WEBVTT - S3 – INTERVIEW 2: Louise Raw 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:09.600 Our guest today is Dr Louise Raw. Dr Raw is 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:12.360 a labor historian with a background in the trade union 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:16.120 movement and political campaigning. She has spoken across the world 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:20.000 telling the story of the Match Women's Strike of her 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.119 book Striking a Light set a new direction for British 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:26.720 labor history. In addition to organizing an annual festival in 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.440 the Match Women's Honor, Dr Raw has served as a 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:32.839 historical consultant for the BBC and appeared on camera in 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.760 series like The Victorian Slum which is available in the 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:39.560 US as Victorian Slumhouse. She has written regularly for British 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:43.480 newspapers including The Independent, of The Morning Star and New European. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.760 She drops in on BBC Radio London and contributes to 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:50.159 programs on BBC Radio Four. It's a privilege to have 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:54.639 her here on Unobscured. Researcher Karl Neelli sat down virtually 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:57.040 and talked with Dr Raw for this season of Unobscured, 0:00:57.320 --> 0:00:59.360 and you'll hear that a storm rolls in part way 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.319 through their convert station, but Louise couldn't be stunted I'm 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:04.320 grateful for that, and I think you will be too. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.560 Carl and Dr Raw begin their conversation with the winding 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:11.199 route into studying and writing forgotten stories from the past. 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.679 This is the Unobscured Interview series for season three. I'm 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:20.080 Aaron Minky. I'm a historian, but I like to call 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:25.160 myself an accidental historian because that's really accurate in terms 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:28.760 of what happened. I'm not an academic historian who always 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.920 thought they would do that. I'd lass school of fifteen 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.319 and I've done. You know, the jobs you do when 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.760 you leave school of fifteen really pubs and restaurants and shops. 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:40.960 And I really, through being involved in the trade junior movement, 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:46.800 fell into becoming the historian, in particular of a strike 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.960 that happened in the East End of London in that 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.360 big year of the strike of the Branton main match 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.120 from him and I really started as an essay on 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.240 a trade in Labe, a history course about Oh, I 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.720 don't like to say how long ago, but twenty plus 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:06.520 years shall we say. And I'm still writing that essay 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.919 Coal really because I'm still researching the match and I'm 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.600 still finding out new things about them and They were 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.800 my teachers. They really were. They may be dead, but 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.880 let's not hold that against them. They were my best teachers. 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:25.079 Through them, I learned so much about how history, as 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.160 I don't need to say to you or your listeners, 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.799 isn't just a neutral record of everything that happened. It's 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:36.200 incredibly political. It can be incredibly biased. It's also very 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:40.760 very powerful. We need it. We as human beings, need 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.720 stories of where we come from. We need stories of 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.280 people like us. That's really important, whether we're black, or 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.960 working class or female. We need stories about people like us, 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.920 our achievements and our importance to our country. That's so 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.520 vital to a sense of our identity. And I learned 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.679 from my research that British history, of course, is incredibly 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:06.880 bad at that it is a forgetting machine, really that 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.480 forgets all the bad things. Well, the Britain's done all 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.200 the bad things about the empire. Americans may need to 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:16.720 be told that Britain did do some bad things historically. 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.040 You know, we've not been wonderful through the years. You 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.679 will be stunned, I know, to hear this. But it's 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:27.640 not just about the empire. All the achievements of anyone 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.800 who's not the kind of great white individual, really preferably 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:33.799 a great white man. We allow a few women to 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.080 sneak in as well. Anyone who doesn't fit that mole 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:40.640 gets really excluded from the narrative. We just can't believe 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.520 they kind of achieved anything. I realized how important that was, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.440 and it became my obsession really to be a collector 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.360 of those stories and a teller of those stories, because 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.680 I think history should do something. It's not just there 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.240 to be interesting and fascinating, just about who we are 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.800 and what we're capable of, and it's so important to 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:08.760 inspire us today in terms of what we can achieve. 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:11.720 People like the match women were supposed to be powerless. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:16.320 They were supposed to be completely irrelevant. Although they're part 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.600 of the majority of the country, the working classes, they're 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.960 supposed to be completely irrelevant to it. They're just toiling away. 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:25.320 We don't need to know their names. There are kind 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:30.320 of undifferentiated blob of the masses, and we don't need 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.280 to know anything about them because they're not really people. 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.120 Of course, that's the humanizing. Of course, it's very dangerous 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:41.360 politically to go down that route, and we need these stories. 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:43.800 So I'm trying to really turn the spotlight of history 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.680 onto those stories that have been kept in the dark 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:51.280 or pushed into the dark. So part of the way 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.240 that you have shined a light on some of these 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.320 stories is with a fantastic book called Striking a Light 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.880 that tells the story of the brandon a Match Women's Strike, 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:06.640 what they won, the durable union that they built. UM, 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:10.480 that had kind of all in victim to that forgetting machine. 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.280 As you say, UM, can you describe you mentioned the 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.680 amount of time that you've spent learning their story. Can 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.080 you describe some of the process of what it took 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:22.720 to learn their story? What did that take? As a 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.680 loving description, it really was like wrestling with this beast 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.520 of history and trying to get it to give up 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.760 these stories that it was obscuring. It was a bit 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.920 like who done it? When you know who done it, 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.560 but nobody wants to believe you about who done it. 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:42.120 So I had to prepare a case, and of course 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:45.960 I had no witnesses. That was the first problem. The 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.320 first thing that I did was to go to the archives. 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:51.400 I kind of toddled down in my lunch break. I 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:53.799 remember from work, I happen to be working quite close 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:57.400 to where that Brian to Make Company archives would then kept, 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:02.200 which was in the basement of a to local history museum. 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.400 And I had not been in an archive. I had 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:07.680 to tell you, I did not know what that entails 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.679 at all. So I was completely fronting it out. Oh yeah, hello, 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:12.640 I'm here to look at it. I know exactly what 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.080 I'm doing. And they took me down to this basement 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:20.039 and they brought me loads and loads of enormous cardboard boxes. 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.840 Now this is not how archival work is done. Now 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.880 you're ordering one document at a time if you're lucky. 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:29.920 But then they just left me with these boxes, and 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.279 I thought, I have no idea what to do here. 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:35.479 So I opened the boxes started routing through papers in 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:41.120 there from the sixties, the nineteen sixties. It's all jumbled up, fascinating. 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.560 So I just had a route through and very quickly 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:50.159 came upon some evidence that the strike was not at 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:54.680 all as I've been taught it. Those historians who had 0:06:54.720 --> 0:07:00.000 written about it, the mainly manly historians, the mainly manly Marxists. 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.599 That you had written about the strike, I've only done 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.080 so very briefly. There would be the odd line about it, 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.000 or this strike happened, but it wasn't very important. It 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.480 was just a few girls. It was a big deal. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:15.200 And crucially that the strike was led from the outside 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:20.280 by a socialist called Abbescent. She's chiefly pushing to the 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:24.560 role of strike leader because she was middle class. That 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:29.640 meant it's not a real, proper worker organized strike. So 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:33.480 that means immediately it's downgraded. It's not an important fact 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.800 of labor, of working class history, because what are the 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.320 match girls in that scenario. Puppets? They're just puppets. They 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.080 have been told what to do. So I'm in the archives. 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.400 I quickly come upon a note the foreman had made 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.640 the formula a factory saying these are the women who 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.360 we think are the troublemakers and the ring leaders of 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.120 this strike. And I thought, oh, hello, Well, if this 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.360 is a strike that was completely organized from the out side, 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.400 how can there be ring leaders from inside? So I 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:10.200 started to draw up a timeline to prove I suppose 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.320 I was trying to prove myself wrong, because I'm not 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:15.840 an academic at this point at all. As I say, 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.120 I'm less called at fifteen, and you know, men have 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:20.920 written in books that this was not an important strike 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:22.920 and that this was led from the outside. Who am 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.640 I to question that? And yet I'm a trade unionist. 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.240 I didn't know at the time that, you know, my 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.560 whole life really had been a preparation, and that I 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.080 had the advantage of not being an academic, of having 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.280 been involved with strikes, that having been involved with workers 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:42.280 a bit like this. So I had to prove it, 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.600 and I started drawing up a time and my goodness, 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.000 you know, I'd love to say I was following some 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.840 kind of classical academic tradition, but I kind of made 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.800 it up as I went along, just to pursue this story. 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.479 How do you do it? There's no timeline of events. 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.400 We only have a few lines on it. Though some 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.640 girls went on strike, wasn't a big deal. Nothing to 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.040 see here, and move along until some men do it 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:08.440 with the ducks strike the next year. So I'm thinking, right, 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.160 I need a timeline. So I literally done in the 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.680 middle of my front room, put a line of papers, 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.480 wrote dates on them, and then got every bit of 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:24.000 evidence I possibly could, from newspapers, from people's journals, from 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:27.800 any kind of commentary. I could find local papers, national papers, 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:32.240 you know, George Bernard Shaw's diary, any Besson's journal, William Morris, 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.319 any of the celebrities socialists who were around at the time, 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.360 and working through these I managed to piece together. Okay, 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:41.400 so it seems to have this seems to have been 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.040 what really begun the strike. This seems to have been 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:49.959 what happened next. And I went to the Colindale newspaper library, 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.760 absolutely wonderful. Ruined my eyesight, you know, looking at microvision 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:58.240 micro film of reports in local papers, because local papers 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:00.840 did carry the strike. Actually there was a paper called 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.960 The Star that was very interesting, sent reporters down there. 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:07.400 But and from that I did manage to come up 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:11.760 with a good, solid timeline which told a completely different 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.640 story from the orthodox version. This is a proper strike. 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.240 It's a spontaneous strike. It's a reaction to management bullying, 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:23.440 and they're brilliantly organized. They're not just these little girls 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.000 who are who are being told you have. The orthodox 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.760 version would suggest that any Vescent, who was a journalist 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.440 at the time, went down to the factory and sort of, 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.080 for no apparent reason, told the match girls they were 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:39.360 going on strike. I say, girls who know you don't 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:41.920 know me, but George Bynature and I who don't know 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:44.040 either have had a vote, and we've decided for no 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:46.640 real reason. You know, it's a Wednesday, we're board, we've 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.920 decided you're all going on strike. I mean, how ludicrous. 