01x02 - Victorians

[bunniefuu]

We've all seen the pictures and read
the stories in the history books

about the kings and queens
with their power and privilege

and silks and furs.

DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC /
MUSIC BREAKS OFF IN NEEDLE-SCRATCH

But in this series, I want to
discover the other side of history...

I'm already quite nervy.

...the side we don't often hear about,

how ordinary British people
lived their lives...

expl*si*n / BOING-BOING SOUND EFFECT
"from the Tudors...

You'll see why
it did attract my attention.

Disgusting!

...to the Victorians.
Throw a stone in Victorian London,

you will hit a drunken cabman,
there's that many of them.

We are not amused!
expl*si*n

From the Georgians...

Oh, my God. It's horrible
just seeing you do that.

MAN SCREAMING
MOTORBIKES REV

...to the people who really fought
the Second World w*r.

James could hear the ping of b*ll*ts
and the clatter of shrapnel.

One thing's for sure. These people
knew the meaning of the word "tough".

WOMAN SCREAMS
'I'll be finding the truth

'about their daily lives -
what they ate'...

How long would that have lasted?
Up to three years.

Agh!
..'how they made a living'...

There's even value in a rat,
when it's dead.

...'and those vital necessities
of life.'

What did you do if you wanted a pee?
Go in the bucket. The bucket?!

This is British history
from the bottom up.

You gotta admit, I am terrifying.
MAN GUFFAWING

WHISTLING / CRASHING SOUND EFFECT
BIRDSONG

This time I'm heading back
to the Victorian age...

PENGUINS-CHITTERING SOUND EFFECT

...when Britain ruled the world...

They were also...lovely whiskers.

Now, while you might be thinking
that Victorian Britain

was made by a bunch
of mustachioed men like him...

the truth was very different.

Because the unsung heroes who really
put the great into Great Britain

were just the ordinary folk

who had to cope with
the most dramatic changes

the world has ever seen.

While Queen Victoria was busy
gazing down from her throne,

her loyal subjects were hard at work

in factories up and down the land,

churning out everything
from steam engines

to natty clothes and cutlery.

SPOONS CLATTER

But life on the factory floor
was cheap.

A combination of lethal machinery
and long hours

meant that gruesome accidents...
Agh!

...even death,
were never very far away.

And right up there in the list of
most-lethaljobs in Victorian Britain

was the match girl...

like Sarah Chapman here,
still called a girl

when this picture was taken,
when she was almost 30.

In the late 1800s,
if you went down the Mile End Road,

turned left at a pub called the Swan
and down a little alleyway,

you'd come to Sarah Chapman's house.

She lived in a court
just like this one,

in a house with her father, Samuel,
her mother, Sarah Ann,

and her six brothers and sisters.

One of seven kids,

Sarah was a feisty young 'un
with a sharp brain.

We know that, at school,
she learned how to read and write.

But this, remember,
was Victorian Britain,

where, at the age of 13,
working-class kids like Sarah

had to put aside
such fripperies as education

and get themselves a job.

And for Sarah,
that meant starting work

in the same factory
as her mum and sister.

This is where Sarah worked...

the Bryant & May match factory.

Back in those clays, it would have
been frenetic around here,

with over a thousand women and girls
working here

six clays a week, every week.

You see, there was nothing
the Victorians loved more

than setting fire to things...

lamps, logs,

more lamps, and, of course, tobacco.

Which meant that the humble match
was an invaluable item.

This is
an old Bryant & May match box,

and the thing about this match
was that it would strike anywhere...

8S YOU can SEE.

Yeah. Very effective.

'So effective that, by 1860,

'Bryant & May were churning out


'every day.'

To keep up with demand,

match girls like Sarah
were expected to work 14-hour shifts,

virtually all of it on their feet.

Can you imagine?!

Luckily she was promoted,

and by 19,
Sarah was working as a machinist,

the person who cut
the matchsticks down to size.

Argh!

'If Sarah ever got sick,
that was just tough luck.'

The factory was perfectly entitled
to discard her like a...

well, like a spent match!

WOMAN SOBBING

For all that, she earned a meagre
wage of five shillings a week,

which is about £16 a week
in today's money.

But even that
could be severely reduced

by harsh fines
on things like sitting down,

being untidy, dropping a match,

or even just going to the toilet
without permission.

