Hell on Earth - A Journey to Victorian Manchester (Slums, Poverty and Drink)
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- Victorian Manchester was described in the 1800s as 'Hell upon Earth.' A grim industrial city of smoking chimneys set amongst the crunching gears of industry, with many of its people living in terrible dirt, poverty and squalor. Today, you will an account by a Victorian journalist of what he discovered on Manchester's filthy slum streets - wretched poverty, gambling, terrible food, hungry children and the ever present escape of the dram shop.
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▶️ Disgusting Victorian Slum Hidden Behind Upper Class Regent Street: • Disgusting Victorian S...
▶️ Disease Infested Victorian Slums: • Disease Infested Victo...
▶️ Journey to St. Giles Slum (The Worst Rookery in Victorian London): • Journey to St. Giles S...
▶️ Slum Dwellers of Seven Dials (People of a Victorian London Rookery): • Slum Dwellers of Seven...
▶️ Survival in Victorian London's Brutal East End Slums: • Survival in Victorian ...
▶️ Victorian Underworld (Living Nightmare of 19th Century London's Slums): • Victorian Underworld (...
▶️ Whitechapel (Victorian London's District of Wickedness): • Whitechapel (Victorian...
▶️ Horrific Homes in Victorian East End London (Squalor in Star Street): • Horrific Homes in Vict...
▶️ The Hell of Life in Victorian Slums (19th Century London's Rookeries): • The Hell of Life in Vi...
▶️ Victorian London's Most Dangerous Slum (Fenian Barracks): • Victorian London's Mos...
▶️ Victorian London's Brutal East End Slum - Filthy Old Nichol Street (Bethnal Green/Shoreditch): • Victorian London's Bru...
Check out Victorian documentaries (Playlist):
• Victorians
Check out Edwardian Documentaries (Playlist): • Edwardians
Check out Worst Jobs in Victorian History (Playlist): • Worst Jobs in Victoria...
Check out Criminal Past (Playlist): • Criminal Past
Check out Victorian workhouses (Playlist):
• Victorian Workhouses
Check out American Slums and Tenements (Playlist):
• American Slums and Ten...
Credits: Narration - markmanningmedia.com
CC BY - Dwellings of Manchester operatives, The Society of Friends Soup Kitchen, The Cotton Famine, distributing tickets for bread, soup, meat, meal, coal etc. at the office of a District Provident Society, Manchester by Wellcome Collection
CC BY-SA - The rear of an old building on Princess Street, Manchester, England, believed to be an 18th century slum dwelling by Mike Peel www.mikepeel.net; Workhouse Infirmary, Crumpsall, Manchester by Tricia Neal; Presumably the original entrance to Strangeways Prison in Manchester by Peter McDermott via geograph.org.uk; Three card monte by ZioDave
#VictorianManchester #VictorianManchesterSlums #VictorianMachesterDocumentary #Manchester19thCentury #VictorianDocumentary #VictorianEraDocumentary #VictorianLife #Victorian #19thCentury #VictorianEra #VictorianSlums #HistoryDocumentary
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▶ Disgusting Victorian Slum Hidden Behind Upper Class Regent Street: ua-cam.com/video/NwNQmmgdpm8/v-deo.html
▶ Disease Infested Victorian Slums: ua-cam.com/video/j6iC2nB_EdU/v-deo.html
▶ Journey to St. Giles Slum (The Worst Rookery in Victorian London): ua-cam.com/video/RqttrGiqcHk/v-deo.html
▶ Slum Dwellers of Seven Dials (People of a Victorian London Rookery): ua-cam.com/video/Sn168_xeaHc/v-deo.html
▶ Survival in Victorian London's Brutal East End Slums: ua-cam.com/video/kDsWyeGUyXA/v-deo.html
▶ Victorian Underworld (Living Nightmare of 19th Century London's Slums): ua-cam.com/video/j9KMCDwo51E/v-deo.html
▶ Whitechapel (Victorian London's District of Wickedness): ua-cam.com/video/STKn9O7Ulv0/v-deo.html
▶ Horrific Homes in Victorian East End London (Squalor in Star Street): ua-cam.com/video/6rF_TI0-aD8/v-deo.html
▶ The Hell of Life in Victorian Slums (19th Century London's Rookeries): ua-cam.com/video/kbgAscHeRcE/v-deo.html
▶ Victorian London's Most Dangerous Slum (Fenian Barracks): ua-cam.com/video/RYQN7vm3bj4/v-deo.html
▶ Victorian London's Brutal East End Slum - Filthy Old Nichol Street (Bethnal Green/Shoreditch): ua-cam.com/video/e7b6fAdT_j4/v-deo.html
I hope to do something on Ireland in future. Thank you for your comment.