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:53.200 And supposedly the women just said, oh god, Bleshamama, certainly, 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.000 whatever you say, we'll be there. This is not how 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.720 strikes happened. This is not how real life happens at 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:03.439 all all. So I had to really claw back, and 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:08.439 once I had the timeline, I had immensely contradictory accounts, 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.600 you know, orthodocs history, and he bessn't led the strike, 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.640 and he besn't Oh my god, the match wouldn't have 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.440 gone on strike, and paraphrasing obvious legion actually said that, 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:21.440 and she's thinking, oh no, this is a disaster. Why 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:23.640 are they gone on strike? We can't afford to support 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:27.480 these people financially. Oh shit, or the Victorian equivalent to that, 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:31.600 not knowing the strike has happened, And I'm thinking, my goodness, 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.679 if I can find this out, what the hell is 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.200 happening here? How have historians who have looked at this 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:43.960 strike managed to conclude that this woman who's who's who's 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.920 like sort of that shaggy song. It wasn't me, that's 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:50.600 Sammy Best. She's running around and I did not stop 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:53.360 that strike. That was not my idea, she said. I 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.439 think it's a terrible idea that they've gone on strike. 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.280 Why did they have to do it? And yet historians 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.679 have looked at that and gone yet finitely started by 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.400 this middle class woman. That's how blinkered we are, isn't it? 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:08.280 In terms of class? We just can't accept anything else. 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.760 And then I thought, well, I've got these accounts, but 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.800 they're mostly middle class accounts. They're from journalists or as 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:19.319 I say, from your Morris Is and your George Burnit shures, 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:24.120 and there's this kind of hilarious incomprehension of middle class 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:26.960 people observing what working class people are doing. Is if 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:31.720 there are another species. Really, And one journalist goes along 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:34.160 to the picket line and he says, well, is it 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:38.440 really extraordinary looking women? Gosh, they are strange. They seem 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.280 to have this sort of style where their clothes they've 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.520 got wear patches on their clothes and they have very 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:47.840 broken boots and it's very odd. Yes, this is not 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.480 a fashion fella. They are poor. You know, there's complete 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.680 the class is just there's such a gulf between a 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:59.320 middle class journalist and a working class match battery woman. 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.200 There's complete incomprehension. So I thought, I'm trying to put 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:07.160 a case here without the witnesses, without the real witnesses, 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:10.520 who are of course the women themselves. What do we 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.160 do about that when they are very, very dead by 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:18.000 the time I'm researching this, And I thought, well, the 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:20.760 closest I'm going to get, isn't it is to get 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:26.000 to their descendants, if possible, if I can possibly find grandchildren, 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.440 maybe even great grandchildren by this point, that's as close 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:31.880 as I'm possibly going to get. And goodness, lots of 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:36.160 historians advised me not to do this. That's a terrible idea. 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.760 It's very hard to trace women forward through history, to 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:41.920 trace their families. It is hard, by the way, that's 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:45.720 completely true. But also again I felt, there was this class, 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.160 and why would you want to talk to their descendants? 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.640 They probably won't know anything about the strike. They might 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.000 be a bit old and perhaps a bit do dally 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.280 by this stage. Would they even would they know? Would 0:13:57.280 --> 0:13:59.520 they understand the importance of it? And you sort of 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:03.360 think more to be just there, probably working class still, 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:05.559 I mean, who knows. They may not be at its point, 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:07.880 doesn't mean they won't know anything about this event. But 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.840 to me, that seems to be the impression that I 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:13.959 was being given a really really bad I did to 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.520 do that, but I persevered. I wrote a little piece 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.000 for the Irish Times because I thought a family that 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.320 have gone back to Ireland. I knew that a lot 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:26.040 of these women were Irish or Irish heritage, and I 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:27.760 didn't really get me anywhere. Got me a lot of 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:30.840 interesting letters, but nothing that really connected me. And then 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:35.160 I was doing a talk at the Docklins Museum in 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:37.400 London and I was saying, oh, I'm talking about the match, 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:39.480 and I was saying, oh, and I'm looking for descendants, 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.960 but it's so difficult to find. And at the end 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.600 a woman came up to me, a woman called Joan Harris, 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:49.480 and she said, oh, sorry to bother you love. I 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:52.200 know you're trying to probably get away, but I think 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:54.480 the photograph you showed of the women, I think that's 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:59.280 my grandmother in there in the back, and probably her 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:02.320 sister as well, my great aunt. And I was sort 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:04.920 of like, lock the doors, did not let this woman escape. 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.000 You are going nowhere, madam, until I have your address. 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:11.880 And I immediately went around to interview her like like 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:14.280 an arrest. I've been drained by as quickly as I could. 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:18.600 That's where it all began, fascinating story of Mary Driscoll, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:23.080 who was her grandmother. There I spoke at another museum, 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:25.400 the Ragged School Museum, and I was talking about that. 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:28.000 I was saying, and would you believe I got so lucky. 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.440 I met this woman who was a descendant and two 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:32.880 bloats at the back where we'll actually love. Yeah, our 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.280 our grandmothers were matched with it as well. And again 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:40.040 I was like, go nowhere, oh nowhere. And I met 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:47.000 Jim Best and Ted Lewis. These were so valuable, so valuable. 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:48.920 You know, all history can be looked down on a 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:52.320 little bit is not not quite proper, not quite documentary. 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:57.280 But these people taught me so much. I would walk 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.760 around the East End with Ted Lewis and he was 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:01.560 a historian. You know, he might not have been a 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:03.680 professional one, but he was a historian, that man to 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:07.440 his bones. Because he could take me around the modern 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.040 East End and make me see past the concrete and say, 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.960 well over there, girl, there was a music all over there. 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.440 Over there, that's the pub where my grandma used to go. 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:19.840 That's where she used to buy her jelly deals. That's 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:22.200 where she used to go to the market. And suddenly 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.400 you see it. You see it, and it's real, and 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.320 those people are brought closer to you, so that but 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:32.600 wouldn't have happened without those descendants, and they are I 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:34.680 was learning from them, you know, there was none of 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:38.479 this thing of the historian goes to interview the informants 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:42.000 who were very minor in the process. I learned everything 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.640 really from them about how it really was and about 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:50.400 how how events were remembered in the East End, which 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:54.560 runs parallel but separate from how their grandmothers have been 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:59.480 remembered in conventional history. They don't have this Annie bess 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:01.760 at this top down version of this story. They have 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.919 that was my grandma and her mates, and they were 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.960 pretty proud of it. They were quite pleased about their story, Lave. Yeah, 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:10.120 they were pretty pleased about that. Didn't have much time 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:12.080 to think about it because they were straight back to work, 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:13.880 so they didn't have time to sit around and write 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:15.800 your books like you're doing. But they were Yeah, they 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:17.639 used to talk about it and they were pretty pleased, 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:23.040 and that's amazing. That's a you know, an uncorrupted, sort 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.399 of preserved in amber version, and that's just close to 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.119 the horse's mouth as you're going to get m hm. 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.680 And I love reading the book because you can see 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:37.000 their stories shining through. I mean, I think I'm so 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:38.800 glad that you that you met up with them and 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:42.359 talked with them, because it gave so much life to 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.240 your book. So I hope we'll spend especially a few 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:49.200 more minutes talking about Mary Driscoll later on. Um, but 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.000 let's let's go now. Can you take us a little 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:57.960 bit back to that London of the late eighteen hundreds. Um, 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:02.000 let's start with getting oriented in the place. What's the 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.320 geography of London like from the big picture to the 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:10.120 East End? Well, we really only have an East End 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.679 from around this period. Of course, London's always had an 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.480 Eastern basis. It's not new. They don't suddenly stick it 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.440 on in the eighteen eighties, but it only starts to 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:23.320 be talked about as the East End around this period. 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:30.000 And London is such a separate collection of communities and 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:35.680 such disparate areas, it's it's hard to conceive really of 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.879 how cut off different bits of London are from one another, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.080 and particularly along a class line. This is really really crucial. 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:46.720 You can't look at London without that, and people start 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.399 to talk about east End to West End, worst End 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:53.840 to best End, and that's what we're talking about. We're 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:58.399 talking about posh London and disreputable London, which is what 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:05.359 the East End becomes. Everything really changes with industrialization. London 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:08.840 becomes much more divided. Before that, you've had rich and 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:13.119 poor living fairly cheap by gewl So imagine a typical 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.280 London square if anybody's ever seen EastEnders, You've still got 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.879 some of those old houses facing onto a square, and 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.680 the rich people are living in those lovely big houses, 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:25.960 and then behind them rows and rows of sort of 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:29.320 service streets really where people live who are perhaps working 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:34.119 for them, but people are close together. And then we 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:40.160 have industrialization. Everything changes. People come in from the countryside 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.879 from working in you know, perhaps on farms or working 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.920 in a very feudal set up really perhaps the lord 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.280 of the manner in some capacity. They come flooding into 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:54.080 the new towns and cities in especially London to work 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:58.400 in the new factories. Nothing's ready for them. Nothing's prepared, 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:03.720 so they just come rowding into London and the rich 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.280 get the hell out as soon as they can, and 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.879 scheme trains, of course make that possible. Suddenly we have 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.719 new suburbs, so you can get out, you can come 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:15.800 back into London for work, and then you can get 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:18.320 away from all the dirt and the dust and the 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:23.680 disorder of industrialization. And you know, it's a pretty stinky process, industrialization, 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:25.199 particularly in the East n where you had a lot 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:29.639 of slaughter houses as well, absolutely dank on Sundays. So 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:33.400 they could get out, and they left the poor, particularly 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:35.760 in the East End, just to get the hell on 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:40.240 with it. They had very little infrastructure, you know, forget 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:46.800 about social services or really good schooling or any sort 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.200 of help. Of course, there are no welfare benefits at 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.200 all in those days. They're just left to get on that. 