Mudlarking on the River Thames London - Hitler Youth Belt Buckle

hi everyone i'd like to say a huge thank you for all my birthday greetings after my last video i had an absolutely great day and i just can't believe how fast the time flies so here's to a super year ahead for absolutely all of us this video is made up of some of my mudlarking finds from various different outings including a very unexpected find so thank you for accompanying me and i hope you enjoy it thank you [Music] see a pipe bowl here which has been um exposed let's see let's see if it's got much of a stem on it my initial feeling is probably not a great deal but you never know i have been wrong before oh oh i am wrong look i think that's pretty good um yeah it's pretty much of a plain early 18th century pipe look what i can see here can you spot it it looks like a little someone let's have a closer look here look it's somebody kneeling down with a gun and unfortunately as is often the case he's lost his head see if we shouldn't see him a little better i don't want to um do too much because he's quite delicate he looks like he might have a kilt on i've just seen something down there on low tide mark which looks worth further investigation by that rock i haven't looked at it yet it looks like it could be perhaps i don't know the top of the lid of a box perhaps i don't know maybe a buckle looks like it's got a design on it there it's quite crusty it's quite crusted up i'll have to um give it a careful wash i think at home i don't want to damage it it's definitely got a round design on there ah there's a spoon or something here a spoon or a fork let's see what it is place your bets now everyone i think it's going to be a fork look pretty firmly wedged in there oh yeah it's a it's a fork it's a bent fork sometimes you can see if they belong to some kind of company or something you want to see that later i've just dug up a great big jar which is intact and i thought it was playing at first but it's not so what did it have in it let's have a look it's uh virolax oh my i wonder if it's like um california big syrup virolax a massive great jar of it too it's just gonna be fun looking up big jar of my relax oh that's quite funny can you see what i'm looking at there interesting oh it's got legs it's got legs it's got lovely knees as well that's hilarious let's go and wash it oh that's funny it looks like a character from bino or something look at those knees can you see what i can see just down there next to that rock just here it's just the tantalizing rim of a clay pipe let's see if there's um anything on the end of it or if it's just a bowl let's have a look let's get this stone out of the way oh i don't know i'm not sure yet away from it probably not a very long stair i don't think there we are it's quite a small bowl actually it's a tiddly little bowl oh it's all right it's got a little spur like a bit of rinsing it's very black at the moment where it's been in the mud but it will fade very quickly back to some ivory creamy color we've got a friendly crow here let's see if he wants a little bit of bread just some bread there you are have a nice breakfast peel it off and put it out [Music] so [Music] here's a pipe bowl just down here wedged in the mud pull it out and see see what it looks like yeah it's another plane one sort of 18th century plane pipe oh look what i've just spotted here it's a pipe bowl with a rose on the side of it and if i'm right i bet there's a thistle on the other side oh look it's really delicate it's pretty much broken already but let's just take it out anyway i can stick it together i'm going to take that fragment um and stick it together and i didn't break it by the way for anybody who thinks i did there's the rose and probably that would be a thistle but we can't see it i'll see if the rest of the bowl is in the mud well i'm home now and i'm going to do a little round up of the items that um have been featured in this video so i'm going to start with this jar here a jar of virolax now the clue is in the name obviously and virolax is or was a nutrient laxative apparently which makes me chuckle because last time in my last video i had the california fig syrup which is also a laxative so i can only assume that there's a lot of constipation going on in the 19th and early 20th century and the funny thing is it's not just california fig syrup that have a very aggressive marketing strategy because when i looked up viral acts which was um made by both real in the very early 1900s and they also employ an extremely pushy advertising um strategy again aimed at mothers um advising moms to get their children via relax and viral which was something else which they made or else so that your child can grow up to be healthy and happy forever because they've had some viral acts so it is a little bit broken unfortunately but it's a huge great jar isn't it so there we are we have a jar of virolax i quite like the writing on the jar actually made by bovril and probably dating to about 1922 or so something like that [Music] this is my bent fork just an average run-of-the-mill fork maybe someone got a little frustrated with it perhaps they were using it to eat their viral axe who knows and what else do we have we've got a few pipe bowls of varying designs this one here which has got a nice fluted design and this one which has got the these leaves going up the front here often used to hide the the molding where it was cast any kind of imperfections could be hidden by that design and that probably dates from mid 18th century i think but by the way i came across this little um part of a pipe stem the other day and discovered that on it there is a little crouching animal unfortunately his head is missing but you can see his little back legs there and his front leg and probably a tail missing as well oh no there is i think that's the tail a little leg another little arm so it's probably a little dog and then that's where the bowl would have been just just here so another very imaginative clay pipe design i do i do love those who next well we have this little um lead soldier here i think he's wearing a kilt so maybe a scottish soldier and no head unfortunately probably dates let's say early 1900s i expect or late 1800s and then jumping forward a century also to 2000 we have here wilfred from the bash street kids from the bino um so yes this would have been given away with mcdonald's in 2000 so he's a little bit vintage himself and his head turns around there we go he's got a nice knobbly knees he's got an arm missing and a little button there that you would have been able to press to make his head swivel around apparently wilfred is the quietest of the best street kids and suffers from social anxiety so two toys from completely different eras the lead soldier oops and wilfred i've got my little compass here which i picked up probably isn't that old i shouldn't think but maybe maybe from the mid 