Nor was there much let-up
when Sarah finally got home.

'Sam Johnson is
Sarah's great-great granddaughter,

'and she's here to tell me
a bit more about her home life.'

There were seven children
in the family.

Which is why there's
so many beds here. Exactly, yes.

Yes, and they would've all been
cramped into a tiny room like this,

so maybe that's what created
her feisty personality.

I bet she was the boss
in the bedroom when she was a kid!

Absolutely, yeah.
Chuck the boys on the floor, and...

Get the good sleep.
..girls get the beds. Yeah.

'As for her one day off,

'well, after a quick breakfast
of bread and dripping,

'it would be out with the broom
and on with the housework.'

HE COUGHS / GRUNTS

The girls,
as soon as they were old enough,

would have pulled their weight
with the housework,

so they would do
all the washing of the clothes,

and cleaning the house and getting
the baking done ready for the week.

Only then would Sarah finally have
been able to put her feet up

with a nice cup of tea

and perhaps a puff on a pipe.

MUSIC REMINISCENT OF
"HAMLET CIGARS" ADVERT

The next morning...

ROOSTER CROWS
SHE GASPS

And it would be up with the lark

for the start of another shift
at the factory.

'But Sarah's life
wasn't just exhausting.

'It was also blooming dangerous.'

MATCH STRIKING /
"PSYCHO"- STYLE STABBING VIOLINS

You see,
unlike today's safety matches,

matchsticks back then were dipped in
a chemical called white phosphorus.

It was this
that made the matches catch fire.

But phosphorus comes with
some horrible side effects,

and there was one
that Sarah dreaded above all others.

Girls who'd worked here for some time

could get a condition
which they called "phossy jaw".

It was a terrible disease

that caused the bones around
the mouth to slowly rot away

and emit a foul-smelling pus.

SQUELCHING

As the infection spread,

it would lead to horrendous
disfigurement, organ failure,

and eventually death.

Luckily Sarah escaped
this grisly fate,

but many of her co-workers,
around one in ten of them, didn't.

Not that the factory owners
seemed to care.

MAN CACKLING

Even Sarah's lunch hour
was full of danger.

The women and girls were forced to
eat their lunch on the factory floor,

where phosphorous particles
could easily get into their food.

There was no other space available,

and they weren't allowed
to eat outside.

Health and safety?!
Agh!

So bad were conditions
in the Bryant & May factory

that, on the 6th ofjuly, 1888,

Sarah and her fellow workers
downed matchsticks

and went on strike.

By the end ofjuly,
Bryant & May had caved in.

The whole thing had been
a complete PR disaster for them,

and they agreed
all the women's demands.

You can imagine Sarah and her friends
racing out of here,

absolutely over the moon.

Coming up, the scandal of
the female miners who hauled coal.

But it wasn't the backbreaking
conditions that shocked everyone.

It was, believe it or
not, the nudity.

And how a Victorian navvy
risked his life

to blast a tunnel
through the Scottish mountains...

which was, of course,
very, very dangerous.

BIRDSONG

On the back of the hard graft
of ordinary Victorians,

the UK became the richest
and most powerful nation on Earth.

"LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY" PLAYING
MEN CHEERING

With all that money rolling in,
the Victorians did

what great empires have always done.

They built things!

expl*si*n

Huge engineering projects,

like railways, bridges and tunnels,

many of them still in use today.

HISSING

Building these monster projects
was the job of the navvies,

big, strapping blokes
like Angus lnnes from Glasgow.

Now, we don't exactly know
what Angus looked like,

but we can take a guess,

because Scottish navvies liked
nothing more than dressing up

in their spare time,
just like Teddy boys,

mods and Peaky Blinders

to let people know who they were.

They sported moleskin jackets,

scarlet waistcoats
and bright-blue caps.

This is the kind of place
where Angus would've lived.

He would've rented a room
or part of a room,

or even part of a bed,
in a boarding house.

It would all have been pretty grim.

Most of Angus's time, though,
was spent building things...

like Glasgow's new sewage system.

You see, Victorian Glasgow
was dirtier than a badger's bottom.

MAN COUGHING

Its slums were so bad,

they were almost as disgusting
as London's.

'Coming home at night from the pub,

'Angus would've constantly
had to watch his step

'for fear of treading in
something unmentionable.'

SQUELCH!

