1970: VICTORIAN TEENAGERS reminisce | Yesterday's Witness | Voice of the People | BBC Archive
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- Опубліковано 29 кві 2022
- What was it like to be a teenager in the Victorian era? Two women, now in their 90's, talk about their younger days in the 1890s. Frances 'Effy' Jones - one of the first women to be trained to use a typewriter, and to take up cycling as a hobby - recalls the life of a young working woman in London. Berta Ruck, a romantic novelist, remembers her formative years at art school, and the culture shock she experienced after moving from her secluded home in rural Wales to the muddy hustle and bustle in the heart of Victorian London.
Together they provide a fascinating oral history of 1890s England.
This clip is from Yesterday's Witness: Two Victorian Girls, originally broadcast 8 June, 1970.
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I can remember Victorian ladies as a child. I was born in the 1970s and thought nothing of these old ladies who were my neighbours. Now I'm almost 50 years old and it was a privilege to know these women and men. For the younger people reading this.. spend time talking to your elderly neighbours. They were young once...
me too... and men who had fought in WW1.
@@dellwright1407 it’s a shame now few left even from ww2 another decade and probably no one that lived through it.
@@dellwright1407 My great grandfather was a WW1 veteran and spoke to me about his war. Even as late as 1989 my school work experience in a care home saw me talking to Victorian ladies and a WW1 solider.
My friend Simon his grandmother was once kissed on the head by a woman who remembers seeing injured Soliders coming back to England from the battle of Waterloo. The distance past is closer than we think.
I was born in the 60s and this was like listening to my nan and her sisters talking about their life. I was fascinated they were girls during WW1 and talked about their dad and men going off to war. Then they were young mom's during WW2, they had some brilliant stories. They saw so much change, so much history. An amazing generation 🌟💝☮️🇬🇧
Queen vicky was a nasty piece of work!
Who else feels like a child, sitting cross-legged on the rug listening to grandma? What a lovely feeling.
Yes!! I wish to hear more! I wonder if there is a longer version of the interview.
I'm going to be 32 years old soon and I couldn't agree more.
@@levity90 I guess it means we should also register our own mondain lives for the next generations. Not the sensational put onto social media. Just the regular perks of an ordinary life that might be lost in time...
I loved my grandmother telling stories and have always been drawn to old people telling stories from their past. I’ve never understood why some people have no time for it.
Jesus is my saviour, too :)
It's amazing to think of all the rapid change they saw through their lifespan. From Victorian era to cars, the jazz age, electricity, two world wars, airplanes, radio, movies, tv, moon landings, hippies, rock 'n roll -- it's mind blowing really!
It truly is!
Absolutely.
And all that makes me wonder what will we see in our lifetimes!
Your right
@@jax99888 me to
“Where there wasn’t mud, there was fog, and in between were us enjoying ourselves”
marvelous turn of phrase, i expect everyone spoke like that back then
I wished they had talked to more people throughout the early 20th century about life in the 1800s. It's fascinating. Voices from the past.
Me too…
They did 😂 in long, drawn out books, articles, and printed diaries.
@@Dushygushy22 people were lazy in the 1800s and couldn’t be bothered to invent TikTok.
I remember too.
I wonder why you assume "they" didn't?
I had an aunt who was alive in the 1890's. She used to tell stories of playing tennis on a grass court, wearing ankle length skirts and huge hats. And cycling for hours to visit friends and stay the night and have dancing until almost dawn. She was engaged to a young man in WWI but he didn't survive the war. She never did marry. She lived with a couple of her sisters and brothers on the farm. She described how every week she would boil up the copper to do the laundry in the little shed just across from the kitchen and she would bake 12 loaves of bread once a week to feed the family. They had an icebox to keep the meat and milk cool.
They purchased the second car to be had in the district. Before then, it was travelling by horse and buggy and if the road was very winding she would get out and walk because she would get "Buggy sick"! Another of her sisters was engaged to a young man but her father made her break off the engagement as he said the young man was not suitable to marry his daughter.
My grandmother as a Victorian, grew her hair long and never cut it, it was long enough for her to sit on (she wore it bunned, of course). My father told me how as a little boy he would sit on her bed and watching her comb her long hair, he found it beautiful.
I never met my grandmother, she died before I was born, but I decided to see if my hair would grow as long as hers and now my hair is calf length (and I also wear it bunned). It's a little like a tribute to her....
Great share! Love the mundane details of life from back when. I guess most of our grandmas wore their hair long out of habit from their youthful days. Mine looked so dignified and pretty, though she was all wrinkled and stooped and supposed to look "silly" because of her age???
@@jitkasuarez You know, I never understood this "Short hair makes you look younger as you age" thing. No it doesn't, you look old whether you have short hair or long hair, and in my opinion, long is better and more feminine.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I find it fascinating and so very interesting.
thanks so much. it wld be lovely if ppl cld put these stories up with pics for future generations
My dad tells me that his grandma had really long auburn hair, and he remembers how amazing it looked when it was half grey half red as she got older. I think she worked at a hat factory in manchester and would walk more than an hour each way, not sure how many hats she owned though. It’s pretty cool to think about anyways
Wonderful how even a Victorian father saw his daughter's talent and knew that she had to be an artist to be happy. The furthest back in history I really ever had access to was from my great grandmother who was a tween and teen in the roaring 20's she remembered a bit of the Edwardian era and she'd pinch the leg of my jeans and say "Thank GOODNESS for rational dress!" wiping mud off your skirt for hours does sound like a nightmare.
"wiping mud off your skirt for hours does sound like a nightmare." --> but only if you are female =b
@@PintkonanI don't care if you are a man, if you're brushing mud off your skirt every days for hours you're probably not happy about it.
These are great! I had a drinking buddy when I was in my early 20s who was born in 1899. He died at just a few weeks shy of 106 in his own home, fit, smoking and drinking and living independently 'til the end. He told me once that his own grandfather remembered being a lad and making his way to London to celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837. I'm still blown away to think that between that event there's only one person between the witness ro the occasion and me.
