24 hours in the past

I watched it and was glad we haven't got smellivision!

A poignant part was when Zoe read an entry in a diary of someone who had lived that life. She then said that she had been worried about appearing on TV without hairdressers or make up, but now she saw how insignificant that was.

I thought the mix of personalties was good with a sprinkling of humour.

I watched it and thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't born in the Victorian days!
Horribly realistic and interesting.

It wasn't just the job of sorting the dung - it was the dreadful living conditions they endured in those days as well. No wonder they enjoyed their gin!

I have seen the cottage that my Great-grandmother lived in in the 1800s and it looks so lovely and picturesque in a lovely village - but of course, water would have to have been drawn from a well, there was no indoor lav or facilities, cooking would have been done over the fire etc, washing all done by hand making them red and raw.

For those of you (like me) that wondered what a "Sagger Makers Bottom Knocker" is, perhaps this song will help (but it probably won't)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKdTIrjdo8

or for the more historically correct version

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5jYFzUBRHw

This is fascinating. Watching Anne Widdecombe starting a rudimentary Labour movement is an eye opener!
Gosh life was indescribably hard in those days.

I suspect, without jobs, it's going to get harder. My GF was in the workhouse.

Pompa I knew what a Saggar makers bottom knocker was because I have lived near the Potteries for nearly 30 yrs.

Is the title of this thread the same as the program and what channel please?

At least in the workhouse, they will have food and proper beds.

Great programme. The second one about the coaching inn is fantastic as well. It is so hard to imagine how hard life must have been, but this programme brings it home. Just one thing I think if Tyger had stolen things he would have suffered much worse punishment than he did. He would have been thrown out at best and probably imprisoned or even transported.

And Anne Widdecombe would not have been a Labour politician, as she said.
She could have been an activist, but there was no Labour party, and she would not even have had the vote.

Let's not nitpick.
Granted there was no Labour movement in those days, we are looking at the early days of Chartism, but the point is nevertheless valid, she would have been an early version of a socialist and of course she would not have had the vote but there were women who were involved in both politics and social reform. One example I am think g of would be Elizabeth Fry.
None of the participants can forget what they know as 21st century adults but for a programme like this you have to be prepared to suspend disbelief

I remember when a sagger maker's bottom knocker appeared on 'What's my Line'!

I thought that painting the pottery would have been quite a nice job, then I thought about failing eyesight and no spectacles.

Anne Widdecombe would have been begging on the streets or transported to Sydney Cove with an attitude like hers
I didn't like the look of her Staffordshire oatcakes.

Nellie - "24 Hours in the Past" BBC1 Tuesdays at 9:00 pm. This weeks was 3/4.

Anne Widdecombe transported ? could that be a spin off series.

The women involved in social reform such as Elizabeth Fry would have come from a privileged background; others such as those in Anne's supposed position would have been too busy trying to scrape together enough pennies to feed themselves.

There was wonderful large ceramic mural dedicated to.the Chartists in Newport which the Labour council have destroyed recently vandals

rosequartz If you go to www.thepotteries.org/focus (sorry can't do a link) and scroll down to 'When I was a child' by Charles Shaw you will find a real insight into what life was like in the pots back then.
I haven't seen the programme yet, will report back.

Granted rosequartz, my point was just that there * were* women who took action despite not having the vote. As I said, you have to suspend disbelief.

Of course, Anne would not have been scratching a living in the 1800s; she would have been one of the middle classes who would have been buying the dinner services!

And one of those campaigning for better conditions - like Annie Besant.

Yes!
So we are just getting a very narrow window into the lives of the downtrodden poor and their oppressors, the nasty factory owners.

I don't think there was any secret of the fact that it was about the poor.

In fact, they are being ripped off by others only slightly less poor - the landlord who charged them so much for a crowded cold room, the knocker-upper who was lucky enough to possess a watch (stolen?) and charged them for banging on the door to get them up in the morning, the tavern-keeper who kept serving them food and drink, although he knew they wouldn't be paid for the day's work and would probably not be able to clear their slate.

I think the reason we are being given an insight into the lives of poor people is to counteract the "rose tinted glasses" of e,g. Historical drama where the rural poor are all rosy cheeked and live in Anne Hathaways cottage with roses round the door, (Lark Rise to Candleford or Poldark) or are perhaps in service at Downton Abbey, living a secure and (relatively) comfortable albeit hard-working life.
Factor in that most people imagine they would have been among the better off like Lizzie Bennett or Lady Mary.
When we rail against the devastatingly harsh regime of the workhouse we also need to bear in mind that the alternative without work could possibly have been starvation and hypothermia under a hedge, possibly racked with disease, or infant mortality, death in childbirth, lice, fleas, rats and worse predators.

It was Anne Widdecombe herself who said she would have been a Labour politician, not me. You would have thought they would have put her right on that.
It's her fault that next week they are in the workhouse.

I've always said that if I had been around in Austen's time, I would have been the one cleaning the grate, not one of the Bennetts.

It always amazes me that, when people claim to have been reincarnated, they were a princess, a pharaoh or something similar in a previous life.
Never a slave, someone building the pyramids, a handmaiden or something similar.

Was she perhaps making a joke, DJ ? People do, you know, even when tired cold and hungry.

I doubt she meant it to be taken literally - after all those years as an MP she must know when the labour party was born!

Her reaction to the exploitation of the poorest workers was to read a Chartist pamphlet and rebel. The Chartists were forerunners of the labour party.

I hardly think it is worth nitpicking about an anachronistic statement like that one.