No thank u ❤
Would love more videos on various Victorian homeless shelters in different parts of the UK.
Like those George Orwell wrote about many ‘Spikes’ around England in Down and Out in Paris and London
@@FactFeast If it's Dublin you want that'd be easy....just a portrait of a syringe filled with heroin says it all...Fact!
@@russellking9762 In Victorian and Edwardian times? Really? If so, people in all of Britain also used what everyone knows is addictive and deadly dangerous. A lot of people then didn't know until it was too late. I am sure that then as now the homeless used drugs to escape the misery for a while. The physical pain of sleeping on hard streets, being kicked and beaten up not only by random members of the public but passing fuzz. Reportedly that still goes on. It doesn't take long living on the streets especially in cold wet weather for someone to seek escape by using one type of drug, then another until they are on the worst.
I was born just after to WW2 in Hull, another poverty ridden industrial city, of invalid parents, so I've got an idea about being poor. Not poverty stricken per se, but poor nevertheless. Life was grim and we had very little. Every penny counted.
We lived in a damp terraced slum just like thousands of others across Hull and probably every Northern town. My parents did the best they could and the state helped. Free invalid car for dad, free school uniforms and school dinners for me and my sister.
Things improved for us in 1960 with slum clearance, and we were given a modest 3 bedroom house with an inside toilet, a bathroom and hot and cold running water. The luxury..
We lost the sense of community we had in the terraces and the ragged streets, so there was a sense of loss felt by many as communities were split apart and dispatched to various newer parts of the city.
One's hierarchy of needs were far better provided for by this move, but as a kid I enjoyed the terraces and bombed-buildings of my formative years. So it was a bitter sweet change.
Things improved during the 60's and by the time the 70's came round, my wife-to-be and I had saved up enough deposit for a new bungalow on the outskirts, and now in retirement in Australia we are comfortably well off.
Nevertheless as my wallpaper on my PC, I keep a picture taken in 1957 of the street where I was born. It's shows my grandma's house and was taken as my gran happened to be scrubbing the step.
It keeps me grounded and reminds me of my very humble start in life. It makes me not take anything for granted...
Beautiful story.
Very good, and very relevant comment.
Thank you so much for this comment. I grew up in the 60s on a council estate. The difference now is that a lot people have no self respect. We didnt have much but my mother had dignity, our house was clean and tidy and our garden was always tidy. I live in Manchester and the fly tipping and litter is terrible. No one seems to care about the environment. Best wishes to you and your wife.😊
That was a heartwarming story, but one experienced by many people that generation. Thank you so much. Your life in Australia must seem very different.
Same for me, born late 1950s and lived in slum houses in Manchester and Hull, my parents brought us to Australia to get out of poverty in 1969,
Love watching our countries history got alot better from here but seems as if our country going to the dogs again now but in different ways 😢
Well I wholeheartedly agree and get the allegory, but that would be an insult to innocent doggos.
More like the ineptitude and gross negligence of the current administration has converted good‘old USA into a cesspool of filth 3rd world country.
The narrating is amazing I love this channel
Cheers! Thank you so much for watching regularly.
I'm a Mancunian.
Things are better now.
But not by much.
Its like what they do to people on universal credit now you dont get get paid for a month so you have to take an advance so your in debt from the beginning and its nowhere near enough to live on
I can remember 6-7 year old children, bared legged without shoes, smoking cigs, playing in Mancunian slum streets in the early 1960's. It was seriously deprived even then. Anyway, Sunday night it a good night. Primary sources of history beautifully presented in this rich narrative style. I wish more people watched and listened to your channel. They'd learn a lot they've never known about social history and bring some inner peace to the world.
