, which survives today as part of the Worcester Royal Infirmary, that Worcester's most distinguished physician, Sir Charles Hastings, founded what was to later become the British Medical Association.

Education of the poor became a cause of the intellectuals - for varying reasons, good and bad - although the move to educate the urban population was led by the non-conformist churches, with the Congregational School in Angel Street opening in 1792, and with Worcester General Sunday Schools being held in every parish by the 1830s. Work too was proscribed as a solution to the problems of the city's unemployed, and in 1702 income from the hopmarket was used to construct a workhouse on the Foregate, although by 1794 a much larger facility was built at Tallow Hill (now demolished) and the old workhouse was turned into a warehouse and offices.

The 18th century reconstruction of the city's suburbs (destroyed during the Civil War) is evidenced by the numerous Georgian buildings which line Foregate Street, the Tything and Upper Tything (extending into Barbourne), while Georgian facades can still be found on most of the buildings in the old medieval city centre (the Guildhall, built 1721-27, being the finest example and in Sidbury, Lowesmoor and St John’s.The old medieval bridge was demolished in 1781, replaced by the present bridge which, together with the buildings along the then newly created Bridge Street, was designed by John Gwynne. A park was developed between Sansome Street and Merriman's Hill and Rainbow Hill on the eastern side of the city - Sansome Fields, later the Arboretum Gardens - though the land was sold for development between the 1840s and '60s, with the Cherry Orchard pleasure gardens at Diglis providing a popular riverside resort until the 1830s, and with promenade walks in St Johns and Sansome Walk providing the town's suburbs with a 'garden city' feel. Natural springs were tapped at the foot of Tallow Hill (the Spring Gardens area) and on The Butts, providing Worcester with an opportunity to exploit the 18th century rage for 'taking the waters', while a racecourse developed on Pitchcroft - the first race held on 27th June 1718 - and the town acquired several assembly rooms (those on Shaw Street still surviving, and recently restored), bowling greens and a riding school.

The city's popularity with wealthy visitors, and its continued importance on the road network and as a regional market centre for agricultural products (in 1796 Worcester's hopmarket was described as 'the most considerable in the kingdom'), resulted in continued traffic problems during the 18th century, although this traffic also provided a significant amount of business for the town's coaching inns - primarily along Foregate Street (the Star Hotel) and in Broad Street (the Unicorn and Crown Hotels) - as well as for the occasional highwayman who, when caught and sentenced (at the Guildhall until 1838 when the County Court was moved to the Shire Hall on Foregate Street - where it remains today) was executed on the gibbet at Red Hill on the London Road. Less serious offences, and with the many pubs and regular fairs these were regularly being committed, were punishable by terms in the County Prison (on Castle Street) or in the City Gaol on Union Street (opened in 1824, and amalgamated with the County facility in 1867, the site later redeveloped by William Laslett for use as almshouses which are still in use today.

It is perhaps a reflection of Worcester's underlying economic fragility that while the city sported many of the trappings associated with the prosperity of the period, its size at the beginning of the 19th century was more or less the same as that of the later medieval town, yet with a vastly bigger population living in increasingly squalid conditions.

Aside from the gradual decline in Worcester's manufacturing importance caused by competition from Birmingham and the Black Country, the level of the Severn itself fell significantly during the 18th and 19th century (possibly due to changing agricultural practices as well as the number and operation of weirs on the river) reducing its usefulness for shipping generally, and particularly in the stretch above Worcester. The economic implications of this did not go unnoticed, however, although it was not until 1784 that plans were laid to ensure a minimum four foot draught for boats between Worcester and Coalbrookdale. This was defeated by interests wanting a canal between Worcester and Stourport, and a later plan of 1835 to make the Severn navigable again by sea-going vessels (a 12 foot draught) up to Worcester was defeated in parliament by a Gloucester lobby - ostensibly because of its impact on the river's salmon, but in reality to prevent Worcester from regaining its dominance as an inland port. While the construction of the weir at Diglis in 1844 helped deepen the channel down to Gloucester, the impetus and opportunity for capital investment had been captured by the railways, and it is perhaps a twist of fate, if not ironic, that there should have been so much argument over the nature of the city's rail links during the 1840s, latterly over the gauge of the track, that Worcester only acquired a rail link (and then only a narrow gauge track) in 1850 (at Shrub Hill) by which time the city had become marginalised on a line between Wolverhampton and Oxford (a line to Hereford through Malvern and Ledbury was added in 1860, and a branch line to Bromyard was opened in 1876, eventually running to Leominster).

