T.S. Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" was influenced by the way urban life became gritty and nasty in the 20th century. City life had become a daily grind and at night there was prostitution and other ugliness.
The poverty and disease that came with industrial life were also in the background of T.S. Eliot's poem. A line in the poem refers to how "a washed- out smallpox cracks her face." In 1900, over 20,000 smallpox cases were reported in the United States. (Eliot wrote this poem in 1911.)