General Chat

http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/behind-scenes-24-hours-past

I thought it was good.
Set in 1840's.

OH's ancestral uncles each had 12yr old children working in Midlothian coal mines at this time and each of them gave statements for the 1842 Children's Employment Commission.
http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/238.html
Edmonstone Colliery.
Alison Adam No12 & William Adam No16 ( cousins)

My research :
Alison's mother remarried and the child was able to leave work.
She married and lived to be 92yrs old.

William died before his 14th birthday.

Very few horse and carts when I was little, but it didn't stop my dad sending me out for horses 'doofers' (we lived on Dartmoor)
Apparently, they would 'doofer' the garden :-D

I don't think many of my ancestors did sh*t shifting, but they were tin miners (both male and female), ag labs and 'domestics' (next week's programme)

I watched it and thought it was typical of the times my gran used to talk about.
Even in my life time,I remember having to sieve ashes to get the cinders out to back up the fire ...and the coal dust was made into briquettes for the fire.

I had to go and get up horse manure from the road when the coal man or whoever had a horse and cart...that was for the roses.

Go back 2 generations from me and it would have been exactly like that for working classes. :-)

I've never the Black Country Living Museum looking so grimy! Most of the jobs in that part of the museum would be metal bashing, nail and chain making. The people really did get the worst possible jobs. I'm not surprised some of them were gagging, the stink must have awful. I wonder if they knew what they were letting themselves in for?


One of the other locations looks like the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke.

Andy

I thought it was good. Obviously starting from the 'lowest' and working their way up :-D
My g g grandfather bought a 2 up 2 down with an added scullery, on 100 year lease in 1842. I have no idea what the living arrangements were then.
My mum was born in 1930, and had one elder sister, one (much) younger brother. My grandparents and these 3 children lived downstairs in this house, a family with 5 children lived upstairs, and the scullery was shared, so living arrangements didn't change much.
The house suffered bomb damage in 1940, the church (from whom the house was leased) gave my grandparents £6 compensation, and they were evacuated to Bournemouth - the church continued to rent the house out :-(

Silly me, didn't realise it was this week, not last.

It's ringed in my tv mag as a definite 'record' so I can watch it in peace later on.

Thanks Gwyn

Lizx

All ready got this marked as worth a look.

A reminder that this starts tomorrow.

Not on in my area, it's the last one of Secret Britain, Scotland this time. I hope we will get the other programme soon, it sounds interesting.

Lizx

I'm looking forward to it, Gwyn :-D

Thank you for telling us about this programme..............looks as if it is going to be interesting.

But you admit they existed?
Shouldn't their story be told?
As for children being educated, the Education Act didn't come in until 1880. Child labour was common before that, and still happened after the Act.
I notice you quote the 'classical' places for poverty - large towns/cities and generally in the North/London area.
I suppose, from your analogy they never had 'true' poverty in Cornwall when the tin mines closed/dried up. They just transported themselves to Lancashire for the heck of it.
Railway navvies, dockers, metal workers etc existed all over the country. As did the grossly underpaid farm workers.

How can poverty make for better TV, aren't the poor boring people who should 'pull themselves up by their boot strings'?
Could the reason be, because many of us had ancestors who lived in grinding poverty?
Historians could easily say it is the minority who use food banks today, perhaps their situation should be ignored and forgotten in the future. It's much 'handier' to forget the mistakes of the past, then they can be repeated.

Even those with 'mod-cons' could today still be living in poverty.
The unemployed are expected to look for jobs online fgs, so they are expected to pay for a computer /smartphone and wifi on the ever decreasing pittance they get.

Joseph Rowntree didn't have a different point of view at all.

Yesterday there was a repeat of an excellent program about the destruction of Dartford ( SE London) by the post war knock it down religion which did far more damage than the Luftwaffe had dreamed of. Dartford then and now was not a centre much known for the discreet charm of its bourgeoisie though some of my ancestors lived there. Rowntree's maps show that great chunks of working class Dartford were doing just fine.

Ironically some of the housing that Rowntree had rated as poor/bad has miraculously survived the wreckers ball and is now expensive upmarket housing for yuppies who cannot run to Hackney prices. Hackney ? Oh yes.

Sure there were a lot of people who experienced the thin end of the wedge - dockers, who fought a war of many years against casualisation of labour ( brought back by Tesco, the NHS et al ) , Black Country metal workers, textile workers, match girls, railway navvies ( who were still fighting for their rights in the 70s see "McAlpine's Fusiliers) and of course the army of domestic servants mostly female.

OTOH places such as Old Ford, London, the Meadows Nottingham and Harpurhey Manchester were not typical and relatively few people ended up in the Union (workhouse). It is simply not true to put forward a picture of Victorian Britain as grinding poverty for the majority.

It is in Victorian Britain that the middle class evolved and prospered most of them with very horny handed roots. Hence the outbreak of grammar schools in 1904.

However poverty makes better TV and programs such as "Poor Cow" are better regarded by the art house scene than, say, "To the Manor Born". Nobody has yet to make a program or movie about the hundreds of thousands who made good in Australia. Stuff such as "Ned Kelly" "The Thornbirds" and "Banished" being more popular with the media crowd.

yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice

.......but, Rollo, millions of people in Victorian Britain didn't / couldn't work, or were on 'first come, maybe have a job for the day' jobs, and didn't live the way you describe.

Joseph Rowntree, who surveyed the conditions of the poor at the time, seems to have a totally different view to you.

...and I'm sure workhouses weren't there for a laugh.

All very well but millions of working people in Victorian Britain were fine with houses roomy enough to accommodate a domestic servant and shell out money for such fashions of the time as fancy wallpaper, gas range, a week's holiday at the seaside and even better education for their kids.

It is a popular myth that most ordinary people lived in grinding poverty with no job security while working all hours. I wonder sometimes if the hidden agenda is that people today should shut up stop moaning vote Tory and be happy with their lot as it could be worse.

The results of Tesco today suggest that austerity and putting working class Britain in the squeezer may not be good for corporate business after all.

Gwyn,
thanks for posting,,,,this programme sounds interesting...

I will look out for this.
:-D :-D

24 Hours in the Past...BBC1 at 9pm

Reality documentary in which six celebrities travel back in time to the 19th century, spending four days experiencing the relentless graft of the working poor in Victorian Britain.

Alistair McGowan
Ann Widdecombe
Zoe Lucker
Colin Jackson
Tyger Drew-Honey
Miquita Oliver
......... are the courageous volunteers. Their first 24 hours in the 1800s lands them in the dustyard, where they have to sift through dirt, rotting veg and old bones.
Presented by Fi Glover, with historian Ruth Goodman.

(copied from Radio Times)

This is the first of 4 programmes.
Might be interesting.