What Were Normal Victorian People Really Like? | Britain In Color | Absolute History

this channel is part of the history hits Network it is Britain in the 1890s when a thrilling new invention the motion picture camera first captures a nation on film we're seeing in this era more or less as the people who lived in it saw it people were absolutely riveted by moving pictures now the Victorian Empire is transformed for the first time into glorious color and it just reminds you the Victorian world wasn't black and white it wasn't that white this world was vibrant will come alive in color because you can see the color of their skin these pictures show Britain at the height of Empire as its people were transforming the world they're looking for opportunity trying to escape the class-based nature of British Society they capture the triumphs [Music] Dyers this at the time would have been incredibly sensual and Incredibly erotic these films reveal people filled with hopes and aspirations as well as the enduring wealth divide with others trapped in a Land of homelessness and hunger there are lots of economic ups and downs in Victoria and Britain so one minute a trade can be booming the next it can be in trouble and they record the much-loved entertainers whose talents brought Light Relief into the lives of millions it is incredible with this footage has lasted and that we can look in a world that has all but disappension this is Victorian Britain on film thank you [Music] it's the 22nd of June 1897 and people from all over Britain are gathered in central London for the greatest celebration of the century for the first time filmmakers could capture moving images of a revered but reclusive Sovereign as she marked her 60 years on the throne [Music] Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 was the great event of the end of the century there might have been about 40 cameramen at work during the procession hanging off railings stationed in every corner people said be sure that you see it future Generations will be able to witness this thanks to moving pictures amid a crowd of around 3 million people the filmmakers hand cranked cameras captured the queen in her gilded State Carriage escorted by her cavalry you can see the crowds bustling against the soldiers wanting to get a sight of her by 1897 the country is at its height of power and Victoria as the figurehead as the head of state really represents this power of the nation during her Reign Britain's Empire became the biggest the world had ever known its control over a fifth of the Earth's surface meant that Victoria ruled over a quarter of the world's population she's not just the queen of the United Kingdom she is Empress of the Great British Empire it's so symbolic of the influence that Britain wielded at this time and indeed the Legacy that he left behind politically legally culturally linguistically around the world that we've seen soldiers of the Empire from Bengal and other places in what was British India these spectacles are kind of sanitized representation of what imperialism meant the empire was built on the blood of soldiers and of the labor of enslaved people but ordinary people could buy into this and when they went out to fight and die they could believe that what they were fighting for was all of this this is a huge spectacle a massive massive pageant runs for I think six miles perhaps it's from Buckingham Palace to Saint Paul's Cathedral so that's Victoria she's wearing black obviously which is standard Victoria I mean she's worn black for 40 years by this point she was in mourning for her husband for a couple of her children some of her grandchildren she'd lived to a ripe old age and so she had buried a lot of people she's been transformed into this figure we now think of as relatively humorless tough and quite elderly she had arthritis she was probably in pain as she jolted along in her carriage in her diary on this day Queen Victoria wrote that no one had ever been given such a rapturous Ovation as she was given history hit is like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you whether you're looking to dive into life and crime in Victorian London or the Forgotten history that deserves to be heard history hit has a documentary for you just a click away we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you can't find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and absolute history fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code absolute history at checkout [Music] almost a year to the day after Queen Victoria's Jubilee huge crowds gathered again in London to toast another grand display of Britain's Imperial Prestige and Power filmmaker EP prestwich joined 30 000 spectators at blackwall on the banks of the Thames to watch the launch of a new giant of the Seas the 13 000 ton Battleship HMS Albion the crowd was excited and expectant but that mood was about to change so full of Sound and Motion it's amazing you can see the ship just slicing through the waterbed and the flag's fluttering this would have marked the epitome of British Naval prowess the Royal Navy was the fundamental institution that maintained the Empire a British Empire immense in size and very difficult to maintain a way to do that was with control of the Seas you lose sea power you lose the Empire as a state-of-the-art steam-powered battleship the Albion was a source of great pride for the Royal Navy and the shipbuilders who made her launch days were moments of excitement and anxiety for everyone involved but a dramatic times launching a ship because they don't put the engines and everything into later on when they're fitting out but um it's always useful to see when they launched that they will in fact float and that you've done the right calculations another camera recording events that day belonged to 28 year old Robert Paul a man who'd become one of Britain's most talented and prolific filmmakers he'd hired a motorboat to get closer to the action we have this film in this form because Paul may have been one of the only early cinematographers to actually have an electric camera all seems well as the Albion slides down the slipway but soon a miscalculation does reveal itself one with deadly consequences the people launching it have not really quite taken account of the wave that's going to be created and the scaffolding which supported huge crowd of onlookers was Swept Away Into the Water by great tidal wave Robert Paul's camera captures the unfolding Havoc as the albion's Wake crashes into the viewing platform and plunges 200 Spectators into the Thames when the disaster unfolded and the reason we have footage of people shouting gesticulating is because apparently the camera was just left running the guy shooing away the filmmaker there as if the camera shouldn't be watching this and we shouldn't be watching this he's filming the aftermath is not actually filming the launch and that caused controversy because it was seen as distasteful in the middle there do you see that there's a man who's wearing a bowler hat who seems to be blowing bubble gum which is quite surprising but it also has a really lovely image of Victorian stoicism that he's helping clear up after a tragedy in their ears blowing bubbles and these men who aren't looking flustered or too emotional but they're getting on with trying to help with this tragedy that's happened it is the first Disaster Movie in a way it's it's actually shot in the teeth of disaster right on the spot simply because the camera happened to be there the Navy's celebration for this great addition to all powerful Fleet turned instead to horror as 34 men women and children drowned that day the Albion disaster remains one of the worst ever tragedies on the Thames despite the dangers afflicting the shipbuilding industry the victorians built vessels that gave Britain pride and joy their cameras captured Britain's boarding luxury liners and observed hijinks on the high seas it's clear there's no women taking part I don't think anybody with a big dress would have fitted through these but they're on the sidelines cheering them on [Music] the motion picture cameras the Victorian sought to capture life in the greatest cities of the age blackburn-based film producers Michelin Kenyon observed the PowerHouse of England the North they were drawn to the Metropolis on the mersey that linked the manufacturing industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire to the Empire and Beyond this is the great Port City of Liverpool which is very dear to me because I grew up in Liverpool as a little girl Liverpool was a very prosperous City by now it had made a lot of money serious money from the slave trade going back to the 1700s and you can see this very Grand Motor Vehicle that's just come out of a garage that it's well ahead of the times just around this time a law is passed in Parliament to increase the speed limit from two miles per hour to 14 miles per hour so that was a great excitement for everybody that they could now do 14 miles per hour legally in their French imported cars this is fantastic this is Holy corner throughout the Victorian period shopping became a major part of the Leisure activity and these shopping arcades were known as cathedrals of consumption I mean the title of the shop bunnies is lovely especially it's in Oriental goods and novelties perfumes stationers I mean they sell everything [Music] the one thing that really caught my eye was on the top floor there or you have what looks like teapots now of course that really resonates with me because at the height of the Victorian era Britain was importing a lot of goods from China including porcelain and of course teapots this is a hat shop that's incredibly important for victorians to Signal their status so it's great to see here you know the Reds and the blues and the greens and these are quite Lively colors that people are wearing it's very easy to assume victorians rather drab and colorless in all sorts of ways but here we can see you know they had a strong sense of fashion and of color and they like to look good even the dog there look has got a coat on so if you thought the coats for pets was a silly modern invention there we go there's a pug wearing a nice Woolen coat the three women that you can see here hats that they're wearing are absolutely and magnificent that earning that they're wearing they're dressed in absolutely stunning clothes and they're not black and white they're engaging in color they're wearing things that Delight them styles were a vital commodity in the story of Victoria's Empire raw cotton from America India and Egypt was the biggest import into Liverpool's docks much of it sent on for processing in lancashire's Mills at its peak an astonishing 40 of the world's cargo pass through the port of Liverpool through entry points like this one Alexandra dock which opened in 1880 these stock workers would probably have been loading and unloading from the great ships that would come from far and wide they were part of this very important economic Cog in a big economic wheel without realizing it I think [Music] and there's a boy there who's clearly trying to sell newspapers without a huge amount of success 1890s was the beginning of sort of modern tabloid newspaper journalism The Daily Mail as founder in the 1890s a few Generations before this there's no way that working men would have either been able to read or been able to afford to buy a newspaper as Britain's leading gateway to the Americas were also established itself as the main Point of Departure for some of Britain's biggest transatlantic cruise liners each year companies like Cunard and the White Star Line would transport hundreds of thousands of British Travelers many of the migrants planning to start new lives in the U.S [Music] is one of my favorite films from the period the Cunard lacania going on its Voyage to America when it actually was launched in 1893 it was the fastest ship in the keynote line and wrote the record the transatlantic Crossing which is the Blue Ribbon record which became a massive source of competition between the German and the British shipmakers at the beginning of the 1800s to get to America would take about six weeks maybe seven weeks if you're unlucky with bad wins by this point in the 1890s you get to America in six days and that is an incredible transformation in terms of speed huge trunks it's just incredible when you think of the restrictions we have on luggage today traveling but um they are packing their lives into these sea chests [Music] it's almost a little microcosm of society on land in that you have a very clear class distinction and they're for a very different experience of what your journey at Sea would be like this is a story of Mobility for the rich and the poor so you take a liner like this you might think oh it's very Grand this is the rich you know traveling in style across the Atlantic but it's just crammed full of third class passengers these people are trying to escape poverty they're looking for opportunity you don't often think of the white English population as an immigrant population but in fact that's how America to a greater extent became America because of migration from this country for many emotions swelled at the moment of departure excitement but also fear for the adventure that lay ahead it probably started off with great Elation their friends waving them off but then as they crossed the Harbor Bar they might have felt just a little twinge there as it first went all Seas have got their own characteristics but the North Atlantic very heavy swell I was seasick in every warship I ever served in taking care of the Thousand first and second-class passengers as well as a thousand less demanding Travelers in steerage were the lucanius 400 strong crew captains and the senior crew members of these ships these were figures of great reputation and Renown they were beautifully turned out and they exuded the kind of feeling of reassurance and here we see the captain with his great coat they used to have this phrase you know Master under god what the captain said went and I believe which still does really someone has to take charge of the whole situation there was probably immense trust in them and there were very competent semen in those days the crew of course more interested in the camera than they are in scrubbing the decks and this one has escaped from the kitchen for a little while just to show off the ship's cat and of course all the maids who would have had to service the cabins looking very prim and proper here these women are dressed as Maids but their official title is stewardess it was one of the only jobs that women could work at Sea and their role really was to look after the ladies in first and second class from helping them dress in the morning tidy up after them mend one of their dresses help them find some form of entertainment on board the leukania belonged to the illustrious tradition of steamship