That is an incredible thought. History is so much closer to us than we realize…
Wow, that's great, how privileged you were to have had someone in your life that had such contact with history. My grandparents were born in the early 1890s, but unfortunately they were not ones to talk about life in their youth. I always feel sad about missing out on so much they could have told me, never mind, everyone is different, I just respected them for who they were. So glad that you had this chance in your life. 😁👍
@@elysebuehrer5981 You are right. A whole century contains less than One Million Hours.
Yes, that's incredible.
Sounds like a great time!!
My Grandfather was born in England, in the 1890's. One day, he told me that neither man nor woman would have dared to ask a pregnant woman "How far along are you?" He said you would have been asking for a slap in the face. I asked him why and he said that was the same thing as asking "When did you have sex?" Very interesting!
Wow! Very interesting. I think we should bring back this rule!
I hope ya'll know you still shouldn't ask a pregnant woman anything about her pregnancy. Still none of your business
What a fascinating notion. How times have changed! I really appreciate you sharing this titbit of knowledge.
@@sarah-annecarney5458 Thank you! My Grandfather lived to be 103 and I just LOVED listening to his stories.
I've always said this lol That's why I never ask people when they are having kids or do they plan on having kids. It really is like delving into their sex life.
What a wonderful line: (paraphrased) "London was full of mud. And where there wasn't mud, there was fog."
And inbetween the fog was us having a good time
The fog was full of pollution too not just water.
I think that given all the horses "mud" may be a euphemism.
Confirmed by Charles Dickens in the opening paragraph of his 9th (of 15) novel, Bleak House.
My mum remembers the smog
The second lady - Berta Ruck - was an author of romance novels such as ‘His Official Fiancée’ (1918), and was married to another author who wrote under the name Oliver Onions who wrote ghost stories! He died in 1961, and she died in 1978.
Love hearing both their stories, especially Effy’s story about being arrested for cycling and the magistrate being so old he was confused as to whether they were riding horses or bicycles!
How did you know this??? What a great comment🎉
One could tell she was a writer. Her language is so beautiful, and her stories just flow…
@@sankuperis Or maybe he read the description below the video...
I was JUST thinking that she speaks like a very well written dialogue in a novel LOL! Now I know why.
I’m Native American, and the stories my grandmother would tell… magical, tragic, compelling. Miss her so much and wish I asked more questions.
Hello Native American person, English person here. Hope you’re well my friend🙏❤️💐
Your peoples were far more connected to the Earth than current people give them credit for. I used to dream when I was younger of visiting just to go listen to their stories. Those dreams are now long gone, especially if trump were to win re-election and starts locking people up for having different political views to him and his cult
I think I'm missing something but, native American weren't victorian's?
@@zyourzgrandzmazthere just saying there experiences with the grandparents
Sure you are 🤣🤣🤣
The ladies singing and adding the hic ups of the drunk men stumbling out of their pubs really made my day
Love it. She remembered it as she heard it. I could listen to these women all day
Oh god yes 😂😂😂
Amazing storyreller!
I was in heaven! 🤣🤣🤣
It made me nearly cry....You just don't get innocence like that anymore.
I love that Berta still has a Victorian hairstyle. People often keep the same style they had in their prime.
Her style is more 1920s
Me too, wanted to see the whole thing, Great!
@@user-tf2zw4mw2v That was the revival!
That hair style is 1920's to 30's.
@@robertgronewold3326 1840's
My grandmother was born in 1888 in east London, a true cockney. I loved hearing her stories. She came to Canada on a warship with 2 children during WW1. She claimed the sailors chased her around the ship. She passed away in 1987 at the age of 99, making a pot of jam, still living in her own apartment. Nanny went from having gaslight lighting up the streets, to seeing men walk on the moon. Truly incredible. She was a real character, nothing uptight and Victorian about her. We have this image of women of this era being prissy and prudish, but they were anything but.
Whoa not to mention she was born near the location of Jack the Ripper in the year his killings took place!
Thanks for sharing, that’s a great story! Not to mention how fabulous, and fortunate, to have grown up around her.
@@HayleySulfridge She was born in the place where Jack the ripper struck in the same year he struck! that's fascinating.
Sailors chased her around? Lol why? Were they fascinated by her or smth?
I think "prudish" are the woke people of today whom you can barely say anything to without them getting offended!
I shook hands with a woman aged 103 in 1985. She remembered seeing Queen Victorias Diamond Jubilee procession in 1897. She lived long enough to see Prince Harry being born, Live Aid, Space Shuttles and early mobile phones.
"Sometimes I don't think any of us know", such a juxtaposition of humanity against the rigid nature of life in 1800s England. I don't know why this particular thing hit me so hard.
I suppose we have our ideas but do any one of us really know? We think we know but....!
She was surprisingly awesome. Its good to know there were people like this around.
It's a perfect encapsulation of the human condition.
@@waltonsmith7210 Honestly if you read Victorian writing, it becomes less surprising. There was just the same spectrum of humanity as exists now - people were more eloquent as well. Although they did go on a bit.
Don't forget though that the Victorians weren't always as tightly buttoned up as first appears. Consider the drugs and pr0n just for starters! That's before we get into the weird esoterica, such as apothecaries spruiking Egyptian mummy innards as a health tonic - which, as common sense might dictate, turns out to have been based on a dodgy translation of a Persian text into Latin (from memory). In the end, that text wasn't even talking about Egyptian mummies. I just want to know how many Victorians consumed mummy innards (apparently still on sale for consumption in the early 20th century?!) and how they felt afterwards :v
130+ years seems a long time, but also not so much.. and yet, so much has changed. I love how well spoken they are, and how clear their memories.