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:54.639 They haven't even got street lighting in the East End 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.440 when you read about you know, the darkest East and 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.080 the dark streets where they really were dark because they 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:06.000 were unlit a lot of the time. And we start 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:10.000 to find that people even who live quite near to 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.920 the East End claim they don't know where it is. 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.720 I mean, it sounds so bizarre, but literally Jack London 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.439 finds this. He asks people. I think he asked some shopkeepers. Oh, 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:23.679 I'm trying to find this place called the East End. 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:25.320 Can you tell me sort of where does it start? 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:27.560 Where does it begin? How do I go? And these, 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:31.439 you know, quite well, quite respectable shop teams, I've heard 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:33.440 tell of it, But I am afraid I couldn't tell 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.560 you where such a place as I would never go there. 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:39.160 One one simply would never go there. And people would 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:41.520 pretend they couldn't find the East End on a map. 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:45.720 Of course they could, but it became this embodiment of 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:52.280 sin and depravity and disreputable policy. So you were not 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:55.479 respectable if you had connections in the East End, if 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:58.760 you had friends there, if you went there apart from business. 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:02.320 So it's so bizarre, isn't it. We have this area 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:05.960 which is producing a lot of the wealth of the country, 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.800 that we have all these important factories there, we're unloading 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.840 the wealth of empire at the docks there. It's crucial, 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:20.040 crucial to the glittering success of the Victorian Empire. And 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.399 we're pretending it doesn't exist, We're pretending we don't know 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:26.920 it's there, and we're calling it the Darkest East as 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:31.320 orientalist language, as if it's a strange terror incognito, this 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:36.720 weird place completely cut a drift, sort of culturally and mentally, 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:39.960 cut a drift from the rest of London. So London 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:42.840 is a divided place. And if we say what was 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:46.359 life like in London, we'd have to say, well, whose 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:51.200 life and where? It completely depends on how much money 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.080 you have, I mean doesn't it always, but particularly at 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:56.639 this time and in this place, and what kind of 0:22:56.760 --> 0:22:59.840 life are you doing and where are you? Completely different 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:04.600 to the extent that there are events in history, there 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:07.520 are marches and protests, and the match Women Strike is 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:12.240 one of them, where the poor leave their district, you know, 0:23:12.560 --> 0:23:16.040 and that wasn't allowed at all. People were horrified knowing 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:20.400 your place literally keeping in your place is geographical as 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:25.399 well as cultural, and people would throw things. I mean, 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:30.320 we have protest marches in theies where the servants of 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:33.639 the posh clubs in Palman, you know, the gentlemen's clubs 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:35.800 in Palma come out on the door sorts and throw 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:38.719 things at the poor who were marching past them. They 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.280 throw heavy glass asteries, they throw shoes, you know, they're 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:43.399 cleaning the gentlemen's shoes and they get their carrier, they 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:46.200 throw them at the poor. You know, go home, what 0:23:46.320 --> 0:23:50.199 are you doing here? Get out of here? So who's 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:53.520 London for the poor? They were told this is your 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:55.879 part of London. The rest of it does not belong 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:58.760 to you, and you shouldn't even be there. When the 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:02.840 match women during this marched Parliament, it literally stopped the traffic. 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:07.920 People stopped and stead and cat called and hurled abuse 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:10.879 at them because the poor were, yes, supposed to be 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:14.760 preferably not seen as well as not heard. You were 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:17.600 supposed to be invisible. That was a lot more comfortable, 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:20.480 of course, for the rich if you were invisible. So 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:25.320 it's just this hugely divided place at this point. And 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:28.840 you've mentioned that you've started to bring in the context 0:24:29.040 --> 0:24:32.600 of London as the largest city in the world at 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:36.199 the time, the nerve center of a global empire. How 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:39.000 would you describe the conditions of working people? You know, 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:42.080 do you have a few more comments on the relationship 0:24:42.240 --> 0:24:46.959 between the conditions of working people to London's financial significance 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:51.639 to its imperial significance at the time. As somebody said 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:57.040 on observing the doctors at work, there's this huge contradiction 0:24:57.960 --> 0:25:02.320 because they're unloading the wealth and the riches and the 0:25:02.560 --> 0:25:06.399 silks and the spices and the teas and all this wonderful, 0:25:06.560 --> 0:25:11.000 luxurious stuff, and they're touching all things and tasting none. 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:15.240 They're dealing in these goods they can never ever afford 0:25:15.359 --> 0:25:19.240 them their unloading tea that they will never taste, their 0:25:19.320 --> 0:25:22.640 unpacking spices, that they will never be able to enjoy, 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:25.720 silks that their wives will never be able to wear. 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:31.800 So there's this immense and it seems to modernize immensely 0:25:31.960 --> 0:25:38.600 hypocritical division. Here we are this incredibly rich, I mean 0:25:38.680 --> 0:25:40.919 mostly because we stole and stuff from other people around 0:25:40.960 --> 0:25:42.800 the world. But you know, that is how the British 0:25:42.880 --> 0:25:45.639 do things, as a little tradition of ours to do that. 0:25:46.040 --> 0:25:48.600 But we have become incredibly rich off the backs of 0:25:48.680 --> 0:25:52.960 other people, including our own poor people. So they are 0:25:53.080 --> 0:25:58.280 the engine of our prosperity, and they're not getting to 0:25:58.440 --> 0:26:01.560 share in it whatsoever. We treat them almost like machinery. 0:26:02.000 --> 0:26:05.400 You can process things, you can produce our wealth, there's 0:26:05.440 --> 0:26:08.040 nothing to do with you. You don't get a share 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:14.680 in it whatsoever. And yet we have this jingoistic sort 0:26:14.720 --> 0:26:19.280 of flag waving narrative that's in the music halls at 0:26:19.320 --> 0:26:21.960 the time, and in all the songs, everyone in Britain 0:26:22.080 --> 0:26:24.920 is doing well. We're also incredibly proud to be British. 0:26:25.320 --> 0:26:28.760 And yet most of Britain is being excluded and might 0:26:28.840 --> 0:26:31.840 let him wave a flag occasionally, but they're being excluded 0:26:31.920 --> 0:26:35.400 from any of those benefits. Huge wealth is being made 0:26:35.920 --> 0:26:40.320 and people are working twelve sixty nowadays and starving to death. 0:26:40.960 --> 0:26:44.040 How do you square that? How is that in any 0:26:44.119 --> 0:26:50.560 way fair? Even according to the fairly simplistic christian Ish 0:26:52.320 --> 0:26:55.760 Victorian narrative that everyone's in their place, and God puts 0:26:55.800 --> 0:26:57.800 you in your place, and you know, the rich man 0:26:57.880 --> 0:27:00.359 in his castle, the poor man at the gap, be 0:27:00.440 --> 0:27:04.040 happy with your place in life. Even then, it's a 0:27:04.119 --> 0:27:08.080 little bit hard to argue that the people making the wealth, 0:27:09.000 --> 0:27:11.520 helping to make the wealth, should be actually starving to 0:27:11.680 --> 0:27:15.080 death whilst working. What do the Victorians do about this? 0:27:15.160 --> 0:27:19.760 Where they could have reformed things, They could have improved housing, 0:27:19.800 --> 0:27:22.639 they could have improved working conditions, But why would you 0:27:22.680 --> 0:27:27.200 do that? That's expensive. It's a lot easier to divide 0:27:27.280 --> 0:27:32.119 the poor into the deserving and the undeserving. Virtually no 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:35.040 one is deserving poor. Really, even if you are, they'll 0:27:35.040 --> 0:27:37.160 find a way that you're doing something wrong and being 0:27:37.200 --> 0:27:40.080 the wrong sort of poor person. So we can blame 0:27:40.160 --> 0:27:42.080 these people, Oh, well they must be drinking, or well 0:27:42.119 --> 0:27:45.080 they can't really be working hard enough. And when there 0:27:45.160 --> 0:27:48.600 are occasional stories of a doctor being called to a 0:27:48.680 --> 0:27:52.000 woman who's who's working sixteen hour days and who's literally 0:27:52.160 --> 0:27:55.880 died of malnutrition, it's all a bit awkward and embarrassing 0:27:56.359 --> 0:27:58.600 and quite now what to do about that, So tend 0:27:58.680 --> 0:28:01.480 to do nothing really, but she probably had a husband 0:28:01.480 --> 0:28:04.800 who drank. It's probably some kind of you know, properly 0:28:05.000 --> 0:28:08.320 behavior was going on there. And it's really only when 0:28:09.800 --> 0:28:13.280 the upper classes absolutely have to I mean, there are 0:28:13.400 --> 0:28:16.720 some exceptions, of course, there are reformers and philanthropists, but 0:28:16.840 --> 0:28:19.680 really it's when there's something like cholera and they realized 0:28:19.720 --> 0:28:24.080 that disease doesn't necessarily respect class boundaries. That we get 0:28:24.119 --> 0:28:26.760 people going into the East den missions to the East 0:28:26.960 --> 0:28:30.960 End to try to help these poor souls, but in 0:28:31.240 --> 0:28:33.840 very much a top down way. There's no equality there. 0:28:33.920 --> 0:28:37.280 It's so this poor souls, this poor there's massive people 0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:39.840 called the poor who are always with us, as Jesus 0:28:39.880 --> 0:28:42.520 sale and will go in and pat them on ahead 0:28:42.520 --> 0:28:44.440 a little bit and tell them to clean themselves up 0:28:44.480 --> 0:28:46.520 and sort themselves out, and give them a little bit 0:28:46.520 --> 0:28:51.880 of rather cold charity. So there's no there's no respect 0:28:52.040 --> 0:28:55.880 really for working class people at all. They are written 0:28:55.920 --> 0:28:59.200 about as animals a lot of the time. The terrible 0:28:59.240 --> 0:29:03.520 conditions that they're living in are blamed on them, as 0:29:03.560 --> 0:29:05.840 if they're choosing, you know, as if a family of 0:29:05.920 --> 0:29:09.080 Irish migrants who are living fift into a room have 0:29:09.280 --> 0:29:11.120 chosen that, you know, they could have lived in a 0:29:11.200 --> 0:29:14.200 five story town, has what they decided they did much 0:29:14.360 --> 0:29:17.160 rather or live in one room with no running water 0:29:17.440 --> 0:29:19.560 and granny dying in the corner and much more fun. 0:29:19.640 --> 0:29:22.400 That's what they like to do. So we stigmatize and 0:29:22.480 --> 0:29:26.920 we blame people for conditions that are absolutely no fault 0:29:27.000 --> 0:29:31.240 of their own MHM. In the book, in Striking a Light, 0:29:32.080 --> 0:29:34.800 you cite an argument that in the Victorian era, um 0:29:35.640 --> 0:29:38.160 here's the quote from the book, the power, social standing, 0:29:38.200 --> 0:29:43.320 and influence of the industrial industrial bourgeoise increased exponentially to 0:29:43.440 --> 0:29:45.680 the point where it had been argued it became the 0:29:45.720 --> 0:29:50.200 hedgemonic class that its values eventually suffusing and dominating the 0:29:50.440 --> 0:29:54.400 entire society. Did you find this sort of thing to 0:29:54.480 --> 0:29:56.640 be true as you conducted your research? And to what 0:29:56.800 --> 0:30:02.760 extent does that include ideals about domestic femininity among working 0:30:02.800 --> 0:30:05.200 class women? So how true was it that really it 0:30:05.360 --> 0:30:08.960 was middle class rather even than than upper class kind 0:30:09.000 --> 0:30:14.280 of culture that became the dominant culture in Victorian society. Yes, 0:30:14.360 --> 0:30:17.720 we definitely do see that happen. We see what people 0:30:17.840 --> 0:30:20.960 might be familiar with as the angel in the house 0:30:21.320 --> 0:30:25.240 narrative that the little woman should be embroidering by the 0:30:25.400 --> 0:30:29.000 fire and making a lovely domestic haven for her man 0:30:29.120 --> 0:30:31.520 to come houmet. Now we think of that as just 0:30:31.640 --> 0:30:34.680 being old fashioned, like that's an idea that's always been there, 0:30:34.720 --> 0:30:37.280 but it wasn't. You See, this is a new idea. 0:30:38.160 --> 0:30:40.200 What the men who and it is generally men that 0:30:40.280 --> 0:30:46.000 are always who make money through being capitalists by owning factories. 0:30:46.040 --> 0:30:50.000 For the first time, there's a real social mobility that's 0:30:50.080 --> 0:30:53.520 possible for working class people. If they have enough money 0:30:54.040 --> 0:30:56.960 to buy a factory to set up production of matches, say, 0:30:57.040 --> 0:30:59.520 which is actually quite cheap, it's quite a low capital 0:30:59.680 --> 0:31:03.520 in kind of thing to do, then they can start 0:31:03.600 --> 0:31:05.640 to rise up a social scale in a way that 0:31:05.760 --> 0:31:10.760 Jess wasn't possible before. Suddenly they've got money, Suddenly they 0:31:10.920 --> 0:31:14.880 have status, and they look around and think, well, what 0:31:15.000 --> 0:31:17.000 are we going to do about the fact that we're 0:31:17.080 --> 0:31:19.600 still looked down on by the upper classes who say 0:31:19.680 --> 0:31:24.480 a gentleman doesn't work. Now, these aristocratic sorts, you know, 0:31:24.480 --> 0:31:26.200 they're always a bit short of cash, so they're very 0:31:26.200 --> 0:31:29.200 happy to have their sons marry our daughters. They're very 0:31:29.240 --> 0:31:31.440 happy to borrow money off us because they're always short 0:31:31.440 --> 0:31:33.600 of the old readies. Aren't they to heat their hope 0:31:33.600 --> 0:31:37.600 their massive country piles. But they look down on us. 0:31:38.120 --> 0:31:40.680 No gentlemen would be involved in trade. We can't have that. 0:31:41.360 --> 0:31:44.680 So they decide how they want to be seen, and 0:31:44.840 --> 0:31:47.480 obviously they scrapped the idea that no gentleman can be 0:31:47.600 --> 0:31:50.880 involved in trade. But what they take from the aristos 0:31:50.920 --> 0:31:53.680 they like this idea of the lady of leisure. They 0:31:53.760 --> 0:31:56.880 think we'll have some of that for ourselves. We like that, 0:31:57.120 --> 0:31:59.920 we like the idea of being able to show our 0:32:00.040 --> 0:32:02.560 far wealth and stages by the fact that our daughters 0:32:02.600 --> 0:32:05.960 and wives don't work, and that they can be decorative 0:32:06.200 --> 0:32:08.560 and that they can keep a lovely home for us. 0:32:08.680 --> 0:32:12.640 So they take that idea. You have to be able 0:32:12.680 --> 0:32:16.320 to hold at least two contradictory ideas in your head 0:32:16.360 --> 0:32:19.200 at anyone time to be a Victorian really really important 0:32:19.200 --> 0:32:21.160 if you're going to be a middle rock class Victorian. 0:32:21.920 --> 0:32:25.080 So you have to consider that these men are going 0:32:25.200 --> 0:32:30.360 in two factories where the labor is very often female. 0:32:30.760 --> 0:32:35.080 Seventy five percent of the workers who industrialized first were women. 0:32:35.560 --> 0:32:38.480 So women have always worked, despite the myth that they hadn't. 0:32:39.000 --> 0:32:41.240 So you have to go into work, make your money 0:32:41.400 --> 0:32:43.600 from sort of Elsie and Mary and Martha and all 0:32:43.640 --> 0:32:47.200 those women who are making your fortune for you. Then 0:32:47.320 --> 0:32:50.920 go home and say, well, women shouldn't work, disgraceful women 0:32:51.000 --> 0:32:53.960 working as Darib was not respectable. They should be the 0:32:54.080 --> 0:32:57.880 piano and riding horses and looking pretty. So it's very 0:32:58.000 --> 0:33:02.560 very strange, and us have an effect on the people 0:33:03.560 --> 0:33:08.920 that it's criticizing. It really does. We do see women 0:33:09.160 --> 0:33:13.400 saying working class women who said they didn't work after 0:33:13.520 --> 0:33:15.840 they got married, because this was the idea. You know, 0:33:16.240 --> 0:33:19.520 once you're a married lady, you shouldn't the breadwinner wage 0:33:19.560 --> 0:33:22.560 of things, which never existed and was a complete fantasy. 0:33:22.720 --> 0:33:25.320 Your man will look after you. You should be at home, 0:33:25.360 --> 0:33:27.880 looking after the children and making the house lovely for him. 0:33:28.560 --> 0:33:34.280 This myth does penetrate the minds of working class women, 0:33:34.800 --> 0:33:36.920 and you can see that when you're going around trying 0:33:36.920 --> 0:33:39.520 to do all history interviews and saying to people, tell 0:33:39.600 --> 0:33:42.000 me about your your granny or your great granny or 0:33:42.040 --> 0:33:44.600 your mom. Did they work? Oh? No, they never worked 0:33:44.640 --> 0:33:48.600 after they were married. Well, I mean they took in laundry, 0:33:49.400 --> 0:33:52.320 and they did a bit of canning for the local factory, 0:33:52.560 --> 0:33:55.120 and they actually made match boxes at home. And in fact, 0:33:55.160 --> 0:33:58.640 these women never start working. They worked any four seven. 