In this kind of environment,
disease was rife.

A system of tunnels was needed to get
all the sewage out of the city,

and it was navvies like Angus
who were called on to do the work.

After a typical navvy's breakfast
of six slices of bacon,

a loaf of bread,
one can of condensed milk

and two pints of beer,

Angus's 12-hour shift would begin

the moment his foreman
gave the order.

HE BLOWS WHISTLE

His job was to dig the huge trenches
that held the new sewage pipes.

Using muscle-power alone,

Angus was expected to shift a hernia-
inducing 20 tons of earth a day.

HE SIGHS

The more muck he moved,
the more he was paid.

Oh!

On average
that was about 25 pence a day,

the equivalent of about eight quid.

But most of that
he would have spent on beer,

a mind-boggling gallon a day
of the stuff.

Oh! Cheers.

This massive sewage pipe
is an impressive example

of the kind of work that navvies
were doing here in Glasgow

in the 19th century.

But to get a more vivid picture
of Angus's life,

I'm gonna travel 30 miles north
of here into the Highlands.

'From census records,
we know that, by the late 1850s,

'Angus had upped sticks
and moved here,

'to the bonny banks of Loch Katrine,

'where he was helping
to build a tunnel

'to carry clean drinking water
into Glasgow.'

This is the water tunnel,
which ran for 30 miles

straight into the centre of Glasgow.

'The census also tells us
that Angus was now married,

'and that his wife, Helen,
and their young family

'were living here too'...
THUNDER RUMBLES

...'no doubt enjoying
the peaceful countryside

'along with
hundreds of other navvies,

'and a bunch of angry locals.'
INSECTS BUZZ

Midges!

'By now, Angus was moving up
in the world,

'and had swapped his shovel
for a much more important job...

...'using expl*sives'...
expl*si*n

...'to blast a tunnel
through the mountains.'

expl*si*n

Which was, of course,
very, very dangerous.

expl*si*n

In fact, the accident
and death rate for navvies was higher

than for any other group of workers
in the country,

and that included
coalminers and soldiers.

No wonder Angus liked a tipple!
BUZZ OF CONVERSATION

At the end of the day,

exhausted from blowing up
the Scottish countryside...

...Angus would have rejoined
Helen and the kids

at the temporary camp
beside the loch.

'Here to tell me more
about life inside the camp

is local historian, Sion Barrington.

It was a well organised community.
There'd be the cooking squad,

so there'd be no problem
getting beef and lamb and pigs,

and oatmeal... Porridge! There'd be
porridge morning, noon and night.

It's astonishing! I would've assumed
that a navvy working here

would've been three-quarters starved

and having the most miserable time
possible,

but actually, what you're describing
is something... Yeah, it's rigorous.

Yes.
But at least your belly's full.

Were the women able to work? Oh,
the women would be fully employed.

There would be laundry
that would need to be done.

So, lots of meat by day,
booze by night,

and clean pants! And... Absolutely!
SION LAUGHS

After four years
of muck, sweat and beer,

Angus's time at Loch Katrine
finally came to an end.

And in 1859,

the new water channel
he'd helped to build

was opened by none other than
Queen Victoria.

I name this pipeline
the Katrine Aqueduct.

Navvies like Angus
were a special breed.

They were itinerant, rootless,
often very isolated.

It was, like,
you had the working class there,

and somewhere down here
were the navvies,

at the very bottom
of the pecking order.

And yet it was people
like Angus and his like

who built modern Britain
with their bare hands,

and their legacy
is still with us today.

The Industrial Revolution
really took off under the Victorians.

But none of
their fancy steam engines,

cotton mills or water pumps

would've been any use without coal.

Coal powered the Victorian age,

and the mining industry was huge.

In 1841, nearly 220,000 people
worked in the mines.

Most of them were men,

but round about 5,000 of them
were either women

or children as young as five.

Among these women
was one Betty Harris.

We don't have
any actual photos of her,

but she might've looked
a bit like this young lass,

holding what seems to be
a giant tambourine.

Betty and her husband lived in
a small rented cottage

not far from Knowles' Pit
in Bolton...

...a place much like this.

It was all very cosy. The fire
was going all the time, of course.

Well, fuel was everywhere, wasn't it?

And here's a clue. Tiny little seat,

tiny little potty.

They had two children,
and when they were at work,

Betty's cousin looked after them.