building that had made Britain the Envy of the world that Heritage owed much to the engineering genius izombard Kingdom Brunel in 1843 he created the SS Great Britain at the time the biggest ship in the world the Great Britain was the very first ironhulled screw-propelled steamship to ever go to Sea because she was built in the middle of the 19th century steam technology was just not Advanced enough yet to fully rely on it so steamship still carried sales just in case the engine failed or you ran out of coal whereas later steam ships at the very end of the 19th century like the lucania the technology was there it had developed at incredible speed so sales were a thing of the past [Music] my third great grandfather a Chuck called Thomas Trevor was a ship Steward and he had served understood in this ship the SS Great Britain he was paid three pound fifteen Shillings four is six weeks so thereabouts Voyage which was roughly about 550 pounds in today's money is at Sea many passengers kill time by exercising a characteristically British fondness for games this is a wonderful film I just love the fact that people are trying to squeeze through a life belt they're not all young by any means they're being watched by an enthusiastic group of Spectators because being on a ship for a long Voyage was basically very dull it's clear there's no women taking part I don't think anybody with a big dress would have fitted through these hoops but they're they're on the sidelines cheering them on the great Victorian steamship serviced almost every corner of the British Empire one of the most Intrepid of all the Victorian filmmakers Joseph Rosenthal recorded this scene from a steamship in what was then a small Colonial Backwater the tiny island of Singapore a lot of these young men used to dive for fish but here they're diving for coins thrown by passengers possibly even by the filmmaker himself you are watching boys in Singapore Through The Eyes of a western Observer looking down in in both senses looking down on these native Singaporean boys and filming them as a sort of exotic spectacle would they have been perceived as being of a lesser class or a lesser civilization because they're not clothed fully as the victorians were emphasizes the alienation and the exoticism and this gap between Us and Them es that recorded such scenes of life in the Empire fascinated people back home filmmakers also profited from so-called exotic performances staged in Britain by filming dance spectaculars like this one at London's Crystal Palace in 1898. increasingly moving pictures would soon showcase the greatest stars of the day and feature worldwide celebrities like Sharp Shooting Annie Oakley I think she could shoot like a cigarette out of someone's mouth you know that kind of level of skill I mean terrifying and some films would even kiss goodbye to long-standing Victorian taboos this was I suppose Victorian porn by 1900 a new technology added an extra Dimension to the viewing experience for the first time audiences could hear the voice of the American Entertainer Lil Hawthorne British director Walter Gibbons recorded her performing the song Kitty Mahone and then synchronized it with footage captured on the roof of the New London Hippodrome to produce Britain's oldest surviving sound film [Music] it shows how film became the new way to capture performances by the stars of a much-loved part of British culture the Music Hall music Hall's a staple of Victorian entertainment the acts are very varied at singing There's dancing there's comedy there's satire you'd go along and you'd see yeah 20 or 30 different performers in a night all sorts of sort of great Stars such as Dan Lino there was Vesta Tilly who was a huge International Superstar she did songs dressed as a man and she'd come on and sing songs about Fancy and girls in 1900 cameras captured captured a star at work during the Paris exposition Harry Ralph better known as little titch was a small man with a mighty Talent little titch was born in Kent he was only four foot six he had six digits on each of his hands he was the incredible great mimic he could change the Contours of his face and he had that whole clowning ability and people would literally cry with tears with laughter this is his most famous act called the big boot dance he's putting on shoes which are about 28 inches in length and he then proceeds to do some very funny sort of walking around leaning bending I mean up on the tiptoes there which it takes incredible control to do that it was what they used to call leg Mania which was he doing lots of stuff well this is wearing just leaning forward and puts that happen without touching it look brilliant and he was much more original than just that routine he was a good actor who played all sorts of characters in his songs this is my favorite he wasn't actually called little tits because titch was a common word for being small it's the other way around we talk about people being teachy because of him he was so incredibly popular it is the power of Personality which Always Wins always when all the great performers had that that raffle with an audience Roy hodd has been in Show Business for over 60 years he was inspired to tread the boards by his grandmother Alice who taught him songs from the Golden Age of Victorian Music Hall but he soon turned his hand to Comedy the discipline that made his name [Music] I I always just call myself an actor and then I've played comedy all the time of course you know you've got a face like Monica and got much more of a chance of playing around me how are you yeah it's a great joy of coming into varieties and sort of unknown was this is what you've done your business because I learned to tap dancing learn to sing of it even learn to dance a bit because I was doing comic and when I was singer is the best way best way to learn to act to do anything is to watch the best when I actually came into the business I did work with some of the great old musical terms where we're just about to Snuff it really a few of the Victorian music Hall's funny turns used film in their acts the comedian and magician Sam Dalton was among the first British performers to amaze audiences by using camera tricks film could have magical effects on a performer's career too in 1894 the American inventor Thomas Edison arranged a demonstration of his new movie camera and asked the celebrated Sharpshooter Annie Oakley to help she'd been born kind of into poverty and had learned to shoot as a very young girl in order to support her family because she would shoot animals and himself into a butcher and she's hitting I think glass cylinders thrown into the air I think she could shoot like a cigarette out of someone's mouth you know that kind of level of skill I mean terrifying and the Oakley of course is the famous Annie Get Your Gun heroine people were absolutely fascinated by her she became famous by being in a competition with a man called Frank Butler who was a famous sharp shooter and when she outshot him he then fell in love with her and they were married for 50 years until she died she was most famous here in Britain for coming over with Buffalo Bill who was this huge Superstar who came across with a massive Wild West circus involving Native American Indians horses and all sorts of exciting things from the West [Music] people a day flocked to see the Buffalo Bill Wild West show when it toured Britain for the first time in 1887. even then Annie's exceptional talents earned some very high profile admirers [Music] when Queen Victoria met Annie Oakley she said to her you are a clever clever little girl and then she would go on private shooting days without members of the aristocracy who were determined to actually outshoot them but she managed to beat them all mine Grant actually saw the show and it was some big open-air thing but all she ever said oh a blue noise she said that far in the things and Ireland dims and apparently it was quite a show but it wasn't just highly skilled humans who'd win the popularity Stakes on the Victorian variety circuit animal-based novelty Acts were adored and the quirkia there were the more beloved they'd be parachuting monkeys high diving horses and belligerent marsupials featured in the earliest British films like this one from 1895. God this is so unethical isn't it it's a child fighting an animal I mean women by monster and there's people like oh my God kangaroos could be trained to box they needed to have gloves on because they got sharp claws pretty dangerous actually a paloman is a great circus man he said the easiest thing in the world to get a kangaroo to box because it's a sort of sexual thing and if you punch them on a certain part of their body they think it's a rival kangaroo so they turn around and give them one you know and that's it he said that's all the training they require it's not a full-bone kangaroo it's a joey the young kangaroo and he's just belting helpful level out of that poor child what's interesting about it I suppose is that on on the first look you can get to go okay well it's a kangaroo fighting a human that's just a funny thing but there is also slightly underpinning it an understanding of the animal kingdom and the human world being more closely linked than we would have thought by the 1890s of Darwin's theory of evolution has been widely accepted so the idea of humans having descended from apes having come from the Animal World um actually is relatively accepted and and also that there are things that animals do that we do and that we we're not so different from each other groundbreaking works by Victorian scientists like Charles Darwin increased public interest in the structure of animal and human bodies [Music] it was a timely moment for one German showman to teach British men how to sculpt The Body Beautiful extraordinary figure classic Victorian strongman Eugene Sandow bodybuilder one of the first of his kind and this is really to do with the whole kind of Victorian Cult of the body and Cult of physicality he had completely mastered his body from a young age he had developed his muscles through constant exercise and repetition he could lift incredible amounts of weights I mean one of his tricks was he'd put a grand piano on his back and have musicians on top of it playing and he'd walk around the stage carrying it and he became a star because he offered people self-betterment in 1897 Sandow opened his own gymnasium in London Peyton did his own brand of dumbbells and published a fitness magazine promoting his regime recommending coal bars and eating raw eggs he also sold protein-powdered drinks and he founded the first major bodybuilding contest at the Royal Albert Hall in 1901. but much of Sandow's philosophy was based on some of the most misguided and dangerous theories of the time [Music] he was a eugenicist his name was Eugen clues in the name he argued the white race was Superior that he could make Britain stronger and healthier and more virile and more Macho and better soldiers it's about Fitness not just being physically fit but being also racially fit and ethnically fit as well and it connects with the eugenic movement of the time so although it's about health and strength and vigor and physique it's also about contrasting that with more inferior bodies so there's a Sinister side to this too I'd say while Victorian men were allowed to show some skin in public ladies were expected to remain firmly covered up [Music] yet some early filmmakers did persuade a few Brave women to break the taboo and peel off for their cameras in 1896 brighton-based Esme Collins produced a woman undressing which is now considered Britain's first ever erotic film in today's standards there's nothing sensual about this performance it's how you can imagine her taking her clothes off to go to bed at the end of the day but how many layers she's wearing everything from the corset that underskirts no wonder it was quite titillating to see that or being removed because there's a lot of it to take away [Music] of course the victorians were very puritanical in the way they thought or and behaved the church had a much greater role in those days but I think when you're repressed in such a big way you have to give vent to your desires so this was I suppose Victorian porn this lady undressing would not have been shown in the musical it would probably have been shown at what was called a smoker because you could smoke there's a kind of euphemism for a male only entertainment [Music] the idea of course is that this is sort of voyeurism that we are peeking into her private boudoir I like the fact also she only has one suck on at the end I don't know if that's super sexy you know just one ankle out you don't want to overload them with two ankles too much [Music] these films to me highlight one of the biggest misconceptions of the Victorian era we've always been taught the victorians have this very stiff upper lip that's showing the ankle is an absolutely abominable but actually it's the victorians who first really Define what sexuality is they study it they find it really intriguing thank you the theme of repressed Victorian sexual desire was also explored in Britain's earliest film dramas from their base at home Firth in Yorkshire the company Bamford Co produced the 1899 film the kiss in the tunnel telling the story of a passionate encounter on a train passing through the pennines [Music] this is a really important moment in the history of filmmaking because it's a step towards editing train enters tunnel cut to interior of the carriage with a couple kissing fondling and then train leaving so we've got a complete kind of dramatic situation this is what people can get up to in the dark the tunnel of course this has now become a classic isn't it the train going into the tunnel what would happen in the dark of the tunnel that's actually quite shocking I don't think you would see many images of kissing on screen at that point this film I find incredible because it to me encapsulates all the newness of the Victorian era you can see the woman sort of being quite shy at first she's covering her face with the newspaper she's acting demure and then this moment this kiss time would have been incredibly sensual and Incredibly erotic what you actually get is one of the first kisses on screen in the United Kingdom thought it was going to be one of those classic kind of more kisses but actually they are really going for it that's a Yorkshire Laden last from home first having their bit of stardom on the the big screen attitudes to sex were changing and across Victorian Britain so was almost everything else filmmakers reflected the nation's anxieties about Rising crime the victorians had of course an enormous fear of crimes they're both fascinated by it and they're terrified of it and the Menace hidden in Grime the reason I think the victorians are obsessed with hygiene cleanliness is because the alternative is infectious disease and early death and while