Buddy, 1870 was 152 years ago
@@JasonP6339 But they are talking about the 1890s, not 1870
Picky
Yes we speak really poorly now days
@@JasonP6339 buddy they said 130+ stop picking on them
My great grandmother died 110 yo, in the 80s. She had absolutely the craziest stories of old European adventure traveling in her own private train car between Vienna and the Black Sea, through war and turmoil. She was a mean and difficult person, but I can understand why. She had very old-timers habits, like traveling around to visit relatives and stay with them for 2-3 months at a time, because that's the way ladies used to travel back then.
Blessed times. I was definitely born in the wrong era
imagine traveling by car that age, would be crazy
Her being mean is the reason why she lived so long 😂😂
I was a child in the sixties and my neighbors were born in the late 1880s and grew up poor in Milwaukee. They would tell stories of fire wagons pulled by horses with Dalmatians running alongside, being whipped in the cloakroom by teachers for some transgression, ice wagons delivering ice. My neighbor was a very kind and gentle lady who was an amazingly gifted artist. She wanted to go to art school but the money to be used for that had to be used to pay medical costs when her mother had pneumonia. When she passed away the family gave me a collection of her drawings, delicate drawings of Vargas girls, ladies in feathered hats, roses and birds. She was a fine spirit in this world and was an inspiration from another age.
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing.
It's sobering to think that we'll never have another first hand interview with anyone from those times.
Think about how at some point in the future people will be saying the same thing about people who lived through the 20th century, as the last people living in the previous millenium.
Prepare your own interview questions now!
Yes, or from Ancient Mesopotamia.
@@ninamartin1084 we r not qualified yet we need to be old have great grandkids and have a life worth telling
My grandmother was born in 1931 when her mother was 45. So my great grandmother was a victorian child. Many of her ways of thought and lifestyle practices have rubbed off onto my grandmother and also onto me through my semi-victorian grandmother. They lived in Rural New Zealand and didn’t have electricity or plumbing until after ww2.
'Indolent, feckless gal'
☺ I love it. So authentic.
"Gel" not "gal"!
She went to Saint Trinians
@@user-pr1ft6gd6u Chill ... you missed his wit.
Such (sadly, ever) is the view of the narrowly (usually petty bourgeois) pragmatic-for-now mindset, deaf to poet Walt Whitman's advocated "prudence for eternity" that zooms out and sees big pictures, and for the artist aesthetic consequences, to catapult them to the best.
A handbag!!!
I cant even form a thought as clear as these women speak at 80-90 years old
Berta Ruck was a writer and lived till 100.
What a life she experienced and lived.
When working in a nursing home, I knew a woman whose family had come to the west in a wagon train when she was a child. She described her father starting up the team and driving away without the children, as a joke, the same way a father might tease his children now by driving away slowly in the car.
Wow is that ever touching.
When I started watching silent movies is when I realized that humans have always been the same. Thank you for sharing the story.
Someone could create a book of dad jokes through the ages, and they’d be remarkably similar across both time and culture. Circumstances change but people don’t.
This is so cute ❤ thank you for sharing!!!!
Oh wow, humans we have always been this way huh 😅😂
Oh my, Berta is a proper card. Love her. I would never have thought that this was originally shown 52 years ago, the quality is astonishing.
I’d have guessed it was filmed in the early 90s!
RIGHT! i was wondering if this was from the 80's-90's bc of the video quality, that'd make them OLD. Then I checked its from 1970! Wow
Shot on film - when scanned correctly, looks brand new :)
Recorded onto metallic film. If they have the originals (which they did in this case) they can reproduce it in high quality. The low quality video of the time wasn't down to the cameras, it was the film (often tape) they recorded onto.
Recording didn’t change much in that time. But broadcast and home TV sets did change a lot, which is why people remember video and audio quality improving massively during that time period.
It was in fact just video BROADCAST and PLAYBACK that improved.
As of now 371,523 people have viewed this. I wonder how these wonderful ladies would react knowing that hundreds of thousands of people sat listening to them, finding them so interesting. Living on, telling their stories long after they're gone.
That’s such a beautiful perspective 🥺💖
@@melzy00It is🙂Regards, Michael M. Kamau, Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa, 28th December 2023.
I imagine they'd react how they are in the video because they were being recorded and interviewed by the BBC so they already knew thousands of people would see it.
@@dickJohnsonpeterI humbly disagree. The ladies were natural and unpretentious. There was nothing artificial in how they conducted themselves or how they presented themselves. Regards, Michael M. Kamau, Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa, 14th January 2024.
@@MundiaKamau I'm not saying that they weren't humble or unpretentious. I said that they already knew thousands of people would see this video. They couldn't have known about UA-cam of course but they knew they were going to be on TV on the BBC. So their reactions were on display here.
"Where there wasn't mud there was fog, and in between was us enjoying ourselves."
I loved that little line
This is wild. I wish they had interviewed more people about their memories as soon as film was invented
It's not so much about when film was invented as when sound recording was invented (or practical).
There are old films of even older people being interviewed, I saw one where they interviewed an American Civil War soldier, I think.
@@Just_Sara One of these men was born before Victoria even came to the throne. ua-cam.com/video/gTf44Wwa2Fo/v-deo.html
There’s quite a lot of these sort of things that are slowly making their way to UA-cam.
@@Just_Sara can you share? I love watching this content
“I gave my address as the office and not my home address”…What a top gal!
How many people are more scared of their family than their employers today? A clue to where things have gone awry perhaps!
I was born in 1974 and as a young child attended the 100th birthday of my great great grandmother, it's amazing to think that I shared space with an actual Victorian, we aren't as distant from them as we think
Especially if you were in the same room......
I've never met any of my cousins twice removed. Nobody has ever told WHY they were removed, but it must have been bad since they were removed twice 😅The worst is going to meet my distant relatives - trying to have a conversation from a distance away is quite the challenge 🤣 @@johnathandaviddunster38
Talk to the elderly of our generation. My grandmother passed this year. She was a teenager in Japan during WW2 right between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The stories she told. I miss my grandma so much, but I’m glad I talked to her and learned about her youth. Don’t let this time pass. Someday time will be as removed from our present elderly as we are to these Victorian women.