1900s here is this pipe bowl which i found which was broken actually which was um cracked a little bit um so on that side there it's got the rose and then i stuck back in the little piece which um had snapped off and it is indeed a thistle on the other side there so the rose and the thistle and almost certainly commemorating the act of union between england and scotland and lastly but definitely not leastly is this buckle which during the course of my research took me somewhere completely unexpected as usual so i did go off piste a little and so we're going to go back to the thames for sure and explore the history the surprising history behind this buckle as well as the button there's another type of clothes fastening object that i find a lot of on the thames for sure like many other mud locks and that is the humble buckle and i've brought a few of them along with me here today and put them out for you to see and although i love buckles i've never really thought that they were that scintillating until a recent find which turned out to be a buckle and it made me realize that yep just like the button a buckle can tell a big story too even if it's a sinister one now this is the belt buckle that is featured on today's video that i found recently and when i cleaned it off i mean it was covered in a lot of crud and blackness the first thing that i found that i saw was the swastika and it gave me a bit of a shock i thought gosh it's a german soldier belt buckle but after a bit of research and some help identifying it by some friends we found out that it's actually a hitler youth belt buckle as you can imagine i was very surprised to find this belt buckle and of course i'm wondering how on earth it came to be in london i looked up the hitler youth and they did in fact visit london some of the hitler youth before the war but i think it's probably more likely that this arrived perhaps as a war trophy um brought along by a soldier that fought in world war ii that's my thinking anyway but we can tell it's a hitler youth buckle by the motto around the edge which is probably not saying that right blood and honor the hitler youth was the youth organization of the nazi party so by 1936 all children in germany over the age of six were required to join a nazi youth group the aim being to ensure loyalty to hitler through political indoctrination so that they would accept nazi ideals without question and they all wore a uniform so this would have been part of the uniform on the belt and it is 1925 autobiography mein kampf meaning my struggle adolf hitler said whoever has the youth has the future so this was part of his carefully thought out strategy and by 1939 there were seven million children in the hitler youth [Music] [Music] being part of the hitler youth involved physical training to ensure that young men were prepared to be soldiers and for the girls who were part of the league of german maidens classes prepared them to be mothers and wives and they were not encouraged to have any further ambitions other than to be a good homemaker the propaganda for the hitler youth was carefully pitched to appeal to children and teenagers giving them an opportunity to have more freedom from the authority of their parents and instead to become loyal to nazi values with slogans such as youth must be led by youth when i was reading some accounts of former hitler youth members i found myself sidetracked when i discovered the story of hans and sophie scholl who at one time had been staunch and enthusiastic members of the hitler youth their sister inga scholl explained the allure of the hitler youth in her book the white rose which she wrote after the war but there was something else that drew us with mysterious power and swept us along the closed ranks of marching youth with banners waving eyes fixed straight ahead keeping time to drumbeat and song was not this sense of fellowship overpowering it is not surprising that all of us han sophie and the others joined the hitler youth we entered into it with body and soul and we could not understand why our father did not approve why he was not happy and proud on the contrary he was quite displeased with us when the hitler youth tried to suppress hanshol's creativity and individuality he gradually questioned his allegiance to the nazi regime and in 1942 hans scholl his sister sophie and some other friends founded the white rose resistance movement publishing leaflets condemning nazism the white rose was intended to represent purity and innocence in the face of evil in february 1943 they were arrested by the gestapo they were tried found guilty of treason and executed only a couple of days later sophie was just 21 but the positive thing about all this is that their message was heard and their anti-nazi leaflets were widely distributed sophie's last words before her execution were how can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause such a fine sunny day and i have to go but what does my death matter if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action i realized that i digressed somewhat from the hitler youth belt buckle itself but that's what i like about finding objects in the thames you just never know where they will lead and in this case i'm very very happy that it led to the brave and inspiring story of hans and sophie scholl and the white rose movement and that some hope and and bravery really this act of courage really shines through in the face of of something that was a pretty awful time in history which this belt buckle of course does symbolize so thank you very very much for watching as usual i appreciate all your comments and feedback and have a great week and see you again soon i've been walking on the same shore ever since the time i left you on the dark side with a promise and a rhyme and everybody else around are beating down on me to leave the only good thing a disaster meant to be [Music] [Music] and if i was to be on trial for every run i did a courthouse would be filled with people waiting to get rid of the one that ripped their lives apart and shattered all their dreams [Music] hoping to get my freedom back before the world has turned on everything i know come you lovers i'm head my way always looking for a new day i will fight for my right to be right here

Channel: nicola white mudlark - Tideline Art

Views: 245,192

Rating: 4.8974972 out of 5

Keywords: mudlarking, ukmudlark, uk mudlark, london mudlark, london mudlarking, mudlarking london, mudlark, river thames, thames mudlark, mudlark the thames, mudlarking finds, nicola white, tidelineart, nicola

Id: d1-sYVu92bk

Length: 25min 56sec (1556 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/apple_kicks]

if anyone looking to do this for a hobby you need a permit and I think some groups still meet up at the mudlark pub. know the tides pretty much too

https://www.pla.co.uk/Environment/Thames-foreshore-access-including-metal-detecting-searching-and-digging