I’ve seen post-WWII photos evocative of continuing poverty. Thank you for your comment about the presentation. If people find value in watching, hopefully they will share the videos with a wider audience.
The same in Birmingham, my birthplace. Watching from the bus with my mother as it drove through the district of Aston in the 1950s. Terrible tenement court slums where they lived. Have never forgotten.
Same in Quebec Canada during my own childhood in the 60`s & 70`s. I used to buy cigarettes for my parents at age 9. Today, no one would think of selling this to a child.
😊 I love this comment n channel
You do no it's still the same now? Or do you not understand the point of the videos?
Disgusting that huge amounts of money was made in this era off the backs of people who couldn't even afford to buy their kids shoes, and proof of the reality of "trickle down" economics for the low paid.
What has changed we still have working poor and only 20% of the population are wealthy
And at a time when the British Empire was at its most wealthy and powerful. So who had all the money?.
Not much has changed in the uk...terrible governments one after another.
This is where a lot of my generation came from. There are a lot of people in the UK these days who need to see this video, they seem to think that all Brits of previous generations floated through life on some utopian entitled cloud.
In my 70s now was born in Manchester.We never had anything growing up . But what we always had was love and food in our Belly. And respect for others.
My Great Grandmother, Granny & her sister were in the workhouse in Manchester it must have been awful. My Great Granny had to have a paupers grave in 1959 as there was still no money. My Grandad was a coal miner, he ended up with emphysema his mother disappeared and his father died at Ypres in WW1, he and his siblings were brought up by their older sister. They both had such hard childhoods
The factories and mines didn't pay enough so although they worked they were still poverty stricken. The establishment still despise the working class....🙄🇬🇧
@@carolinejohnson22yes and for the most part wages are still poverty level while rich get richer. Human nature at its worst.
@@kathyinwonderlandl.a.8934 yes...so true! 🤨🇬🇧
@@carolinejohnson22yes greed is the most destructive energy and responsible for most of the misery and suffering on the planet,if everyone shared just a little no one would go without
If you went into the workhouses in Ireland you probably wouldn't come out. Interesting how you said "still there was no money even in 1959". It's a class slave system. People were not allowed to move out of that class. No credit cards then either. You had a tiny fixed income. All by design everything is by design in this world not by happenstance or coincidence.
At the rate the present government is going, and the price rises for basic every day things, we'll end up back there in the Dickensian times.
Meanwhile cholera, tuberculosis, rickets, typhoid and smallpox killed hundreds or thousands. Apart from grisly industrial accidents.
Plus scarlet fever, mumps and childhood illnesses..
My mother's people escaped Manchester and came to the US. It sounds like it was hell. Grandma talked a lot about it. Her Grandmother fed her family by selling tea and bread out the kitchen window.
And this at a time when Britain had developed the largest empire ever seen. It is obvious that the cash only went into very few pockets. The working class shown here were arguably no better off than those who lived in the conquered colonies.
People forget this a lot when criticizing your average brit for the British empire
No wonder they all went to the drink. Gin was the tranquiliser of the 19 century.
This is a dream come true for greedy elites. We’re heading in that direction again.
Sadly i fear you may be right
@@taraelizabethdensley9475there is another path.
There is a great book ( and film ) called ' love on the dole ' by Walter greenwood which is set in Salford during the Great Depression. It is misery with cold and rain thrown in for good measure.
I grew up in the 60's in a town that was particularly hard hit during the depression. People were still scarred by that - let alone by WW2 and post war austerity.
My own mother had the privilege ( 😮!) of growing up during the depression in a one up , one down , cockroach infested infested wooden house with an outside communal toilet . She never recovered physically or mentally from that .
The era in the excellent documentary pre dated all that but it's wrong to think that it is all historic . As a comment above mentions there were still bare foot kids in the swinging 60's when the welfare state was still rudimentary.
Even now there will be kids living in households where there is a choice between heating and eating . Their carbon footprint will be low😢!
Approximately 150,000 British kids classed as homeless. Of course they might have the privilege of living in temporary accommodation without cooking facilities.