In order to keep
Betty's household going,

her cousin did all the housework.

She cleaned the house.
She went shopping every day,

cos fridges hadn't been invented yet.

She cleaned the courtyard.
She did all the washing.

Imagine how difficult it would have
been, keeping things clean

with all that smoke and dust about.

RHYTHMIC SPLASHING
I don't envy her!

But if running a Victorian household
wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs...

BABY CRYING

...working down the mine
was just horrendous.

"HOVIS ADVERT" MUSIC /
MUSIC BREAKS OFF IN NEEDLE-SCRATCH

Six clays a week,
dressed in trousers and jacket,

our Betty
would leave the house at dawn

and head down t'pit,

where she could spend the next


like a beast of burden, hauling coal.

It's hard to imagine anything
more grim.

CRASHING SOUND EFFECTS

To learn more about
Betty's life underground,

I've come to Caphouse Colliery
near Wakefield.

If you'd like to follow me, please,
through these doors... Yep.

'I've been joined by Denise Bates,

'whose great-great-
great-great grandmother

'was a Victorian mining lass
like Betty.'

Can you imagine just shlepping up
and down here every single clay?

I think we sometimes
don't realise we're born.

No, we don't, do we?

'Just like Betty, we're going to have
to crawl on our hands and knees

'to get to the coal face.' Whoa!

Oh! it...really hurts your hands!

Like most of the women and children
who worked in the mines,

Betty's job was to drag
the big, heavy carts

used to carry the coal.

So, this is the conditions that Betty
would've been working in, right?

Oh, definitely. She reported that
she was working in a very nasty pit.

Oh! I can't imagine
what it must've been like

if these were
your...working conditions for...

how many hours a day, do you reckon?


Blimey!

Would you get up to the surface
at lunchtime?

Not a chance. Oh!
HE CHUCKLES

'More likely to have been a hunk
of bread and cheese on the go.'

Is this the coal face here?
Yeah. Looks like it, doesn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.
HE GRUNTS

I don't think
I should've touched that!

HE CHUCKLES / SIGHS

So, tell me about Betty.

She was working for her husband,

which was the practice of females
who mined in Lancashire.

What do you think their relationship
would've been like?

Betty mentions that there's an awful
lot of domestic violence going on,

that there were very many women
who were being beaten by the man

that they worked for, for no other
reason than their inability

to move those trucks
as fast as the men wanted.

CREAKING
What with the heat,

the dust and the regular beatings,

life for Betty
was about as tough as it gets.

When Betty got home from work,

usually around 6:30 or 7:00
in the evening,

she would've been
absolutely exhausted.

She'd have been filthy, sweating...

but she would've been far too tired
to have a wash

before she went to bed.

One thing she'd definitely have done,
though, is have a decent meal.

She'd have needed the calories.
Apart from rent,

virtually all her money went on food.

'Victorian delicacies such as tripe,

'trotters, or budget lamb cuts

'from sheep that had dropped down
dead from disease.'

CRUNCHING SOUND EFFECTS

Come Sunday,
her one and only day off,

Betty was then expected
to catch up on chores

like darning socks
and knitting stockings,

while hubby put his feet up

and contemplated
the serious issues of the world.

SNORING

But Betty's life was about to change.

'In 1838,
a flood at a Yorkshire colliery

'drowned 26 children,

'prompting a report
after a lengthy public enquiry.'

So, the report was published,
and, as you can imagine,

the press were all over it.

Here's some of the daily newspapers

that came out in May 1842.

Some great pictures here. Look.

You've got
"Propelling the loaded wagons",

"Digging out the coal"...

Imagine seeing these
for the first time,

if you didn't know that that kind
of thing went on in your country.

But the revelations didn't end there.

In fact it wasn't the long hours,

the dust, the...awful conditions,

the industrial accidents,
that shocked people.

It was, believe it or not,
the nudity.

"The girls,
they are naked down to the waist."

"Young females,
dressed like boys in trousers,

crawling on all fours."

"Any sight more disgustingly indecent
or revolting

can scarcely be imagined
than these girls at work."

"No brothel can beat it."

Disgusting!

In actual fact,
if it happened at all,

such topless working
was extremely rare.

But still,
the report had a dramatic effect.

HOOTER BLARES

And in 1842,
the Mines and Collieries Act

put a stop to women,
including our Betty,

working underground.