My Scottish grandma was born in 1948 and her earliest memories were picking strawberries on a farm, she couldn’t read or write but had the greatest memory. My other grandparents were born in 1930 and 1937. They’re all dead now.
29 watching a video in 2022 of women In their 90s talking in the 1970s about their life in the 1890s.
Mind blowing.
I love this stuff. Listening to ladies who spent their teenager years in the 1800s is incredible.
Not too far in the future they'll say the same thing about a millennial who who was born in the 1900s....
No its not
@@alyssasmith9081 no they wont
@@unholylemonpledge9730 Why are you even watching? away with you to a video about slavery or something...
“And in between was us enjoying ourselves.” Life summed up, right there. This felt like listening to my grandmothers 🥰
I'm a nurse in training. Of course many patients are in the "later stages" of their lives, most are 70 to 80 years old. But when i first worked with an old lady who was born in the 1920s i had a moment where it kinda struck me how awe inspiring her age was. i imagined her life, of which i didn't know anything of course, as a long film. The viewer gets to know her well, goes through thick and thin with her and in the end sees her lying there, in a hospital bed, her body weak and old, her voice frail and quiet. And in comes the unamed nurse (Me) as an insignificant extra at the end of a very long life.
We are literally from different worlds, not in space but time. And talking to old people and recording what they say is a connection, a form of timetravel to other "world".
I have had thoughts like these before too. Such a fascinating perspective!
This is why I dread getting old imagine in a few decades being operated on by a doctor that was born in 2022 😂
I really like the picture you drew there
My grandmother was born in 1927, we’re German and she was 18 by the end of WWII. We lived in the same house and I grew up eating strawberrys with sugar in her kitchen and listening to her stories of taking care of her 6 younger siblings, hiding in smelly bunkers and steeling her sisters English book in order to learn some English as she had to leave school early.
It's so special and amazing to think about this. And of course, how one day our humble old years will be accompanied by a totally different world and future young people, listening to our stories of time passed. It's absolutely precious.
I’m 57 and when I talk to younger folk about living in a pre-internet and smart phone world they look at me as if I was living in the 1890’s 🤣
I'm 41 and I remember. Some days it feels like it was only a few years ago rather than 25 or so.
I'm only 25 but any time I mention a video tape or floppy disk to any of the kids in my family, they look at me the same way 😂
I’m 54 and when my son was little he once asked me ‘ Did they have electricity when you were little? ‘ … but to be fair I still remember the gas man coming around to light the gas lights at dusk. ( Ireland in the seventies )
I'm 36 and a teacher. When I tell students I had no computer or Internet until 15 they're on the floor.
No phones in the pocket either! When I needed my mom to pick me up from a football game at school I would call collect and speak through the recording and hang up for zero charge....we lived on the edge.
In memory of my dear Grandma, born in Lanarkshire 1879, died 1963 when I was 12. A dear, thoroughly Scottish, Victorian lady, whose memory I cherish forever.
I could listen to these ladies speaking about their lives for hours and hours and not get bored.
They are real women, now we don't have them
Life runs so fast. One day we Will be the old ladies telling the 00s' history
More like the covid history. I have kept all the papers for all the essential worker movement stuff.
Ill be telling my future grandkids what a scam covid was, and how the sheep panicked for no reason @@OffGridInvestor
How lovely, my great grandmother was born in 1908 and lived to be 102, luckily I had some amazing conversations with her about her childhood. These videos are priceless
My great grandpa was born in 1876 over 100 years before i was born!
My grandfather was born in the 1920s. He was mostly raised by his grandparents (his parents worked overseas and they sent him back for school) who were obviously old school Victorians, hence he was brought up on Victorian values that shaped his entire life going forward. This very point was noted at his funeral in 2007 after he died aged 84.
How lucky you are. I had met my great grandparents but back then i was not interested in their experience and history as i am now. But now they are all gone. I advice everyone who has old relatives to ask them and interview them as those ppl will be gone soon.
Did you record something?
My grandfather was born in 1880 and would have been almost an age peer with these ladies. I was lucky enough to be brought up in 'Old Peoples Homes' in the 60s and 70s. I was able to hear stories of Lancashire in the late 19th Century. I was also lucky enough to hear true Lanky Twang, a dialect that has all but disappeared.
Can you still remember any stories?
Tell us some stories
You should be sure to write down what you remember- these stories keep those times of the world, the spirit of those times, alive and well. Don’t let us all forget. I’m sure we would all feel privileged to hear what your grandfather had to say about his time.
Lanky Twang must be recorded, quick!
Oooo I have some ancestors that are from Lancashire. They emigrated to America in late 1800s. 💖 So amazing when you have stories from older generations.
For anyone interested… there’s footage of interview from the 1920’s of people who are 90-100 years old. Fascinating.
My grandmother, born in 1906, told me an anecdote about HER mother. Women, of course, always wore the long dresses 'back then.' When women's dresses were allowed to be cut above the ankle, well, my great-grandmother thought that was the most wonderful, comfortable thing!
Cab driver yelled out to her "Don't you want any children?" Because she's riding a bike. Holy hell man.
There was less information about then. They were lucky if they got school until 12 and that was just basic '3Rs'. There was no radio, no TV, no internet and books were difficult to access. The only information was newspapers and most could either not read or could not afford to buy a newspaper. People did not know new things would not damage them - so they aired on the side of caution.
“I expect I said something cheeky back.”
😂 Good on her! We see the past as so serious all time. I would have loved to be there and hear her reply “Not with you, guv’nor!”
@@Iazzaboyce the average 12 year old then was better educated than an 18 year old today. Everyone gets A grades today if they can spell their name correctly.
@@beniteztheconman I think that's probably true in relation to middle class and above, but working class Victorians were lucky if they got a basic education. I was really talking about general information being accessible to ordinary people.