I have good memories of visiting my grandparents in Salford in the 70's. My Grandad had always worked as a Miner, but it was a v v basic 2 bed terrace. They weren't well off. There was a lot of work then though. You could walk out of a job on Wed & have a new one by Thursday. My Dad was the first in the family to go to University. Temporary accommodation today: they do get a microwave even if it's a hotel room. Also, those with children get priority over anyone single, regarding housing. If you are single, unless you have a disability or MH issues, you are on your own.
@@sarahholland2600 Thanks for your interesting reply .
The character Larry Mearns was based on my Uncle Larry (my dad's brother in law).
My dad grew up on the South side of Chicago during the depression. I have no idea if it was as bad as was described here, but it was not great. My mom told me she thought he might have had rickets in his ribs and though he was 6'4" he was always very thin.
My father was an apprentice in a brass foundry in the 1950’s in Manchester. He never said anything about poverty. Only that all was smoke, from the stacks, and from tobacco. Non-smokers didn’t exist. Collars had to be changed daily. Soot and grime everywhere.
Interesting. I imagine the buildings had a coating of coal dust as well.
@@FactFeast They had indeed. Do you know the story of this moth? You should look it up. I’m afraid I can’t tell it accurately. But it is about speciation/adaptation/Darwin/moths changing with their environment. From very dark to almost white, with the bark of trees getting cleaner.
The poor and mill workers were generally displaced agricultural labourers. They had a fairly decent life in the country. As did weavers and spinners. However the enclosure of lands and the introduction of mechanised weaving forced these decent people into the cities. Many petty criminals were robbing to get a meal. Meanwhile children were on hands and knees in coal mines. A terrible period.
Absolutely dreadful,to think the riches the elite got their greedy paws on during the British empire,it’s enough to make you give up on humanity
I am from Manchester and love these history clips, gives me insight into my past, I am from Old Trafford and I can remember going to Salford to visit family, 2 adults and 10 kids in a 2 up and 2 down house was amazing, I will aways remember the wash house at the back of my aunties house.
Thank you for sharing! It’s great to know you found this history interesting.
Is a wash house where the toilet and tub are?
My Mother's people were from Manchester. They worked in the factories. In Great Grandparents day they escaped to the US. Horrible stories remembered by old family members.
Born and raised in Bolton, 8 of us in a 2up 2down. No bath or hot water.
Used to go to the slipper baths once a week for threepence a time.
My first wage was 10 shillings a week as an apprentice paint sprayer.
Things never changed much until the 70s, even then it was slow.
What little was done is quickly reverting back to the sh*thole it was in my youth. Escaped in 1984 and only go back to visit family.
Know the slipper baths well Papa. The attendant with his tap key, 3 inches of tepid water and a tiny bar of soap. Oh yes I remember the smell of poverty...
I agree with you. Manchester is a dump. Litter and fly tipping everywhere. The public parks on the outskirts are also badly maintained.If people love Manchester so much why dont they take care of it?
When 18th -19th colonialism and racism is viewed, don't do it from the relative comfort of 2023+
- remember the suffering of the average soul in Britain, or New York at the time.
My paternal grandparents came from Manchester in 1912 to America. I don't know what life was like for them, but this gives me a glimpse of their life there 😢
Nothings Changed thats why I got away :-)
Not as bad as it is in the US. We have a national Health service and welfare benefits.You lot slave until you die , putting money into insurance company's pockets and most of you still die young and poor .🤫
It would depend on their class as to what their life was like here
This is happening again has anyone actually stopped to look around???
I think the powers that be want us working class pesants living like this again!
You mean there were no spontaneous singing and dancing orphans? We’ve been lied to.
Manchester 😊 love this ❤ Oldham is the dampest so the cotton mill thrived
Proud to be from Manchester! I work at old trafford cricket grounds and live nearby 🥰
Great 👍 Thanks for watching.
@@FactFeast you're welcome 😊 I love your videos
I live in Manchester and Im sorry to say this but its a dump. The litter and fly tipping problem is horrendous. I am forever contacting the council about bins left on the street and fly tipping. I am always picking up litter. No-one round here is proud enough of their city to look after the environment.
@@lizzieh5284You dont live in Hale barn then.😂😂
@@lizzieh5284Not true. As with all cities, it does have it's less salubrious districts but it's centre is very pleasant as are many of it's suburbs. I should know as I live in one.
funny how we still have the same problems today as they had .