'Coming up, how a Victorian shop girl
got people to part with their cash.'

Ooh, look!

Esther's job was to try
to persuade her customers

to do something entirely new.

HE CLICKS
Come on!

'And why you might think twice about
taking a cab in Victorian London.'

Cab drivers were notorious for
spending hour after hour in the pub.

BIRDSONG

In Victorian Britain,

THE place to be was in the city.

London might have been filthy
and plagued by crime,

but by the 1850s
it was the world's largest city...

and in just 40 years,
its population doubled in size,

just like Queen Victoria's waistline.

We are not amused!

And all those new people
meant lots of work

for London's cabbies.

Keb, sir? Keb?

Men like John c*ck.

John was born in 1833,

and lived in Holborn,
an old-fashioned part of London

full of narrow alleyways
and densely packed housing.

But he was looking to move up
in the world.

The year is 1851,

and 18-year-old John c*ck
wants to set up in business.

He wants to do exactly
what his dad did before him,

and be the driver of a horse and cab.

Hallo, Daniel. You are looking
so beautiful, aren't you?

WHINNYING

But sadly his dad isn't around
anymore to show him the ropes,

because, when John was 11,
his old man had passed away...

BIRDS CAW
..leaving behind a wife,

four kids and huge pile of debt.

CASH-REGISTER SOUND EFFECT
To make ends meet,

the young John had been forced
to become the main breadwinner.

'And, by 18, he's scrimped
and saved enough money

'to buy himself a horse, hire a cab,

'and follow in
his dearly departed dad's footsteps.'

HE GRUNTS
But the problem for John

was that he looked really young,

and on one of his first journeys,

he was accused of being a buck,

which was the slang word
for an unlicensed driver.

But he wasn't.
He was perfectly legal.

He was over 16, and he knew
the highways and byways of London,

which were the two stipulations.

Right, let's go!
HE MAKES CLICKING SOUND

Come on!
HORSE WHINNIES

"BLACK BEAUTY" THEME MUSIC
'Back in the 1850s,

'London streets would have been
filled with horse-drawn cabs

'just like this, leaving great piles
of steaming dung in their wake.'

But while the middle-class passengers
were able to put their feet up

and enjoy the view...
WHIPLASH SOUND EFFECT

...for working-class lads
like young john,

the job was relentless,
six clays a week.

On an average day, he'd start touting
for work about 9:00 AM,

and finish at midnight.

He didn't have a little yellow "for
hire" sign on the top of the cab.

If he wanted to show people
that he was available,

he held up his whip like this.

WHIPLASH SOUND EFFECT
Where to, love?

THUNDER RUMBLES

Sitting on top of his cab,

with only a hat and
a couple of old coats for protection,

John was exposed to
the very worst of London's weather.

Chuckin
all that Victorian soot and smog,

and the lifestyle
of cabbies like John

was about as healthy
as smoking 40 a day.

MAN COUGHING

The money wasn't much better, either.

To make a profit,
he had to work really hard.

You only got sixpence a mile
for a cab like this,

and out of that,
you had to pay yard money

for the stabling and feeding
of the horse. It was a tough old job.

'And it was about to get
a whole lot tougher.'

You see,
horses can be very temperamental...

...as poor old John discovered
one afternoon

shortly after buying
his very own cab,

when his horse suddenly bolted,

causing his new set of wheels
to flip over...

ALL SHOUT AND SCREAM

...leaving John
with a hefty repair bill.

MAN SIGHING

In fact, accidents like this
were pretty common,

and more often than not,
they were caused by the same thing.

Cab drivers were notorious for
spending hour after hour in the pub.

But did they really?
I'll ask a cabbie.

Taxi driver Sean Farrell
writes a blog

on the history of London's cabbies.

So, by law, they should've been
sitting on the box of the cab,

no matter what the weather. Yeah?
In truth, they hid inside a pub.

Presumably
there must've been examples

of cab drivers coming out of the pub
hammered and having accidents.

Oh, they're numerous.
SEAN CHUCKLES

Throw a stone in Victorian London,
you'll hit a drunken cabman.

TONY LAUGHS
There's that many of them.

But not John c*ck,

because john, one of the few cabbies

who refused to work on a Sunday,

didn't approve of the demon drink.