soap makers were cleaning up the dirty world of Victorian advertising still saw things in black and white [Music] throughout the 19th century city streets heaved with people traffic and invariably foul smells everywhere the stench of coal fires and factories and horse droppings mingled with the odor of a largely unwashed population but affluent victorians believe that cleanliness was Next to Godliness so for those in the soap business it was boom time this is one of the great early advertising films that survive as this is spinolea soap one of the great commercial successors of the Victorian era and here we're seeing an army of women marching off carrying vanolia soap to the uh the grimy masses in the 19th century you get germ Theory it's a discovery that germs exist and that's how disease spreads once hygiene comes in as an idea that people start buying soap in larger and larger quantities the victorians had only just started to have Plumbing so the idea of washing of soap of hygiene in the home is something that victorians particularly the middle classes are starting to embrace in great numbers to Market their products soap manufacturers often Drew upon disconcerting stereotypes that revealed the stigmas of the age very often the way that it was advertised and there's some extremely unfortunate and to our eyes unpleasant adverts which show a little black boy or little black girl being given soap to clean themselves up so there's this contrast between black and white and the idea that if you use soap then you can clean yourself and finolia as well as pears soap had these adverts like contrasting a little white child with a little black child saying use our soap for Britain's middle class life was on the up that the desperate plight of the urban poor was almost impossible to ignore among the Charities and philanthropists helping those in need was nottingham-born Methodist preacher and founder of the Salvation Army William Booth new medium of film to promote his ideas his film crew followed him on his speaking tours across Britain I love the fact that he's just like holding the crowd and getting out to where people are [Music] that's a big crowd isn't it there's no shoes on some of these children as well it just brings back the reality of what they were really dealing with William boost thought all the social problems of the world could be solved by knowing that you were valuable and that you were loved and they went to the outcasts they went the gamblers the drunks and they went to the prostitutes basically the people that the rest of society wouldn't touch the Salvation Army served breakfast to Children of the destitute provided shelter for the homeless and in 1891 he launched a campaign to improve the dangerous conditions endured by Young Factory workers in one of Britain's most important industries had already been a lot of noise in the Press about the conditions of working for young women and particularly in the match factories they used phosphorus to make the matches and that caused something called fossy jaw for these women where it literally would eat away at their faces it was a horrific way to die and rather than just looking at it and saying oh isn't that sad he said let's do something he built a factory he employed those same women and they had safe working conditions time off appropriate pay and safe matches marketed under the name lights in darkest England Booth's matches were cheaper than rival Brands so he helped put unsafe match factories out of business and with it the use of phosphorus Victorian street life was a great source of inspiration for storytellers and nothing stirred the public more than crime [Music] notorious criminals dominated news headlines and fascinated best-selling novelists like Arthur Conan Doyle early filmmakers also realized that crime really could pay in 1895 american-born inventor and director Bert Acres produced a rest of a pickpocket a work that's now considered to be Britain's first ever film drama this is extraordinary this footage I mean look two-man wrestling him to the ground early example of police brutality perhaps the victorians had of course an enormous fear of crimes they're both fascinated by it and they're terrified of it the exploits of notorious felons whose crimes haunted the public imagination continued to inspire filmmakers for years after Queen Victoria passed away in 1905 director William Hager dramatized the astonishing crime spree of Charles peace the most infamous fugitive of the Victorian age I first came upon Charles piece when I was researching my own novel The House of silk which took Sherlock Holmes novel and actually Charles Pease does have a distinction of being one of the very few real people who turn up in a Sherlock Holmes novel because he was probably the most famous criminal of his time the story of Charlie peace is this incredible double life he led by day he was a prosperous businessman who played the violin by night he was a notorious cat burglar every image of him looks different because he was a Master of Disguise he was like the world going Champion he could twist his face he actually looks quite a repulsive individual but apparently he was irresistible to women made in 1905 when Charles peace was still a household name the film depicts him entertaining his neighbors Mr and Mrs Dyson but soon passions are inflamed after he expresses his love for the lady oh he's found him with his wife not happy about that at all and altercation starts always threatening revenge and here it comes why is it within Victorian melodrama when anything bad happens the woman always puts their hands up to their cheeks and does that it's rather sweet and there he is killed later policemen catch Peace during a burglary when he shows just how far he'd go to evade Justice but then it couldn't even get any better as a narrative he escapes from the police and then he gets chased through the countryside and gets rearrested and on the night before he is going to be executed confesses to the murder of the constable and a poor young Irishman had been framed for it peace was a murderer and a renegade yet strangely he acquired a cult status in parts of Victorian society there's some element of sympathy for him and some element of admiration he was injured as a young man in an industrial accident and and then turned to a life of crime and sort of outwitted the police ultimately people didn't approve of criminals who murdered policemen and so people were also pleased to see him get his comeuppance this film of child's peace ends with the Fate he faced in real life an appointment with the hangman at armley jail in Leeds in 1879. I can't believe that we just saw the man drop into the scaffold where they even allow us to show that these days I mean drop into the trap door from the scaffold extraordinary and I can imagine gosh how the victorians would have enjoyed watching this for years after his death the legend of Charles peace lingered on I cannot believe the media obsession with Charlie Pace there was a huge Tableau in Madame two swords until the 1950s so well before Jack the Ripper their most famous criminal of the late Victorian period was this gentleman from Sheffield to Charlie peace while crime continued to Fascinate the obsessions of Victorian filmmakers ranged from childhood play of flowing Head bar to the sporting passions that put Britain leagues ahead 100 000 people would come to watch a rugby match if you weren't there you didn't see it fostron fire engines turning out were one of the spectacles That animated the Victorian Street we really brought it to life [Music] in 1898 london-based filmmaker Charles Goodwin Norton aimed his lens on these energetic children recording their every move for posterity Street Entertainment was a great feature of Victorian life here we've got a little troop of dancers who are very well rehearsed gardeners gathered Garden winding it up this is the equivalent of carrying your speakers out and putting them on the street and everyone having a dance there's so much joy there's so much fun it shows that children will always be children no matter what time and place you put them in we all know that childhood mortality was really terrible in the 19th century about a quarter of all deaths were of babies in 1900 about 50 times higher than it would be today and that's one of the things I have in mind when I'm watching a film like this it kind of makes it all the more poignant that these boys and girls these are the ones who have survived and stayed healthy and are able to dance in the street without realizing Victorian filmmakers were documenting the shifting face of childhood changes in the law now entitle children to protection from exploitative employers and to free Elementary schooling [Music] in 1901 Michelin Kenyan cameras captured some of the earliest moving images showing the excitement of the young students of York Road School in Leeds so small so small so well just you can see the flags with the the Union Jack on another sign of even the children are taught to be proud of their Nation obviously it's a special occasion for them there's a camera there they've been told totally exciting thing is happening the film's being made and just imagine how exciting it was for them one thing that really impressed me was how very well disciplined very orderly they are Marching alongside their teachers just there is a boy wearing a pair of glasses which the camera doesn't deal with very well the lights reflecting off them these children would not be well off and pair of glasses would not be all that cheap so I'm thinking that boy probably got quite a serious problem with his eyes it was Victorian teachers who first introduced physical education into British schools but from time immemorial children have always devised their own ways of expending their excess Energies [Music] this is a very complicated game of LeapFrog I've never seen anything quite so developed [Music] wow hang on that's a flying Head bar this is kids being kids but it's actually it's really fun it's like organized fun they know what they're trying to achieve here and they're having several goes at it and it's not quite working the last kid's gonna jump on there he is oh no they're collapsed all right try again [Music] children are good subjects for filming because they move fast they Rough and Tumble they jump around and what early filmmakers want is movement action activity they're also popular people like seeing children on screen maybe they like you because they're better behaved than in reality there you have it you know kids learning kids playing this is what childhoods should be for the victorians not about work not about being exploited it's about getting old before your year is not about being precocious it's an idealized view of children the introduction of PE into schools would boost the development of Britain's favorite team sports by establishing rules and creating new competitions the victorians shaped the modern sporting World Mitchell and Kenyon sent their cameras to Yorkshire to observe the players and fans passion for the new Breakaway sport rugby league [Music] when filming as introduced in sporting events this tradition of the home team coming out first actually starts and we think with the camera so this is dewsbury and now now we get Manningham Manningham in the hoops and the dark shorts foreign this is fantastic footage it shows that in their time these people are heroes a hundred thousand people would come to watch a rugby match because there isn't live TV if you weren't there you didn't see it in the 19th and the early 20th century there wasn't a concept of weak end in the way in which we we now have but these sorts of sporting activities were the beginning of that weekend certainly because people were absconded so they just didn't go to work because they wanted to see the game can tell about the uniforms it's totally different to what I used to wear that's a certainty no shoulder pads are notice long shots dark socks the guy with his shirt ripped off his back [Music] but the movement's good it moved the move in the ball everybody chasing about defensively it's different another guy with the torn shirts showing his body off and changing his shirts good physique no fat on him but they do look young I said I would have looked you when I started I'm only 17. for four decades Nigel Stevenson played for some of rugby league's finest sides including 13 years at dewsbury where he was a key player in their first division championship winning side in 1973 [Music] tonight [Music] we were the best team in British rugby league in 1973 so without it I'll lifting that Trophy and then coming back to Deals and being met in the town by must have been 10 000 people that were magnificent I'll never forget that moment for many Northerners the local rugby team is part and parcel of their Town's identity this area the heavy Woodland District was renowned for its rugby league players from the deals with Batley Huddersfield Castleford Wakefield areas I think it's great the tradition of our sport is all that way back I hope the tradition can go in another 120 years thank you Mitchell and Canyon specialize in films capturing local life and across the very same town they found another great subject nothing was perhaps more exciting than the fast and dangerous work of the Jews brief firefighters as few people had telephones the Brigade was alerted to fires by the ringing of the Town Hall Bell horstron fire engines turning out were one of the spectacles That animated the Victorian Street and people did turn out to see them you can tell it's cold people have put on their best clothes you can see the wonderful hats and scarves it's worth remembering that fires were very common in Victorian times illumination was mostly naked flames and of course most buildings were absolute Tinder boxes firemen have become really popular figures in Victorian Britain in the late 19th century dewsbury fire brigade was mostly volunteers they joined local policemen to respond to fires today's 44 strong Brigade is made up of train professionals who respond to an average of over a thousand call outs each year they recognize the challenges their predecessors faced when tackling similar emergencies [Music] foreign I suppose the principles of firefighting are still the same put the water on the fire goes out times the noise and fire brigade would attract everyone in the neighborhood even the local pets poor dog because he's gonna get run over in a moment this footage is not only people's fascination with the fire brigade but also people's fascination with the camera what this film really in color actually brings to life the energy and power of the fire brigade the children running in the streets and the victorians lived in the streets they played in the streets they worked in the streets and they celebrated in the streets the street was an extension of their front room if we get 10 minutes and