0:33:59.120 --> 0:34:02.800 But it's the narrative gets adopted to the extent of 0:34:02.920 --> 0:34:06.040 people saying, oh, yes, I'm not really working because you know, 0:34:06.240 --> 0:34:09.080 I'm just working to pin money. Not true at all. 0:34:09.520 --> 0:34:14.600 And we also see the working classes sometimes completely rejecting 0:34:14.640 --> 0:34:18.919 this respectability narrative, which is the big thing for Victorian's respectability. 0:34:19.000 --> 0:34:21.160 They love a bit of that, at least in theory, 0:34:21.320 --> 0:34:24.800 not so much impractice as it turns out, but they adapt. 0:34:24.920 --> 0:34:29.200 It's really interesting. So you'll get people who will say, well, 0:34:29.360 --> 0:34:33.000 my family were respectable, but the Pitaways down at number seventeen, 0:34:33.040 --> 0:34:36.560 they definitely weren't respectable, or we were respectable, but two 0:34:36.680 --> 0:34:40.600 streets over they weren't respectable, so everyone redefines it to 0:34:40.680 --> 0:34:45.280 suit themselves. Factory girls are the most looked down on, probably, 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:48.280 and they're looked down on by servants as being really 0:34:48.520 --> 0:34:51.480 common and rough and probably a moral But they in 0:34:51.640 --> 0:34:55.040 turn look down on servant women and say, well, you're 0:34:55.200 --> 0:35:00.359 basically enslaved. You we are free. So everyone's are keying 0:35:00.480 --> 0:35:03.839 for position and defining and redefining, but they are very 0:35:03.960 --> 0:35:07.400 creative with it. They don't and obviously they can't just 0:35:07.719 --> 0:35:11.120 accept this notion of respectability and say, oh no, we're 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:14.279 not respectable, we're terrible people. We shouldn't be working. They 0:35:14.360 --> 0:35:17.840 know they have to. But we also see people completely 0:35:17.920 --> 0:35:23.320 rejecting it. We see people whose parents who are trade unions, 0:35:23.520 --> 0:35:25.640 are very poor and working class will say to them, 0:35:25.880 --> 0:35:28.359 don't ever let anyone look down on you. Who We'll 0:35:28.400 --> 0:35:30.680 walk them around London and say, look at these beautiful 0:35:30.719 --> 0:35:33.160 buildings in brush London. Who do you think built them? 0:35:33.440 --> 0:35:36.120 That was our lord, that was us from the back slums. 0:35:36.280 --> 0:35:40.560 Always remember that, remember who has created London really, from 0:35:40.640 --> 0:35:43.360 the navies, you know, building the railways and the canals. 0:35:43.800 --> 0:35:46.880 We have made this and always be proud and always 0:35:46.960 --> 0:35:48.719 remember that, so you do get a lot of that 0:35:48.840 --> 0:35:51.640 resistance as well. It's a really fascinating time for that. 0:35:52.840 --> 0:35:58.440 In writing about middle class stereotypes, you describe the symbolic 0:35:58.600 --> 0:36:03.960 triad of the good wife, the celibate spinster, and the 0:36:04.160 --> 0:36:07.960 prostitute as kind of the three categories that were possible 0:36:08.040 --> 0:36:12.120 to imagine for women, and you also write that, of course, 0:36:12.239 --> 0:36:15.040 as you've been saying, working class women who were working 0:36:15.160 --> 0:36:21.359 outside the home, particularly alongside men, they didn't exactly fit 0:36:21.640 --> 0:36:27.960 any of those three, but they risked classification, mostly as prostitutes, 0:36:28.000 --> 0:36:29.880 if they were going to be shoehorned into one of 0:36:29.960 --> 0:36:33.360 those three. Would you offer a few more comments on 0:36:33.520 --> 0:36:38.640 on perceptions maybe of sex work and factory work for 0:36:38.760 --> 0:36:40.839 women at the time, and why it was so easy 0:36:40.920 --> 0:36:45.480 for especially middle class Victorians to equate those two. It's 0:36:45.520 --> 0:36:50.480 no coincidence that the term working girl becomes a euphamiss 0:36:50.520 --> 0:36:54.800 them for prostituted women or for sex workers at this time. 0:36:55.880 --> 0:36:59.319 A study of Victorian literature really fascinated me because they 0:36:59.400 --> 0:37:03.440 conclude to that if a novelist wanted to have her 0:37:03.520 --> 0:37:07.760 reader sympathized with her there down on their luck heroin, 0:37:08.080 --> 0:37:11.520 they would make her a prostitute rather than a factory girl, 0:37:11.760 --> 0:37:14.680 because nobody had any sympathy with factory girls. They're sort 0:37:14.680 --> 0:37:18.560 of worse in some ways because at least with prostituted women. 0:37:18.960 --> 0:37:22.680 There's this fallen woman narrative, which the Victoria's get terribly 0:37:22.760 --> 0:37:26.040 excited about. They love a fallen woman because a fallen 0:37:26.080 --> 0:37:28.880 woman can be redeemed. You see, she can realize how 0:37:29.000 --> 0:37:31.719 ghastly and beastly her behavior has been, and she can 0:37:31.760 --> 0:37:35.720 come to Jesus and she can be forgiven. But somebody 0:37:35.719 --> 0:37:38.360 who's working, well, that's a little bit different, isn't it, 0:37:38.360 --> 0:37:41.600 because they're probably going to continue doing it. You see 0:37:41.920 --> 0:37:47.720 this incredible judgmental and very sexualized by the way narrative. 0:37:47.920 --> 0:37:51.160 Even in labor reports of the period, there was one 0:37:51.360 --> 0:37:55.040 mining commissioner, you know, who knows what working life is like, 0:37:55.360 --> 0:37:58.480 you would think, and yet he looks at the terrible 0:37:58.560 --> 0:38:02.759 conditions down mines where you've got girls, women, boys, men 0:38:03.440 --> 0:38:08.560 crawling through tunnels all day on their hands and knees, 0:38:08.760 --> 0:38:11.359 you know, naked to the waist with chains around their waist, 0:38:11.480 --> 0:38:16.920 pulling carts of coal. Absolutely horrific. Imagine that heat imagined 0:38:16.960 --> 0:38:21.120 the difficulty in breathing. Imagine the physical horror of that. 0:38:22.560 --> 0:38:24.839 But he looks at that and doesn't say, well, yes, 0:38:24.880 --> 0:38:27.960 the conditions are pretty awful. He writes about it as 0:38:28.000 --> 0:38:29.880 if it's some sort of orgy going on, because the 0:38:29.960 --> 0:38:32.960 women are partly dressed, partially dressed as you would be 0:38:33.000 --> 0:38:34.880 in those conditions. You're not gonna wear your best dress, 0:38:34.920 --> 0:38:37.239 are to crawl on your hands and knees through a 0:38:37.280 --> 0:38:41.760 coal shaft. And he says the conditions that the site, 0:38:41.880 --> 0:38:47.399 the spectacle of these women at work was absolutely revolting, disgusting. 0:38:47.560 --> 0:38:51.600 It was seen. No brothel can beat it. And first 0:38:51.680 --> 0:38:53.920 that you think, well, Mr Mining commission you seem a 0:38:53.960 --> 0:38:56.759 bit well versed and exactly what a brothel is like. 0:38:56.920 --> 0:38:59.560 I wonder what Mrs Mining Commissioner might have had to 0:38:59.600 --> 0:39:04.240 say about up that one. But also how bizarre, how bizarre, 0:39:04.440 --> 0:39:08.440 and how sort of pervy really and slightly fetishistic do 0:39:08.640 --> 0:39:12.400 you have to be to look at children, you know, 0:39:12.560 --> 0:39:16.839 in those awful conditions and say, oh, good grief, they're 0:39:16.920 --> 0:39:20.279 partially closed or they must all be having you know, 0:39:20.400 --> 0:39:22.120 they must be all be having sex with each other, 0:39:22.280 --> 0:39:25.319 disgraceful and disgusting, as if these people I must have thought, well, 0:39:25.320 --> 0:39:26.799 a chance to be a fine thing. You know, these 0:39:26.840 --> 0:39:32.279 people are exhausted, they're absolutely exhausted, and they're starving. And 0:39:32.520 --> 0:39:34.279 yet that is what we see. We look at a 0:39:34.360 --> 0:39:37.239 factor and we see women working alongside men and we say, well, 0:39:37.400 --> 0:39:40.240 she's clearly no better than she should be. But again, 0:39:40.360 --> 0:39:42.560 that's a lovely way to be humanized people. It's a 0:39:42.680 --> 0:39:45.640 lovely way to stigmatize them and blame them. Well, you 0:39:45.719 --> 0:39:48.080 no wonder you're Paul. Look at the way you're carrying on. 0:39:48.200 --> 0:39:53.280 It's absolutely disgraceful. And yeah, that symbolic triad is absolutely 0:39:53.400 --> 0:39:56.640 fascinating in this the fact that working women don't figure 0:39:56.680 --> 0:39:59.960 in it at all. When we do hear about working women, 0:40:00.280 --> 0:40:03.480 there are always comments on their morality. We have people 0:40:03.560 --> 0:40:07.480 like Charles Booth, who reported an investigated London posit poverty, 0:40:07.920 --> 0:40:11.239 and he will always say about groups of women, well, 0:40:11.400 --> 0:40:13.480 you know, they're a bit rough, but they're not too 0:40:13.719 --> 0:40:17.840 bad morally. That's always significant. One of his causes of 0:40:17.920 --> 0:40:21.239 publicies I really love actually was having a drunken or 0:40:21.400 --> 0:40:24.320 fectless wife. I think we'd all like to be that 0:40:24.480 --> 0:40:27.759 drunken and effectless wife. But these are the judgments. There's 0:40:27.840 --> 0:40:31.480 always is incredible sexual judgments, and they're only really put 0:40:31.560 --> 0:40:33.920 on women, they're not really put on men at all. 0:40:34.719 --> 0:40:38.080 And we see it in the Contagious Diseases Acts, where 0:40:38.360 --> 0:40:40.399 the government decides to act as if women are giving 0:40:40.440 --> 0:40:44.600 themselves scenarial disease in cases of prostitution, as if women 0:40:44.640 --> 0:40:47.880 are doing prostitution all by themselves. No one else is 0:40:47.920 --> 0:40:50.560 doing it. There can't be anyone else in bold. Of course, 0:40:50.600 --> 0:40:53.279 the reality is that midd class and upper class men 0:40:53.360 --> 0:40:57.799 are sneaking into poor areas and using them as sexual playgrounds. 0:40:58.200 --> 0:41:02.000 Who on earth is visiting the artles Paul Working men 0:41:02.040 --> 0:41:05.239 often can't afford to. And there are also lots of 0:41:05.480 --> 0:41:09.240 incidences of people, you know, sexual predators, trying to drag 0:41:09.600 --> 0:41:13.160 women and children as well away from groups down the 0:41:13.280 --> 0:41:17.040 darkened back alleys. That's a very dangerous place. But we 0:41:17.200 --> 0:41:20.600 do get this siren idea that it's it's the women 0:41:20.640 --> 0:41:23.480 of the Eastern, the women of the poor areas, alluring 0:41:23.680 --> 0:41:26.480 these poor innocent men who are just trying to get 0:41:26.560 --> 0:41:29.160 home to their wives. Leave me alone, you wretched women. 0:41:29.200 --> 0:41:34.360 They're being dragged into these brothels. It's incredibly bizarre, and 0:41:34.480 --> 0:41:36.960 even the people who are supposed to be in sympathy 0:41:37.600 --> 0:41:40.680 with these women, you're Josephine Butler's and your child's Dickens. 0:41:40.760 --> 0:41:46.640 There's incredibly patronizing and judgmental language about the women, as 0:41:46.719 --> 0:41:51.360 if they are somehow corrupt, as if they are somehow 0:41:51.520 --> 0:41:55.920 eugenically degraded. And even if, like Charles Dickens did, you 0:41:56.040 --> 0:41:59.480 can save them from themselves and rehabilitate them from prostitution, 0:41:59.520 --> 0:42:01.600 you better and get them to move abroad, because we 0:42:01.760 --> 0:42:06.560 don't really want them staying in London. Josephine Butler who 0:42:06.600 --> 0:42:09.360 has a dying prostitute to live with her at the 0:42:09.480 --> 0:42:11.760 end of her days, which sounds lovely, but she assures 0:42:11.760 --> 0:42:14.680 everyone she's not letting her children go anywhere near this 0:42:14.800 --> 0:42:18.000 woman or see this woman, this poor girl who's tying 0:42:18.239 --> 0:42:22.560 and consumpted, because they could be corrupted. So there really 0:42:22.840 --> 0:42:29.399 is this horribly eugelic idea of bad, bad women, contrasted 0:42:29.480 --> 0:42:31.440 with the angel in the house who you know, oh 0:42:31.719 --> 0:42:35.640 reathed in clouds of glory, the shining example, ghastly poem. 0:42:35.960 --> 0:42:38.359 I have to say apologist to Coventry pat more fans, 0:42:38.480 --> 0:42:41.960 but ghastly poem epic poem by Coventry back pat more, 0:42:42.280 --> 0:42:45.480 where he writes about the life of the perfect you know, 0:42:45.719 --> 0:42:50.800 surrendered wife really, who completely subjugates herself to the needs 0:42:50.880 --> 0:42:53.680 of her man and casts herself down the gulf of 0:42:53.800 --> 0:42:57.799 his old necessities more falling and flinging and casting. There's 0:42:57.800 --> 0:43:00.839 an awful lot of that forman A currently written about 0:43:00.920 --> 0:43:03.560 his first wife who died young, and I could only say, 0:43:03.600 --> 0:43:05.600 I really don't blame her. I think if I had 0:43:05.680 --> 0:43:09.239 to listen too much epic poetry like that, I would 0:43:09.239 --> 0:43:13.200 have chosen to die young as well. So again it's 0:43:13.360 --> 0:43:17.680 just incredibly hypocritical, and a woman's place in the East 0:43:17.760 --> 0:43:20.719 End of London is in the wrong. You can't do 0:43:20.960 --> 0:43:24.520 right for doing wrong at this period. That gives us 0:43:25.120 --> 0:43:30.719 a pretty well rounded picture of how middle class Victorians 0:43:30.760 --> 0:43:34.200 were thinking about working women in the East End. Um. 0:43:34.960 --> 0:43:36.959 But a lot of your work has been to try, 0:43:37.120 --> 0:43:40.680 as you've said, through talking with Descendance um and through 0:43:40.719 --> 0:43:43.320 the other kinds of research that you did in archives 0:43:43.400 --> 0:43:46.880 and and all the rest, to try to get a 0:43:47.000 --> 0:43:52.000 sense of what life was like for those people. And 0:43:53.440 --> 0:43:59.200 maybe could you offer us what life was like for 0:43:59.320 --> 0:44:02.960 those people in the East End if if we're when 0:44:03.440 --> 0:44:05.880 they could have expressed it themselves, what was life like 0:44:06.400 --> 0:44:09.560 actually in the East End, Not through the eyes of 0:44:09.680 --> 0:44:14.319 a Victorian journalist or a Victorian Victorian novelist, but from 0:44:14.360 --> 0:44:19.360 a Victorian worker. M Again, there's obviously no one East 0:44:19.520 --> 0:44:22.600 End life and no one account of East End life, 0:44:22.840 --> 0:44:26.560 but you can draw out some common themes for children 0:44:26.880 --> 0:44:30.279 in particular. People look back on their Eastern childhood and 0:44:30.320 --> 0:44:34.320 they would tell me that they remembered the warmth and 0:44:34.480 --> 0:44:38.200 the comfort of very close families. I mean literally very close, 0:44:38.200 --> 0:44:40.400 because you'll be sleeping six to her bed sometimes if 0:44:40.440 --> 0:44:43.160 you had a bed, of course, but they remember that 0:44:43.239 --> 0:44:46.319 it's really comforting. And later, if they did make enough 0:44:46.320 --> 0:44:48.040 money to move out and have their own places, they 0:44:48.160 --> 0:44:50.359 kind of missed that, I kind of missed having their 0:44:50.400 --> 0:44:53.399 brothers and sisters all around them. But then they would 0:44:53.480 --> 0:44:57.720 tell you it was incredibly hard. Mean, being poor is exhausting. 0:44:57.840 --> 0:45:01.239 It's exhausting now, it was particularly exhausting. And then you're 0:45:01.280 --> 0:45:04.120 working long hours and you may be all snugg in 0:45:04.160 --> 0:45:08.200 that bed together, but also your room is probably crawling 0:45:08.560 --> 0:45:14.200 with insects. It was a nightly process for kids to 0:45:14.560 --> 0:45:18.319 get their shoes and bash the black beetles that infested 0:45:18.800 --> 0:45:21.160 the tenements. And the rooms of the Eastern so that 0:45:21.200 --> 0:45:23.160 they could go to sleep without being woken up by 0:45:23.239 --> 0:45:26.719 being bitten. And people would sleep outside actually on rules 0:45:26.760 --> 0:45:30.200 if they couldn't to the nineteen twenties to escape that. 0:45:30.920 --> 0:45:34.280 So nighttime, when you desperately need to sleep, is really noisy. 0:45:34.360 --> 0:45:39.240 There's always dogs barking, drunk people shouting, people doing moonlight flips, 0:45:39.280 --> 0:45:41.440 the fine eestent tradition to try and get ahead of 0:45:41.520 --> 0:45:44.040 the landlord and the rent and load everything into a 0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:46.720 cart at midnight and flit off to your next address. 0:45:47.360 --> 0:45:54.319 But people do remember extraordinary solidarity, really, and the ingenuity 0:45:55.040 --> 0:45:59.200 that people used to help each other, but to do 0:45:59.320 --> 0:46:02.800 it so everyone could preserve their dignity. So if you 0:46:02.960 --> 0:46:06.520 knew that someone in your tenement was really struggling, and 0:46:06.680 --> 0:46:09.320 perhaps husband had been laid off at the docks and 0:46:09.400 --> 0:46:12.960 they had no money, you wouldn't help them in that 0:46:13.080 --> 0:46:15.920 sort of patronizing, lady bountiful way that you know you 0:46:16.080 --> 0:46:19.160 resent being helped yourself by the middle classes. You send 0:46:19.200 --> 0:46:21.640 little Jimmy over to knock on the door with a 0:46:21.719 --> 0:46:24.719 saucepan and say, oh, all right, Mrs Jones, mom's made 0:46:24.760 --> 0:46:28.080 too much food tonight. You know, silly old mayor. She 0:46:28.239 --> 0:46:30.400 made too much food, so she said, could you please 0:46:30.520 --> 0:46:32.440 use this for us, because we're just going to have 0:46:32.480 --> 0:46:36.440 to throw away otherwise. So you really would give people 0:46:36.480 --> 0:46:40.960 your dignity their dignity. The way that the poor organized 0:46:41.000 --> 0:46:47.120 themselves into these incredible communities. Every street had its queen, 0:46:47.560 --> 0:46:50.399 every street had its auntie. They weren't by different names, 0:46:50.640 --> 0:46:52.440 but there was a woman in every street who was 0:46:52.520 --> 0:46:55.920 the go to gal. So if you were skinned, if 0:46:55.960 --> 0:46:58.160 you were in trouble, you would go to this woman 0:46:58.360 --> 0:47:01.520 and she would help you out. And this could be 0:47:01.680 --> 0:47:05.440 by the woman who was an official midwife before the NHS, 0:47:05.760 --> 0:47:09.279 the unofficial undertaker, and the person who would tell you 0:47:09.360 --> 0:47:13.000 which butcher you could go to if you were really skinned, 0:47:13.000 --> 0:47:14.839 and he'd give you the bones out the back door 0:47:14.920 --> 0:47:17.359 so you can make soup out of them. Who tell 0:47:17.360 --> 0:47:19.960 you which shopkeepers would give you tick, would give you credit, 0:47:20.360 --> 0:47:22.279 Who tell you when to go to the market to 0:47:22.360 --> 0:47:24.560 pick up what they called the specs that the fruit 0:47:24.600 --> 0:47:27.120 and vege that got dropped on the ground. So it 0:47:27.280 --> 0:47:30.719 was all about your mates. You could survive. You had 0:47:30.800 --> 0:47:33.360 to be quite popular. Your social skills had to be 0:47:33.520 --> 0:47:36.759 pretty good, because if you're obnoxious. No one's going to 0:47:36.840 --> 0:47:39.560 help you. When the landlord or the bailiff comes knocking, 0:47:40.000 --> 0:47:42.319 no one's going to look after you. But as long 0:47:42.400 --> 0:47:44.800 as you played by the rules and have this community spirit, 0:47:44.920 --> 0:47:48.840 people will help you. If your husband's violent, your neighbors 0:47:48.880 --> 0:47:52.759 will come in and help you. If dad is trying 0:47:52.800 --> 0:47:55.160 to sexually assault or attack the children when he comes 0:47:55.200 --> 0:47:58.600 home drunk from the pub, your neighbors will pull your 0:47:58.680 --> 0:48:01.600 children over the back fence and hide them in theirs 0:48:01.920 --> 0:48:05.560 until dad's calmed down. But it would be wrong to 0:48:05.840 --> 0:48:11.080 say that all these dempool were drunken, violent, not at all. 0:48:11.280 --> 0:48:16.319 They couldn't have survived. There had to be very, very sensible, 0:48:16.920 --> 0:48:21.560 very practical, very hard working people, often women, who could 0:48:21.680 --> 0:48:24.960 make something out of nothing, who could feed ten children 0:48:25.080 --> 0:48:28.759 on not much more than fresh air, really, and make 0:48:28.880 --> 0:48:32.239 do and mend and repair and keep your place as 0:48:32.400 --> 0:48:35.160 clean as you could with no running water, you know, 0:48:35.239 --> 0:48:37.719 going down three flights of stairs, bringing the water up, 0:48:37.800 --> 0:48:39.759 heating out over the fire to get any sort of 0:48:39.800 --> 0:48:43.640 hot water, and yet keeping things just hygienic enough so 0:48:43.760 --> 0:48:49.560 that everybody survives. It's a mammoth task. It's the policy Olympics. 