So, while his fellow cabbies
were off getting plastered,

John could be found sitting
on the taxi rank,

reading a book and munching on
a popular Victorian dish,

salted herring.

'And before long, he'd signed up to
an extraordinary new idea...

'a scheme to stop cabbies
from drinking and driving.

'I know! Mad!'

I'm not really allowed in here, am I?
I'm not a cabbie.

You're not,
but I might give you my badge.

In 1875, John attended the opening
of London's very first cab shelter,

a place where cabbies
could wait for customers

without drinking their bodyweight
in beer.

SNORING

It's great in here, isn't it?
Lovely. Nice and compact and bijou.

Yeah. It's a funny shape, though,
isn't it? It's really long and thin.

They're designed to be
the same width and length

as the original
horse and ca-...coach,

so they didn't take up
no more extra space in the road.

Oh, so just go, cab, cab, cab,
little hut, cab, cab?

Exactly.

Do you think it would've been
very similar in Victorian times?

Absolutely.
You've got electric lighting there.

Would've been gas lighting
in them days.

But they got a gas stove. They would
provide hot meals for you,

hot tea, coffee.
You could even bring a steak,

and they would cook it for you,
and charge you accordingly.

And while he was getting
his protein hit,

John could also browse
through a selection

of complimentary books
and newspapers,

keeping his brain fit and alert

to deal with London's roads
and grow his business.

By the time the cab shelters
were built in the 1870s,

John's business was thriving.
He ended up... Cheers, love.

With nearly 30 people
working for him,

and 126 horses.

In fact, when he was 68, he sold up
and retired on the profits.

Not bad for a cabbie, eh?

Cheers, mate.
Cheers.

MUSIC: Dance Of The Hours
by Amilcare Ponchielli

Victorian Britain
was brimming with inventions

and people experimenting
with new ideas.

But forget your lsambard
Kingdom Brunels of this world

and all those boats and bridges
of his,

and consider instead
another great Victorian advance.

It's the invention
of modern shopping.

You see, with all that new industry,
wages were on the up,

and for the first time, working
people had a bit of money to spend.

Go!
WOMEN SCREAM

The canny Victorian shopkeeper
was only too pleased to help.

CASH REGISTER GRINDS / RINGS

was really hotting up.
A hundred years previously,

a window display like this one

would've been
completely unimaginable.

The shops had been small, specialist,

and staffed by
very fierce shopkeepers.

But change was on its way,

and it was pioneered by women
like Esther Brown.

Here she is.

Esther was born in 1878
in Manchester,

where she grew up
in a small terraced house.

Her dad, Joseph, worked on the trams,

while her mum, Margaret,
stayed at home

looking after Esther
and her brother and sister.

SOUND EFFECT OF CHILD GURGLING

The Victorians, though,
didn't really DO childhood,

and by the age of 14,
Esther had left school

and was working on a market stall

selling household bits and bobs.

CROWD LAUGHS

But down the market, things were
a bit...well, downmarket.

And when Esther was offered a job
in a fancy new shop,

she jumped at the chance.

Esther came up this very road

on the first day
of her first proper job.

The year was 1894, and she was 16.

This is Cheetham Hill.

It's not the most salubrious part
of Manchester, is it?

There would've been trams clanging
backwards and forwards,

lots of new immigrant communities.

It would've been noisy,
vibrant, energetic...

and it was Esther's big day.

Her new job was as a shop girl

at Michael Marks's Penny Bazaar,

which was the very first
Marks & Spencer store.

This is the Cheetham Hill M&♪ now.

Well, it was
absolutely nothing like that.

This was virtually
a Victorian pound shop.

They kept the stock under tarpaulin
in the back yard,

and over the front door
there was a big scarlet sign

that said,
"Don't ask the price, it's a penny."

Marks's Penny Bazaar wasn't just
a bargain-hunter's paradise, though.

TONY, AS SHOPPER:
"Oh, that is so lovely."

You see, for years, if a customer
so much as stepped into a shop,

they were expected to buy something.

'But all that was about to change,
with a little help from Esther.'

Esther's job was to try
to persuade her customers

to do something entirely new.

In fact it was so new,
they had to invent a word for it,

and that word was "browsing" -
looking at the goods

without feeling that you had
a compunction to buy them.

Nowadays we're all brilliant
at browsing, aren't we?

But back then, it was a novelty.

