All language subtitles for [English (auto-generated)] The Deadly Diseases Of Victorian Factory Workers _ History Of Britain _ Absolute History [DownSub.com]

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

[Music]

but in this series i want to discover

the other side of history i'm already

quite nervous the side we don't often

hear about

how ordinary british people lived their

lives

from the tudors you'll see why it did

attract my attention

to the victorians throw a stone in

victoria in london you will hit a

drunken cat man is that many of them we

are not amused from the georgians

you take the saw oh my god it's horrible

just seeing you do that

to the people who really fought the

second world war

james could hear the ping of bullets and

a platter of shrapnel

one thing's for sure these people knew

the meaning

of the word tough i'll be finding the

truth about their daily lives

what they ate how long would that have

lasted up to three

years 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 to pee

go in the bucket the bucket this is

british history

from the bottom up you've got to admit i

am terrifying

this time i'm heading back to the

victorian age

when britain ruled the world

[Music]

and mutton chops weren't just something

you ate they were also

lovely whiskers why thank you now

while you might be thinking the

victorian britain was made by a bunch of

mustachioed men like him

the truth was very different

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 but life on the factory

floor

was cheap a combination of lethal

machinery and long hours

meant that gruesome accidents even death

were never very far away and right up

there

in the list of most lethal jobs 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

marlin road

turn left at the 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 anne and her six brothers and

sisters

one of seven kids sarah was a feisty

young and 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 and may match factory

back in those days it would have been

frenetic around here

with over a thousand women and girls

working here six days a week

every week

[Music]

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 and may match box

and the thing about this match was that

it would strike anywhere

as you can see yeah very effective

so effective that by 1860 bryant and may

were churning out

75 000 boxes of the things 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

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

for all that she earned a meager wage of

five shillings a week

which is about 16 pounds 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 have all been cramped

into 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 check the boys on the

floor and uh

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

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

the next morning

[Music]

and it would be up with the lock for the

start of

another shift at the factory

but sarah's life wasn't just exhausting

it was also blooming dangerous

[Music]

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 fozzy jaw

it was a terrible disease that caused

the bones around the mouth to slowly rot

away

and emit a foul smelling pus

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 1 in

10 of them

didn't not that the factory owners seem

to care

even sarah's lunch hour was full of

danger

the women and girls were forced to eat

their lunch on the factory

floor where phosphorus particles could

easily get into their food

there was no other space available and

they weren't allowed to eat outside

health and safety

so bad were conditions in the bryant and

may factory

that on the 6th of july 1888 sarah and

her fellow workers

downed matchsticks and went on strike

by the end of july bryant and 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

on the back of the hard graft of

ordinary victorians

the uk became the richest and most

powerful nation

on earth with all that money rolling in

the victorians did what great empires

have always done

they built things

huge engineering projects like railways

bridges and tunnels many of them

still in use today building these

monster projects was the job of the

navis

big strapping blokes like angus innis

from glasgow

now we don't exactly know what angus

looked like but we can take a guess

because scottish navi's like 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 moleskine jackets scarlet

waistcoats

and bright blue caps

this is the kind of place where angus

would have lived he would have 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

its slums were so bad they were almost

as disgusting as london's

coming home at night from the pub angus

would have

constantly had to watch his step for

fear of treading in something

unmentionable

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 navis like

angus

who were called on to do the work

after a typical navi'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

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

the more muck he moved the more he was

paid

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 navies were doing here in

glasgow

in the 19th century but to get a more

vivid picture of angus's

life i'm going to travel 30 miles north

of here

into the highlands

from census records we know that by the

late 1850s

angus had up sticks and moved here

to the bonnie banks of la catrine

where he was helping to build a tunnel

to carry clean drinking water into

glasgow

is the water tunnel which ran for 30

miles

straight into the center 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

no doubt enjoying the peaceful

countryside along with hundreds of other

navies

and a bunch of angry locals

midges by now angus was moving up in the

world

and had swapped his shovel for a much

more important job

using explosives to blast a tunnel

through the mountains

[Music]

which was of course very very dangerous

[Music]

in fact the accident and death rate for

navis

was higher than for any other group of

workers in the country

and that included coal miners and

soldiers

no wonder angus liked a tipple

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 lock here to tell me more

about

life inside the camp is local historian

sean barrington it was a well-organized

community

they'd be the cooking squad so it'd be

no problem getting beef

and lamb and pigs and oatmeal porridge

they'll be porridge

morning noon and night that's

astonishing i i

would have assumed that a navi working

here would have 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 uh at least

your belly's full

were the women able to work oh the women

would be fully fully employed there

would be laundry would need to be done

so lots of meat by day booze by night

and clean pants

and absolutely

after four years of mux 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 catrine

aqueduct navis like angus were a special

breed

they were itinerant rootless soft and

very

isolated it was like you had the working

class there and somewhere

down here were the navies 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 have been any use without coal