0:48:49.680 --> 0:48:53.520 You wonder how anyone managed to survive this, let alone 0:48:53.640 --> 0:48:56.680 to thrive. But they did. And people look back with 0:48:56.760 --> 0:49:01.720 incredible respect on their moms and their grandma's who had 0:49:01.960 --> 0:49:05.719 all these skills and all this ingenerity. So it's a 0:49:05.880 --> 0:49:10.760 very very mixed picture. Of course, there's misery. Of course, 0:49:10.920 --> 0:49:14.279 there's death and horror and disease and violence. Of course, 0:49:14.360 --> 0:49:18.320 there is in starvation hunger all the time. But there's 0:49:18.400 --> 0:49:22.920 also people who are very united. And they're particularly united 0:49:22.960 --> 0:49:26.480 because they know that they're judged and their look down 0:49:26.640 --> 0:49:31.160 on by everybody else, so they unite. So they take 0:49:31.280 --> 0:49:35.200 on this Eastender identity, which is an insult by the way. 0:49:35.239 --> 0:49:38.800 That's how it starts. East Ender is an insult, and 0:49:38.960 --> 0:49:42.120 they what we call revalorize that. They turn that around 0:49:42.200 --> 0:49:45.360 and they say, know, we're very proud of our streets, 0:49:45.400 --> 0:49:48.160 We're proud of our community. We're proud of our friends 0:49:48.200 --> 0:49:51.320 and neighbors. We all work together, we all stick together. 0:49:51.440 --> 0:49:54.480 And they had a great deal of totally justified pride 0:49:54.520 --> 0:49:59.840 in that there were incredible people m and thinking about 0:50:00.040 --> 0:50:05.840 how these neighborhoods were changing shape around the working people. 0:50:06.320 --> 0:50:15.160 UM you talked about in Industrial Industrialism Reshaping London. UM 0:50:15.360 --> 0:50:18.600 in the book, you mentioned that when the St. Catharine's 0:50:18.640 --> 0:50:22.760 Docks were built, they displaced eleven thousand, more than eleven 0:50:22.840 --> 0:50:29.800 thousand people who undertook that dock building project. And what 0:50:29.960 --> 0:50:32.360 happened with those people who were displaced? What did that 0:50:32.440 --> 0:50:35.239 look like for this east end of London where these 0:50:35.320 --> 0:50:39.839 communities were living. This was a disaster because even though 0:50:40.040 --> 0:50:43.120 their houses were pretty grim and pretty ghastly, they were 0:50:43.200 --> 0:50:45.520 at least houses. This was their home, this was near 0:50:45.600 --> 0:50:49.600 to work. Often these were dockers often who were displaced 0:50:49.640 --> 0:50:52.800 by the building of this new docks. A dock company 0:50:52.920 --> 0:50:55.520 was set up. They've been trying to develop this area 0:50:55.680 --> 0:50:58.560 since the seventeen hundreds. They could see the profit in it. 0:50:59.200 --> 0:51:02.240 And it was Robert Telford and the famous Robert Telford, 0:51:02.600 --> 0:51:07.000 the engineer. It was his only big building and development 0:51:07.120 --> 0:51:13.080 project in London. And it was not just St Catherine's Docks. 0:51:13.120 --> 0:51:15.960 This happened as well when they built the underground they 0:51:16.040 --> 0:51:18.680 were just knocked down poor houses. Are that so much 0:51:18.719 --> 0:51:21.320 as by your leave? If you were better off and 0:51:21.400 --> 0:51:25.040 the property owner, then you've got compensation. If you didn't 0:51:25.280 --> 0:51:29.400 tough on, you go. And we presume because nobody bothered 0:51:29.440 --> 0:51:32.480 to record where people went that they just went deeper 0:51:32.600 --> 0:51:36.640 into London. They just increased the overcrowding everywhere else they 0:51:36.640 --> 0:51:39.759 would have had no choice, perhaps stay with friends, go 0:51:39.920 --> 0:51:41.640 wherever you could. A lot of them would just have 0:51:41.719 --> 0:51:45.480 been homeless, and there was a large increase in homelessness. 0:51:46.239 --> 0:51:49.279 But again this is very typical of London. We think 0:51:49.360 --> 0:51:52.840 of pulling down the tenements as a good thing, of 0:51:52.920 --> 0:51:56.000 flump clearance as a good thing, and of course getting 0:51:56.080 --> 0:51:58.160 rid of insanitary housing is a good thing. But if 0:51:58.160 --> 0:52:01.839 you're not providing any alto latives for people, how can 0:52:01.920 --> 0:52:05.160 it be? And that's what's so extraordinary. Very few people 0:52:05.200 --> 0:52:07.239 at the time wrote about that. They wrote about isn't 0:52:07.239 --> 0:52:09.880 this wonderful We're getting rid of all this awful housing? 0:52:10.080 --> 0:52:13.319 Was Hello, there are people in those houses. Where are 0:52:13.360 --> 0:52:15.840 they going to go? They probably rather have a really grotty, 0:52:15.920 --> 0:52:18.360 dirty roof over their head with their family and friends 0:52:18.400 --> 0:52:21.440 and neighbors around them than no roof over their head 0:52:21.480 --> 0:52:23.759 at all. And of course if they're homeless, they get 0:52:23.880 --> 0:52:28.879 judged and castigated for being homeless. And it's really it's 0:52:28.960 --> 0:52:34.520 quite surprising that that has still been talked about as 0:52:34.600 --> 0:52:38.000 this really interesting, huge development and how good that it 0:52:38.160 --> 0:52:42.000 got rid of terrible slums, And there's been very little 0:52:42.200 --> 0:52:45.840 comment even now on what a disaster it was to 0:52:45.960 --> 0:52:49.680 lose your home and how completely discombobulating. As if life 0:52:49.880 --> 0:52:53.200 wasn't bad and uncertain enough, suddenly you've got to move 0:52:53.239 --> 0:52:55.399 and you need to be near work because you can't 0:52:55.440 --> 0:52:58.400 afford to get public transports, so you're working. So it 0:52:58.480 --> 0:53:00.600 could be a disaster. Couldn't it have to be four 0:53:00.719 --> 0:53:04.160 or five miles away from your work? Just everything just 0:53:04.440 --> 0:53:07.759 makes poverty worse. That's really what happens in London of 0:53:07.840 --> 0:53:12.000 this series, just about everything that happens happens to the 0:53:12.120 --> 0:53:17.239 poor and makes their lives so much worse. MM. So 0:53:17.360 --> 0:53:20.320 you've you've talked a little bit about that middle class 0:53:20.480 --> 0:53:24.440 culture that shaped Victorian thinking about poverty in London. UM, 0:53:24.920 --> 0:53:27.279 let's talk a little more about the role of journalism 0:53:27.400 --> 0:53:32.480 specifically and especially stories like The Maiden Tribute of Modern 0:53:32.560 --> 0:53:36.839 Babylon series or The Bitter Cry about Castle London UM 0:53:37.400 --> 0:53:40.239 in creating an imaginative geography of the East End for 0:53:40.400 --> 0:53:43.759 London readers. Like we've talked about those two pieces you 0:53:43.880 --> 0:53:46.520 mentioned in your book, how influential were they and what 0:53:46.719 --> 0:53:50.400 kind of substance. Did they add to the the general 0:53:50.520 --> 0:53:54.120 ideas about the East End. Yes, it's a very interesting 0:53:54.280 --> 0:53:58.560 period for the sensationalist press. And it all comes about 0:53:58.560 --> 0:54:02.520 because they dropped a tax on newspapers, so suddenly it's 0:54:02.560 --> 0:54:07.080 possible and quite cost effective to publish daily and in 0:54:07.239 --> 0:54:11.520 order to keep readers interested. We get these serializations have 0:54:11.719 --> 0:54:17.520 often very dramatic and quite salacious stories, so we certainly 0:54:17.600 --> 0:54:21.320 get that with W. T. Stead, the journalist who wrote 0:54:21.360 --> 0:54:25.440 the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon, and what that was 0:54:25.520 --> 0:54:30.520 about was the supposed sex trafficking of young London girls 0:54:30.719 --> 0:54:34.359 to foreign bruthels. And again, you know the foreign it's 0:54:34.440 --> 0:54:38.279 much easier to be outraged and to deal with and 0:54:38.400 --> 0:54:41.320 look at these things when it's not bruthels here in England. 0:54:41.400 --> 0:54:47.000 It's those foreigners taking our girls. But what he actually did, 0:54:47.440 --> 0:54:49.120 I'm gonna said, don't think you get away with this now, 0:54:49.760 --> 0:54:54.680 was smuggled a young girl away to France just to 0:54:54.880 --> 0:54:58.399 prove that it could be done. He struggled to get 0:54:58.480 --> 0:55:03.840 accounts for various reason of that really proved this was 0:55:03.880 --> 0:55:07.719 happening extensively. So he did this too, at least show 0:55:07.920 --> 0:55:10.279 that it could be done, and to be honest, the 0:55:10.360 --> 0:55:13.320 whole thing was highly dubious. He seems to have paid 0:55:13.440 --> 0:55:17.440 this girl's mother to effectively by her, and there's no 0:55:17.520 --> 0:55:20.200 suggestion that anything went on between him and this girl. 0:55:20.280 --> 0:55:22.879 I should stipulate, but the whole thing, you know, it's 0:55:22.960 --> 0:55:27.360 highly ethically questionable, to say the very least. But of 0:55:27.520 --> 0:55:32.120 course readers lap this up. Innocent young girls have been 0:55:32.239 --> 0:55:36.680 trafficked into prostitution. You can see how that's going to 0:55:36.760 --> 0:55:40.880 sell papers. But it also casts the people of the 0:55:40.960 --> 0:55:44.480 East End in a ghastly light, doesn't it. They're selling 0:55:44.680 --> 0:55:48.360 their children these awful It proves everything, doesn't it that 0:55:48.440 --> 0:55:52.360 we've suspected about these people who are degraded and not 0:55:52.520 --> 0:55:55.520 really proper humans and their animals. And they will even 0:55:55.680 --> 0:55:58.560 sell their own children, that's how low they will go. 0:55:59.440 --> 0:56:02.720 So well, he's trying to get the age of consent 0:56:03.120 --> 0:56:06.239 raised with this, and ultimately he does achieve that, so 0:56:06.520 --> 0:56:11.560 his aim is good. It's just is more demonization of 0:56:11.640 --> 0:56:16.759 the poor and more suggestion that the East End is 0:56:16.960 --> 0:56:22.560 this ghastly in moral criminal place where all these ghastly 0:56:23.080 --> 0:56:27.480 acts begin. And in fact, there was this idea that 0:56:27.600 --> 0:56:30.560 the poor didn't love their children which is a really 0:56:30.840 --> 0:56:34.680 strange one. How separate of a species have you got 0:56:34.800 --> 0:56:37.760 to be considered if people question whether you love your children? 0:56:37.960 --> 0:56:40.840 And there are even some commentators who say, you know, 0:56:40.840 --> 0:56:42.319 I've talked to some of this poor pl and jin 0:56:42.440 --> 0:56:45.560 know they actually do, they actually love their children. The 0:56:45.640 --> 0:56:48.920 poor used their children. Well, they're very surprised about this. 0:56:50.040 --> 0:56:52.840 Why shouldn't they well, of course because their children are working. 0:56:53.120 --> 0:56:58.279 And again the ludicrousness to modern eyes of making people 0:56:58.400 --> 0:57:00.560 so poor that everyone in the family has to work 0:57:00.680 --> 0:57:02.719 from six years old and then saying well, do you 0:57:02.920 --> 0:57:05.480 love your children? I feel making them work is so 0:57:05.800 --> 0:57:11.240 hypocritical to eyes. And then we have means the bitter 0:57:11.520 --> 0:57:15.040 cry of Outcast London, which again is a very very 0:57:15.160 --> 0:57:20.600 famous piece, but outcast the very language of it. You know, 0:57:20.640 --> 0:57:24.520 there are people who are beyond the pale, that outside 0:57:24.840 --> 0:57:31.240 normal society, and it is judgmental. It's very top down. 0:57:31.280 --> 0:57:33.560 We're looking down on these people. Were saying, well, they 0:57:33.640 --> 0:57:38.600 don't attend church very often, they're not regular attenders at worship. 0:57:38.800 --> 0:57:42.520 Men's talks about that. An awful lot talks about immorality, 0:57:42.800 --> 0:57:46.000 very obsessed with that, the fact that in these crowded 0:57:47.160 --> 0:57:50.000 houses and what people are sleeping together in the same head. 0:57:50.080 --> 0:57:52.760 You know, there could be incests, there could be immorality. 0:57:52.920 --> 0:57:56.880 That's always the implication, and that if we're not careful 0:57:57.720 --> 0:58:00.560 in means his eyes, one of the reason we should 0:58:00.640 --> 0:58:03.240 do something about this, and definitely is saying that we 0:58:03.240 --> 0:58:07.480 shouldn't do something about this because we might have revolution otherwise, 0:58:07.600 --> 0:58:11.920 and revolution the ultimate terror. So it's not let's be 0:58:12.080 --> 0:58:15.640 fair to the pool because it's fair, or let's stop 0:58:15.680 --> 0:58:18.320 people starving and die because we're a very rich country 0:58:18.520 --> 0:58:21.880 and nobody needs to starve and die. It's there will 0:58:22.000 --> 0:58:26.120 be consequences if we don't. There could be revolution if 0:58:26.200 --> 0:58:28.240 there don't. There could be people having the wrong sort 0:58:28.320 --> 0:58:31.120 of sex with the wrong sort of people if we don't. 0:58:31.720 --> 0:58:35.280 So there's always this need to justify why on earth 0:58:35.400 --> 0:58:38.160 we should help these people who are you know, in 0:58:38.240 --> 0:58:41.280 the East and there within a stone strow of Posh London. 0:58:41.360 --> 0:58:44.680 They're so close to Parliament. And that, by the way, 0:58:44.840 --> 0:58:49.200 is another reason that the Eastern becomes so feared and 0:58:49.760 --> 0:58:51.680 watch and people are keeping an eye on it for 0:58:51.760 --> 0:58:56.880 signs of revolution because they there is this uneasy awareness 0:58:57.800 --> 0:59:01.760 that's so close to the sender to repower. Are all 0:59:01.880 --> 0:59:06.120 these thousands upon thousands of people who we are working 0:59:06.240 --> 0:59:09.560 to death basically, and who we are making staff to death, 0:59:09.960 --> 0:59:11.880 and my goodness, we're all in trouble if they get 0:59:11.920 --> 0:59:16.280 a bit upperty m hm hm and over and over again. 0:59:16.320 --> 0:59:18.240 This is something that you mentioned a little bit earlier, 0:59:18.320 --> 0:59:22.160 but I'd like to explore with a few more comments, um, 0:59:22.720 --> 0:59:27.120 the way that writers compared East London to the Imperial borderlands, 0:59:27.920 --> 0:59:31.600 and the kind of mystique, the kind of Orientalists thinking 0:59:31.800 --> 0:59:34.080 that was used to talk about the Middle East or 0:59:34.360 --> 0:59:38.960 or India were applied to bethnal Green and whopping um, 0:59:39.360 --> 0:59:41.520 could you give us an example of that kind of 0:59:42.160 --> 0:59:48.120 writing that drew the imperial logic into London itself. We 0:59:48.440 --> 0:59:53.640 hear it absolutely constantly when people talk about the East End. 0:59:54.080 --> 0:59:58.720 It's the mysterious East. It's the darkest East. It's a 0:59:59.040 --> 1:00:02.560 terror in coordin eater, it's a darkened land. It's a 1:00:02.640 --> 1:00:05.040 place that we cannot find on a map. It's this 1:00:05.440 --> 1:00:11.520 alien culture. And of course that's again super handy if 1:00:11.600 --> 1:00:13.680 you want to justify the fact that you are letting 1:00:13.760 --> 1:00:15.880 people start is to say, well, they're not like us. 1:00:15.960 --> 1:00:20.680 To see, we can't really comment on how other cultures 1:00:20.720 --> 1:00:23.000 in other countries live. That's up to them. That's not 1:00:23.080 --> 1:00:25.000 our business how they run themselves. And this is a 1:00:25.040 --> 1:00:28.920 separate country within our own country. These are not really 1:00:29.040 --> 1:00:31.960 people like us. They're not even really human. They're certainly 1:00:32.000 --> 1:00:35.120 not really normal English people. So what can we do? 1:00:35.360 --> 1:00:39.800 They choose to live like this, and it's another way 1:00:40.080 --> 1:00:45.479 of demonizing people and other in people. And we see 1:00:46.040 --> 1:00:51.320 the result of this in what's known as plumbing. What 1:00:51.520 --> 1:00:55.440 people like to do who had read these sensationalist, dramatic 1:00:55.600 --> 1:00:59.000 tales of the Darkest East was to go and visit it, 1:00:59.600 --> 1:01:02.160 often with a couple of policemen who were paid to 1:01:02.280 --> 1:01:05.480 accompany them, and they would go around and stare at 1:01:05.520 --> 1:01:09.040 the poor. Basically, so they would go into the slums, 1:01:09.240 --> 1:01:12.360 into the tenements and look at how they lived. And 1:01:14.080 --> 1:01:18.360 it was supposed to be I suppose sometimes somewhat philanthropic. 1:01:18.440 --> 1:01:20.960 Oh dear, they could exclaim about, oh dear, how terrible. 1:01:21.560 --> 1:01:23.920 You know, I do at least understand the conditions of 1:01:23.960 --> 1:01:25.720 the poor, because I bothered to go and see it. 1:01:26.520 --> 1:01:30.520 But then there were a lot of posh, young ladies 1:01:30.720 --> 1:01:32.960 and gentlemen who just thought it was a laugh, really, 1:01:33.040 --> 1:01:36.000 and it was a freak show. So it was akin 1:01:36.560 --> 1:01:39.160 to go and laugh at the bearded lady at the circus, 1:01:39.280 --> 1:01:43.800 to laugh at the freaks, and how awful that must 1:01:43.840 --> 1:01:48.680 have been to experience. I worked on a TV show 1:01:48.760 --> 1:01:51.760 for the BBC a few years ago called The Victorian Slum. 1:01:52.440 --> 1:01:57.480 Loved working on it because they recreated a plum, essentially 1:01:57.520 --> 1:02:01.720 a tenement, and for an as geek historian like me, 1:02:01.920 --> 1:02:03.680 that's as close as you were going to get. It 1:02:03.840 --> 1:02:08.360 was gremendously exciting to be in those beautifully recreatible I said, 1:02:08.400 --> 1:02:11.720 beautifully that horrible living a conversation, but to be almost 1:02:11.840 --> 1:02:15.640 in it was incredible. But what I've never forgotten about that, 1:02:15.680 --> 1:02:17.480 and I'm still friends with some of the people that 1:02:18.600 --> 1:02:21.360 were the cast. When I say the cast, they weren't acting, 1:02:21.400 --> 1:02:24.040 they weren't trying to pretend they were Victorian. They were 1:02:24.120 --> 1:02:27.720 sending modern people to dress like it and live like it, 1:02:27.840 --> 1:02:29.720 and see if they could earn money, see if they 1:02:29.760 --> 1:02:32.560 could survive without the welfare state. It was really eye opening. 1:02:33.160 --> 1:02:35.520 But I remember one day I went into do filming 1:02:36.920 --> 1:02:41.880 and they were furious, so angry and so agitated, and 1:02:41.920 --> 1:02:43.560 I said, what on earth it's wrong with you? You 1:02:43.680 --> 1:02:46.720 all you've all got faces like thunder. And they said, oh, 1:02:47.240 --> 1:02:51.360 we filmed this thing this morning where people came slumming 1:02:51.920 --> 1:02:54.240 and they came into our rooms, they came into our 1:02:54.320 --> 1:02:57.120 boarding house, as they came into our courtyards, and they 1:02:57.240 --> 1:03:00.480 filmed us. They actually like we weren't there. They didn't 1:03:00.520 --> 1:03:04.040 talk to us, and they were even though they knew 1:03:04.880 --> 1:03:08.600 that this was the two thousand's, even though they knew 1:03:08.760 --> 1:03:12.000 these people had, you know, were not really laughing at them. 1:03:12.360 --> 1:03:15.720 It hurt them emotionally. It caused them so much pain 1:03:15.800 --> 1:03:18.160 and in fact, one of the fathers that one of 1:03:18.200 --> 1:03:21.920 the families had to have counseling after doing that. Chauffeur, 1:03:21.960 --> 1:03:24.640 I think it was three weeks because it was just 1:03:25.040 --> 1:03:29.320 so awful not to be able to protect and help 1:03:29.440 --> 1:03:31.960 your family, not be able to protect and help his 1:03:32.120 --> 1:03:35.560 children and his grandchildren as he wanted to. So I 1:03:35.640 --> 1:03:38.440 think that gives you some idea of what it's like 1:03:38.760 --> 1:03:43.840 to be right there in London and to have people saying, 1:03:43.960 --> 1:03:48.240 where is this mysterious country that is strange and mysterious 1:03:48.360 --> 1:03:52.360 denizens living And you're thinking, Hi, I'm right here, can 1:03:52.400 --> 1:03:55.400 you not see me? But you're being cast adrift. You 1:03:55.480 --> 1:03:59.880 are being outcast by your own society and community. M HM. 1:04:00.760 --> 1:04:04.240 I will say in in I love that that program. 