Ooh, look! A rolling pin!
I can handle it.

A basket! I can touch it!

Shoplifting became a big problem.

TONY, IN FALSETTO: "I'm sorry!
It must've just fallen in my bag."

Once the customer
had chosen what they wanted...

wooden spoon, maybe,
a chopping board,

four candles...
That's actually what these are!

Then Esther would wrap them all up.

But she wasn't allowed to tot up
the money.

That had to be done by a man.

Leanne, can you demonstrate how
this procedure worked? Certainly.

Five pennies.
Mm-hm. Thank you very much.

So, I then put this in here,
this half a ball.

This would be closed tight.
Now I would put this into the slots,

send it up through the system.

And he would send your change back
the exact same way.

A nice, sensible man who would know
how to add up. Of course.

Of course. Not like the giddy girls
who wouldn't be trusted with that.

While adding up wasn't high
on her list of duties,

Esther was expected to be smart,
polite,

and have the constitution of a...

HORSE WHINNIES / SNORTS
Exactly.

Anyone who's ever worked in retail
knows what it's like,

standing on your feet all day,

but Esther's day
started at six in the morning,

finished ten or 11 at night,
so a 90-hour week,

in big, clumpy shoes, heavy skirt...

stiff back,
smiling nicely all the time...

Must've been so exhausting.

And, of course,
her customers paid her wages,

so they were always, always right.

But Michael Marks
was better than most employers.

At least he installed gas rings
like these in the back office,

so the girls could get some hot food,

such as that shop girl's favourite,

a nice bowl of green-pea soup.
Lovely.

For her efforts,
Esther was paid a modest £25 a year,

around half of what
a male shop assistant earned,

but just enough for the odd trip
to the music hall...

on her one day off.
CROWD LAUGHING

Working in a shop
is so commonplace nowadays

that it's easy to underestimate
how different it would've been

for someone like Esther.
In those clays,

a lot of people thought that
shop girls were a bit tainted,

like prostit*tes, you know,
just standing out there in public,

selling stuff to customers.

Happily, though, for Esther,

things were beginning to look up...

...because, as shopping
got more and more popular,

shops began to move into
fancy arcades like this.

And as for the women
who were working in them,

they started to have a career path.

They could end up as shop managers,

and who was one of the first women
to do just that?

Esther Brown.

WHISTLE BLOWS
Coming up,

the train-loving office worker

who recorded every tiny detail
of his life.

Everything seems hunky-dory.

But the diary tells
a very different story.

BIRDSONG

CROWD CHEERING
Before the Victorian age,

travel was a bit of a bore.

"LONE RANGER" THEME MUSIC
[WILLIAM TELL OVERTURE]

The fastest thing around
had four legs and ate straw.

DYNAMIC "LONE RANGER" MUSIC CONTINUES

So no wonder the invention
of the steam train...

HORN BLARES
..got everyone,

including Queen Victoria,
rather excited.

TONY, AS QUEEN VICTORIA:
Albert, I want one.

But trains weren't just for
the rich and famous.

They were used by almost everyone.

Like this ordinary shoemaker's son
from Manchester,

who describes one memorable
train journey in his diary.

It is very strange,

reading the diary of someone
who was born over 200 years ago,

and is so candid about their life.

His name was Edwin Waugh.

He was a secretary, writing letters
in his office in Manchester

in the late 1840s.
He'd just turned 30.

He lived in Hulme with his wife,

who looked after the house
when he was away working,

which is what a Victorian wife
would have done in those days.

Everything seems hunky-dory.

But the diary tells
a very different story.

'Because Edwin
was utterly miserable.'

Oh! Look over there! Mwah!

"Went to Rochdale in the evening
in company with my wife."

"Oh, full of unhappy reflections."

TONY SIGHS

'And then there was work.'

and he hated being two-faced,

trying to squeeze money out of people
who were in debt to his company.

He wrote in his diary,
"I don't have the beggarly eloquence

which can humbug them
into a false generosity."

For his efforts,
Edwin earned about a pound a week...

around 130 quid in today's money.
But often he wasn't paid at all,

prompting him to complain,

"My wife and me had just one ha'penny
between us,

and we knew not where the next meal
was to come from."

For the longsuffering Mrs Waugh,

it all got too much.

After a particularly heated row
with his wife, Mary Ann,

Edwin describes her packing her bags

and heading off
for her aunt Sally's in Rochdale.

