Birmingham before and affter :

(it took me a while, but i managed to find a similar image)

You can clearly see the huge difference betweem Birmingham in the 1700s and 1800s.

In the 18th century, Birmingham was no more than a hamlet, and had about 1000 habitants who almost all worked as farmers or retail traders.But as soon as the industrial revolution arrives there, the little settlement becomes the fastest growing city of the 19th century, and the most productive one of the entire U.K. .By the 1850s, the city was called ´the workshop of the w orld´ and was the most important city of England after London.

Here´s a graph of it´s population throught history :