then nowadays we still get a lot of people watching on just the different context because social media has taken over so much now we might go to an instant and there might only be 10 or 20 people watching but then within five ten minutes it'll be on Facebook or it will be on Instagram and then I think the whole of Duties were probably still watching but just in a different way soon Mitchell and Kenyon would switch from filming firefighters close to home to depicting British Fighters Under Fire far away real public appetite to some sense of what life was like for our soldiers out there people knew it was tough the Boer War showed really really vulnerability hi was a wake-up wake-up call for Victorian Britain [Music] Victoria's long Reign was drawn to a close Britain's power still reached across the globe but there were signs of unrest in some important parts of her Empire in 1899 Settlers of Dutch descent known as boers were again challenging British control of South Africa's lucrative mineral reserves and fertile lands an army of almost half a million British and Colonial troops was sent to quash an uprising by determined Rebels who were armed with modern rifles and artillery for the first time filmmakers were able to present to a fascinated public moving pictures of Britain's forces at War they followed Aberdeen's Gordon Highlanders on the march at the township of Ladysmith in the natal [Music] remember the people watching these films would have had husbands Brothers Sons serving out in the cape and there was a real public appetite to get some sense of what life was like for our soldiers out there people knew it was tough [Music] these guys have been in the field for weeks at a time they looked tired they've lost lots of weight and they do look a bit scruffy and there's Captain Michael John VC with his one arm just beside the amount of the officer there he was severely wounded at the Battle of the landslugat just prior to the CG Ladysmith he went back to Ladysmith where they tried to treat his wounds and then The Siege began they had to remove his arm there so this is obviously him he won the Victoria Cross Britain's highest award for bravery I've never seen any Victorian era film colorized and it really does completely bring it to life you can almost hear it you take note of everything much better but filmmakers soon resorted to different tactics when they couldn't access the front lines of the conflict which forced many to film elaborate reconstructions of the action often far away from the cape it's a propaganda War it's a media War and what we're seeing here is reconstructions and the reason for this obviously is that it's too dangerous to actually film real footage you'd have to be very very brave to stand there cranking your camera as people are shooting around you this film called the dispatch Bearer is one of Britain's first ever action dramas its depictions of boar war combat might have convinced some even though it was shot in the yellow Hills area of Blackburn why not stage your own why not get a few local amateur actors out few uniforms and smoke bomb or two and you can stage the kind of action which the audience is Keen to see the actors are playing dead very convincingly they've got guns in their hands and the smoke goes off when they shoot so maybe yeah maybe a lot of people would have been taken in by this they look so staged so overly dramatic and the British soldiers do not look like British soldiers the period they've got sort of outdated weapons it almost looks slapstick here we try and make it a bit more accurate than this Toby Braley is involved in creating historical reenactments of the everyday life of British soldiers stationed in South Africa during the Boer War we just felt that the second anglo-boer war is kind of Forgotten for nowadays from the public memory we don't tend to do the battle reenactments and fake deaths which tents will live like they do we eat like they do [Music] we drill and parade as they do [Music] field Maneuvers so when they were in battle how they would have gone to meet the enemy [Music] try and get the best experience that we can for ourselves and for the public and the people that come and see us [Laughter] Britain finally defeated the boers in 1902. but Victory came at Great cost to the country's reputation the Boer War also has a terrible place in British history and that it was where concentration camps were first used by Lord Kitchener by the British forces and over 20 000 bore women and children died in those concentration camps of malnutrition and disease the era of Imperial Conquest was definitely over and I think what we're seeing in the South African War is Britain holding its own but with with more difficulty than might have been expected [Music] begin to contract [Music] on New Year's Day 1901 the Australian Commonwealth was inaugurated after Britain granted it the right to self-rule in time many others would follow on the 22nd of January Queen Victoria died aged 81. she had reigned for 63 years and seven months longer than any British monarch before her just as they had four years earlier at her Jubilee film Crews were there to capture Victoria's final Journey it was a massive Universal morning it was the death of them of the Empire Queen Victoria was dead all these generals and Military types looking very pompous but perhaps not wanting to realize that this is the end of it all and that they have to face reality and things going to change at this moment the Empire is very very much in people's minds as a huge part of what it means to be British and this ceremony the purple and white drapes over the coffin the soldiers the horses the gun carriages absolutely embodies that and there we see the next king of England riding along behind his mother's coffin we see her son Edward VII there in the middle he represents something entirely different he's going to become king and the whole country is about to change once more with the first world war and after that nothing will ever be the same again [Music] what we've got here in Victorian film is really time travel it's the first era that is captured on film we've seen sex we've seen crime we've seen death we've seen this of celebration of life they felt the same as we did and they really embraced the highs and the lows and the pleasure pain happiness of life it's still funny watching little tits running around his big shoes putting his hat on still makes me chuckle so there are things about this that connect across the decades and remind us of the sort of common Humanity see it like that in color it's pretty breathtaking just adds a whole incredible emotional Dimension to trying to understand these people as they look out at us peering into the camera quite extraordinary Contraption and WE peer back at them by making it color it makes it seem modern relatable it's more accessible so it can provide context and Clarity to historical moments and the thing about color Narrows the gap between us and a world that we think we've lost [Music] it is incredible we can sit here today and look in a world that has all but disappeared here it is on the screen it gives me a sense of a timeline to which we all still belong [Music] this is Edwardian Britain the remarkable years at the turn of the 20th century it's an incredible period it's the shaping of our modern era we wouldn't be where we are without the midwardians and now for the first time in color history tends to be about the rich the famous the powerful whereas these people they're Ordinary People this footage is about them Britain was the richest country in the world on the back of the hard work of men women and children we often think of the working classes or a drab in old clothes in black and white and it shows what they did have that they LED these lives of color and of richness it's an age when workers were allowed to enjoy life after the long austerity of the victorians look at those colors gorgeous people out to enjoy themselves families out together [Music] new rights their use of three colors purple white and green and everybody knew what that stood for three words votes for women change did come but on a scale nobody could foresee and this is incredibly poignant because it's filmed just two weeks before the start of the war and that war is going to change everything foreign [Music] Britain began with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 Millions lined London streets to witness the funeral behind Victoria's coffin wrote her son and successor Edward VII the last king to give his name to an Era with a new century and a new king the nation now looked forward to change [Music] [Applause] [Music] the summer of 1902 on the day of Edward VII's coronation the nation takes to the streets to celebrate like this one here in accrington shown in color for the first time [Music] fascinates me to see it because the pageantry of it from accrington it's you know just another kind of Northern kind of old industrial town when we look at the efforts that's been put into the costume the sort of expense that would have gone into this parade it's bright to the point of being blindingly bright but that's part of spectacle in the absence of TV in the absence of the internet and a computer screen on every phone this is the spectacle that brings people together [Music] when you look at look at that time period people on the streets all the time they would pray for temperance they would parade for the wit walks they would preferred for Catholic possessions protests and possessions so they paraded massive big banners huge pageantry dressed up and it was a spectacle and this coronation procession would have lasted about two hours I think what we're seeing here is a film of how conscious people are of what's happening in the rest of the British Empire how people have absorbed descriptions of Empire from newspapers from popular culture and so on remember this is only three months after the end of the Boer War there will have been a lot of talk about Africans and I think this film reflects how globalized thinking was at this moment in time these are people in the absence of having sufficient people of color black themselves up to include those people of color as part of the British story so they want the British story to be authentic and for it to be authentic it has to include people of the empire [Music] was the richest city on the planet with the biggest port in the world importing food steel wool and Timber this film from 1904 shows 11 miles of wharfs handling 60 000 ships a year tens of thousands worked in the docks and in the markets foreign driver used to pick up chemicals from the docks onto a horse-driven cart and drive them back to a chemical Factory in South London that started his life in this in this very sphere I think that's a pretty dangerous job driving chemicals on the back of her of a cart through Central London yeah amazing I'm here so the London docks it's a real hub it's built on physical labor the physical transport of goods and a lot of these men in the pictures they would be casual workers hired by the day they have to turn up to the dock to see if there's work for them that day the Advil team period's pretty tough time to be alive um okay Society is changing and reforms are being introduced but people are working very long hours average working week of 60 hours plus low wages on the whole for most people so everybody you see here would have a story to tell I'm sure about their working lives Bobby Cooley works at the new Covent Garden flower market in Vauxhall he was the third generation of quarters to work in the old Covent Garden then a fruit and veg Market Not Just Flowers I mean dad's Granddad works as a ballroom common Garden my dad's dead me lots of uncles at one time I had seven relatives working over 60 when I started I was one of the last kid is to be working out in Covent Garden little had changed in the way the market was run since Edwardian times lots and lots of vegetables for sale all sorts of stuff looks like spring a lot of vegetables guys pouring with the couches on their head and all sorts of things on there and bushels which I now have 28 pound in them apples looks like cabbages you could sell a Market Port where you normally had a scarf and a cap because you're carrying a lot of stuff on your nut and you don't want to sort of like completely put your brains in ladies now this is an important part ladies here working hard in the market the flower marketers Porters and in the veg Market shucking peas and processing stuff I can really relate to these people in this picture here exactly because they're working as I used to work I.E they're working with wicker and and boxes where we used to work with cardboard and plastic but yeah we shoved as much stuff around as they did come gone back in the 1900s it was the Larder in London you had the borough market and spitfalls but Covent Garden was the big Hub anything was going anywhere it was going to Covent Garden first it you can imagine quite a dangerous place to work a lot of every Good's been shifting around and all she's moving you know them ladies up there were quite fearsome ladies so they used to as much as the men as far as the swearing goes I was told having a hard life is a good life because if you're working hard you're getting paid and all the guys in here they're up early where we have a good trade or bad they're here to do a day's work and mostly as it's eased off over the years it's harder because there's a few less money to go around but we're all after that money it's lovely to see it in color I'm seeing flowers you can identify it daffodils hyacinths daffodils looks like irises I'm seeing vegetables what look edible rather than black and white I might spot you want to be granddads here if I'm careful back in the day because we've been here since 1905 and that looks about around about when it was [Music] London might have been the capital of the empire but Britain's real wealth lay further north where Millions worked in the Mills and the mines long hours accidents deaths it's a really dangerous industry you had to work so fast you had to really go like that you couldn't stop [Music] if you missed any of the dirt [Music] foreign [Music] Britain was built on grindingly hard work more than 10 of the population relied on coal for their livelihood never had more coal being dug Britain's status is the most powerful nation in the world depended on coal it was our biggest export it powered our industry and heated our homes here for the first time in color we see the life of a coal miner in Wigan in 1910 coal cap the nation go in the country would not have survived without it because it was so heavily reliant on industry and with the new technology coming in they needed it more than ever so when we see these men you know the nation is on their shoulders we just can't imagine what it would be like to be a minor at that time I mean extremely tough conditions extremes