She even takes
the rocking chair with her,

so she's clearly not intending
to come home.

Edwin's response is to turn to drink.

But Mary Ann
must've had second thoughts,

because she eventually returned home,

presumably with the rocking chair,
too.

RHYTHMIC CREAKING

To celebrate their reunion,

Edwin splashed out
on a pair of railway tickets

to that home of holiday fun,
Blackpool.

Mary Ann was gonna be SO pleased.
ALARM CLOCK RINGS

On the morning
of the Blackpool excursion,

Edwin gets up early,
tries to wake his wife...

but she won't budge.

He's not gonna let her spoil his day,
though.

So he gets washed, gets all ready...

...and leaves...the house.

Oh, Mary Ann!

When he got to the station,

Edwin was gobsmacked by what he saw.

"I found an astounding gathering
of people,

upwards of 2,000 persons."

You see, to the average
Victorian city dweller,

the lure of the sea
was like human catnip.

And, beginning in the 1840s,
special railway excursions

began ferrying hordes of
overexcited day-trippers

to such far-flung locations
as Brighton, Bangor,

and, in Edwin's case, Blackpool.

Susan'?
SHE LAUGHS

How you doing?
Fine, thank you very much.

We're going off on a holiday!
Yes. It's very exciting.

To tell me more about
Edwin's big day out

is railway historian Susan Major.

Why was he so excited
about this excursion?

He had a particular thing about
the thrill of being in a crowd.

Now, to us,
being in a crowd is a nuisance...

Yeah, yeah.
..but somebody like him,

he felt it made it feel
as if it was one world.

It was a new thing. It was
a modern thing. Oh, definitely.

In Edwin's diary, he does say
that there were 2,000 people.

I thought that was a misprint.
No. These were monster trains,

with monster excursions. Quite often
you'd find more than one engine

pulling up to a hundred carriages.

Er, there could be
three, four engines.

It would've been like being on the
London Tube in the rush hour in June,

wouldn't it?
ENGINE CHUGGING SOUND EFFECT

People must've felt as though
they were being treated as animals.

They felt as if
they were being dehumanised,

so would bleat and moo and baa.

ORGAN RENDITION OF
"I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE"

where he and his fellow passengers
disembarked...

and, like a crowd
of starving penguins,

PENGUINS CHATTER AND SQUAWK

So, Edwin comes down the high street
from the station, and, remember,

because the crowd know they've only
got a limited amount of time here,

they immediately set to work
having a good time.

SEAGULLS CRY

The Blackpool of 1849
didn't yet have its famous tower,

or even a pier, for that matter.

Nonetheless,
Edwin was totally smitten.

The thing he likes
more than anything else, though,

is the donkeys.
DONKEY BRAYING

There's little kids who get on them,
and they won't move.

He says,
"Everybody is having a good time,"

except, presumably, the donkeys.

And then,
towards the end of his stay,

he buys four chops,
raw chops, off some bloke,

and then he goes back into town,

where someone in a shop
fries them up for him for fourpence.

What a way to spend the day!

As for his problems, well,
they now seemed a million miles away.

But things weren't just looking up
for Edwin.

In a momentous time
marked by new railways...

HORN BLARES
..new sewage systems,

and even modern shopping...

Go!

...the Victorian period was
a crucial part of British history,

driven by ordinary women and men
across the land.

'In the next episode,
we're in Georgian times,

'an era of great luxury -
unless, of course, you were poor.'

One of the most horrible things
confronting Elizabeth

would've been
the sheer filthiness of London.

Your life was at the mercy
of the rich.

MAN:
John had no choice.

He'd been press-ganged.

'If you wanted to grab
a piece of the action'...

MAN: Stand and deliver!
..'you risked everything.'

jack was sentenced to death.

BONE-CRUNCHING SOUND EFFECT

JAUNTY ORCHESTRAL INTRO /
MALE VOCALIST SINGS MUSIC-HALL STYLE

♪ Boiled beef and carrots

♪ Boiled beef and carrots

♪ Makes you fat
and it keeps you well

♪ Don't live like vegetarians

♪ On food they give to parrots

♪ From morn till night
blow out your kite

♪ On boiled beef and carrots ♪

DRUMBEAT / WHIMSICAL VIOLIN OUTRO