Jeremy Paxman Visits The Slums Of Glasgow | Who Do You Think You Are

well it's one of these ones here second floor one room and it stinks around here too i mean there must be an open sewer or something one room on the second floor and she'd given birth by this stage to 11 children uh and there are what seven or eight of them at home and presumably it was someone in this block who snitched on her when she had the illegitimate baby dora which caused her benefit to be cut my grandmother was going out to work to support the new baby dora i don't know what she'd have felt about that i hope she i hope she'd have felt generous about it just don't know we're born doing [Music] at the turn of the century glasgow was the second most crowded city in britain over a hundred thousand people were packed into old style one-room apartments known as single ends where one in every five babies died [Music] these were dark unhealthy homes often with no running water lighting heating or privacy [Music] the national trust for scotland has preserved one blimey is tiny it is really small i simply have no idea how you would get seven or eight or nine or however many children it is i don't know how you get them all even to sleep on the floor you could pace out i mean what is it one two three four five what's that about five no it's less than that i don't know how long my paces are but i mean you can paste it out and you can you can see exactly how little room any any any child would have but that the notion that there were up to 10 human beings a mother and seven or eight or nine children all in this confined space and he's always raining in glasgow too so they must have spent an awful lot of time actually inside and you know her children fight i mean it must be that's what she chose she chose to stay with her children it's an admirable decision mary's life had changed utterly since marrying john mackay in 1876 whatever became of her after 1901 it seems she didn't die young there's another photo of her years later well i guess um i guess she's about 50 in this picture so she obviously did live on but i would also say that the years have not been very kind to her because in that earlier picture she looked sort of quite tall and slender but i guess if you have 11 children and live in extreme poverty it takes its toll she looks strong though don't you strong i wouldn't cross her i certainly wouldn't no she's um strong is um yeah that's that's a definitely a word you could use frightening might be another this bible was obviously given by mary mackay the wit the widow here to my grandmother mabel a present from her mother to mabel a makai 21st of december 1904 and then there's an inscription written in by someone called lizzie gibb in the salvation army training school or home in 1905 the secret of the lord is with them that fear him he will show them his covenant mabel do right and fear not you

Channel: Who Do You Think You Are?

Views: 26,488

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Keywords: who do you think you are, wdytya, who do you think you are uk, who do you think you are BBC

Id: oTlYdHwi82U

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021