of temperature both hot and and cold long hours accidents deaths it's a really dangerous industry that was absolutely integral to everybody's everyday life and the industrial life of the country in Lancashire its coal Heritage is well remembered by the Chorley Empire Film Community my grandfather worked in the pit uh in goulburn at this time and in fact he was injured in a disaster there was a fall of coal several people were killed but he lost his leg he never worked again and when you look at the conditions they were working under it looks absolutely terrifying so I look at them and I think one of them could be my grandfather yes which is extraordinary it's very moving it really is there were 350 calories in Lancashire alone Eric Lancaster worked as a minor on the Wigan coal face where they mind using the same process as the edwardians I started at new Corey at 14 and a half I worked in the store still I could go down the mile and then I went down the mine and was on the what they call the allage where the Rope used to pull the tubs along and then eventually got on the coal face they're they're getting in the cage now to descend the mine you went down seven because the pit whistle would go then you could have two miles to get to the coal face the other a man Rider local and that took you a mile then you walked a mile then you got to the coal face and then you started work you don't keep on working until you cleared your call it's called a breadth it was about the length of a Terrace sitting room about 12 feet and about four foot thick and four foot Advance when you clean it you'd Advance the face forefoot it was tough and it was hot and it was sweaty it's watching this film it is realistic because it was quite dirty you got black and uh when you'd finish your shift it was covered in coldest so you wanted to get into the pitted bus for a real hot shower it wasn't just the men the men who worked in the coal industry women did too working underground thousands of girls and women worked on the surface sorting coal and loading wagons they were known as the pit brow lasses Rita colshaw is the fourth generation from her family who worked in the mines I left school when I was 15. and to start to work on the Monday on the pit bro and I went with my sister your hands got really cold and black and dirty and used to put Vaseline on your iron lids so that it was easy to wash the cold dust out but after you'd had a bath you're still picking bits of color to the color of your eyes oh those pit Right girls pin smiling like we all did pushing the tubs I remember they still dressed like that and still folded the rounds like that as well aggressive defensive because they won't land a man pick on them they're picking the dirty to the call and you had to work so fast you had to really go like that you couldn't stop and War beside you if you missed any of the dirt you weren't allowed to speak to each other but one girl there named Edna Woodcock she was a comic just to pick a sped up and she used to go to bed I'm leaning and she used to sing they all used to sing but they weren't allowed to speak I think it was the atmosphere of being with such friendly girls there was no arguing of fat biting or anything it was just job I loved her I loved it and all of the camaraderie of the girls oh memories [Music] besides coal cotton was one of the biggest Employers in Edwardian Britain Britain's cotton industry reached its peak in 1912 when 8 billion yards of cloth were being produced using raw materials from around the empire with thousands of Mills and weaving sheds across the county Lancashire was the cotton capital of the world and it wouldn't have been possible without the women who made up more than 60 percent of the workforce Chief employer of women at this time was the co was the cotton industry they were employed as Weavers a really good Weaver could operate up to eight Looms so they would work in a section of the factory and they would just watch the Looms and if there was any snags or the um the shuttle needed to be refilled they would get that ready I've had very very highly skilled work weaving at this point deafening as well [Applause] actually my mum worked in the mill it was Fountain Mill and as soon as the door is open it was deafening was the the sound of it and my mum was partly deaf well a lot of the ladies were and they are too lip read each other or they made and singles to communicate with each other because of the amount of noise and dust [Music] Edwardian film inside the Mills this film shows the women workers leaving the Alfred Butterworth Cotton Factory near Manchester in 1901. what's fascinating is the girl's hair is all covered so women do not show long hair so if you see the girls the shoals are completely covering them and you don't see the hair at all you just see their faces there's all this debate now about the hijab and about women covering their hair and we forget that we've lost that as part of our culture that hundreds of years ago you wouldn't walk out in the streets of Lancashire with your hair down [Music] in Edwardian documented but women's work could be every bit as skilled as captured in this rare footage from 1910 of the Siemens Brothers factory in dalston east London where women are busy making electric lamps watching the work that she's doing it's skilled work you know it is really intricate detail work difficult work as well which would have taken a lot of concentration a lot of effort and we think about the working hours as well how long you would sit and do that for and the colors of it again you know we often think of the working classes where I drab in old clothes in black and white and you see the different patterns the different textures and it makes them real it shows what they did have that these aren't people to pity that they LED these lives of color and of richness as well in in one way and I love that she's wearing her locket and her jewelry as well you know it challenges a lot of people's perceptions of what the working class would have looked like in Edwardian Britain and this is a working woman she is at something out of a Dickens novel she's real she's got her jewelry she's neat she's tidy the quality of the film The exactitude of the image is is really extraordinary we're used to everybody being a bit distant but these images of of ordinary people working they're very touching really they're very moving because you feel you know a kind of human connection with somebody who's just you know they're doing something and there's nothing more human than working with your hands really and to have these very very beautiful and very clear images people doing intricate work for you to watch you can't help but look at her hair and her hair's been done very nicely for the film but it seems to be moved by a gust of wind it's a small thing which goes beyond what's in the image and reminds you that you're looking at a real person a real incident those are the things that connect us to the Past [Music] it's just lovely to see life as it was being lived you know see people at work it's the mundaness the humanity of it somehow concentration they used to talk about women and the low paid work you know the invisible work the five C's so women is keep cleaning cooking cashewing clacking and caring um there were also women in factories as we've seen here but it's the lowest paid work often the slightly dangerous work but having said that the options for men as well were much more defined and confined for particular classes of people than they are now in Edwardian Britain all classes of people had to wear hats you weren't fully dressed if you didn't wear one and they had to find your position in society from top hats and boaters to Bowlers and flat caps Stockport was the world center for hat making in 1910 here it's the men who are hard at work making the popular fur felt hat [Music] Steve cossy is perhaps the last Apprentice from Stockport still working in the Hat industry the processes that they go through are over 130 processes just from that to actually get it blocked into a shape the blocking aspect is done with the boiling water so the hats are put into the boiling water to which means the Hat body then is pliable so they're able to stretch the Hat body over the wooden blocks sometimes the air gets trapped between the hot body and the block so they're used to blow in it to get all the air out the men could block around probably two to three hundred hats a day you can imagine the problem they have with their hands putting it in and out of the boiling water but it wasn't just that I'm a Hatter and many people would know the term from Alice in Wonderland the Mad Hatter now the Mad Hatter comes from when they used to use mercury to make the house and it made all the men who made the half go nutty basically and this wasn't realized until quite late after they've been using it and then once that was found then they abolished it and was never too used again it was very hard very hard you know it's quite a lot of pressure on the hand and it's a vibration and the fur rubbing on your hands which can cause the sores what we want to do is keep this tradition going so the Hat industry is still alive but we want to keep using the traditional methods and make them in the UK in Stockport or Denton just like they did in the early 1900s foreign [Music] the biggest difference was in the lives that children were forced to lead in Edwardian Britain it would have been hard work heavy dirty hard work and children were useful because they could get between the Looms we talk about social Mobility these days these kids wouldn't have had an opportunity to stay on at school very long and going to University would be like going to a different planet [Music] Edwardian Britain was the richest most powerful nation in the world its power and wealth was built on the hard work of men women and children all children had a basic education but most left school by 12. the factories in Mills depended on child workers and families needed the income Across the Nation even the smallest of children would try and find work doing something former politician Alan Johnson grew up in poverty in post-war London in conditions similar to many of the children featured here in the early 1900s I love this so I used to drink water out those fountains where there was a fountain for the horse and then drinking water on the end so all around North Kensington um that was including the corner of my street and south of the street there was a horse trough and the toddlers would come and tie their horse up at lunchtime usually pop in the Earl of work for a pint and uh they'd put a nose bag over the horse's ears a bit of food and then take them to the trough for the water and those kids look as if they're ups are no good three ragger muffins difficult to know what they are they could be rag Pickers people who make unexistence by just harvesting discarded clothes and recycling them in some way it certainly doesn't look like a toy cart looks like they're at work probably on the embankment [Music] some children worked as half-timers school until noon then to work like these seen here at the butter with Cotton Factory near Manchester so this is reason why Lancashire was such a prosperous County in the Edwardian the Victorian age because women worked the men worked and the children worked so they would have three or four income for the household and the factories they would employ up to six to eight thousand people some of these factories it would have been hard work heavy dirty hard work and children were useful because they could get between the Looms the way we now see children is very different from the way in which Edwardian Society saw children for Working Families they saw children as a source of Labor extra labor especially labor that men didn't want to do that women couldn't perhaps do and that they could but there was a call for reform and for children to attend schools and certainly laws came in to try and force all children to attend school but many didn't many still worked and many of the families relied on the labor that children provided this was the first age of filmmaking so it was still unusual to see a film camera outside your factory gate the children are intrigued it's almost like he's looking to go look at me and he looks and he's playing in front and he hits his friend but he's so natural in front of the camera he's like the instant film star he does look like The Artful Dodger you've really brought him to life in their faces there's there's a lot in there they look old beyond their years and it's partly the clothes it's partly that they're at work it's partly you know some of those faces are pinched with poverty and they would have seen a lot in in their short lives I'm sure all the missed opportunities I mean we talk about social Mobility these days these kids wouldn't have had an opportunity to certainly not to stay on at school very long and going to University would be like going to a different planet so they knew where they were going into the factory they said look look with bow legs coming down there that's rickets and Hollywood or it's painful children were in moska Ricketts whilst they were still growing is caused by malnutrition lack of vitamin D and lack of sunlight well it was beginning to die out but it was still a fairly common feature so living conditions are improving infant Health beginning to improve all these things that contribute to those kinds of changes but as you can see it's still very present in some of these films [Music] kind of gets me is that some of these Lads probably didn't come back from the war you start to project our knowledge of what would happen in the build up you think these lads who are staring at the camera and you know look so innocent this generation this decade of time would change their lives forever so that it feels like quite poignant when you do see them coming out [Music] that's what I find fascinating about these films picking out an individual wondering exactly what he came at them and where their children are today or their grandchildren [Music] this was a new century with a new king a new thinking for the British people this meant while they worked hard they got to play too what we're seeing here is children from Altrincham really excited about to board a train to Moberly which is only seven miles away and it's their big day out for these kids they get to see acrobats bizarre puppeteers it may seem a little bit underpowered for the kids of today but at that time for these children this is a really special really liberating experience it was a hard time the Edwardian period for children because their parents often were working full-time they didn't have a lot of opportunity to get Outdoors this is one of the reasons why outings like this were so important to try and get children out into the countryside away from the sort of polluted areas in towns and into the fresh air so