@@beniteztheconman you don't know what you're talking about. You'd only get a good education if you had a title or very rich parents. Oxford and Cambridge were filled with people like that.
The emancipatory power of the bicycle. Even today, bicycles for transport - not sport - represent a kind of rebellion in many parts of the world, and freedom from long slogs on foot in many other parts.
The bicycle was the greatest boon to the genetic health of the nations. Men could now cycle to the next village to find a wife rather than relying on the women in their own village, all of whom may be close or distant relatives.
I feel you. Bikes can still radically empower an individual even today, especially the poor.
@@stephenclark9917 Whereas bicycles might hold a different kind of significance to women, for example enabling greater independence of movement. The fact that Victorian women not wearing skirts to cycle were chided by strangers as voiding their chances of ever seeming attractive to men speaks very powerfully to me as a woman in the 21st century!
I feel like the male experience of the bicycle is therefore, to some extent, something else, because as far as i know there was never any objection to men riding bicycles. Whereas this shows the bicycle-loving women of today some of the 💩 our forebears went through in order to participate in cycling. Their willingness to resist caving in to such social criticism paved the way for women to be able to cycle today. A very different view of the bicycle vs a reproduction enabler.
Not dismissing your views, just perceiving the same activity very differently from a female perspective.
Something i liked about this clip was that it wasn't focussing on women as instruments of reproduction but rather focussing on their experiences of how they changed as people owing to new developments, if that makes sense.
And i enjoyed the British sense of humour about all this, including when the lady wearing her "rational" cycling get up was cheeky back to the bloke having a go at her. If not for the pluck of women of this era, my own life would be significantly different, for the worse.
Going back to the perspective of men and villages, I think there is a video on UA-cam about "the last cycling postman". I think that might be in Cornwall or possibly Devon. I think i might have a squizz at that after reading your comment. I wouldn't have thought villages so very far apart in the UK, partly because i am in Australia and so the land mass appears compact by contrast, but it's one of those things where living after the Industrial Revolution in a far more highly populated society could put the blinders on about certain realities.
@@mothratemporalradio517 I totally agree. For men the bicycle was (and is) an enormous labour saving device that was affordable in very poor places. But for women it was liberating in any situation - offering autonomous freedom of movement and a level of liberation from life in the home. And the threat that represented meant that it was a major act of rebellion.
Today it's less gendered. But among wealthier people transport without using fossil fuels and using an affordable device represents a different kind of rebellion against capitalist consumerism and the logic of car-centric cities - even if people just start because they want to get some exercise while getting around.
@@thecaveofthedead And bicycling makes riders stronger, more flexible and coordinated, and shapelier.
The only great grandmother I ever knew, was born in Czechoslovakia.
My best guess for her birth year, is 1892. I knew she came to America on a ship, all by herself at the age of fourteen, so that's about 1906. She settled in Chicago, worked very hard and saved her money to bring every member of her immediate family that desired to come, to the US.
She lived the rest of her entire life in a small ethnic suburb of Chicago during the height of the gangster era, when they were gunning each other down in the streets.
She worked very hard at physical labor all her life, had five daughters, lost one of them to appendicitis at the age of ten, and was left a single mother of five when she lost her husband under very suspicious circumstances when he was crushed under a truck, after only ten years of marriage. (Although my suspicions are that he was murdered by political opponent, since at the time, he was running for, and a very popular choice for local office.)
She never learned to speak a word of English, yet taught me a great deal about gardening and herbal remedies, by showing me the way as a small child.
I never got to ask her questions like this, but from experience inquiring of my grandmother (her eldest daught) about her mother's life experiences, I doubt my grandmother would've told me very much. She was a very private person, never spoke of the "Old country," we think she changed her name and age, and forbid any talk of religion in her house. We suspect that her family experienced pogroms in their Czech village, and many like her fled into lives of anonymity, out of fear.
We were aware that as a child, she had been kidnapped by gypsies, but were never told any details. That had to have had a huge, and frightful impact on her life.
She died of a stroke in the sixties, when I was thirteen, and I think of her all the time. I turned out to be the only one in my family who took an interest, and grew up to be a practicing herbalist. I will always be grateful to her for taking the time to pass on her knowledge to me, and I'll never forget the aroma of herbs drying in her pantry.
Had we been able to communicate verbally, I'm certain there was much, much more she could've taught me. The most important thing she did manage to communicate to me, was her unconditional love.
But oh, the stories she could've told.
She was born in Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Czechoslovakia existed since 1918.
Her background would have probably differed a lot depending on whether she was Czech or Slovak, too. Czechia at the time was probably the most industrialised, modern part of Austria-Hungary, while Slovakia, in part because it's much more mountainous, would have been a lot more rural.
That' a lovely story, thanks for sharing!
@@Shanti_devi19 whats so lovely about a economic migrant just moving in to Profit for herself and her own blood and not even bothering to learn the language of the country that let her move there? I find this story ridicilous and just another example of Human Crickets flying everywhere where the gras is green, then eat it all up and fly to the next green pastures
First of all there was no czechoslovakia until 1918
Second there were no pogroms. Those were in ukraine region.
Berta Ruck wasn't just any Victorian lady, she was a somebody who wrote 90 romance novels, 5 non-fiction books, and several short stories. She was married for 52 years to the writer George Oliver Onions who published under the name "Oliver Onions". He wrote 30 novels and is best remembered for his ghost stories. I'm sure some of you probably don't give a Ruck, but I find her life and works very interesting.
Wonderful. No one can teach you history like those who have lived it.