Meanchester has always been the greatest grimiest goriest most glorious place on the planet
Had I lived in that era I think I would have been very tempted to steal.
You think the apartments were bad, imagine the prison cells.
Britain has 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe in its borders. Nothing has changed. As an Irishman I am very glad we got out of that union with London, a union that did nothing but bleed us dry and keep us down. We made better partners. London only cares about London and places that Londoners have holiday homes in. The rest of the country can rot.
My paternal grandparents lived in Manchester in the 1890's. Grandad was a coal miner and grandma worked in the cotton mills. They emigrated to Canada in 1921 when my father was 2 years old. Proud of where I come from.
Prince Albert changed social housing so much for the better.💙
We don’t have to go back 100 years. Drive thru skid row in LA and it’s worse. This only happens when governments tell you that they’ll take care of you cause their smarter.
Wors time ever to live in...The royalty lived in splendour but as usual no one helps its people.......these days are pretty bad also in a different way. Spending millions to explore space instead of helping people on earth......
How true.
“You will own nothing and you will be happy” - don’t think they don’t want to bring back the workhouses.
It would never happen with todays society. Dont believe everything your told on social media. Life itself is totally diffrent in everyway to back then .
I grew up not far from Manchester. Perfect conditions for cotton weaving. All my family worked in the mills and had rough lives.
As a Yank, now I know the true meaning of the UK rock band The Smiths album title, “Strangeways, Here We Come” ❤
Class Manchester band👍My hometown 👌
A disturbing history that seems to begin to repeat itself . It doesn’t appear we have learnt a lot from the past .
Salford should equally be described and was earlier larger than Manchester.
The way this countries going it won't belong till we're back there thanks to the Tories.
Yet Manchester has had a Labour Council ever since WW2. Also periods of Labour central Government. Where does the buck stop.
Ah, the plight of the Mancunian worker! Fascinating indeed! Wonderful work here!
Glad it’s interesting history 🙂
@@FactFeastIt always is! Without fail.
And we're headed back to this. Just wait.
I was born in Manchester in 1944, I remember it well. I live in North wales now.
My mum run from one soup kitchen to the next one as she was always hungry.
Every city in the uk went through same deprivation even in to the 80s we had outside toilets and one bath a week in Nottingham
I hear Nottingham is up to two baths a week nowadays.
@@youtubecensors5419only the wealthy 🤔
Parts of msnchrster yiu were knee deep in raw sewerage on the streets in the 1800s.
The way it's going a return of these times is well underway.
That is so terribly close to the truth Tim. Just hope we collectively wake up in time, though it's not looking promising...
It will if you vote for clowns on your profile photo
Friedrich Engels once lived at the opposite end of the road I live in today. There was a plaque on the house but somebody stole it.
Look at Kensington avenue philidelphia USA that's a hell on earth as we speak
Another great video! Making a bit for supper in me old doss house and having a rough time of things here in the states. The future doesn't look much better, either. Hope everyone is happy and healthy! ✌️
I wish you good health and better times ahead.
Wow, shocking but an intellectual the buildings nowadays are all brand new glass concrete. Tyson’s corner is really beautiful now this seems like a depressing time I can’t believe it. Wow. Makes me thankful to God to find myself in the 21st-century. Thank you God for what I do have don’t need much but to have something makes you happy. So gray and no medicine like we have now or doctoring. Wow incredible.
Thankyou so much for doing manchester... I really appreciate it thankyou 😊❤ in Bolton where I live there were loads of old cotton Mills and majority are still standing.. they've been turned into warehouses and places were you can run your own businesses from.... its crazy to see a lot of the old pipes and things in side these big Mills and history is still in them it's crazy and fascinating at the same time. I asked you to do manchester and you did... thankyou so much... its so much appreciated... I should look into bolton and see what it was like... as the the majority of my ancestors worked in the Mills on bolton 😊
You’re welcome! It’s good to know some of these mills are still standing and put to modern uses. Tough places to work in the past, but part of our history.
My Grandfather’s family was from Bolton, his mother I believe was from Manchester and worked in a mill as a girl. They moved to Canada before WW1. Must have been quite a life back then.