1:04:04.320 --> 1:04:06.960 I watched it last year. Um. It's marketed in the 1:04:07.040 --> 1:04:10.560 United States as slum House. I think I hope for 1:04:11.000 --> 1:04:14.680 any listeners of unobscured who want to get a little 1:04:14.720 --> 1:04:18.040 more of that tangible feeling, who want to try to 1:04:18.160 --> 1:04:22.320 experience some of the rhythms of Victorian working class life, 1:04:22.720 --> 1:04:25.520 uh slum house or the Victorian slum that program is 1:04:26.040 --> 1:04:30.160 brilliant for that. UM. So I really commend that too. Listeners, 1:04:30.560 --> 1:04:33.040 go check it out, give it a watch. It's it's very, 1:04:33.160 --> 1:04:37.840 very worth it. In in striking a Light, Louise you right, 1:04:38.760 --> 1:04:43.600 um that the socialist groups which have been so well studied, um, 1:04:43.840 --> 1:04:47.200 they only represented a very small minority of the people 1:04:47.240 --> 1:04:50.600 who actually lived in the East End, and that membership 1:04:50.680 --> 1:04:53.960 was generally highest among the middle classes and men from 1:04:54.040 --> 1:04:57.280 more affluent sections of the working class. UM. And if 1:04:57.400 --> 1:05:01.040 most of the socialists or the radical known to us 1:05:01.080 --> 1:05:04.760 today we're a middle class people, what can we actually 1:05:05.240 --> 1:05:09.680 say about the politics of East London's working classes and 1:05:10.160 --> 1:05:14.720 and poor. And what's so interesting is that we've just 1:05:15.520 --> 1:05:20.040 gone ahead and assumed that working class people in the 1:05:20.200 --> 1:05:25.680 East End were not political, as if somehow, just because 1:05:25.680 --> 1:05:27.680 you hadn't read car marks cover to cover the fact 1:05:27.760 --> 1:05:33.919 that you were starving and dying and being worked to death, 1:05:33.960 --> 1:05:37.040 wouldn't wouldn't really occur to you. You wouldn't really realize 1:05:38.400 --> 1:05:41.600 unless somebody middle class came and told you. And even 1:05:41.760 --> 1:05:46.120 some historians that I greatly respect have written about that 1:05:46.240 --> 1:05:49.120 and said, you know, politics stirs them very little. Was 1:05:49.240 --> 1:05:51.560 the phrase that was used at the time about the 1:05:51.600 --> 1:05:55.800 working classes. They're not moved by politics. They're just so 1:05:56.120 --> 1:05:59.920 busy trying to get ahead, trying to get work, try 1:06:00.000 --> 1:06:02.640 mine to live, that they will climb on each other, 1:06:03.120 --> 1:06:06.360 you know, they will do each other down in order 1:06:06.720 --> 1:06:10.120 to survive. And you could understand it, frankly, if that 1:06:10.320 --> 1:06:14.600 had been the case, because working those hours, that struggled 1:06:14.640 --> 1:06:17.160 to survive, that struggled to feed your family, what does 1:06:17.240 --> 1:06:22.480 it leave you for political thinking? But what's so fascinating 1:06:22.680 --> 1:06:27.280 is it's not true at all. Working class people again 1:06:27.440 --> 1:06:31.200 and again have told us when talking about their childhoods, 1:06:31.520 --> 1:06:36.520 that they were incredibly politicized. It tends to be assumed 1:06:37.400 --> 1:06:41.320 that literacy, that being able to read is the be 1:06:41.480 --> 1:06:44.960 all and end all and if they were illiterate. I've 1:06:45.000 --> 1:06:47.000 often been told this, you know, don't you think you 1:06:47.080 --> 1:06:49.800 make too much louise about the poor being? Don't you 1:06:49.800 --> 1:06:53.320 think you're romanticizing them when you say that they were political, 1:06:53.400 --> 1:06:57.480 because after all, they couldn't read all right. Well, humanity 1:06:57.600 --> 1:06:59.840 hasn't been able to read all right for a great 1:07:00.280 --> 1:07:02.440 deal of our history. And yet you know, we've managed 1:07:02.520 --> 1:07:08.880 pretty well. And for example, the Irish community maintained a 1:07:09.120 --> 1:07:15.760 real sense of politicization through telling tales around the fireside. Literally, 1:07:15.920 --> 1:07:19.200 families would gather of an evening and they would, as 1:07:19.240 --> 1:07:23.320 one man called John Gibbons his reminiscences, unpublished Reminiscences of 1:07:23.440 --> 1:07:27.520 his Childhood I read, said, we would tell the tales 1:07:27.880 --> 1:07:31.040 of Erin's wrongs, and they would talk about all the 1:07:31.200 --> 1:07:33.200 terrible things that the Bricks had done in Ireland, and 1:07:33.280 --> 1:07:35.000 my goodness, there were enough to keep you going for 1:07:35.200 --> 1:07:38.320 several evenings, I would imagine. And he they would talk 1:07:38.400 --> 1:07:41.760 about Robert Emmett, the Irish rebel who was executed and 1:07:41.880 --> 1:07:45.960 how he died, and somebody would recite his speech from 1:07:46.040 --> 1:07:49.160 the dock, and he said, how can we not grow 1:07:49.320 --> 1:07:53.720 up to be dreamers? Of them? Roast romantic dreams. How 1:07:53.840 --> 1:07:58.720 could those people not become passionate about Irish home rule, 1:07:58.760 --> 1:08:01.880 about Irish affair is, how could they not become passionate 1:08:01.920 --> 1:08:06.640 about their people? And this was recreated with non Irish 1:08:06.680 --> 1:08:09.600 people as well. I mentioned before that one doctor's daughter 1:08:09.760 --> 1:08:13.680 remembered her dad taking them around for Sunday walks and saying, 1:08:13.760 --> 1:08:17.479 look at that beautiful building. Are people built that? And 1:08:17.720 --> 1:08:22.680 there were organizations like the Clarion Cycling Club. There was 1:08:22.760 --> 1:08:28.679 also a journal that was really widely read and Marry England, 1:08:28.760 --> 1:08:32.040 the wonderful book by the Clarions Robert Blatchford, which people 1:08:32.080 --> 1:08:35.679 would read. And there was a tale that I read 1:08:35.720 --> 1:08:38.120 of a little girl's thinking. I remember that my dad 1:08:38.240 --> 1:08:40.880 would read to us from that from Mary England, and 1:08:40.960 --> 1:08:43.679 my mom would shout up the stairs, those children should 1:08:43.760 --> 1:08:46.800 be in bed, it's past their bedtime. Stop reading to them, 1:08:46.920 --> 1:08:49.880 let's go to sleep. And he would say, what I 1:08:50.000 --> 1:08:54.200 am telling them will do them much more good than sleep. 1:08:54.880 --> 1:08:57.640 So there was this awareness by parents that we have 1:08:57.880 --> 1:09:00.800 to politicize our kids, we have to give them a 1:09:00.920 --> 1:09:06.880 sense of class pride. Another um reminiscence that I read 1:09:07.000 --> 1:09:08.960 was ever woman saying, well, we were told we were 1:09:08.960 --> 1:09:11.760 supposed to look up to our so called betters. But 1:09:11.920 --> 1:09:14.680 you know, my mom was was in service and she 1:09:14.880 --> 1:09:17.960 dusted the sideboard of old Lord Ponson b Smithe and 1:09:18.040 --> 1:09:19.760 she knew what he was like. She had to pick 1:09:19.840 --> 1:09:23.280 up after him. We weren't impressed by these people because 1:09:23.360 --> 1:09:26.320 we knew from our parents we were told that they 1:09:26.400 --> 1:09:29.840 were no better than us. And in fact, there are 1:09:29.960 --> 1:09:35.560 constant attempts to unionize. There are constant attempts to protest 1:09:35.800 --> 1:09:38.760 and to rebel by working people. It's just that they 1:09:38.800 --> 1:09:41.200 often get their skulls broken by the police and the 1:09:41.360 --> 1:09:43.800 armies when they try it. It's not that they don't 1:09:43.920 --> 1:09:48.800 try it, but then these stories also get misrepresented. There 1:09:48.960 --> 1:09:54.040 was an incident in six that led to violence when 1:09:54.080 --> 1:09:58.960 a protectionist group, so a group that are supposedly representing 1:09:59.040 --> 1:10:02.200 working people, are speaking in Trafalgar Square and they're saying 1:10:02.240 --> 1:10:05.000 we've got to keep these foreigners out of our British 1:10:05.120 --> 1:10:08.719 jobs and all that awful rhetoric that unfortunately is still 1:10:08.840 --> 1:10:13.519 with us, and this led to violence. This has been 1:10:13.560 --> 1:10:17.040 written about by historians saying, look you see, you see 1:10:17.080 --> 1:10:19.840 this is what working class people were like then. They 1:10:19.920 --> 1:10:23.280 were so ready to fight foreigners. They were so ready 1:10:23.360 --> 1:10:26.160 to be sort of borderline racist and xenophobic, and they 1:10:26.200 --> 1:10:29.559 were so ready to riot all the time. But actually 1:10:30.040 --> 1:10:33.719 it doesn't take much research to prove that that whole 1:10:34.080 --> 1:10:38.320 thing was a front for employers organizations. It was them 1:10:38.439 --> 1:10:41.719 who are up on the posiums in Trafalgar Square speaking 1:10:41.720 --> 1:10:43.720 about the need to get rid of foreign workers and 1:10:43.840 --> 1:10:48.400 to fight foreign competition. It wasn't genuine working people, and 1:10:48.520 --> 1:10:51.799 in fact, genuine working people who were listening were pretty 1:10:51.880 --> 1:10:55.920 disgusted and fought back against those speakers, and that's what 1:10:56.160 --> 1:11:01.320 caused the violence. And yet even comparatively re historians have 1:11:01.560 --> 1:11:08.160 written about that as an example of these uneducated, selfish, 1:11:08.560 --> 1:11:12.919 a political poor people. But I would say you couldn't 1:11:13.320 --> 1:11:18.240 be a political and survive as a poor person in 1:11:18.400 --> 1:11:21.640 the East End of London if you take politics in 1:11:21.720 --> 1:11:25.000 its widest sense, if you didn't have enough sense of 1:11:25.080 --> 1:11:29.080 solidarity to say, look, we're all in this together, we 1:11:29.280 --> 1:11:32.000 all need to help each other, we all need to 1:11:32.439 --> 1:11:34.400 make sure Mrs so and so next door has got 1:11:34.520 --> 1:11:38.000 enough food because it could be us tomorrow. That very 1:11:38.160 --> 1:11:42.920 basic sense of basically important sense of networking and solidarity. 1:11:43.600 --> 1:11:47.479 People brought that into factories and women in particular bought 1:11:47.560 --> 1:11:51.599 their networks of support and solidarity into the new factories 1:11:51.640 --> 1:11:54.960 and the new industrial jobs, and why wouldn't they? And 1:11:55.240 --> 1:12:00.680 really these things get dismissed sometimes by the serious label historians. Oh, 1:12:00.760 --> 1:12:03.599 that's not really a form of politics, but I think 1:12:03.800 --> 1:12:06.560 it's definitely, to my mind it is. And that was 1:12:06.640 --> 1:12:10.519 really the basis for trade unionism. For modern trade unisn't 1:12:10.640 --> 1:12:14.360 begins with this idea that we all need to help 1:12:14.439 --> 1:12:17.439 each other. We know who, we know, we have class 1:12:17.560 --> 1:12:19.920 enemies and we all need to unite to fight them, 1:12:20.000 --> 1:12:22.320 and a wrong to one is a wrong to all, 1:12:22.400 --> 1:12:24.920 if you like, that's a lesson that you learned pretty 1:12:25.000 --> 1:12:30.360 quickly in the backslums of the East End. What's jumped 1:12:30.360 --> 1:12:33.400 forward a little bit um. What was it like to 1:12:33.640 --> 1:12:39.080 be Irish in London's East End? What was distinctive about 1:12:39.200 --> 1:12:43.920 the Irish community there? What was that experience like and 1:12:44.120 --> 1:12:47.839 was it typical of the Irish experience in other places 1:12:47.880 --> 1:12:53.759 in London. Yeah, there's no one Irish experience in London, 1:12:53.880 --> 1:12:58.320 of course, but certainly it's a very different experience. If 1:12:58.400 --> 1:13:02.479 you're arriving from Ireland and extremely poor, with perhaps nothing 1:13:02.520 --> 1:13:04.920 but the clothes you stand up in and settling perhaps 1:13:05.000 --> 1:13:08.440 around spittle fields. That was always the zone of transmission, 1:13:08.520 --> 1:13:11.800 that was where people often began. Then if you'll say 1:13:11.840 --> 1:13:15.679 an Irish lawyer or a playwright, or if you're Oscar Wild, 1:13:15.840 --> 1:13:18.360 you know there's Irish people in Irish people at this time. 1:13:19.640 --> 1:13:22.639 But it was said that if there was one thing 1:13:22.920 --> 1:13:27.760 an English working person despised more than a policeman, it 1:13:28.040 --> 1:13:32.040 was an irishman. So there were these awful divisions of 1:13:32.120 --> 1:13:34.200 Karl Marks commented on that. He said, oh, we have 1:13:34.439 --> 1:13:40.360 to stop this racist conception where workers don't unite together. 1:13:41.600 --> 1:13:44.040 They see the Irish is competition and they try and 1:13:44.240 --> 1:13:46.320 drive them out of the employment market. They need to 1:13:46.479 --> 1:13:49.680 unite with them. Isn't that always the problem? And it's 1:13:49.680 --> 1:13:52.639 also a problem for women workers that male trade uniors 1:13:52.680 --> 1:13:54.920 would see them as taking their jobs because they were 1:13:54.960 --> 1:13:58.639 forced to work for less. So we do see Irish 1:13:58.760 --> 1:14:04.599 people being accused of causing their own povericy. This happens 1:14:04.640 --> 1:14:06.920 with Jewish people as well. It happens with most waves 1:14:07.040 --> 1:14:11.760 of migrant workers. They're accused of bringing down wages, they're 1:14:11.760 --> 1:14:17.280 accused of causing overcrowding. To set against this, they do 1:14:17.640 --> 1:14:23.840 have really strong networks, so through culture, through music, through pubs. 1:14:23.880 --> 1:14:25.680 There are a lot of Irish pubs in London at 1:14:25.720 --> 1:14:28.000 this time and they're very important to the political life 1:14:28.080 --> 1:14:33.640 of London. And through the church, Irish people are very united, 1:14:33.840 --> 1:14:36.280 and we see a lot of what they call chain migration, 1:14:36.360 --> 1:14:39.000 which means you go to a certain area because your 1:14:39.040 --> 1:14:41.400 friends are there, so your friends are settled in London, 1:14:41.520 --> 1:14:44.439 you come over and settle there. And we see entire 1:14:44.600 --> 1:14:50.439 streets becoming categorized as Irish that is an Irish area. 1:14:51.200 --> 1:14:53.680 And from the seventeen hundreds we hear people saying yes, 1:14:53.720 --> 1:14:58.000 in certain districts of London, you won't hear English spoken 1:14:58.040 --> 1:15:00.639 at all. People are speaking Irish or people speaking gaily. 1:15:00.680 --> 1:15:04.320 There's a priest who says, because I speak Irish, I'm 1:15:04.479 --> 1:15:08.160 really in demand for giving confession because most people can 1:15:08.200 --> 1:15:11.400 only access to English priests. So I'm working flat out 1:15:11.560 --> 1:15:14.599 dealing with all the Irish people, and I never hear 1:15:14.720 --> 1:15:18.920 English spoken from morning tonight. And we also see in 1:15:19.000 --> 1:15:25.240 the seventeen hundreds horrible anti Irish riots in which people 1:15:25.280 --> 1:15:27.880 are actually killed. It's it's not written about it very much, 1:15:28.000 --> 1:15:31.840 but there were some awful periods of xenophobia going to 1:15:32.040 --> 1:15:35.080 attack Irish hands. I mean, how terrifying must it have been? 1:15:35.120 --> 1:15:38.240 You know, for several days and nights, English people were 1:15:38.320 --> 1:15:41.200 told to put a candle in their window to show 1:15:41.320 --> 1:15:44.559 they weren't Irish, otherwise they could get their house pulled down. 1:15:45.080 --> 1:15:48.479 Irish pubs were attacked, Irish homes were attacked, Irish people 1:15:48.520 --> 1:15:51.839 were attacked. Apparently an Irish person was shot and actually 1:15:52.040 --> 1:15:55.160 killed in Brick Lane in the seventeen hundred. There's very 1:15:55.240 --> 1:15:59.519 little evidence of that's not written about very much. So 1:15:59.760 --> 1:16:03.240 Irish people are dealing with all of that, and there 1:16:03.560 --> 1:16:07.519 is a tendency, certainly from middle class commentators to look 1:16:07.680 --> 1:16:11.200 down on them even more than they're looking down on 1:16:11.320 --> 1:16:13.640 the English working class that we hear about, you know, 1:16:14.040 --> 1:16:18.000 the dirty Irish and the black Irish and all Irish 1:16:18.040 --> 1:16:24.040 and drinkers, all Irish criminals, they're all tinkers. Terrible bias, 1:16:24.720 --> 1:16:27.800 not helped by the fact that the Victorians, of course, 1:16:27.880 --> 1:16:32.120 we should never forget that the Victorians begin eugenics. You know, 1:16:32.200 --> 1:16:34.160 the Nazis really do a lot with it. We have 1:16:34.320 --> 1:16:36.639 fair they really pick up on it. But it's another 1:16:36.800 --> 1:16:41.080 wonderful thing that the British invented around this period, and 1:16:41.240 --> 1:16:45.280 one of the justifications for the conditions of poor, working 1:16:45.360 --> 1:16:48.400 class Irish people was that the Victorians decided, on no 1:16:48.520 --> 1:16:52.240 basis whatsoever, that they were a black race, a Negroid race, 1:16:52.479 --> 1:16:55.960 and therefore, of course inferior to the only superior people 1:16:56.000 --> 1:17:00.920 who were white English upper class men, incdentally considering a 1:17:00.960 --> 1:17:03.040 lot of the people that were writing the studio science 1:17:03.080 --> 1:17:05.559 were white English upper class and then they just happened 1:17:05.600 --> 1:17:08.800 that they were the superior ones. So you're really up 1:17:08.880 --> 1:17:11.599 against it, I think it's fair to say if you're Irish. 1:17:11.680 --> 1:17:15.400 But they do have the advantage of these strong networks 1:17:15.439 --> 1:17:19.759 and solidarity, and also this politicization that I've talked about. 1:17:20.280 --> 1:17:23.559 They are very politicized by what happens back home in Ireland, 1:17:23.640 --> 1:17:25.519 by their treatment at the hand of the British, and 1:17:25.560 --> 1:17:28.559 they come over here and they're very unenthusiastic about the British, 1:17:28.640 --> 1:17:31.839 just as much as we are about them. They're not grateful, 1:17:31.880 --> 1:17:34.120 and people complain about this. You know, they're coming over 1:17:34.200 --> 1:17:36.160 here and they're not at all grateful. They don't like 1:17:36.320 --> 1:17:38.680 the English. I mean, how dare they were giving them 1:17:38.720 --> 1:17:42.760 a roof over their head, So they were already pre 1:17:42.960 --> 1:17:46.280 politicized if you like, and that is a great weapon 1:17:47.040 --> 1:17:52.600 to fight being mothered and being demonized and dehumanized is 1:17:52.760 --> 1:17:55.160 your sense of self. And this is something with the 1:17:55.240 --> 1:17:59.960 Irish community that's quite remarkable is that even three general 1:18:00.080 --> 1:18:04.160 rations in London ISS would say I am Irish, even 1:18:04.160 --> 1:18:08.439 if they've never been to Ireland. They really maintained that 1:18:08.560 --> 1:18:13.120 sense of identity and that was very important. That's how 1:18:13.280 --> 1:18:15.840 you survive, I suppose, when you're really up against it, 1:18:16.080 --> 1:18:20.160 by a sense of pride in your identity. When you're 1:18:20.160 --> 1:18:26.360 talking about um, politicized communities and political forces working on 1:18:26.560 --> 1:18:30.320 some of these groups and in these neighborhoods. Um, would 1:18:30.360 --> 1:18:35.080 you describe the influence that Fenian movements and the Fenian 1:18:35.120 --> 1:18:39.439 bombings of the eighties had on Irish life in London 1:18:39.479 --> 1:18:43.720 at the time. M Yes, just as the community I 1:18:43.800 --> 1:18:47.120 suppose was getting a little bit more settled and a 1:18:47.200 --> 1:18:50.640 little bit more established. I wouldn't say massively accepted, but 1:18:51.080 --> 1:18:54.559 getting that way. There was First of all, in eighteen 1:18:54.600 --> 1:18:58.679 sixty seven there was the bombing at Clarkenwell Prison which 1:18:58.800 --> 1:19:01.320 was to release Richard was Sullivan Bok, who was an 1:19:01.360 --> 1:19:05.040 Irish rebel leader who was being held there and unfortunately 1:19:05.160 --> 1:19:09.080 it went horrifically wrong and six people were killed, and 1:19:09.160 --> 1:19:12.200 it was working class people who suffered. They put gunpower 1:19:12.280 --> 1:19:14.680 against the prison war, but there were crowded, you know, 1:19:14.840 --> 1:19:17.720 working class houses cheap by jail, right up against the 1:19:17.800 --> 1:19:21.240 prison And as Karl Marks remarked at the time, people 1:19:21.280 --> 1:19:24.320 have previously shown great sympathy for the Irish cause, and 1:19:24.400 --> 1:19:26.760 there was an awful lot of sympathy for it, but 1:19:27.000 --> 1:19:29.879 they will be driven into the arms of the government 1:19:29.960 --> 1:19:33.040 by this. You cannot expect the English proletariat to accept 1:19:33.080 --> 1:19:36.599 being blown up just because it believes in the political cause. 