It's so humanising to here their stories, to not just see them as some monolothic ancient blob of a people
TODAY is the monolithic blob of people. Just visit a music 'festival'
@@RideAcrossTheRiver No group of people is a monolithic blob. That's the importance of empathy, recognising the humanity and complexity and nuance of all people and all groups in all ages
@@franticranter Nope. The 'smart' phone and social media have done nothing but to enable homogenized, conformist uniformity. Everyone stares at phones all day long now.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Not everyone stares at the phone all day, and nor is the phone homogenising it. There continue to be significant differences between people - what sort of things they like, what their jobs are, how they relate to their friends and families, their religious beliefs etc. Nothing can ever homogenise any group, people will always be different and varied. One could even argue that in some ways, it has led to some fragmentation in people's experiences. In the past, you could ask your colleague at work "did you see the new episode of that new show last night?" and they would say yeah, and then you could talk about it. These days, any given show or video or anything I have watched online is much less likely to have also been watched by my colleagues at work, and I have more choice to fit that to my niche personal interests
@@RideAcrossTheRiverEh, I still know many people who do not use phones that often. Then again, the area I live in is still quite rural.
Is it just me, or does it seem like people these days have largely lost storytelling skills? It seems like when I see these old videos of people long in the tooth, no matter in what language or nation, they are excellent storytellers. My English grandmother tells her stories of the war like this too. I think perhaps people have lost the gift of storytelling. I absolutely adore these old videos and audio.
I think it's how we relay memories nowadays that have led to that loss. Back in those old days, photos were a rarity and the main way people remembered was through their own mental images. Now, we have pictures, videos, recordings and all that. Which makes the need to remember things with great detail more obsolete. Which is a shame if you ask me. Without those recorded stills, you'd be a lot more free to remember things your own way. Which I feel makes the older generations better storytellers.
Lady singing drunken cockney song is adorable 🥰 😁
My lovely Nan was a tweenie maid at that time. Never enough to eat, up at dawn, falling into bed, exhausted, just a few hours sleep. This was not how she told it, though, there was no moaning or recriminations from her. It was her life when young, and she remembered it fondly when telling stories of that time in service. She was such a hard worker, and so gentle.♥️
By now even WW2 generation is almost wiped out. Glad my grandma kept me for hours telling me stories from her childhood. She was 11 when the war hit Poland
The shift in lifestyle and times during these ladies lifespan would’ve been incredible. They witnessed so many changes. From 1800’s slums to cars, televisions, skimpy fashions, airplanes, it’s just mind blowing
Being born in 1955 I can remember many men and women that were born in the reign of Queen Victoria, some of them were still working!
I have a co-worker who was born in 1960 and he told me he remembers when every home had an outhouse and you would bathe in a tin bath but most people used the bath room in the local swimming centre to bathe themselves.
@@tdoran616 I was born in the 1980s and my house in rural Poland didn't even have indoor plumbing LOL we used chamber pots at night and washed with boiled well water
Fantastic generation. The old lady who brought me up in my earliest years would have been about ten years younger than these ladies. She was born in 1890 and died in 1990 and was already 72 when I was born and was very like those women in character.
These women remind me of my great grandmother who died when I was about 5 or 6 years old (35 years ago now!) Talk to more old people!
@@syrus3k The prewar generation are either gone or very old. People born since are increasingly homogeneous. Even people n there are very much media constructs whose experiences in the years of peace and plenty are increasingly the same.
Fascinating. My grandma was born in 1904, so later than these ladies, but i loved her stories. She died aged 102.
2006!
My great grandmother was born in 1903- Married in 1920. She passed in 1973. I as almost 13. Her stories were amazing.
Mine was born in mid 1930s, so yes very later than these ladies, but I remember how in our small town back then (I still live here) she would say she'd see the British soldiers go by the streets. She's also the lady who probably saw the 50s-70s Bombay back then, a very popular sight you'd see in old Bollywood. My grandparents also travelled to Calcutta (Kolkata now) of that time although my granny would specifically mention of her seeing British soldiers here in our small town (now a large city in it's early stages) maybe because she was mere 14-15 in 1947 when we gained independence
Gosh this is spooky! Mine was born 1904 died 2006 😳
My great grandma would've been 101 this year, but the pandemic sorta ruined that
@@L0rdOfThePies 😢
My husband’s grandmother was born on 11/11/11. She lived through it all but never worked outside the house and never drove. She had 3 children and did all her womanly duties within the home. She died at 104 years old in 2015 now she is with her beloved husband and oldest daughter
The last subject of Queen Victoria died in 2017. Her name was Violet Brown, and she was born 10 March 1900 and died 15 September 2017. My daughter just turned 9, and it blew her mind to find out that when she was born there was still a Victorian lady alive... I mean, technically, guess. I'm sure she didn't really remember anything as she was a baby! But there were people born in 1890 alive until as recently as 2006. The Victorian era seems an awfully long time ago, but it's really just about on the edge of living memory (or at least its twilight years).
The timespan between the Victorian era and the recording of these interviews (1970) isn't all that far away from the timespan between 1970 and today
Scary to think isnt it
Thanks for that reminded
80 years vs 50 years? I'd say there's quite the difference. It'll be the same in about 30 years.
Well my dad was born in 1970 and he's only 51 going on 52.
@@SummerRocks50 The Victorian period ended in 1901, so it's more like 69 years vs 52 years. Thats not a huge difference in terms of cultural and linguistic evolution
Do you think I might dare to sing one of them now?
She's amazing, wish I had grown up around the older generations like her.
Interview the older people you ARE around. They have just as many stories to tell.
Being born in 1995 I feel extremely lucky that I had the chance as a child to hear my great grandmother's stories. She was born in 1905 in Yorkshire, and had vivid memories of German zeppelins flying over Barnsley on their way to bomb Sheffield. It's incredible to me now, many years after she passed, that I heard first hand stories of something that happened over a hundred years ago. I just wish I'd been old enough to appreciate it at the time.
Same. I was born in 95 and my great gran 1905.
My grandfather turned 21 while on the way to war. Conscript pulled out of art school. Seen a plane shot down above him at night, had a coconut crab come in his tent to grab his helmet, saw bodies rolling off cliffs, big pythons falling out of trees, had proper PTSD until he died age 94.
Crazy how this generation lived through the transition of the industrial revolution, right into modernity. It's like they lived through two completely different worlds!
