[Adrian]

Noticed this two-page spread in the Mail today:

It was the worst slum in Victorian Britain. Yet its crime-ridden streets were SAFER than today's

Said slum was the Old Nichol. But the headline's basically bullshit because the article barely touches on the difference in crime levels. This is what the article says on the matter:

In 1887, five out of every six infants to die in Bethnal Green homes where the whole family shared a bed were found to have suffocated.

Coroners attributed most of these deaths to 'overlaying', during which a sleeping parent or sibling rolled onto the infant and accidentally smothered it.

Others, however, suspected that many were intentionally suffocated, by desperate mothers with too many mouths to feed.

Many believed sexual abuse was uncommon, but Beatrice Webb, one of the founders of the LSE, wrote: 'To put it bluntly, sexual promiscuity and even sexual perversion - the violation of little children - are almost unavoidable among men and women of average character and intelligence crowded into the one-room tenements of slum areas.'

Sounds great.

Mugging was commonplace in the Old Nichol - although perhaps no more so than in London today.

The magistrate Montagu Williams, for example, warned a victim: 'It is as certain as the day is long that if you go out to get drunk, and have money in your pocket, you will, in this neighbourhood, get robbed.'

More violent crimes, however, were rare. According to the Old Bailey archives, between 1885 and 1895 only one murder occurred within the Old Nichol, when a middle-aged shoemaker stabbed his wife to death.

Domestic violence was commonplace, but it stopped short of murder.

So we have a 'perhaps' and an unreliable statistic. And that's it. I'm still happy to be living in the present day, to be honest.

[ManicMiner]

I don't know why the Mail has to include their "safer than today" angle. Another dig at Brown?

[cycloon]

Oh dear. I'd go into this but I'm working and cba.

[jonnyhead]

Domestic violence was commonplace, but it stopped short of murder.

Oh right, that's cool then.

[Antigherkin]

So aside from the child abuse, high morality rate, sexual perversion and domestic abuse, it was truly a golden age when you could leave your door open at night secure in the knowledge that any burglar would be working class and therefore likely to drop dead of TB before he was able to lug your grand piano out the door. Sounds brill.

[Steph]

You could leave your front door unlocked because you had fuck all to steal...oh wait, no I mean, everybody was all friendly and had a jolly old Cockney knees up and trusted each other. "We wuz poor but honest"

There's a major factual error right at the start of the article too, it wasn't called Old Nichol in reference to St Nick, but because the original land owners surname was Nichol. But makes it makes the slumsound like hell, but still better than Broken Britain.

Rargh, this article has missed the whole point of the book and the impact slums had on British politics (i.e stop claiming poverty is because somebody is a moral failure and look at how the government should be assisting the most deprived). There's a great review of the book in the Guardian, from this Mail tripe you'd think it was some sort of sub-Catherine Cookson crap.

[Paul]

1881 census

Institution: "Female Lock Hosp & Asylum" Westbourne Grn
Census Place: Paddington, London, Middlesex, England
Source: FHL Film 1341003 PRO Ref RG11 Piece 0014 Folio 102 Page 1

Hannah NEWSON U 17 F Lowestoft, Suffolk, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Matilda GOOCH U 16 F Greenwich, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute

Mary ROBERTS U 28 F Nottingham, Nottingham, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Elizabeth WHITE W 34 F Melbourne, Australia
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Agnes GOSDEN U 19 F Chobham, Surrey, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Alice HAYHURST U 23 F Deptford, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Henrietta BELSON M 25 F Swanscombe, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute

Mary TAYLOR U 19 F London Bermondsey , Surrey, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Elizabeth HAYNES U 22 F Greens Norton, Northampton, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Susannah DORRELL M 35 F Faversham, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Ellen FLAHERTY U 19 F Deptford, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Emma TAGG U 17 F Thames Ditton, Surrey, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Florence GERMAN U 17 F London Marylebone , Middlesex, England

Mary Ann HUNT U 21 F London Poplar , London, Middlesex, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Maria NEWMAN U 21 F Chatham, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute

Susan HUNT M 25 F Streeton, Gloucester, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute

Catherine SHINE U 18 F Madras, East Indies
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Phoebe WARREN U 17 F London Bethnal Green , Middlesex, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
May GREENWOOD U 18 F Brookland, Hertford, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Ann LEGGETT U 22 F Petworth, Sussex, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Elizabeth ROSS U 10 F Gravesend, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Alice ROGERSON U 17 F Queenborough, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Jane CHAMBERLAIN U 25 F Devenby, Northampton, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Jane CHUCK U 17 F North Mimms, Hertford, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Martha CRANE U 20 F Darlington, York, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Ada TAYLOR U 17 F London Marylebone , Middlesex, England

Ellen BEVAN U 19 F London Lambeth , Surrey, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Caroline PRESTON U 24 F Ramsgate, Kent, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Eliza MARTIN U 17 F London Chelsea , Middlesex, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Ellen JUDE U 20 F Sawston, Cambridge, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Hannah Maria THURLOW U 19 F London Fulham , Middlesex, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Mildred Rose BALDOCK U 19 F London Holborn , Middlesex, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute
Marcella JARVIS U 20 F Windsor, Berkshire, England
Rel: Patient
Occ: Prostitute

[mattomac]

You could leave your front door unlocked because you had fuck all to steal...oh wait, no I mean, everybody was all friendly and had a jolly old Cockney knees up and trusted each other. "We wuz poor but honest"

There's a major factual error right at the start of the article too, it wasn't called Old Nichol in reference to St Nick, but because the original land owners surname was Nichol. But makes it makes the slumsound like hell, but still better than Broken Britain.

Rargh, this article has missed the whole point of the book and the impact slums had on British politics (i.e stop claiming poverty is because somebody is a moral failure and look at how the government should be assisting the most deprived). There's a great review of the book in the Guardian, from this Mail tripe you'd think it was some sort of sub-Catherine Cookson crap.

Whats the books name....

[Steph]

The Blackest Streets by Sarah Wise

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/stor ... 13,00.html

[mattomac]

The Blackest Streets by Sarah Wise

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/stor ... 13,00.html

Sounds good, will get the paperback should have a job by then

[Tom_UK]

Rather than start a new thread...

Oh, the unbearable nostalgia of those fading holiday snaps

But what's this at the bottom?

Those days are gone for ever and eternally present. The colours are faded, but not enough to stop the photograph breaking my heart.

© Guardian News and Media

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... iday-photo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Esqui]

I'm going to guess that a few Victorian slums were safer than the very worst parts of the UK today, and that like for like - it's now much much better.

[Tom_UK]

Another one today:

When the three Rs meant rations, roller skates...and real education: School day pictures from the 1940s, 50s and 60s

Everything was so much better when kids' got indoctrinated at school...


...and we had lovely TB...

[glasgowgril]

...and we got caned for not using a ruler to draw lines, and it didn't matter how badly you were being bullied, nobody was interested, and kids with learning difficulties got caned for doing badly, and teachers could call kids fat, ugly and stupid without any comeback, and lessons were the same year after year after year (I had a teacher in 1972 whose idea of a history lesson was to sit at his desk and read out facts written on the back of old bank statements dated 1941, and that is absolutely true, I swear it)....oh yes, and of course ALL the kids were white. That makes SUCH a difference to REAL education. Riddled with TB, but white.

If the Mail makes any more efforts to please its readers, it might as well come in the new! improved! long thin ready-perforated format.

[crabcakes_windermere]

Bloody soft Victorian kids living off the state - you have to pay upwards of £20 for a slanket these days on firebox.com, and they used to get them for free!