1:19:37.080 --> 1:19:39.519 So this did cause a lot of descent within the 1:19:39.600 --> 1:19:42.960 Irish community as well. The cause was a good one, 1:19:43.520 --> 1:19:47.240 but yes, when you kill working class supporters, it's never 1:19:47.320 --> 1:19:49.680 going to be a good move. And then there were 1:19:49.800 --> 1:19:53.439 the eight and eight three bombs at train stations and 1:19:53.760 --> 1:19:56.960 at underground stations, and that's why Special Branch was set up, 1:19:57.080 --> 1:20:00.320 of course, So suddenly you have all the these in 1:20:00.479 --> 1:20:04.559 four months from the Irage community. And within the Irage community, 1:20:04.920 --> 1:20:09.439 you know, you are the most suspect group in London. 1:20:09.800 --> 1:20:12.000 People write about the Irage at this time or they're 1:20:12.000 --> 1:20:16.000 all Fenian terrorists. Fenian was used as an insult against 1:20:16.080 --> 1:20:19.040 Irish people. There was an area of London around Gayle 1:20:19.120 --> 1:20:23.400 Street that was known as the Fenian Barracks. And Charles 1:20:23.520 --> 1:20:27.040 Booth writes about a policeman telling him about the Fenian Barracks, 1:20:27.120 --> 1:20:30.400 and he says, men here are not human, they are 1:20:30.560 --> 1:20:34.840 wild beasts. If you try and arrest anyone, he said, 1:20:34.920 --> 1:20:38.040 from that area, they all unite together. They will barricade 1:20:38.120 --> 1:20:41.280 themselves in. They will throw anything they can get their 1:20:41.320 --> 1:20:45.320 hands on, furniture, anything at you. They will never allow 1:20:45.400 --> 1:20:48.280 one of their numbers to be arrested. And he says, 1:20:48.320 --> 1:20:52.200 not an Englishman nor a Scotsman would live among them. 1:20:53.120 --> 1:20:55.479 So here we are, even in the East End, which 1:20:55.560 --> 1:20:58.360 is being divided from the rest of London, even the 1:20:58.439 --> 1:21:01.639 working class, which has been divided from the rest of society, 1:21:01.880 --> 1:21:06.439 is dividing itself. And we're guessing these divisions, these false 1:21:06.520 --> 1:21:11.040 divisions between Irish and English, and the Irish are coming 1:21:11.080 --> 1:21:16.240 to personify the worst and least respectable poor of all, 1:21:16.840 --> 1:21:21.600 and all suspects, all being suspected of terrorism. Mhm. Of 1:21:21.680 --> 1:21:24.080 course you write in Striking a Light that many of 1:21:24.120 --> 1:21:28.160 the Metro when were Irish and you've mentioned that again today. Um, 1:21:28.600 --> 1:21:31.519 you have a section of your first chapter dedicated to 1:21:31.960 --> 1:21:34.639 perceptions of women who worked in factories, and again you've 1:21:34.640 --> 1:21:37.880 talked a little bit about the factory girl in the 1:21:37.960 --> 1:21:43.639 middle class imagination. What was the reputation of factory women 1:21:44.200 --> 1:21:48.439 in the neighborhoods where they live. Yes, now that is 1:21:48.439 --> 1:21:52.559 a very different thing. Of course, how push London, how 1:21:52.640 --> 1:21:57.080 they're so called betters, viewed them, and how the local 1:21:57.160 --> 1:22:00.760 spewed them is completely different. So taking the match women 1:22:00.800 --> 1:22:04.240 as one example, because they are the largest pool of 1:22:04.439 --> 1:22:09.320 female so called casual workers in the East Stand at 1:22:09.360 --> 1:22:12.599 that time, so they're quite a good example. They were 1:22:12.800 --> 1:22:16.760 so looked down upon by commentators, you know, a rough 1:22:16.880 --> 1:22:21.360 set of girls. Their own employers said said that about them, 1:22:22.080 --> 1:22:25.680 and people would write about the incredibly patronizing lee or 1:22:25.760 --> 1:22:28.840 they're always drunk and they're always consorting with men of 1:22:28.920 --> 1:22:32.439 the very worst type. And they're also written about. When 1:22:32.439 --> 1:22:35.519 they're not written about like that, they're written about us children. 1:22:35.720 --> 1:22:39.320 So match girls, it's always match girls, and they're written 1:22:39.360 --> 1:22:43.639 about being a little bit simple, having no intelligence whatsoever. 1:22:43.760 --> 1:22:46.400 So they're the lowest of the low really because they're 1:22:46.439 --> 1:22:52.479 east Enders and Irish origin and industrially working women factory girls. 1:22:52.600 --> 1:22:56.480 That is three massive strikes against you. This is appalling. 1:22:56.560 --> 1:22:58.400 You know, it's bad enough being a woman really in 1:22:58.520 --> 1:23:02.120 Victorian England, but insisting on being working class and Irish 1:23:02.160 --> 1:23:07.320 only standa isn't really taking the proverbill. So the way 1:23:07.360 --> 1:23:10.920 they're looked at in their area though, is completely different. 1:23:11.320 --> 1:23:14.400 So fascinating. You could get away with a lot of 1:23:14.640 --> 1:23:20.120 sins against the Victorian narrative if you were the right 1:23:20.200 --> 1:23:24.160 sort of woman, So if you were really gutsy, if 1:23:24.240 --> 1:23:27.640 you fronted it out. That's a really important term in 1:23:27.720 --> 1:23:30.640 the East End, fronting it out, you know, having the competence, 1:23:30.720 --> 1:23:34.679 holding your head high and not taking any nonsense from anybody, 1:23:34.760 --> 1:23:37.479 having self respect I supposed to. Really, you could get 1:23:37.479 --> 1:23:39.120 away with an awful lot of stuff. You know. There 1:23:39.120 --> 1:23:41.240 are women who had lovers, which were supposed to be 1:23:41.320 --> 1:23:45.759 a terrible sin, and yet they were still a great 1:23:45.840 --> 1:23:49.439 standing in the community because they were just wonderful people. 1:23:50.120 --> 1:23:54.280 They were good to their friends. They were the aunts 1:23:54.320 --> 1:23:56.439 and queens of the street. They were the midwife, they 1:23:56.439 --> 1:23:59.800 were the undertakers. They filed incredibly important functions. So where 1:24:00.160 --> 1:24:04.160 we are told any woman who does anything immoral, is 1:24:04.280 --> 1:24:08.200 completely outcast. Nobody would speak to her, her reputation is ruined. 1:24:08.640 --> 1:24:11.920 That's not true at all. That's the middle class perception. 1:24:12.479 --> 1:24:15.320 And the Pool were a lot less judgmental and a 1:24:15.439 --> 1:24:18.720 lot more flexible, and the match Woden were kind of 1:24:19.080 --> 1:24:23.439 really the cool girl gang in the neighborhood. Actually, or 1:24:23.640 --> 1:24:26.760 despite the way, it's such a contrast between the way 1:24:26.840 --> 1:24:30.160 that the middle classes looked down on them, they were 1:24:31.120 --> 1:24:36.320 the ones who knew all the musical songs of the day. 1:24:36.439 --> 1:24:39.599 I discovered that when I've read a magistrate who lived 1:24:39.640 --> 1:24:43.280 in the Eastern complaining about, Oh, these match women they 1:24:43.400 --> 1:24:45.760 wake me up, you know, occasionally when they have enough 1:24:45.840 --> 1:24:48.120 money to go out, maybe on the back holiday, they 1:24:48.240 --> 1:24:50.960 come back from the musicals and they're singing all the 1:24:51.040 --> 1:24:54.560 way home. They're singing Tar Bundier knocked him in the 1:24:54.600 --> 1:24:57.320 old Road. And I'm trying to sleep, I've got caught 1:24:57.400 --> 1:24:59.360 in the morning and I'm being woken up by them. 1:25:00.200 --> 1:25:02.760 But when you think about what that means, you could 1:25:02.880 --> 1:25:06.280 only know the words of musical songs if you manage 1:25:06.320 --> 1:25:10.280 to get into those performances. And they were their hit 1:25:10.360 --> 1:25:13.280 the coolest songs at the time, so it's like dropping 1:25:13.439 --> 1:25:16.880 bars from the latest grime artists, being able to recite 1:25:17.080 --> 1:25:19.519 those songs, being able to sing them walking arm in 1:25:19.640 --> 1:25:23.160 arm down the street. That's pretty cool. That makes you 1:25:23.880 --> 1:25:27.479 pretty cool. They all said something else they loved about them, 1:25:27.479 --> 1:25:32.280 which gave me a real clue to their personalities. And 1:25:32.400 --> 1:25:35.840 it's really common of working class people over the world, 1:25:35.960 --> 1:25:38.960 actually not just in England at this period, and certainly 1:25:39.000 --> 1:25:41.200 not just in the East End, was that when they 1:25:41.240 --> 1:25:44.559 could go out, which was rare, but sometimes somebody, one 1:25:44.560 --> 1:25:47.040 of the better paid workers would stand treat as it 1:25:47.200 --> 1:25:49.120 was called, and who said I'll pay for you all 1:25:49.200 --> 1:25:51.200 to have tea, and they'd be really excited. They might 1:25:51.240 --> 1:25:53.719 get a cup of tea in a cafe and jam 1:25:53.920 --> 1:25:56.360 on their bread. This was a real highlight, maybe even 1:25:56.479 --> 1:25:59.000 some cake. And when they got to go out, they 1:25:59.040 --> 1:26:01.920 were going to look their better as a matter of 1:26:02.040 --> 1:26:05.240 pride and partly as a retort to the people they 1:26:05.320 --> 1:26:07.600 knew were looking down on them. They were going to 1:26:07.760 --> 1:26:10.800 look absolutely dressed up to the nines and probably the 1:26:10.920 --> 1:26:14.080 tents when they were walking down the streets. They couldn't 1:26:14.080 --> 1:26:17.280 afford it though on their own they couldn't afford to 1:26:17.439 --> 1:26:20.920 buy the beautiful hats that every Victorian woman needed to 1:26:21.040 --> 1:26:24.960 be really cool. So they formed what they called feather clubs, 1:26:25.400 --> 1:26:27.640 and actually a lot of factory women did this. The 1:26:27.760 --> 1:26:29.680 match women had a feather club, and what was it. 1:26:29.800 --> 1:26:32.920 It was a communal hat club. Feather club. Because the 1:26:32.960 --> 1:26:36.000 hats were so befeathered at the times, entire flocks of 1:26:36.080 --> 1:26:39.720 poor little birds died to make these hats, and they 1:26:39.760 --> 1:26:44.760 would pay in to the club. And I presume that 1:26:44.840 --> 1:26:46.760 when there was enough money, Elsie would pop up to 1:26:46.800 --> 1:26:48.880 the milliners, or perhaps somebody would make a hat. I 1:26:48.920 --> 1:26:51.560 don't know, but they would have these beautiful hats. So 1:26:51.760 --> 1:26:54.519 they knew when they walked down the bow row, when 1:26:54.560 --> 1:26:57.200 they promenaded down the bow row with their friends singing 1:26:57.320 --> 1:27:01.280 these really a lot, you know, up to the minute 1:27:01.360 --> 1:27:05.840 musical songs, they looked incredible. And that was a kind 1:27:05.880 --> 1:27:08.640 of political resistance. Really. It was like, Okay, you might 1:27:08.720 --> 1:27:10.519 want to look down on us, but look at us. 1:27:10.640 --> 1:27:14.160 We look bloody fantastic, and we know we do. And 1:27:14.240 --> 1:27:17.880 the descendants that I talked to, we're really good at 1:27:18.000 --> 1:27:23.200 explaining how these notions, these received notions that were forced 1:27:23.280 --> 1:27:26.599 on them from above, were rejected and were turned around 1:27:26.680 --> 1:27:29.439 and he said, I'm really glad you're writing about my 1:27:29.520 --> 1:27:33.559 grand and her friends, because they were wonderful and nobody 1:27:33.680 --> 1:27:35.720 thinks they were. And I had to grow up with that. 1:27:35.880 --> 1:27:39.960 I had to grow up with these incredible powerhouse women, 1:27:40.520 --> 1:27:44.439 strong characters, brave, amazing, you know, did the impossible on 1:27:44.479 --> 1:27:48.400 a daily basis, fed huge families, and people treated them 1:27:48.439 --> 1:27:51.800 like dirt. And people would say they weren't ladies, but 1:27:52.000 --> 1:27:56.120 to us they were. They were East End ladies. And 1:27:56.320 --> 1:28:01.360 that's so key, that distinction between women and lady. Anyone 1:28:01.439 --> 1:28:03.760 can be a woman, but certainly not everyone, according to 1:28:03.840 --> 1:28:07.920 the Victorians, could be a lady, and a lady was 1:28:09.040 --> 1:28:12.000 an absence. Really, what is a lady? Well, it's what 1:28:12.160 --> 1:28:17.519 she's not. She's not loud, she's not drunk, she's not sexy, 1:28:18.439 --> 1:28:21.799 she's not having a good time. Really, she's sitting quietly, 1:28:21.880 --> 1:28:25.280 as quiet and still as you can possibly be, as 1:28:25.720 --> 1:28:28.920 as devoid of humanity as you can possibly be. It's 1:28:28.960 --> 1:28:31.439 no coincidence that the angel in the house that an 1:28:31.520 --> 1:28:36.320 angel isn't human, is above humanity. But the east Enders 1:28:36.360 --> 1:28:40.679 rejected this. They had their own much more liberated, I suppose. 1:28:40.760 --> 1:28:42.880 I mean, it sounds strange to talk about. I'm not 1:28:43.040 --> 1:28:47.120 suggesting that every doctor was a rampant feminist in this period, 1:28:47.400 --> 1:28:50.160 but they had far more liberated conceptions and far more 1:28:50.360 --> 1:28:55.639 real conceptions of what a woman was than they're supposing. 1:28:55.680 --> 1:28:59.800 Betters m What did working women in the Eastern think 1:29:00.280 --> 1:29:03.040 of the police? Did they have a relationship with the 1:29:03.160 --> 1:29:07.599 police that was antagonistic? Was there was there a general 1:29:07.800 --> 1:29:10.320 class alignment of the London police at the time that 1:29:10.479 --> 1:29:14.600 was very evident? What can we say about that? This 1:29:14.960 --> 1:29:20.840 kind of fascinating because the police had a healthy respect, 1:29:21.320 --> 1:29:25.559 shall we say, for working class women, and there were 1:29:25.640 --> 1:29:30.880 reasons for this. You hear policemen talking. Sometimes commentators like 1:29:30.960 --> 1:29:33.320 Child's Booth will seek out the opinion of the police 1:29:33.360 --> 1:29:36.080 are sort of respectable authority figures who also know the 1:29:36.160 --> 1:29:39.160 working classes because they're from the working classes on the whole. 1:29:39.720 --> 1:29:43.000 About people like the matchwomen and they will tell them, well, 1:29:43.680 --> 1:29:47.200 the matchment are very well respected in the area. They 1:29:47.479 --> 1:29:51.000 have a famous sense of unity. They settle all their 1:29:51.080 --> 1:29:54.960 disputes really quickly. But if they have a dispute and 1:29:55.080 --> 1:29:56.840 you know you're working with people, they get on your nerves. 1:29:56.880 --> 1:30:00.360 If they have a dispute at work, they can't resolve. Well, 1:30:00.479 --> 1:30:04.639 let's just say they had a rather non Industrial Relations 1:30:04.720 --> 1:30:08.080 approved method of sorting that out. So this police been said, 1:30:08.280 --> 1:30:11.200 a ring will be formed, they will fight like men, 1:30:11.840 --> 1:30:15.120 and we, as the police, do not interfere. So they'd 1:30:15.160 --> 1:30:18.040 have punch ups if they really couldn't sort out a 1:30:18.200 --> 1:30:21.639 problem at work, and the police would back off. Isn't 1:30:21.720 --> 1:30:25.840 that interesting? The police were scared or certainly respectful of 1:30:26.000 --> 1:30:29.680 these incredibly tough working class women. And then one of 1:30:29.760 --> 1:30:33.400 the other tales that I was told was that, in 1:30:33.560 --> 1:30:36.280 order to amuse themselves of an evening, of course there 1:30:36.400 --> 1:30:40.400 wasn't much on Telly because there wasn't telly. Working class 1:30:40.439 --> 1:30:44.400 people would observe the coppers who were parading around their neighborhood, 1:30:44.439 --> 1:30:47.439 and who would often go in pairs because famously we 1:30:47.479 --> 1:30:49.600 always here, don't we. You know, you wouldn't patrol that 1:30:49.640 --> 1:30:51.680 neighborhood with less than two of you because it was 1:30:51.760 --> 1:30:55.879 so dangerous and also dark. So they'd watched the coppers 1:30:56.520 --> 1:31:00.360 strolling around and they think, interesting, their walk over a 1:31:00.479 --> 1:31:04.320 manhole there, and that's quite a large manhole. I wonder 1:31:04.400 --> 1:31:08.920 what would happen if we removed that manhole cover? And 1:31:09.120 --> 1:31:12.800 it's dark and the coppers wouldn't see that. So one 1:31:12.880 --> 1:31:16.120 of their forms are fun was to remove the manhole 1:31:16.160 --> 1:31:19.080 covers the poor coppers walking around, and they wait and 1:31:19.240 --> 1:31:22.519 see if one of them just dropped and ended up 1:31:22.880 --> 1:31:26.960 beneath the street, down the manhole, and then, as if 1:31:27.000 --> 1:31:29.920 that wasn't bad enough, if they if they could, if 1:31:29.920 --> 1:31:31.360 they could get away with it, they sneak out and 1:31:31.400 --> 1:31:34.240 put the manhole cover back on and leave the poor 1:31:34.320 --> 1:31:36.200 bobby down there. Now I don't think forever. I mean 1:31:36.240 --> 1:31:39.240 I presume eventually his workmates got him out. I don't 1:31:39.240 --> 1:31:43.040 think they're still down there skeletons of policemen below the 1:31:43.120 --> 1:31:45.800 streets at the east End. But I think this gives 1:31:45.840 --> 1:31:50.599 you an idea of the shall we say, mischievous regard 1:31:50.960 --> 1:31:52.880 in which the east Enders held the police. Now, there 1:31:53.040 --> 1:31:56.000 wasn't a great deal of respect there because they saw 1:31:56.120 --> 1:32:00.760 the police on the whole as forces of the establishment. 1:32:01.280 --> 1:32:03.719 You know, they're the people that are on these damned 1:32:03.760 --> 1:32:06.920 plumbing tours. So these are people coming to your neighborhoods, 1:32:07.040 --> 1:32:11.160 leading the knobs, the talks, the posh people laughing at us. 1:32:11.280 --> 1:32:13.720 They're being led by police. So how can you see 1:32:13.760 --> 1:32:16.920 them as being on your side when there are demonstrations 1:32:16.960 --> 1:32:19.839 and protests. Who who's hitting over here with a truncheon. 1:32:20.040 --> 1:32:23.920 It's the police. So no, there isn't much class solidarity. 1:32:23.960 --> 1:32:26.439 There are some police at the time who say, well, 1:32:26.479 --> 1:32:29.280 we are trying to do good for our neighborhood and 1:32:29.360 --> 1:32:31.280 you know, we need a job. We're not trying to 1:32:32.520 --> 1:32:35.639 oppress our working class neighbors. But now I think it's 1:32:35.680 --> 1:32:40.080 fair to say that they're not incredibly well thought of 1:32:40.520 --> 1:32:43.400 by the people of the East. And when the match 1:32:43.479 --> 1:32:45.920 from the strike happened, I was really interested to read 1:32:46.280 --> 1:32:50.719 in the local press that battalions of police were rushed 1:32:50.840 --> 1:32:54.800 into the area. I love this idea of women on 1:32:54.960 --> 1:32:57.920 strike and young women girls in many cases, being so 1:32:58.160 --> 1:33:01.879 terrified to the establishment they're all police leave was canceled. 1:33:01.920 --> 1:33:04.519 Oh my god, people eye on these dangerous match women 1:33:04.560 --> 1:33:06.920 said police are rushed in. But I think another reason 1:33:07.080 --> 1:33:10.280 is probably the local police were not key at all 1:33:11.000 --> 1:33:14.640 on trying to police the match women strike. They were like, no, 1:33:14.880 --> 1:33:17.400 it's fine. Let let people from outside who don't know 1:33:17.479 --> 1:33:21.000 what they're dealing with it and we can see the 1:33:21.160 --> 1:33:24.280 spirit of the match women. There was an event in 1:33:24.400 --> 1:33:29.520 the seventies when match workers were protesting against a proposed 1:33:29.800 --> 1:33:33.120 tax on matches which have been really bad for their trade. 