[Music]

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 around 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 have 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 knolls pit in bolton

a place much like this

it was all very cosy 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

[Music]

in order to keep betty's household going

her cousin did all the housework

she cleaned the house she went shopping

every day because 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

not only huh but if running a victorian

household

wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs

working down the mine was just

horrendous

[Music]

six days a week dressed in trousers and

jacket

al betty would leave the house at dawn

and head

down pit where she could spend the next

14 hours

on her hands and knees like a beast of

burden hauling coal

it's hard to imagine anything more grim

[Applause]

to learn more about betty's life

underground i've come

to cap house colliery near wakefield

if you'd like to follow me please throw

these doors yeah

i've been joined by denise bates whose

great great great great grandmother

was a victorian mining lass like betty

can you imagine just schlepping up down

here every single day

i think we sometimes don't realize we're

bored no we don't do it

just like betty we're going to have to

crawl on our hands and knees to get to

the coal face

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 have been working in right

oh definitely she reported that she was

working in a

very nasty pitch oh i can't imagine

what it must have been like if these

were your

working conditions for how many hours a

day do you reckon

14 hours depending on demand and would

you

get up to the surface at lunchtime not a

chance

more likely to have been a hunk of bread

and cheese on the go

is this the cold face here yeah it looks

like it doesn't it yeah

oh god i should have touched that

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 have 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 the inability

to move those trucks as fast as the men

wanted

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 in the evening

she would have been absolutely exhausted

she'd have been

filthy sweating but she would have 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 land cuts

from sheep that have dropped down dead

from disease

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

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 inquiry

so the report was published 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

[Music]

and in 1842 the mines and collieries act

put a stop to women including albetti

working underground

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

capture cab men like

john cochran john was born in 1833

and lived in hoban 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

cockrum

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

hello

daniel you are looking so beautiful

aren't you

[Music]

but sadly his dad isn't around anymore

to show him the ropes

because when john was 11 his old man had

passed away

leaving behind a wife four kids and a

huge pile of debt

to make ends meet the young john had

been forced to become the main

breadwinner

and by 18 he scrimped and saved enough

money to buy himself

a horse hire a cab and follow in his

dearly departed dad's footsteps

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 come on

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 for working-class

lads like young john

the job was relentless six days a week

on an average day he'd start touting for

work about nine am

and finish at midnight he didn't have a

little yellow for hire sire on the top

of the cab

if he wanted to show people that he was

available he held up his whip

like this we're to love

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

chucking all that victorian soot and

smog and the lifestyle of cabbies like

john

was about as healthy as smoking 40 a day

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's 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

leaving john with a hefty repair bill

in fact accidents like this were pretty

common

and more often than not they were caused

by the same thing

[Music]

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 have been sitting

on the box of the cab no matter what the

weather

yeah in truth they hid inside a pub

presumably

there must have been examples of cab

drivers

coming out of the pub hammers and having

accidents oh

they're numerous throw a stone in

victoria in london you will hit the

drunken cat man

there's that many of them but not

john cockrum 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

sorted 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'm not cabbie you're not but

i'll

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 body weight in

beer

[Music]

it's great in here isn't it lovely nice

and compact and bijou

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 coach so they

didn't take up no more extra space in

the road

also cab cab cab little hut cab cab

exactly do you think it would have been

very similar in victorian times

absolutely you've got electric lights in

there would have been gaslighting in

them days but they

got a gas stove they would provide hot

meals for your 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 complementary 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

chiseler

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

cabrio

cheers me cheers

victorian britain was brimming with

inventions

and people experimenting with new ideas

but forget your ismart 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

[Music]