The British government failed miserably these people and it could easily have provided better housing, food and education. Although I am a conservative, the monarchy didn’t need nine castles and countless grand estates.
But we had white privilege 🙄 kids really need to see how bad it was for most in uk and how hard people had to work to provide.
Queen Victoria brought in the workhouses prior to this the poor where better looked after by local communities, church and charities, she was horrible she decided that hand outs would stop they should be made to work for their keep
fascinating to learn about my home~
my dads house is one of the houses that was built for the workers; tightly packed brick street, ridiculously steep stairs, oven in summer, ice box in winter. spent my childhood in the alley between the streets. not in a gross way; there were a bunch of kids, and we'd hang out in each others yards, and we were away from the road
Thanks for sharing! Glad this history has meaning for you.
And contained ghosts of the departed.
My aunt lived in my Grandparents old terrace house in Salford Manchester. When I slept in the front room, a ghost grabbed my legs. Granddad, grandma, two aunts and an uncle died there. I think the ghost was Aunt Margaret.
My mother was born in Manchester in 1930. They lived in Wythenshawe. She emigrated to Canada in the 1950s.
Oh also any videos on various Victorian homeless shelters in different parts of the UK would make me so happy!
Love how you present this information
Like those George Orwell wrote about many ‘Spikes’ around England in Down and Out in Paris and London
Orwell also wrote "The Road to Wiggan Pier", very interesting..
That great city of Manchester is my hometown and was one of the most important cities of the British Empire 👍
The London Road Railway Station (shown at 00:50) is actually the Manchester Piccadilly Station of today, it was renamed in 1960. I immediately recognised the approach road, leading up the ramp (that part basically hasn't changed.)
No no no …no one lived like this as we all had white privilege …..working class back in Victorian Britain was atrocious with a average life expectancy of 38 yrs in 1835………
Mt Grandmother was from around there, Old Sarham it appears. She went to work at a Welsh Boys school not far away in the laundry, at about the age of 12. Her Father was killed in WWI so they packed the children and sent them to Canada. Halifax, in 1917 exploded like an atomic bomb hit it. They survived and again she was working in the Acadia University Laundry. She was a hard woman who outlived three husbands and three children. Now I see why she never wanted to return home.
I always remember the canal with ‘skeletons’ of old barges sitting rotting away in mud near Oxford Rd. in the 1960s. I wish I’d photographed them!.
Poverty has got worse in the city, people go without food for days, no electricity for days. I remember in the mid 80s going to Ardwick where a woman had no electricity with young kids. She was in the dark for days with no one to care for her. Now you get people saying people are faking it, no its not true, the DWP impose workhouse like conditions on benefits, and you can lose them at a drop of the hat. Their favourite technique was to date a letter a few days before and post the letter after appointment, at one time the royal mail use to date the post mark, now they do not so people cannot prove they did not reived it as they claimed. It is an evil system. The usual lies about people on benefits standing out side the jobcentre in designer clothes is all abound. I asked one person how did you know they were on benefits? She could not answer. Now you can lose benefits if you do part time work, and not get more hours or a pay rise. If your sick forget it they make you work, have a bad back, i.e. slip disk now that is nothing you can still lug heavy bags - after all your faking it. Never mind your legs give way to trapped nerves- get a job your lazy scumbag the cry goes out. Medical assessments are like poor law court judges all designed to trip you up. An evil system. One ex solider was asked why he could not walk on his foot. He told them he had lost it while on active service. Again he was asked if you can feel it why not walk on it, again he told them he has only one foot. He lost his benefits. Another person was denied benefits while in hospital and was told she has to look for work. She was filling the claim form after having a lung transplant. She died 6 weeks later. An evil system, there are more stories like this. As a kid I was living in house the council gave to my mum, there was a big hole in the roof, it was a type of house that did not have a loft. The council refused to rehouse her or fix the roof, so i went to sleep while seeing the stars. So my mum up sticks and squatted in another house. Soon the council rehoused her lol. I remember one time the Police came to the house the same one with a hole in the roof. They asked for my father and this was in the early 70s. They said they wanted him in connection with a local crime, that had just been done. The problem he been dead for about 3 years then.