Fascinating
Imagine that! Growing up with gas lighting and horse and buggy only to live to see man walk on the moon.
@@qwertasdcfghjklmo24z I had a great great aunt on my father's side who was born in 1876 and died in 1966 when I was 8. I don't remember a lot about her but when I think about it now I can't imagine the enormity of change she went through in her lifetime.
Electricity, phones, lighting, cars, household appliances, television later on in life...
Her house was very Victorian-like in decor. I remember this little prism lamp (mantel lusters) she had in the living room close to an old working fireplace. It fascinated me to no end. And she kept a box of rags for me to play with. I loved it! I was endlessly entertained by her box of rags.
Oh - and a wind up gramophone. The singing voices sounded so hilarious when the player started to unwind. She used to play a song with the lyrics, "Mickey, pretty Mickey".
It's as mad as growing up without the Internet and mobile phones and then living through the eras of change when they came to be. It weirds me out to think some people have only ever known a world with this tech.
I remember listening to my grandmother. She came to London down from Scotland at the age of six, with her parents. This was before there was automobiles. There were only horses for transport. The roads were covered in straw. A while later as a young woman she worked in the war factories as a munitions girl.
I LOVE busty Scottish women!
At this time that there was a British nationalist feeling or did she die considering herself Scottish?
@@nathan_408 I think if given a democratic choice, most people would stay British.
My maternal Grandmother was born in 1897. My mom is 90. I hear stories of the old days.
I think every generation should be taped and filmed talking about their youth and what it was like! I love the fact that we could hear firsthand what life was like for these young people back in Victorian England.
My grandmother was born in 1888. As a well brought up girl she knew nothing about the facts of life. Her wedding night was a terrible shock, and when her first baby was due she knew nothing, and thought she would be cut open. Appalling to think of nowadays.
True .
My Grandmother didn't know either...
Should have, she grew up on a farm .
That’s so disturbing, can’t imagine the trauma
To have a memory of this time. Remembering what things looked like, how people behaved and how they spoke... It's something we can only imagine.
But how lucky we are to be able to imagine it by listening to those who really lived it
My grandmother died at 102 in 2012. She was a cockney born in Poplar. She had a fabulous memory right until the end and used to tell stories of her childhood. Growing up in the East End back then. Hard times. They moved around alot coz they never could pay their rent !! but she said they were happy. Life is what you make it.
RIP These old ladies ..From a better era
When I was about 5 we used to live next door to an amazing woman in her late 80's. She used to live in London and remembered seeing Queen Victoria as a young girl.
I love how regardless of era, teenagers are teenagers. They work, they play, they live in the moment and we all (well, most of us) look back fondly on it.
It's also amazing how much all of our best stories we tell over and over until our 80's all come from that short span of years.
I could listen to these ladies reminisce all day. I regret not asking my gran about her younger life. She was born in 1904, although she said it was 1914. We were all shocked to find her true age when she died. 🙂 I still miss her, 26 years later. She was an integral part of our family life, living with us frequently throughout my life at home. My Mum had had to leave school after her A levels even though she was intelligent, simply because she'd overheard her parents talking one night when she'd gone to bed. My gran was saying it was a shame they couldn't afford her to go to university. My granddad, who died in 1962, before I was born, said "Look, we agreed. I wanted her to her a job at 16, you pushed for her to study until 18. I let that go. We simply can't afford it."
My Mum had wanted to be a teacher, but the next morning she volunteered to find a job & started her career in a bank. In her 30s, she finally went to uni, thanks to my Dad having worked 2 jobs for about a decade & my Mum working part-time as well as having 3 children, including one was always ill (my parents were told he wouldn't reach 1 month as he was premature & sickly, then he wouldn't reach 1 year, then 2, then he'd never start school, etc, until he ended up a strapping 6'6" & played rugby league professionally!). So in her 30s, my Mum finally realised her dreams & studied before becoming a teacher. My gran had already lived with us before for 6 months, when she'd had knee replacement surgery (I remember her that Xmas, on the floor, racing to push a peanut with her nose with her leg in a plaster cast sticking in the air!) & She had no qualms about moving back in to look after us, but mainly my sick brother, so Mum could study.
She moved in with us again just after she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's & stayed for years until she insisted on moving into her own place. Her social worker supported it, although we fought because she wasn't able to look after herself. But the social worker insisted, but at least we got the compromise of sheltered accommodation. That led to 3 years of sheer hell, with us visiting every day to take her food & bathe her, with Care workers going into for breakfast & lunchtime. Unfortunately she wandered at night so every night, one of us had to either sleep on her sofa or we ended up walking the streets looking for her. We drew up a rota for who would be responsible for her at any one time. In the end the warden of the sheltered accommodation joined us fighting the social worker, putting in an official.complaint that the social worker was playing king-maker to the detriment of my gran. She was a danger to herself;
even though the energy company had put in a special stopcock to turn off the gas supply & you had to use a special key to turn it on (she'd already switched on the gas & not lit it, resulting in the entire complex being evacuated, which is when we asked for the gas board to come in), the stupid social worker said it was unfair that gran couldn't use the cooker, so she gave her the rotten gas key. Gran didn't need to cook: the care workers gave her breakfast & lunch, we took a cooked meal down every night. The result was a fire. We put in an official complaint about the social worker &, with the help of the warden, social services finally agreed gran had to move. We wanted her to move back in with us, but she didn't want to. She said that little men hid in the wardrobe & attacked her at night when everyone had gone to bed. (She'd had this recurring nightmare since she'd been robbed, when a man broke into her home & hit her to get her money. He did it again the following month so the police had told us to move her. We knew who it was, the police knew because he'd done it before & my Gran had identified him, but there was no proof & the police advised us not to push it as his lawyer would crucify gran & really play up her dementia at the trail. This accelerated the Alzheimer's & led to a previous period of living with us.) We found her a home in the street she'd moved to when she first married & she loved it there. She knew the other residents, 1 was even the lady who'd babysat Mum as a teenager during the war, when my Gran worked in a factory. She had 5 happy years In the home, with us visiting every day (again we drew up a rota so she never had a day without visitors). She eve had a boyfriend in the home. She'd had offers of marriage after my granddad died but never accepted any. There was a guy in the home called the same name as my granddad & I suspect she got confused & thought it was him, because she called him by the pet name she'd use for her husband & reminisced with him about their earlier life together. He was a lovely man, who didn't have any firm of dementia & said he didn't mind, he enjoyed her company. The home let them use a separate room for meals so my gran could lay the table, prepare the cups of tea & butter some bread, looking after "her Tommy". It gave her dignity & self-worth which I am grateful for.
thnkyou for taking the time and sharing your gran with us.
