The Victorian Slum

I'm watching it right now on Channel 4.

My God, we don't know we're born these days.

If you didn't have the money to pay for a bed, you had to sleep over one of these. Hangovers.

Jesus!

They had to do this standing up!

Poverty was seen as the natural order of things if you were poor in 1860. It was Tough titters.

And they had to smoke their kippers in the privy!

Shall I join you in this conversation? You seem to have it all covered pretty much.

eddie wrote:Shall I join you in this conversation? You seem to have it all covered pretty much.

Imagine having to live like that? Even the homeless in our times don't have to struggle like that.

I'd love to time travel. I would actually want to live that for a month, see what it's like.
In fact time travel is what I'd wish for if I had a wish...imagine fucking off for a month, to another time and no one in your present knowing where you are.

Sorry. Totally off topic.

eddie wrote:I'd love to time travel.  I would actually want to live that for a month, see what it's like.
In fact time travel is what I'd wish for if I had a wish...imagine fucking off for a month, to another time and no one in your present knowing where you are.

Sorry. Totally off topic.

yeah, like flitting from one forum to another under a different name.....

eddie wrote:I'd love to time travel.  I would actually want to live that for a month, see what it's like.
In fact time travel is what I'd wish for if I had a wish...imagine fucking off for a month, to another time and no one in your present knowing where you are.

Sorry. Totally off topic.

I wouldn't mind living as a rich person, but I draw the line at using a 30 family crapper

HoratioTarr wrote:

eddie wrote:I'd love to time travel.  I would actually want to live that for a month, see what it's like.
In fact time travel is what I'd wish for if I had a wish...imagine fucking off for a month, to another time and no one in your present knowing where you are.

Sorry. Totally off topic.

I wouldn't mind living as a rich person, but I draw the line at using a 30 family crapper

See, I'd really do the poor bit. I am incredibly adaptable, incredibly so. It appeals to me in a weird way.

I would too Eddie. I'd love to go back to Tudor times, just for a day or so. I would want to be in the Palace though wearing Elizabethan dresses, not rags. Poverty those days was extreme.

eddie wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:

I wouldn't mind living as a rich person, but I draw the line at using a 30 family crapper

See, I'd really do the poor bit. I am incredibly adaptable, incredibly so. It appeals to me in a weird way.

yes, you could waft around with the stink and pick up a dose of the pox and perhaps end up dying in a back bedroom from the consumption. Oh the joy of it all.

It would be romantic in a smelly, rags and longing kind of way. Perhaps...... in any case, the rich man in the mansion would fall in love with me and I'd be swept away on a crusade to help the poor.

eddie wrote:It would be romantic in a smelly, rags and longing kind of way. Perhaps...... in any case, the rich man in the mansion would fall in love with me and I'd be swept away on a crusade to help the poor.

Oh, that's different then

There was a small area, type of courtyard in Coventry town centre opposite where the cathedral is, twaz a dead ringer for Victorian London, I reckon I was about 15 when it was demolished, quite a scary place, there were other areas not as bad.

London was full of criminals, people stealing as they were starving, cutpurses, poor people living in filth, children with no homes living in the streets which were cess pits. Such a hard life.

In the U.S., there are a lot of people who want to go back to times like that (they have lots of money so they'd be okay).

Ben Reilly wrote:In the U.S., there are a lot of people who want to go back to times like that (they have lots of money so they'd be okay).

I've always fancied swanning around in a crinoline, flapping a fan and having the vapours around the gentlemen. (I wonder how you scratch your arse in hoops?)

Ben Reilly wrote:In the U.S., there are a lot of people who want to go back to times like that (they have lots of money so they'd be okay).

Well when your mega rich it wouldn't affect them.

HoratioTarr wrote:They had to do this standing up!

A tragic sight.

So many horrors were visited on large sections the Victorian population. Grinding poverty, child labour - and Jack the Ripper was at large.

Queen Victoria's  accomplishments that were nothing short of epic imo. She transformed many areas from sleepy semi agricultural towns to  highly industrialised cities. A quantum leap.  And she acquired an empire covering nearly the whole surface of the earth from Canada down to New Zealand.


Modern day tourists admiring an awesome historical figure






Her son and heir Edward 7th also lived a fabulously wealthy lifestyle far removed from many of his subjects. Luckily for him, unlike other monarchs there were no wars during his reign. He did not have the crippling costs of war to contend with. Extreme poverty exists all over the world and is always a very sad sight to see.

I've often heard people who were born in the early 1900s telling their families they didn't want to go to the workhouse if they became old and infirm, the local workhouse had become first the cottage hospital and then the hospital for elderly and terminal patients, so basically once in you didn't come out. They remembered people in their child hood going to it when it was the workhouse and later in the 30's when it changed slightly when the local councils became responsible for them instead of the Workhouse Board.
What a life, te programme showed, even the shop keepers were struggling,
imagine having to live in the same clothes, share the toilet with all sorts and never knowing if you'll have the money to pay the rent and feed yourselves, it only seemed to be bread and butter as well every day, except for the tradesman's family who managed to get a bit of soup.

Didn't unwed pregnant mums get sent to the work house too, for their 'wicked sins'? (Could have been a later era, I'm not sure.)

Yes, generally they were if they were in domestic service and became pregnant they were out the door with no reference, quite often the father would be the master or his son. Their own families mostly couldn't help them out because of the stigma and lack of funds themselves. The babies of course would be taken away fairly quickly. A great aunt of mine had an illegitimate child while in service but in about 1916, I don't know the whole story whether she was sacked but she had her baby in the local workhouse but the baby was adopted and they stayed in touch until my aunt died. Before the NHS of course you had to pay for any assistance whether doctor or midwife, so going to the workhouse was the only other way to have any medical assistance what ever it was.

Jules wrote:Didn't unwed pregnant mums get sent to the work house too, for their 'wicked sins'?  (Could have been a later era, I'm not sure.)

Yeah, I think so. Terrible time to live if you had no money.

Jules wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:They had to do this standing up!

A tragic sight.

So many horrors were visited on large sections the Victorian population. Grinding poverty, child labour - and Jack the Ripper was at large.

I wonder if the saying they could sleep on a clothes line came from this. Also hangover as maybe many were drunk and woke up on the hangover.

Just realised that this topic is filed under entertainment. Eh??

Jules wrote:Just realised that this topic is filed under entertainment.  Eh??

Because it was based around a TV programme.

Ah ok.
I stumbled on it by chance when I came to post the pussy riot song.

Jules wrote:Ah ok.
I stumbled on it by chance when I came to post the pussy riot song.

I figured I must put it here, this being the tv and movie section.

Yeah it's fine here.

I still want to go on that whole, poor crusade escapade. I will be their mouthpiece!