028 0:31 “ huge Numbers of people poured in from the countryside” ….. Actually, the slave Masters, who ran the factories, needed more slaves. Started at the outset of the industrial revolution with the enclosures act that meant people living, bucolic lives in the countryside were forced off the land When the common grazing lands and common woods were closed off to them.. access to wood for fuel and manufacturing essential items and without access to the grazing on the common lines for the sheep and pigs. Many started to starve and were left with no option but to move to the towns and cities. This method was then employed slightly differently in Scotland, with the Highland clearances, and then an island with the potato famine and the exportation of food crops leaving the Irish to starve or move to England or the colonies. And now in 2023 we see the same happening but on a global scale
So many dangerous and repetitive jobs with poverty wages. The tory dream.
One of my ancestors Robert Neill who moved from Scotland to Manchester was the Mayor of Manchester during the late Victorian era and also had his own building firm Robert Neill and son's and was a founding member of the NFAEL to help other businesses which the greedy and corrupted big wealthy firms in London didn't like.
So much is publicized about the poverty in the east end of London and I thank you for helping us realize the same conditions existed in other cities during the Victorian era. The poverty and problems continued to escalate during her reign.
Still feels like this today in Stockport!! (Greater Manchester)
Go county
Now people regard themselves in poverty when they can't afford the latest smartphone.
You mean struggling to pay for essentials like heat, water, electricity, food, council tax and yes, a smartphone. In very many cases, when your in employment.
Absolute rubbish. We're in a cost of living crisis and people are struggling to pay for the bare essentials. More people than ever are using food banks, pretty sad in this day and age
But rent mold infested homes have to use food banks and are in full time work
Lots of cities looking this way now. Decline and decay every were.
Basically bloody slavery 😮😮
This sad word and video picture was not at all unique to the city of Manchester during and shortly after the Victorian era in England. In fact, I think the video understates the horrible living conditions and the degree of poverty and chronic starvation and malnutrition that were ubiquitous among the working classes. The working classes of France and Germany had it much much better, by comparison.
another cracking video! sorry i've been absent of late - life's been so busy i've hardly had time to breathe!
but its so great to come back and catch up on your new releases :)
all the best!
Nice to see you here 😊 Thank you! All the best.
Great watch and very interesting as always, I was really happy with the minimal use of modern imagery. I’m very much looking forward to the Birmingham episode.
Thank you very much for your super thanks! Birmingham is on my list that I’d like to do.
Oscar Wilde about those times (trying to be funny, of course): --
"Work is the curse of the drinking class".
I have this quote framed, sitting on my bar.
It's easy to criticise in isolation by focussing on the worst aspects, but all those people didn't come to Manchester because they were forced. They came because conditions in the country was much worse. And now much of Manchester has been ruined with faceless tower blocks and bland shopping emporia, whilst industry has all but disappeared.
That's called being forced.
I am 78 years old. I was born in 1946 in the Manchester slum district of Ardwick. I lived there until 1966 when my house was demolished as part of the slum clearing initiative of the 1960’s.
There is no doubt that Ardwick was a very poor and deprived area, and as a family of four we had very little. In my early childhood I was never conscious of being poor, because everyone around me was in the same boat. I read lots of books from the library (Secret Seven, Jennings, Famous Five etc), and I remember wondering where these other children had their adventures.
I became aware of being a slum child when I passed the 11+ and went to a grammar school , where the majority of pupils were from middle class families, and lived in up market areas of the city.
Children can be very cruel and I was subject to mockery for my accent, poor quality shoes and clothing, etc, and the fact that I seldom went on holiday. ( I was married and in my 30’s when I first went away for two weeks.)
Having said all that, my poor childhood was happy. There was a tremendous community spirit, where people helped each other. With the slum clearances we got houses with bathrooms and indoor toilets, but we lost that sense of togetherness. I have never experienced it since.
I can imagine how foreboding the prison was. Think how we delight in these buildings' architecture now. These people lived through horrific times. Let us, this ONCE, celebrate Britain for the Britons, as the screaming and demonstrations are all about immigration (among other things), and racially motivated poverty. TY for this upload. Most families have experienced poverty at 1 time or another, it is not stricly the province of immigrants-SMH! I know this as a poor white woman brought up in the US in the 1960's...
but we NEVER SUFFERED!!! Right? Oof...