Thank you for taking the time writing this ❤
When I was a boy I knew a man in his 90's (he was born in 1880) and he remembered so many things - the first aeroplane he ever saw (in 1910), the first moving pictures, and organising a trade union in his factory when he was only 15. He started smoking when he was about 11, but gave it up at 93 because he thought it wasn't doing him any good. Sadly, he didn't quite see the clock round and died at 98.
The dangers of smoking are obvious
This programme was recorded in the 1970s of women who were teenagers during Victoria’s reign. Why can I understand them more easily than people on TV today?
This is just wonderful. Listening to an actual Victorian era person talk about watching the telly is a bit mind boggling!
The bicycle story had me in stitches, especially how she has remembered his disapproval - “Oooooo” - after all those years.
This type of programming is fascinating and should take precedence over anything that is remotely in the same vein as ‘Love Island’.
We may have some future for the UK if we do!
I love their slang words and figures of speech! It makes them so human to me, instead of those stuffy portrayals in history books.
I loved this. The way that woman went from her normal accent to singing in Cockney was just fantastic. And the stories. The school one could have been in an Angela Brazil book.
From horse and buggy to landing on the moon.. There may never be another generation that experienced the change that these ladies had.
My step nan was in service, when she retired she used to meet a friend she met while they were both working in Crystal Palace.... I was amazed they always addressed each other my " hello Mrs..... Nice to see you Mrs...." never called each other by their first name. Nan only stopped working when a route master bus she was alighting moved away too fast and she slipped... she was in her late 80's then. Such a wonderful woman! She told me I would never see the things she had in her life. Queen Victoria, two world Wars, radio, men on the moon etc. She also would never buy new furniture... she said she had been bombed out twice and wasn't taking a chance! RiP Eva.... I still miss you after all these years!
It blows my mind, that before Berta passed away at 100, she may have had a chance to see Star Wars. From horse & buggy to airplanes, and dreams of space travel.
My dear grandmother, *Nanny Marks* with whom I had lived for a number of years, (it’s on my IMDB) well, she was born in 1896.
I wish I had talked more to her about her young years, about how everyday life was, about her lost love, her jobs, life in the east end of London,… but my granddaughter who is 17 thinks I’m far too stupid to know anything.
I adore the second lady who sang her song. Much love to her.
Such a beautiful glimpse into the past. I've always thought stories told by old folk are so sweet and romantic. Even the war stories are told with such tenderness of friendship and resilience.
I've read several of Berta Ruck's books and they're charming. Many women writers from her era are today sadly overlooked and even forgotten altogether, while Regency and early-to-mid Victorian writers are still read. I also recommend Mrs George de Horne Vaizey, Esmè Stuart (Amélie Claire Leroy) and Elinor Glyn for people interested in early 20th century women's fiction.
I love listening to these wise old ladies. I wish we still lived in a decent, hardworking, honest world like they did. Ppl still had respect for others, but most importantly, for themselves, back then. 😢❤
Marvellous. Looks like lady 2 hadn't changed her hairstyle since the 1920s. Good zoom background avant la lettre.
I have photos of my great grandma in the 60s still with that hairdo too.
She looked like Arthur Askey in drag😄
Living in 2022, listening to these lovely ladies (May they Rest In Peace) about their lives, is absolutely fascinating and it’s quite interesting to learn the vast differences
My paternal grandmother never talked about her childhood and teenage years. I would have been interested to hear about it, but the trauma of losing her parents when young, especially the suicide of her mother, probably damaged her for life.
Seeing and hearing these marvellous women recollect their younger days makes such a time seem so much closer.
I can't believe these two lovely women were in their 90's here, they look so young and lively; had to be an amazing time to live in to meet and talk with people form the Victorian era.
I could listen to those lady’s all day long
My grandmothers and my parents aunts and uncles were all Victorian….i remember them well with love and respect
Berta - indolent and feckless, what a girl 😂❤
I could stay talking to these ladies for the rest of my life.
They both were very sharp considering that they were in their 90s and could still speak so eloquently!
"And in between there was us enjoying ourselves." She has such a lovely and poetic way of talking.
What a treasure! Woman no.2 has such a similar voice to my great grandmother (b.1902). Heartwarming to hear this long gone voice again.
This put a smile on my face and brought a tear to my eyes simultaneously. Our bodies are extremely fragile to time and we can only preserve moments like these in the memory bubbles stored our minds for as long as our ageing/deteriorating brains allow us to carry. It’s so incredible beautiful that these 2 woman are giving us a peek of their lives in a time so ancient to many of us and so incredibly sad that we are all in the same life journey as them and those of us lucky enough to make it to that age with our memories intact would be shocking many young minds of the future with our youth stories of what would be from their point of view, memories of an ancient time. It’s profound.
That’s a beautiful observation
Thank you for your perceptive and sensitive thoughts!
The human body is just a badly designed trainwreck. God gave us no protection to cold or heat, god gave us brittle small bones and weak muscles, god gave us tiny useless sensitive teeth, gave made us very different visually and genetically so we kill each other aswell. Just a giant bad design. The only Goos thing about human body is Soeak, Brain and Hands. But even racoons have hands. If it wasnt for the hands and brain, I would prefer to be a crocodile or big cat