they could run around and play and I mean childhood was very short at this point you know people had to grow up very quickly and get to work and and you really I mean we we have a concept of childhood you know really lasting now until sort of 18 but childhood in many ways was over by the time you were 12 in the awarding period but men women and children were United in their pride for their King country and community they came together for huge celebrations like this one in 1902 the once every 20 years Preston Guild opened by The Nair Frederick Arthur Stanley the 16th Earl of Derby the week-long possessions date back to Medieval Times but now a new world is being celebrated and new inventions so it's not unlike a modern Carnival different floats coming through town and they're all part of the textile train of course that's the thing that had made this region you know made the area what it was and that is the symbol of the trade I mean you know the loom that would have meant so much to so many people they generations of people's families would have worked in different elements around those those kinds of machines you know from the kids sweeping up on the floor to the to the supervisors running the you know whole floor of hundreds of these things it would have been a huge occasion for for the town you see the Pavements thronged especially if it's only happening every 20 years or so what's that pig I'm surprised to see a pig in the middle of a text Opera wow the famous mysco pig um so my school were butchers based in Preston on Shepherd Street and they had a factory but in the 19th century they became famous for their sausages which were called MP sausages and the pig became a sort of mascot for them it went on to appear in two more guilds in 1922 and in 1952 so it became a bit of a star and sadly we don't know what happened to it I mean look at the guys I mean they've got butchers with huge knives as well I've never you know that it's crazy I think because you've got colorized you you things stand out that you wouldn't have seen before it's a fantastic piece of footage Leisure Time previously just for the rich was now available to the working class even if it was just one day a week fun parks were very popular in the early 1900s like this one near Halifax in Yorkshire this is Sunnyvale here for home pleasure Gardens which was two shillings to get in and it was a place where the emerging middle class and also the aspirational working class would go for their Leisure Time so you'd have boating Lakes you'd have swings and people dancing so it was just you dressed up it was your Sunday Best and you put your best shoes on you didn't wear your clogs you wore everything this is actually a early form of a roller coaster it's called a mountain glad or a Switchback we were taken up the hill by a horse and you can see the horse in the shop and then you just were let down on this almost like a carriage that you would see in coal mines and you're on this little rickety carriage and then it would break at the bottom the man operating the mountain glider is Joseph Bunce owner of Sunnyvale Gardens who paid for the filming as an early tourist film thank you one of the other activities filmed was donkey riding a seemingly hazardous Pursuit for the ladies oh ouch that looks very painful a humiliation on film has never ceased to be uh everybody's favorite thing you know also I thought perhaps maybe she's drunk they do look because the lady who fell off the Don K laughs and gets stripped good for her yeah she's they're obviously having a great time filmmakers would often introduce comic interludes to their films to keep Cinema audiences entertained if you look closer at the lady you can see that her hair is cut short perhaps this is an early example of a stunt man caught on film with the northern Mill workers allowed one full week off a year that created a whole new sector the world's first Seaside holiday resorts for working and middle classes alike and one towered above them all Blackpool had a unique offer nowhere else had three peers nowhere else had a Blackpool Tower it was the place to be foreign [Music] in the Edwardian era was the richest most powerful nation in the world all this was thanks to the enormous hard work by its people finally Leisure two was part of their lives for the mill workers of the north they could now enjoy one week's unpaid holiday a year and for millions of people in the early 1900s that meant the seaside and the ultimate place for Edwardian entertainment Blackpool [Music] this is Blackpool Victoria of peer and this is a really fascinating film because this is the third Pier that was built in Blackpool so Blackpool has three fears it has the north Pier the Central Pier and this was called the Victoria pier and it was opened in 1893. now it's called the South Pier the three piers were all connected by the Promenade and the trams running along Blackpool Central seafront this film was made commemorating the opening of the new Promenade in 1904 which allowed um you know this fantastic Promenade Walk we're right up to the new pier Victoria Pierre and what they're doing is promenading really what peers were built for you Promenade it on the pier it's the idea of being able to walk out to sea and being able to look back at Blackpool I mean that was a huge attraction I mean Promenade was a big social activity at this point wonderful Glimpse back at the Sands there of the early housing in Blackpool most of that is now gone you know it's been replaced by large hotels this tram is also incredible because it's also advertising blackpool's famous Winter Gardens a fantastic indoor entertainment complex with the opera house and then the empress Ballroom so the a real palace of entertainment one of the big attractions in Blackpool where everybody went to enjoy the greatest stars of the day or dance on the Fantastic Empress ballroom dance floor you've got middle class people and working-class people all mingling together in ballrooms everybody knew how to dance everybody could whilst and it was a big part of the culture of this time you dressed up to go to the seaside in the way that you dress up to go out on a Saturday night you only had that week off and you didn't get paid for it and you save your money or you'd have holiday clubs they came here for access to the sea to bathe they came here for the the sweets the treats the the ice cream you know they they came for things that they couldn't really get home same time as a Victoria Pier the great Blackpool institution of the pleasure Beach was opening and developing it they brought these incredible rides from all over the world and the river caves was this incredible journey so you went through and you went through all the caves of the world in Blackpool uh so it was an astonishing attraction the river caves attraction is still running here today the other ride going strong is the captive flying machines by sahira Maxin the oldest ride on the pleasure Beach thrilling the public since 1904. Maxim is best known for Designing the first automatic machine gun but he dreamed of inventing powered flight by designing this amusement ride he hoped to raise funds to build a working aircraft sadly this was the nearest to the Flying Machine he achieved in his lifetime the Wright brothers got there first with four million visitors a year Blackpool became a magnet for a new wave of entrepreneurs the illuminations we enjoy today first lit up the town in 1912 and nowhere else had the ultimate money-making attraction Blackpool Tower it was built on the most prominent position overlooking the central Beach which was where Blackpool sprung from it was where all the entertainment was was first offered to the masses who arrived on their day trips and then holidays Blackpool Tower was always about making money and it made a lot of money it could have thousands of people could go through his store every day for a mixture of attractions so you could go dancing you could have a cup of tea it was almost like a multi-purpose venue that we think of nowadays before they were built there's nothing wasted in this building every single bit of this building is economically viable even the legs of Blackpool Tower were used to house a circus designed by Frank nachem Black Hotel circus is the oldest continuous circus in the world because it's never broke season 3 000 people would come here for three shows a day it was advertised as a variety and Aquatic circus so basically this ring would drop down and 40 000 gallons of water would come in and then people would swim horses would dive into it essential stars were the clowns Blackpool Tower clowns were very famous at the early period there was definitely elephants and in the morning during the season they would take them down and you'd go out onto the Promenade and they would actually go swimming in the water in the sea and it was very clever attraction because basically people would come to see the elephants going in the sea but it was also web advertising circus [Music] Blackpool was very much a place of showing and enjoying obviously after the death of Queen Victoria people could actually just feel more relieved and and Edward was a fantastic King in that way he was a very jolly King but those nine years of his Reign are particularly poignant because so much social change but so much joy as well this is a form of time travel these are lives being lived out in front of your eyes to act as our witness really to the Past I think they're wonderful seeing these films with their full color again when you get a sense of the life in a way which is much more direct and much more kind of for immediate and affecting I think what some of these images show you is the individual Behind The Wider story and in the individual you have those who enjoy their life I mean they have limited opportunities and aspirations but they're still having fun one day and there's an awful Story the next and I think the images take you to that level of the individual's experiences and I think there's something really powerful and beautiful about that actually because too often in history you put people into boxes and then the box has a narrative around how hard life was and yes it was hard but there was so much more going on [Music] Return of the 20th century it's an incredible period it's the shaping of our modern era we wouldn't be where we are without the major audience now for the first time in color history tends to be about the rich the famous the powerful whereas these people they're Ordinary People this footage is about them this time Edwardian Britain locked in a power struggle Workers Unite and fight for fairer work and pay real sense of hope I think amongst working people that they can make a difference to their own lives women demand a voice the vote and a place in the world it was about changing society's views about what women could dream to be and do and it was about counting themselves in way that Society didn't count them victories are one but a whole generation would make the ultimate sacrifice it's very poignant because you know what's coming next and you know exactly what these men are going to face [Music] [Music] the Edwardian era from 1901 to 1914 was a period of Rapid change and excitement miraculous new Feats of British engineering were changing the world the unsinkable Titanic built here in Belfast and set sail in Southampton in 1912. and the motor car boasting a top speed of 12 miles per hour were inventions that revolutionized life for all kinds of people the Edwardian period was a start of a new decade of a new century people were prosperous people were happier they were kind of coming out of that long morning period for Queen Victoria there's a whole feeling of optimism cities and towns across the North like Wigan captured here in 1902 were being transformed by modern forms of transport this is at the opening of the tram so the trams were an absolutely important thing for linking small industrial towns together so when when a new tram opened everybody would come out and celebrate virtually every major town in Lancashire had a tram whereby certainly the early 1900s previously they would have had horse drawn trams and so this was like state-of-the-art new technology and they were very much part of civic pride in 1900 more than a million horses were required to pull Britain's trams and buses for just a decade later they had all but vanished British engineered double-decker trams like these were a proud emblem of progress [Music] the excitement The Joy on people's faces at seeing this new innovation at this time everything was Innovative everything was changing not just for upper classes not just for middle classes but for work in Everyday People I think there's something really special about that and I love that we've got the alderman new side by side hochman in the red coat coming alongside the newer tram that's going to displace him just getting ready to start we're leaving behind that world of horse-drawn carriages and horse-drawn carts and yeah we're moving into a different kind of time I absolutely love this shot of the little girl being picked up by her dad so she's on camera everyone around her is cheering and excited it's just a moment of absolute Joy it's fantastic and even the couple in the very middle class couple in the background guys waving his riding crop I think everyone wants to be part of this moment they see it as a historic moment foreign this film was shot by Mitchell and Kenyon two would Warden entrepreneurs who traveled the country documenting everyday life and on this occasion they couldn't resist an attempt at comedy but look at this the filmmakers obviously set up a comedic element you can see the guy in the bowler hat is clearly setting it up and sort of directing it at there and he's giving the sort of saying to to and he's like pushing the man directly into the horse pipe which is hilarious these had a locality of maybe 10 or 12 miles they were not really shown anywhere else outside the area it's actuality it's entertainment to show people a bit of their Hometown on film and get yourself on the screen the color just really brings this scene to life it closes that gap down between us as viewers and their most subjects in the film it makes them seem much more like us it's like time traveling it's like you're going back and walking amongst these people people who are exactly like us and Lead such similar lives to the ones we lead today the Edwardian period is the most fascinating period of like the last hundred years because it's a period of Rapid transformation where people's standards of living increases quite quickly their access to Leisure Time and holidays and new technology is starting to make a massive difference to their lives with more time for leisure sport became part of daily life cricket and Tennis had long been favored by the wealthy but now the Working Man had football where two or three thousand would watch in