It's because it is not a matter of race or origin, it's a matter of social class. People can say what they want about Marx, but he nailed it when dividing the world in classes. The poor, no matter religion, sex, skin color, country, etc, etc, will always be in a losing game.
Last part of my research in 1840 bombing its cotton industry is world famous in Manchester but life expectancy is just 26 . Victorian Manchester is celebrates industrial expansion, technological and economic growth but there are on another side for ordinary people who worked in Milles, factories, life was hard , poverty was widespread and life expectancy was short . There are also in Manchester child labor, teeming slums , drinking , prostitution,illiteracy, spread of chorionic diseases and health conditions but many religious people were moved by appalling living conditions of working class and decide to do something. Find out about institutions to make difference between life and death for urban people. I hope you like my research. Best wishes for you your loved ones .
Thank you for taking the time to comment! I appreciate your support.
I was born in 1946, and not much had changed for us. 7 of us in a two up two down, with an useless drunk as a dad and mum out working all hours to feed us all. Went to school in wellingtons, free school meals. Had a bath in a tin bath in front of the fire every now and then and cleaned my teeth with soot and salt. This sounds like a Monty Python sketch but unfortunately it’s the truth
....and confirmation that this sorry Country is now massively overpopulated.
My home town. Fascinating stuff.
Great to know this history has meaning for you. Thank you!
LOVE THE OLD FOOTAGE!
Correction; tuppence - not twopence. Thruppence - not threepence etc.
Dreadful conditions. Sadly we are in another period of inequality where banks, real estate and money-lenders rule hardworking multitudes in this dastardly Neoliberal economy which has infiltrated the world 😢🥺 Time for THE PEOPLE to rise up!! 🤷♀
Up to and including the 1970s (and often even later) University students were expected to live in houses hardly changed from that rotten era.
we are already half way back to these times.
There are some old houses still standing in Manchester city centre. They are now selling for about £500,000. Unbelievable.
The only thing I can think after hearing this narration, is there were no winners other than the elite. From the enslaved in America and the Caribbean to the west, it was sheer misery and death for all. 🥺🥺
My grandparents were born in Manchester in the 1860's, married in Manchester Cathedral, and emigrated to the US in the 1890's. His occupation looks like "iron burner"? In the US he was a machinist. I guess they needed to escape Manchester. They made a good life and lived in a nice home in the US. Not sure what it was like in Manchester. Grandfather lived at 211 Clowes Street in the Gorton district and grandmother at 67 Union Street. Does anyone have a link to photos of those areas in the 1880's and 1890's?
Manchester cathedral was the `mother church` to a number of local churches around Manchester and it was cheaper to marry at the cathedral than at your own church. This saved having to pay two fees as the cathedral always had their cut.. I suspect that his job was an iron turner - someone who operated a lathe which I assume would be a machinist in America. Gorton was home to a number of heavy engineering companies.
Manchester central library has a vast collection of photographs of Victorian streets taken in the 1960s just before they were demolished. It used to be easy to search but seems to have become complicated. The easy way is to Google `Clowes Street Gorton ` and there are some images there of the typical terraced houses and small shops. By the way Clowes is pronounced as Clues like in a crossword. There were a number of Union Streets and the name often referred to the proximity to a workhouse as they came under the Poor |Law Union Act. Hope this helps.
And yet they could have escaped class ridden poverty-stricken filth and squalor and migrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada but preferred for whatever reason which is beyond comprehension to a sane person to stay in that God Forsaken hell hole of Britain.
Maybe they couldn't afford the passage
Strangeways Prison sounds like a place straight out of a Harry Potter book lol
A true tonic for the naively nostalgic; thanks.
Thanks for listening! Glad you found it worthwhile.
ASMR so my warm bed n fuzzy blankets are even more appreciated ❤
My 3 hot water bottles and 2 duvets are very much appreciated
Not much changed then!
After 13 years of the Tories we're heading back to this today
They were the good old days.Not like the hard times of today,like poor cell phone reception,or too much mayo on ya burger,or ya $10 coffee not hot enough,or the %5 interest rates.They had it good back then.