[Applause]

the canny victorian shopkeeper was only

too pleased to help

by the late 19th century the competition

for customers was really

hotting up 100 years previously a window

display like this one would have 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

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

[Music]

but down the market things were a bit

well down market

and when esther was offered a job in a

fancy new shop

she jumped at the chance

[Music]

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 cheatham hill

it's not the most salubrious part of

manchester is it

there would have been trams clanging

backwards and forwards

lots of new immigrant communities it

would have been

noisy vibrant energetic

and it was esther's big day

[Music]

her new job was as a shop girl at

michael marx's penny bazaar

which was the very first marx and

spencer's store

this is the cheatham hill m s now well

it was absolutely nothing

like that this was virtually a victorian

pound shop he kept the stock under

tarpaulin in the backyard

and over the front door there was a big

scarlet sign

that said don't ask the price it's a

penny

[Music]

marx's penny bazaar wasn't just a

bargain hunter's paradise though

oh that is so lovely you see for years

if a customer so much has 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 oh look a rolling pin i

can

handle it a basket i can touch it

of course the downside was that from now

on

shoplifting became a big problem i'm

sorry

it must have 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 works

certainly five pennies

thank you very much so then put this in

here there's half a ball this will be

closed tight

now i would put this in a slot send it

up through the system

to the cash office that would go to the

cash office the gentleman would record

in the ledger what you'd spend

and he would send your change back the

exact same way a nice sensible man who

would know how to add up of course

not like the course 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

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

10 or 11 at night so a 90-hour week

in big clumpy shoes heavy skirt

stiff back smiling nicely all the time

must have been so exhausting

and of course her customers paid her

wages so they were always

always right at lunchtime esther didn't

get much of a break

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 girls favorite a nice

bowl of green pea soup

lovely for her efforts esther was paid a

modest

25 pounds 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

[Music]

working in this shop is so commonplace

nowadays that it's easy to underestimate

quite how different it would have been

for someone like esther

in those days a lot of people thought

that shop girls

were a bit tainted like prostitutes 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

before the victorian age travel was a

bit of a bore

[Music]

the fastest thing around had four legs

and eight straw

so no wonder the invention of the steam

train

got everyone including queen victoria

rather

excited hell but 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 war

he was a secretary writing letters in

his office

in manchester in the late 1840s

he just turned 30 he lived in hume

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

[Music]

he and his wife marianne weren't exactly

love's young dream went to rochdale in

the evening

in company with my wife oh

full of unhappy reflections

and then there was work edwin loathed

his job

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 happening

between us

and we knew not where the next meal was

to come from

for the long suffering mrs war it all

got

too much after a particularly heated row

with his wife marianne

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 marianne must have had second

thoughts because she eventually

returned home presumably with the

rocking chair too

[Music]

to celebrate their reunion edwin

splashed out

on a pair of railway tickets to that

home of holiday fun

blackpool marianne was going to be so

pleased

on the morning of the blackpool

excursion edwin gets up early tries to

wake his wife

but she won't budge he's not going to

let her spoil his day though

so he gets washed gets all ready

and leaves the house

oh marianne when he got to the station

edwin was gobsmacked by what he saw

i found an astounding gathering of

people

upwards of 2000 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 over-excited

day-trippers

to such far-flung locations as brighton

bangor and in edwin's case blackpool

susan how you doing

good to see you we're going off on a

holiday 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 well he had a particular

thing about the thrill of being 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

[Music]

in edwin's diary he does say that there

were 2

000 people i thought that was a misprint

these were monster

trains with monster excursions quite

often you'd find

more than one engine pulling up to 100

carriages

there could be three four engines it

would have been

like being on the london tube in the

rush hour in june

wouldn't it people must have felt

that they were being treated as animals

they felt as if they were being

dehumanized

so they would bleat

[Music]

finally edwin's train pulled into

blackpool

where he and his fellow passengers

disembarked

and like a crowd of starving penguins

headed straight for the sea

[Music]

so edwin comes down the high street from

the station and remember

because the crowd know that they've only

got a limited amount of time here

they immediately set to work having a

good time

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

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

[Music]

but things weren't just looking up for

edwin in a momentous time

marked by new railways

new sewage systems and even modern

shopping

the victorian period was a crucial part

of british history

driven by ordinary women and men

across the land