the Victorian era now matches were attracting crowds of more than thirty thousand this FA Cup third round match between Burnley and Spurs at Taff Mall shows there was nothing bigger than supporting your local team quite extraordinary you can't hear the supporters however 23 000 burn supporters wouldn't have been quiet that day I've been following Burns since 1972 came down my dad brought me on a Fulham game in 1972 down at Birmingham I've followed them for 20 years without missing a game home and away looking at the footage Burma Sean in Greenway that is the correct colors of the day it wasn't up to this stuff in the 1910 season that would change to Clara and blue the captain that day was a gentleman called Alex League he led the Burnley players out and it was a big big occasion cup fever cup fever then olden day all the guys in the background they're wearing flat caps it looks like they've come straight from the Mills to the mill workers and the main workers in the area this is what they lived for football this is where their outlet from coming out of the mines out of the Mills they come straight down here and to watch the Burnley play the average ticket cost only one pound in today's money and apparently the beer was just as cheap [Music] it's rather the worst for wear before the football match I mean football's huge for many communities supporting your local town it's become a regular kind of leisure Pursuit for Many Men we know that then these films are shown in the local exhibition places that people responded to seeing their players and if the home team lost they didn't show the film luckily Burnley won the game 3-1 so the footage survives [Music] [Applause] edwardians were proud not only of their football team but of their local community and they love to show it big social events like this charity swimming gal are in tynemouth in 1901 were an opportunity for the whole town to come out and enjoy themselves the edwardians loved to put on a show for local people they loved Civic events and Galas and necessary processions so this this is very appropriate for Tamo to put on a Gala have people swimming have people diving you know and lots of people in boats watching because it's really it is a it's a town that's fiercely proud of its Maritime history the fancy dress swimming parade in time of they start with top hats and then they have to wear almost like this gentleman's costumes and then they swim and it's it's a local annual charity competition it's so funny seeing men dressed up in fancy dress swimming it's kind of like the ludicrous pantomime of Edwardian entertainment most the people watching would not be able to swim so this is incredibly daring full quality activity and they're not in the safety of the local swimming pool they're actually in the town looks absolutely freezing but this reminds me of as growing up in the Northeast and going to talmouth open airport which was a tidal pool filled with sea water so I I remember um just how cold it was and they're a lot hardier the edwardians than we are I think we're all a bit soft now but Edwardian Britain wasn't all fun and games workers took to the streets to demand a fair deal as a wave of strikes threatened to pull the nation apart working-class people seem to push for a better deal after centuries of having a pretty rubbish deal and this is the first time you really see this and it's played out on the streets [Music] thank you the Edwardian policeman is a figure we can recognize today throughout the era the profession modernized as officers were issued standard uniforms and equipment and Ethan began using methods like fingerprint analysis [Music] a policeman had to be a certain height in the Edwardian period so most policemen that you see command attention from their height and there's that kind of demeanor of authority [Music] I love this thing because it looks to me this is their equipment and I think there's a transient certainly a transient so that's what they defend themselves with their notebook I think we're seeing their whistle and pair of handcuffs the four essential things that you would find on a police officer today only one in five applicants were successful the perfect candidate was over five foot seven physically fit and had a stable personal life criteria that haven't changed too much over the years we certainly did that as well be they tended to select people who were under 30 and if they were married they were told they couldn't have more than two children when they joined and if you wanted to get married you had to ask permission to get married I remember when I got married in 1981 I had to put in a form in ask information to get married so it's still carried on then I was sent away with other male colleagues to an army training center it was such a shock to the system I can remember phoning my dad and saying what an earth have I got myself into these things pretty varied at this time yeah they're involved in first aid they're involved in ambulance work I like the Spirit by the very latest methods of ambulance work they just roll up stick out of stretcher put this poor guy on the stretcher who probably shouldn't be moved stick him in the back and that's the very latest methods of policing it's amazing [Music] Keen to publicize their achievements the themselves commissioned this 30-minute long documentary it's perhaps an early example of Edwardian corporate PR there's an interesting thing already that the makers of this film of senior is necessary to say our friend's the police almost as if they're trying to convince the audience who may be watching this that the police are their friends it's almost as if they're producing this to try and tell the audience what the police do because people don't know what they do or they want to change the perception of what people think the police do shows that the people that have been recruited in civilian clothes they're Ordinary People think they're trying to instill that sense of you can trust us because we are you one January morning in 1911 in the shadowy streets of London's East End the police were about to face something no training could have prepared them for one of the most infamous gun battles in British history all remarkably caught on film [Music] oh it's just amazing isn't it a Siege of Sydney Street something we can relate to today because it's a terrorist incident of Latvian anarchists were on the Run after murdering three men in a failed jewelry robbery tourism got trapped this house in Sydney Street amazing piece of intelligence to track them down so there were the guns that the police had totally inadequate but the unusual thing is that the Army were called in I think the first and only time that the police have called the Army into a system because they had nothing to match the Firepower of these two latvians who were cornered in this house in Sydney Street East End was honed for a large working class an immigrant population it was seen as a hotbed of political activism and those in power were determined to stamp out any signs of social unrest early 20th century Britain the fear of anarchism was very strong and there was a fear that anarchists would take over the country or cause so much disarray that there would be social Revolution so in many ways Sydney Street Siege shows that we do need Army we do need a police force that there is a need for Law and Order it provides a justification for it yeah The Siege lasted for over six hours and standing less than a hundred yards from the gunfire a familiar figure came down to get involved foreign Churchill there in the top hat who had come down to some say to direct operations and people weren't sure about his authorities do that although he obviously had a military background himself so Churchill's there as Home Secretary looking as if he's in charge well of course he shouldn't be in charge the whole point of our system was we set up the police they would be citizens in uniform and not directed by politicians so Churchill had no role there the very presence of a politician might well have been putting the police in more danger because they would have to protect him he went there just because he couldn't resist the temptation of being in the lead I mean he was a bit of a showman was was our Winnie at this time Winston Churchill was a very ambitious young politician and his attempt to resolve the Sydney Street Siege was an attempt to place his name and his picture on the front pages as some sort of Savior now here a fire started in the house where the two latvians were holding out Under Siege nobody knows how that fire started but Churchill had said no Let the Fire Burn even the lap against will come out or they'll die a guy being carried out is a fireman one final was killed actually in this it was a big incident I remember when I was a kid it was still a big thing you can read lots of Articles and books about it but actually watching seeing it seeing Churchill turn up seeing it happening it's fascinating [Music] tension and conflict were in the air and it now exploded in a wave of workers strikes the likes of which Britain had never seen before in 1913 alone there were 1500 strikes from Dockers here in Liverpool to miners teachers and bus drivers all took to the streets to fight against the old order in Dublin 20 000 transport workers most forced to work 17-hour days were locked in industrial disputes without wages for six long months working-class people seem to be rising up in all sorts of ways they're organizing politically they're forming political parties those of them who have the vote are beginning to use it and they're beginning to use it to push for a better deal after centuries of having a pretty rubbish deal and this is the first time you really see this and it's played out on the streets it's a much a group of hotel workers in Dublin that provides a rare glimpse into life on the Edwardian picket line [Music] so this looks like the price list in the strike committee's Cafe you can't strike on an empty stomach wow you pay high prices but where paid Lodge wages this shows how in the Edwardian period with people becoming more aware of what they were getting paid in relative to what they were selling and so that somebody was making a profit out of their low wages so there's they're starting to create these banners I mean that's absolutely fascinating I love this sign if we are super service we are not dished yet not quite sure he's got that right but he's very proud of that he's done that himself and he's standing there with that very forbidding knife it looks like he's parted his hair with that knife by the way down the middle of his head at this time nine out of ten people owned in effect nothing at all these workers were demanding only basic improvements an extra Penny on their hourly wage some kind of state pension and as we are seeing here a reduction on a 14-hour working day these women would have been taking a particular risk it was entirely legal to sack striking workers all of them on day one of the strike but they look as if they're on their way to a victory that's only very cheerful They're laughing and smiling about it is is amazing it sort of shows in a way their confidence in what they're doing no they believe they're right we're seeing that moment of fight when you're driven by what you think is right they're not looking sad they're not looking down these people are laughing they know what they're doing they're confident in what they're doing and they're happy that they're doing it [Music] thank you protest and confrontation was now contagious footage of mass unionist demonstrations in Belfast shows how arguments over home rule threatened to spark Civil War in the United Kingdom this clip is absolutely fascinating it's showing a huge affiliation to the rest of Britain it reminds me strongly of some of the Orange Order marches that we used to see every summer when I was growing up in Liverpool and we can see they've sent a contingent it would seem oh to support these marches in Belfast the Fashions haven't changed much either they still wear bowler hats for that the idea of home rule was something so unknown it was a bit like sort of political climates today and we don't know what's going to happen when there will be huge changes to our borders and to our country and it was this potential that it might have the potential for violence the potential to split families the potential to cause damage that would be irreversible but more than Irish home rule or workers strikes it was a group of middle-class women and their demands for change that was to shake at Ward in Britain to its very core you see the moment of a sacrifice you see the moment where somebody puts their cause beyond their own safety [Music] across Edwardian Britain ordinary people were fighting for a better deal and the suffragettes were leading the charge for women as large public marches like this one in London in 1910 became increasingly common oh wow fortune favors the brave women of all backgrounds with again their amazing hats marching in military style but yet this is a feminine March all the flowing robes my great-grandmother Emily Pankhurst was the leader of the suffragette movement her photos used as the iconic symbol of power and demand and uncompromising Leadership it's a role that she can play and that she will play and she won't give up she will campaign to the end so the incredible to watch this clip because the banner that is the marched forward now was made to commemorate the founding of the wspu the women's social and political union in 1903. that's incredible famed for Deeds of Daring rectitude wow champion of womenhood I mean that just makes me so proud it was much broader than just votes for women it was it was about really changing attitudes towards women and they were at the Forefront of that the televisation process is fabulous in that it just it brings it to life when you have the black and white the white is lost because it's just black or white here when you've got the different colors the white actually emerges as very powerful it is one of the symbolically important colors for the suffragettes white for purity if we go back in time the reality of life is one where Women's options are totally constrained if you had children they are the property of your husband and you're not a citizen you're not allowed to vote you're not seen to have a say beyond the home before the pankhursts the fight for women's suffrage was a relatively tame one the national Union of women's suffrage societies persevered with peaceful and polite protests like this one but Pankhurst suffragettes took a radically different approach the women's suffrage movement started you know well before 1903 and you had 50 years of campaigning before then and you know thousands of petitions that were not getting anywhere and with the beginnings of the suffragette movement you have more voice more noise more engagement it becomes the issue that so many people