The completion of the Birmingham and Worcester Canal in 1815 (joining the river at Diglis) provided an additional stimulus to local manufacturing, with new industries like iron founding (Hardy and Padmore - established 1814), corn milling (the Albion mills at Diglis and the City Flour Mills at Lowesmoor), brick-making (at the foot of Lark Hill), vinegar manufacturing (Hill Evans Vinegar Works - founded in 1830, and with the largest vat in the world, holding 114,821 gallons) springing up between the Lowesmoor and Diglis canal basins in the Blockhouse area. However by this time the city's strategic position within the economy of the west midlands had declined to such an extent that it was unable subsequently to sustain the same level of industrial development which occurred in Birmingham and the Black Country, while being too high up the Severn to benefit from the international trade coming in through Bristol.

Nevertheless, what the city did produce it produced well, and the reputation of its manufactured goods during the Victorian period spread world- wide. Aside from the growing reputation of Worcester Porcelain; the Vulcan Iron Works, later McKenzie and Holland, became famous for its railway signalling equipment; J.L. Larkworthy and Co. for their agricultural equipment; and of course Lea and Perrins, whose 'Original and Genuine Worcestershire Sauce' was first made and distributed from premises on Bank Street and Broad Street before the business moved to its present site on Midland Road in 1897. Heavy engineering companies like Heenan and Froude (moving into the city in 1903), Metal Castings (founded in 1919) and The Mining Engineering Co. (factory opened 1925) continued this process into the 20th century, while the city's main strength developed in light engineering - exemplified by the Tower Manufacturing Co. who established works at Shrub Hill in 1890 (now based in Diglis), and by the industrial profile of the present city.

In 1826 the Government removed the import duty on foreign gloves, which essentially ended Worcester's gloving industry - one of the last industrial relics of the medieval period, although the city's links with heavy engineering can of course be traced back to the old Roman iron workings. Of the 108 manufacturers recorded for the city in 1830, only 11 were left by 1885, although boot and shoe factories were set up to make use of the population's leather-working skills (the most famous being Cinderella Shoes, founded by J.W.Willis in 1848), and other industries sprang up to fill the local unemployment gap - including breweries at Spreckley's in Barbourne Road (founded 1850) and at Lewis Clarke's in Angel Place (1895-1970), with numerous bottle factories developing in the South Quay and Blockhouse areas.

By the mid-19th century Worcester had developed a general educational system based on National and Parish Schools - the foundation of the modern system - although it took the city authorities 29 years before they adopted the Public Libraries Act (1850), providing a public library which was eventually located at the present site on Foregate Street in 1896 (a subscription library had previously been provided by the Presbyterian Society in Angel Place, founded in 1790). In 1833 a natural history museum was founded in Angel Street - by Sir Charles Hastings - which moved to premises on the site of the present Odeon Cinema on Foregate Street before being re-located across the road into the new Library building - its present location.

By the end of the 19th century the city had acquired a proper theatre (on Angel Street), with numerous pubs replacing the earlier coffee houses and coaching inns as the focal point of city centre social life - which was also sustained to a great extent by the city's agricultural markets and fairs. The northern suburb lost its Sansome Fields gardens during this period, although gained Gheluvelt Park (at the end of Barbourne Road), while the area between the old medieval causeway on the west bank and the new link road between the bridge and St Johns (New Road) was transformed from a refuse tip into Cripplegate Park in 1932 (the adjacent County Cricket Ground was established in 1897, although the County team had been playing since 1847) with Fort Royal Park - originally a private park owned by The Commandery - being given to the city in 1913.

In 1832 cholera struck the city, and while recommendations were made to improve the sanitary conditions in the city centre, the Health in Towns Society reported in 1849 that only one mile of new sewers had been laid, and that the poor were living in courts of five to 20 houses, served by one or two privies emptying into a central cess pit which itself was emptied perhaps once every six months - the worst areas lying between the High Street and the river, in the then derelict medieval suburb.

Fresh water was a problem too, and in 1851 only a third of the city was supplied with this - much of the system reliant on wells which were liable to contamination from nearby cess pits. While the 1780 Waterworks Act had prompted the construction of a pumping facility on the north of Pitchcroft to take water from the Severn to a reservoir in The Trinity (the old tower, on Tower Road, demolished in the 1960s) - later supplemented by a steam driven pump erected on the Quay in 1807 (which continued in use until the late 1850s) - these measures were inadequate for the urban population which by then had grown to 27,000.

Finally, in 1858, a new plant was built north of the old works on Pitchcroft (the core of the present Barbourne facility), pumping purified water to an 850,000 gallon holding reservoir at Rainbow Hill (another was later built at Elbury Hill). The quality of urban life was additionally improved in 1894 when the City Council transformed the Powick Mills on the Teme, adjacent to the bridge, into a combined steam and water driven hydro-electric facility (an experimental design and the first of its kind). Electricity from this provided about half the city's needs, with additional power coming on line in 1902 from the Worcester Power Station on Hylton Road (by the river on the east bank). This more powerful facility soon became the city's main source of electricity, although the Powick site continued generating until the 1950s.