are talking about they lived by that they adopted more and more violent tactics as the years went on window smashing letterbox bombing hunger strikes the police clash with the suffragettes on a fairly regular basis and that image of women fighting for the votes against a state represented by the police that was denying them that voters are really powerful powerful image they felt they had to do this in order to push for that vote which just had been denied them by this time for more than 50 years we're seeing them respond to this idea that deeds will get attention even if it's bad press it will get you pressed it will get you heard it will get the messages of votes for women in the newspapers there's a lot of suffrage film and the suffragettes were very good at recording what they were doing they were making a conscious effort to make their Mark and also to create films that they could then show in local settings so they were extremely good at marketing their message colors the purple white and green and we can see in the March they're carrying their prison arrows on polls the prison hour represented that you were the property of the government and it's amazing to see that they reclaim that so they take on March just to show we are the property of a government a government that won't give us advice that won't give us a vote that imprisons us and that arrests us foreign such bravery I mean the ways that these women were force-fed you know they went on hunger strikes and they knew that a terrible pain and suffering that went on and then they'd leave prison and then do it the same thing all over again and go on Hunger Strike again but you can understand it can't you it just seems like I talked to my daughters now how could so relatively recently anyone argues that women shouldn't have a vote one woman above all is remembered today for her commitment to the cause Emily Wilding Davison seen here in her academic robes she obtained a first-class degree from Oxford but was never permitted to graduate because she was a woman Emily was almost wildly committed to the cause she was one of the first people to be force-fed we know she broke into Parliament several times and I think at this stage the fight for women suffraged to fight for the vote had almost reached its point the 1913 Epson Derby the scene of the most shocking five seconds of film footage of the Edwardian era so this is an incredible moment in British history big sporting occasion well-known event you see people in their best hats and their best outfits people turn out in their thousands to go and watch it but of course this one we know ends rather differently it's known from being more than a horse race this is on tape This Is Us seeing that moment 100 plus years later you see the people physically going back as they see the horses come past and that the speed at which all of that's happening and somewhere in that crowd we know there's Emily Davidson huge crowds here she comes and there she is oh foreign [Music] it's still shocking to see her suddenly run out I genuinely when I'm watching Newman where she sort of steps out I want to cover my eyes it's almost amazing that she's still standing then so many horses have gone past her [Music] and it's so fleeting almost you could miss it [Music] I mean just the incredible kind of Bravery of that turns out and that moment of contact and impact is just just awful to watch it's the ACT you you see you see the moment of her sacrifice you see the moment where [Music] somebody puts their cause beyond their own safety [Music] miraculously Emily Davison survived for four days it's thought she was trying to attach a scarf to the king's horse in protest [Music] she knows it will make news she knows it will make headlines she wants to make headlines for the women's cause I don't think she wants or expects to die so people call her a martyr and say she is a martyr not necessarily an intentional one this moment is synonymous with the word suffragette you can't talk about them without talking about the suffragette who threw herself in front of the king's horse what makes me so angry as well is that for a long time and in all the newspapers people were more concerned about the horse than they were about the woman and I just think that is a testament to how women were treated at the time how women's rights were considered at the time for you know here's one woman just trying to stand against this tide and in a sense it's a representative of that tide of opposition to suffrage and someone who's standing there just saying you know enough [Music] at Emily Davison's funeral 5 000 suffragettes marched behind her coffin determined to make her a martyr for the cause and a further fifty thousand supporters line the Streets of London there's no doubt about the emotions on people's faces I fought the good fight the women saluting their black bands girls watching at the top [Music] crowd attending this funeral of the Martyr for the suffrage calls so the organization wspu but Ordinary People Too were determined that she would not die in vain it really is a moment [Music] created by women for women their suffragettes were incredibly good at the planning of events and the visual side of things so they were given very specific instructions about what to wear and what flowers to bring and how to present themselves knowing that the visual image of all of this was part of the propaganda it's like a state funeral it's sending off one of their own and I think it shows the element of how they saw themselves as an army how they saw themselves as soldiers because it quite has that very militant aspect to it it must have been really hard for these women who were you know burying a friend burying a comrade to to have to put on a show and to use it actually as another moment to push forward the cause and you see in the first few days the media is very critical of Emmy Wilding Davidson's act that changes quite quickly by the end of the week there's a lot more sympathy and understanding and uh appreciation I think for her and for the cause I think women in those times involved in this struggle were incredibly Brave and uh you know we owe them a great great debt this was not just about the vote it was never just about the vote it wasn't about illegal or structural or policy change it was about changing social norms it was about changing society's views about what women could dream to be and do and it was about individual women doing more with their lives doing different things with their lives counting themselves in way that Society didn't count them so from that perspective well beyond the vote it's those things that people admire and appreciate them for in their fight for equality these Edwardian women knew their enemy but British men would now face a new threat and it was on a scale that few could have ever imagined they were told we had more men more arms than the Germans this is just a matter of finishing them off and you'll all be back by Christmas and we all know what happened next [Music] in July 1914 people enjoyed a long hot summer largely unaware that war was looming over Edwardian Britain this is incredibly poignant footage because it's taken just a few weeks before the outbreak of the first World War and that war is going to change everything and it's going to bring the Edwardian era to a close and social life is not quite the same again after it it is we're sad to see all these boys actually many of them book about the right age to have been either conscripted near the end of the first world war or volunteered when you see them crawling along doing that stuff there you can they're almost like they're crawling under barbed wire or going through look going through hoops the kind of stuff they would do in their army training and then eventually out on the battlefield and to see them at play sun shining grass green whole lives in front of them just looking at this crowd of people you know things were sort of building up tensions were Rising but that didn't impact the you know life didn't stop and it's just amazing to think that yeah within two weeks a lot of these men would have been would have been gone I would have been quite excited to sign up on the 4th of August 1914 Britain declared war with Germany three thousand men a day signed up to fight whole towns enlisted together like these volunteers from Morecambe this film is particularly poignant for me because this is my hometown and that's the more come Winter Gardens it's all within that same area you could actually go that area today and it's still exactly the same all those buildings are still there the regiments going from Lancaster one of the greatest fatalities was the Lancashire regiments my own great grandfather was in these regiments and went off to war and came back severely disabled and could have been one of these this is an emotional film for me I don't really look at it as historical I look at it as my own friends or family for going off to war [Music] so these are the professionals but of course supplemented by your country needs you volunteers this won't take long chaps regular soldiers maybe and they would have been bemused by trench warfare part of stone to watch any footage of men Marching for World War one and not feel the tragedy of it they're so young these are men who you know if they were too young were kind of sent out to have a birthday and come back in again [Music] you can tell it's very early on in the war you can tell because this is mass optimism that they think the war is only going to be like five months or I'm Gonna Be Home for Christmas as one of those tragic postcards you often read about everything about this is very poignant and these young boys like waving their Flags they're showing their pages and they'd carrying one of the soldiers kit bags they want to join in they want to kind of be like the older boys the older men who are Marching and you think in a way these younger boys probably the lucky ones because they escaped that they escaped what would have been an almost certain death [Music] soldiers form part of the king's own Royal regiment they would fight in the battle of the Somme in 1916. one in six of the regiment would die on the front line Corporal George parsonage was one of the lucky survivors that's my grandfather George parsonage in the middle and his best friend Harold Hodson he looks quite cheery he's he's smiling there so obviously he's having a good day by this time he's become a Corporal and this is his dog which he brought home with him after the war called shrapnel foreign coming down to the railway station if we look at what they're carrying here they've all got their 303 landfill rifles and the bandoliers around the neck containing their ammunition their pouches with the first Essentials shaving kit eating kit that they wouldn't have at the front line I would imagine that they were thinking about what they were leaving behind whether they would see their homes again and what's ahead of them what's it going to be like this is a picture of the staff sergeant having his photographing with his daughter having just moved his son out of the way so that he could possibly have his last photograph before he departs for war but it's actually quite a moving feature isn't it because that's all dad's Delight with the daughters and there is an amount of Brevard or where would we need to be brave we need to show or not to screamish or soft but then equally there's a another side that's quite uh thoughtful and and caring and that this is one of those moments [Music] the pride the men felt going to fight was matched by the people left behind from small acts of kindness like collecting blankets for the troops to the manufacturing of artificial limbs all of Britain was United in the war effort the edwardians were brilliant at identifying a need and acting quickly to meet that need whether it's providing a cup of tea at a train station for a soldier passing through on a train or whether it's a blanket that could be sent out to a guy stationed at a Barrack somewhere do you see what mobilization means on the ground unprecedented in British history in European history every industry every worker everyone who can do something is putting themselves into the war effort this is what this film encapsulates really with that sort of community spirit that bound people together and it got Britain through that wall it really did in total six million British men went to war over 700 000 were killed and millions more were injured my dad's father was a stretcher Bearer that then went off probably in a train like that at the age of 17 makes you think about it quite differently but you can see there it's not just because the camera's there this is an exciting Adventure they're going off to do something different and for many of them that have been working those 11 hour shifts in factories and not very good conditions suddenly they got abroad so you can imagine how excited they were very few would have been trepidatious they were told we had more men more arms than the Germans this is just a matter of finishing them off and you'll all be back by Christmas and we all know what happened next huge Carnage just to gain 25 yards on the western Pro [Music] there was a huge enthusiasm for the war in the early days you know fighting for king and country and you know fighting for a just cause so people walk off with pride and with a certain sense of being Invincible I think these films like nothing else reveal how our Edwardian ancestors lived what they stood for what they fought for and what in the end they were prepared to die for history tends to be about the rich the famous the powerful the influential and most of the people that we've been looking at for this film footage are not powerful people they're ordinary people and they often get left out of The Narrative of history but this footage is about them better conditions for workers people's rights are fail people's right to travel people's right to earn a living wage all of those things that we still fight for today the edwardians fought for and achieved for us so we shouldn't look at them as a Lost Generation we should look ourselves as their proud descendants because they they gave us modern society [Music] a world that's shown in all its sensory vividness and you get a better sense of I think the Beating Heart of that of the Edwardian period by seeing it in color

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 1,353,855

Keywords: 19th century life, Victorian culture, Victorian society, archival footage, cinematic history, colorized footage, cultural revolution, dramatic reenactments, everyday life, everyday life portrayals, forgotten history, hidden gems, historic films, historical exploration, historical reenactments, past events, period dramas, rare footage, significant moments, visual storytelling

Id: lELsj7dtw3g

Length: 154min 45sec (9285 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023