1:33:33.680 --> 1:33:35.760 Now I have to say that their employers were really 1:33:35.840 --> 1:33:38.240 happy with them, encouraged them to protest. Actually, so that's 1:33:38.280 --> 1:33:42.839 not a complete revolution. React that they marched to Parliament 1:33:42.960 --> 1:33:44.880 and they're very young, a lot for people marching, and 1:33:44.960 --> 1:33:48.920 they have banners that they've made themselves to say two 1:33:49.200 --> 1:33:52.400 MPs do not don't bring this tax in. Now the 1:33:52.520 --> 1:33:55.360 police cattle them like this might have been one of 1:33:55.439 --> 1:33:58.839 the first examples ever of cattling, when the police around 1:33:58.920 --> 1:34:02.679 protesters and they try to snatch their banners and there's 1:34:02.720 --> 1:34:07.320 an all all out, free for all punch up. By 1:34:07.400 --> 1:34:10.240 the side of the tents, there are match women throwing 1:34:10.400 --> 1:34:12.800 rocks at the police, very well aimed apparently as well. 1:34:12.880 --> 1:34:16.640 They're they're finding their targets and breaking through, refusing to 1:34:16.720 --> 1:34:19.280 surrender their banners. Banners are a very important thing in 1:34:19.360 --> 1:34:21.519 protest at this period. It's like an army. You don't 1:34:21.600 --> 1:34:24.560 let the other side take your banners. And there's some 1:34:24.640 --> 1:34:26.439 of them managed to get free and they managed to 1:34:26.479 --> 1:34:30.200 get as far as Parliament to present their petition. But 1:34:30.360 --> 1:34:33.440 that gives you an idea as well. These are children 1:34:33.720 --> 1:34:36.439 on the whole. But my goodness, they can be fierce 1:34:36.600 --> 1:34:39.720 and they can fight, and the police, you know, the 1:34:39.840 --> 1:34:44.880 police know it. Mhm. Let's step forward a little in time, 1:34:45.240 --> 1:34:50.280 but follow those girls, those women who protesting in the seventies. Um, 1:34:52.520 --> 1:34:55.360 But what was the context in which they were working. 1:34:55.439 --> 1:34:59.760 Let's hear a little bit more about the factory. What's 1:34:59.800 --> 1:35:02.760 her little bit more about Brian and May. How significant 1:35:02.880 --> 1:35:06.400 a company was it? And you know in the book 1:35:06.479 --> 1:35:11.080 you've you've described that that company had an irresistible rise 1:35:11.280 --> 1:35:17.320 from quaker grocers to powerful and ruthless cartel. Can you 1:35:17.400 --> 1:35:20.439 offer that story kind of in in brief they're really 1:35:20.520 --> 1:35:23.599 the Victorian dream Brian to May. There is an original 1:35:23.680 --> 1:35:26.200 mis to Brian and then Mr May. And they start 1:35:26.280 --> 1:35:31.439 out as grossest, they're not particularly rich. They're trying a 1:35:31.640 --> 1:35:34.000 number of things, trying their hand at various things, so 1:35:34.320 --> 1:35:37.439 making candle making, all trying to make their fortune. And 1:35:37.560 --> 1:35:41.560 eventually they come to London because they're from Plymouth originally, 1:35:42.040 --> 1:35:45.679 and they leased this factory site on the Fairfield Road, 1:35:46.400 --> 1:35:48.600 very near the Bow Road, one of the most important 1:35:48.800 --> 1:35:52.240 roads in the East End. It was three factories. That's 1:35:52.280 --> 1:35:56.960 how large their ambition is really. And they construct this 1:35:57.120 --> 1:36:01.320 incredible Gothic castle. It's it looks like from the outside 1:36:02.000 --> 1:36:06.519 in which to make matches. They become this huge, huge firm. 1:36:06.600 --> 1:36:10.360 There are a household name. Matches are hugely important of 1:36:10.479 --> 1:36:14.160 course at the time, because you've got no lighting, you've 1:36:14.200 --> 1:36:16.400 got no heating, you've got no fire, you've got no 1:36:16.479 --> 1:36:19.200 hot water, you've got no hot food, let alone lighting 1:36:19.280 --> 1:36:22.439 your fag, your cigarettes or your pipes or your cigars. 1:36:22.800 --> 1:36:26.000 So matches are everywhere and they're an absolute essential for 1:36:26.120 --> 1:36:30.040 every household. And they very quickly because it is a 1:36:30.320 --> 1:36:35.479 low investment industry, huge profits, very little money to put in. 1:36:36.320 --> 1:36:41.240 They become massive within a generation. The original Mr Bryan 1:36:41.280 --> 1:36:45.240 and Mr May are still alive when this firm really 1:36:45.360 --> 1:36:48.840 carries all before it, and they're incredibly in with the 1:36:49.040 --> 1:36:53.800 Liberal Party that in the politicians. They're very significant. They 1:36:53.920 --> 1:36:59.000 become huge exporters as well, something factors all over the country. 1:36:59.000 --> 1:37:00.800 It's not just in the East End of Well This 1:37:00.920 --> 1:37:03.240 is a very significant one in the East End. And 1:37:03.400 --> 1:37:06.760 they're so important to the government that the government will 1:37:06.920 --> 1:37:11.040 tailor it's policies to Briant May. So, for example, the 1:37:11.200 --> 1:37:14.840 ghastly white phosphorus that they used to make matches gets 1:37:14.960 --> 1:37:17.559 banned in the rest of Europe quicker than it does 1:37:17.640 --> 1:37:20.120 in England because we don't want to aspect Brian and made. 1:37:20.200 --> 1:37:25.320 That's how important they become. The original Mr May, who's 1:37:25.360 --> 1:37:28.200 the nicer of the two. Francis May, I think, gets 1:37:28.320 --> 1:37:31.120 forced out by the Bryants. We don't know why. I'd 1:37:31.320 --> 1:37:35.280 love to know why something happens. He alludes Mr May 1:37:35.720 --> 1:37:37.760 to this terrible thing that Bryants have done that he 1:37:37.800 --> 1:37:40.080 can't forgive. I would love to know. I love a 1:37:40.120 --> 1:37:43.560 bit of gossip, but we don't know. The sons of 1:37:43.640 --> 1:37:47.400 the original Brant takeover and they are absolutely ruthless, capitalistic 1:37:47.520 --> 1:37:51.120 bastards in a very modern sense too. They've got a 1:37:51.400 --> 1:37:57.040 huge regard for public relations, so they're constantly showing rich 1:37:57.160 --> 1:37:59.680 people in journalists around the factory and saying, look at 1:37:59.720 --> 1:38:02.920 our lovely working conditions. Obviously they're making everything look good 1:38:02.960 --> 1:38:04.800 for those days. The girls are dressed up in their 1:38:04.840 --> 1:38:07.280 finest clothes that they probably got out of the pawn broker, 1:38:07.720 --> 1:38:10.400 so they're really aware of their public image and they 1:38:10.520 --> 1:38:13.200 just become second to none. They're one of the most 1:38:13.360 --> 1:38:20.559 successful countries in the company, so people assume that conditions 1:38:20.640 --> 1:38:23.200 must be good, it must be all right working for them, 1:38:23.200 --> 1:38:26.040 because look how rich they are. They've become a firm 1:38:26.400 --> 1:38:30.719 Innate and eighty four and very quickly shareholders they're getting 1:38:31.720 --> 1:38:36.880 return on their investment. That's massive. Also, shareholders are often 1:38:37.360 --> 1:38:39.760 liberal MPs because they're very tied in with the Liberal 1:38:39.840 --> 1:38:43.760 Party and clergymen. So again people think, well, they must 1:38:43.920 --> 1:38:48.439 be a fairly kindly respectable company because look at all 1:38:48.439 --> 1:38:50.800 these good men who are very concerned about the pool, 1:38:51.280 --> 1:38:55.000 who are investing in them. And it's really not until 1:38:55.080 --> 1:38:58.400 the strike that the match when managed to show us 1:38:58.560 --> 1:39:03.400 what's really going on. Behind this facards that looks like 1:39:03.800 --> 1:39:07.760 this gothic castle with gatehouses and turrets. Women are working 1:39:07.840 --> 1:39:11.720 twelve hour days and starving to death. Women are contracting 1:39:12.479 --> 1:39:16.679 necrosis from white phosphorus. Their jaws are rotting and decaying 1:39:16.840 --> 1:39:21.320 while they're still alive. But it takes this huge event 1:39:21.439 --> 1:39:23.560 that a striper comes to show us this because we 1:39:23.640 --> 1:39:26.920 don't want to see it. We want to assume Brian 1:39:27.000 --> 1:39:29.880 to mayar this lovely success story. And we all have 1:39:30.000 --> 1:39:32.400 their match boxes at home, and they have this wonderful 1:39:32.520 --> 1:39:36.240 patriotic designs on their match boxes, and it's all very Imperial. 1:39:36.400 --> 1:39:40.080 It's all very royal. We want to believe that they 1:39:40.200 --> 1:39:43.280 are good employers as much as we would bother thinking 1:39:43.320 --> 1:39:47.280 about match match work is we want to believe that 1:39:47.439 --> 1:39:50.840 they're good, but they're not. And they're also buying up 1:39:51.000 --> 1:39:55.559 rival firms at an incredible rate. So when people hear 1:39:55.600 --> 1:39:59.840 about conditions and they want to boycott Branton May, they say, right, well, 1:40:00.080 --> 1:40:02.960 will buy our matches from Bells or from this other 1:40:03.240 --> 1:40:07.040 companies instead. They don't realize that Briant to me are 1:40:07.080 --> 1:40:09.040 chuckling wig go and go on them because we actually 1:40:09.160 --> 1:40:12.320 own those companies. Sometimes they would buy out rivals who 1:40:12.360 --> 1:40:16.160 would maintain their own name. So you know, really it 1:40:16.320 --> 1:40:19.240 looks like David versus Goliath. It looks like the matter 1:40:19.400 --> 1:40:23.760 and have no chance. They've done everything to ensure their positions. 1:40:24.040 --> 1:40:28.240 They've not only managed to push wages down for no reason, 1:40:28.360 --> 1:40:31.200 doesn't need to be done, but wages are lower in 1:40:32.200 --> 1:40:34.679 eight and they were in eighteen seventy eight, just because 1:40:34.720 --> 1:40:38.439 why not, you know, more profits for the shareholders. And 1:40:38.720 --> 1:40:43.120 they've done this relentless pr campaign. They're in with government 1:40:43.439 --> 1:40:46.320 who can possibly stop them, who is possibly going to 1:40:46.439 --> 1:40:48.960 take them on? They think no one but of course 1:40:49.000 --> 1:40:52.000 they've underestimated the women who are right under their noses. 1:40:53.040 --> 1:40:56.200 Can you describe what kind of life was possible on 1:40:56.280 --> 1:40:59.040 a branton May wage and how did it compare to 1:40:59.240 --> 1:41:01.880 other sorts of are available in the in the East End. 1:41:02.720 --> 1:41:06.400 It was lower paid that brianton May didn't even know that. 1:41:06.640 --> 1:41:08.800 That's what's so fascinating. They just paid as little as 1:41:08.840 --> 1:41:11.840 they could get away with. During the strike, when people 1:41:11.880 --> 1:41:15.200 start saying, you are paying your women a very low rate, 1:41:15.280 --> 1:41:17.720 even the best pay, because everyone got different ways they're paid, 1:41:17.760 --> 1:41:20.160 depending what they did, how how long they've been there, 1:41:20.240 --> 1:41:22.679 how good they were at the job. You are paying 1:41:22.720 --> 1:41:27.200 your women way below the average. And brianton May say, 1:41:27.240 --> 1:41:29.760 we're absolutely not. But behind this scenes, if you look 1:41:29.800 --> 1:41:33.519 in their company correspondence file, they're desperately writing if the 1:41:33.600 --> 1:41:35.680 other factors going what do you pay? What do you pay? 1:41:35.720 --> 1:41:37.519 Can you please tell us what you pay? And they 1:41:37.640 --> 1:41:41.840 find out that yes, pretty much everywhere is paying more 1:41:42.320 --> 1:41:45.519 than their pay, so very little life a toy. We 1:41:45.560 --> 1:41:47.800 can't really call it a life. When you look at 1:41:47.840 --> 1:41:50.479 what some women were earning, they'd be earning a few 1:41:50.560 --> 1:41:53.160 shillings four shillings a week, the rent of one room, 1:41:53.200 --> 1:41:55.360 would be two shillings, and then you've got your bills, 1:41:55.479 --> 1:41:58.400 and then you've got food, so you are just about 1:41:58.479 --> 1:42:02.120 scraping by if that. And they're constantly having to rely 1:42:02.280 --> 1:42:04.479 on each other. They're in and out of the pawn 1:42:04.560 --> 1:42:07.880 break at Broker's like a revolving door. You know that 1:42:08.000 --> 1:42:11.720 wonderful song, Pop goes the weasel up and down the 1:42:11.800 --> 1:42:14.080 city road in that diaesel, Pop goes the weasel. What 1:42:14.200 --> 1:42:18.400 that means is you're popping your pawning your weasel, which 1:42:18.439 --> 1:42:22.840 wasn't dressmaker's iron. So working women are constantly having to 1:42:22.960 --> 1:42:25.960 pawn even the tools of their trade to get them 1:42:26.040 --> 1:42:28.000 to the end of the week until I get paid again. 1:42:28.240 --> 1:42:30.160 And that was certainly the case for the match women, 1:42:30.600 --> 1:42:33.840 palling everything they could, their clothes, their boots and their 1:42:33.880 --> 1:42:36.640 hats that probably didn't have jewelry, but anything they did have, 1:42:37.120 --> 1:42:41.040 and helping each other, lending to each other, constantly supporting 1:42:41.080 --> 1:42:44.479 each other. So when they were sacked by Brian and 1:42:44.600 --> 1:42:47.080 May for anything, oh god, it could be anything, you know, 1:42:47.200 --> 1:42:51.439 getting pregnant if you weren't married, laughing, any kind of 1:42:51.520 --> 1:42:54.519 in subordination, you would just be sacked. And they would 1:42:54.560 --> 1:42:56.360 literally pass the hat, and it was a hat and 1:42:56.400 --> 1:43:00.759 probably a beautiful feathered one for each other. So life 1:43:01.040 --> 1:43:04.400 was impossible, and it was starvation rates unless you were 1:43:04.479 --> 1:43:08.080 helped out, and even those who did have the support 1:43:08.120 --> 1:43:14.120 of their friends were so malnourished by that When Annie 1:43:14.160 --> 1:43:16.800 Besset comes along and meet some women for the first time, 1:43:16.880 --> 1:43:20.800 she notices they're very small and frail, even for working 1:43:20.840 --> 1:43:23.280 class women at this time. They were not healthy and robust. 1:43:23.320 --> 1:43:25.759 You don't have a chance to be. But they're particularly 1:43:25.840 --> 1:43:30.040 small because these low wages. Brian and Mayor pushed the 1:43:30.080 --> 1:43:32.559 wages down, so they're lower than they were ten years before. 1:43:32.640 --> 1:43:35.920 So you're a young girl, you're getting that terribly below 1:43:36.040 --> 1:43:40.360 starvation rate of pay when you should be hitting puberty. 1:43:40.680 --> 1:43:44.840 So you're just not developing properly. You're just so malnourished 1:43:44.920 --> 1:43:49.120 that you're unable to grow and develop as you should 1:43:49.160 --> 1:43:53.120 have done. So really very little life was possible. Yet 1:43:53.320 --> 1:43:55.719 they still, you know, girls just want to have fun. Still, 1:43:55.880 --> 1:43:59.799 they would enjoy life whenever they could, their feather clubs, 1:44:00.240 --> 1:44:03.800 standing treat going out to tea whenever they could. They 1:44:03.960 --> 1:44:07.479 would still enjoy life, So you know, they weren't as 1:44:07.640 --> 1:44:11.800 beaten down and as oppressed, as their employers like to think, 1:44:12.240 --> 1:44:14.599 and as you think they might have been. They had 1:44:15.080 --> 1:44:18.439 this incredible spirit and they had pride in being matched women. 1:44:18.840 --> 1:44:21.720 They decided to turn that around. Other people may look 1:44:21.800 --> 1:44:24.439 down on us, but we are proud. We are the 1:44:24.520 --> 1:44:26.720 match girls. Who the hell are you? And they were 1:44:26.840 --> 1:44:30.280 proud of their identity, and still some of them remained friends, 1:44:30.439 --> 1:44:34.479 you know, forty forty years after they finished working in 1:44:34.520 --> 1:44:38.880 the factory and still went drinking together whenever they could. M. 1:44:39.800 --> 1:44:44.479 Can you describe the kinds of work needed to produce 1:44:45.040 --> 1:44:50.080 a briant in May match? M. Yes, it wasn't supposed 1:44:50.120 --> 1:44:54.160 to be skilled work, but in fact, the way that 1:44:54.360 --> 1:44:57.080 we decide what is skilled and what is not as 1:44:57.120 --> 1:45:00.679 pretty arbitrary. Generally decide that if men do it, it's skilled. 1:45:00.800 --> 1:45:03.400 Even when a job has been female, when it becomes male, 1:45:03.760 --> 1:45:07.280 suddenly we decided that it's skilled. But they had to 1:45:07.439 --> 1:45:12.280 work incredibly fast and incredibly accurately, not just to earn 1:45:12.320 --> 1:45:15.200 their wages, but to avoid being fined, because Bright and 1:45:15.280 --> 1:45:18.960 May would put illegal fines onto their wages if they 1:45:19.080 --> 1:45:21.880 made the slightest thing wrong, if the matches caught fire 1:45:21.920 --> 1:45:26.400 in the process, so you would initially have would that 1:45:26.640 --> 1:45:30.519 was divided into splints, which would go on to make 1:45:30.560 --> 1:45:33.120 the matches. Each splint was divided into two to make 1:45:33.160 --> 1:45:38.080 a match. These were set into a frame. The frame 1:45:38.400 --> 1:45:44.360 was then dipped into the white phosphorus, this horrible toxic chemical, 1:45:45.000 --> 1:45:48.560 and that was what made these matches so incredibly flammable. 1:45:49.360 --> 1:45:52.920 They were then left to dry. They were then cut 1:45:53.040 --> 1:45:56.479 down and they were then boxed and the fillers, by 1:45:56.520 --> 1:45:59.360 the way, the people who filled the boxes were incredible. 1:46:00.080 --> 1:46:02.360 Could throw any kind of different box or any kind 1:46:02.400 --> 1:46:04.479 of different match at them and they would hardly stop. 1:46:04.520 --> 1:46:06.439 Their fingers were just moving all the time. They knew 1:46:06.479 --> 1:46:10.040 exactly how many matches to grab to fit into a box. 1:46:10.160 --> 1:46:14.800 They were just incredibly skilled women. But a note on 1:46:14.960 --> 1:46:18.240 white phosphorus. People who have heard a little bit about 1:46:18.280 --> 1:46:21.120 the match them may have heard of Fossey jewel, this 1:46:21.560 --> 1:46:27.000 ghastly industrial disease. The thing about it was it's completely unnecessary. 1:46:27.120 --> 1:46:30.760 Brianton May didn't have to use it. Red phosphorus was 1:46:30.840 --> 1:46:34.480 available and it was safe, but it was more expensive, 1:46:34.840 --> 1:46:37.080 it was more difficult to produce, it took a little 1:46:37.120 --> 1:46:41.280 longer to produce, so why should they bother? They claimed, 1:46:41.320 --> 1:46:43.280 they didn't know about the effects of Fosse jewel. They 1:46:43.439 --> 1:46:45.920 claimed they didn't have any cases of it in their factory. 1:46:45.960 --> 1:46:49.080 They absolutely did know, and they absolutely did have people 1:46:49.200 --> 1:46:52.200 dying of it. And what would happen was that if 1:46:52.240 --> 1:46:55.160 you went into the area of the factory where the 1:46:55.160 --> 1:47:00.400 phosphorus was, you would immediately smell the ghastly fumes of phospterus. 1:47:00.439 --> 1:47:05.080 Absolutely stinks phosphorus, and you would perhaps be sick straightaway. 1:47:05.080 --> 1:47:07.559 People would vomit immediately on breathing it in, or they 1:47:07.600 --> 1:47:10.040 would pass out. That was really common. Whomen had to 1:47:10.080 --> 1:47:12.719 go outside and faint and then go back to work. 1:47:13.760 --> 1:47:16.800 If it caught hold of your teeth, as the women said, 1:47:16.880 --> 1:47:19.840 if it got into your jawbone, often throw holes in 1:47:19.960 --> 1:47:22.679 your teeth because you couldn't afford the dentists in those days. 1:47:23.040 --> 1:47:26.479 It would start to rot and decay your jawbone. So 1:47:26.680 --> 1:47:32.800 you're still alive, but you've got this horrible, separating, stinking abscesses. Sorry, 1:47:32.840 --> 1:47:36.759 I thying was just eaten in your gun and pieces 1:47:36.800 --> 1:47:39.720 of bone, your own bone. You're spitting them out there 1:47:39.760 --> 1:47:43.400 working their way out through these abscesses. It was a 1:47:43.520 --> 1:47:48.519 horrible disease, particularly because sufferers couldn't always live under the 1:47:48.600 --> 1:47:51.240 same roof as their families. Loved ones couldn't stand it. 1:47:51.280 --> 1:47:53.240 You know, you're living tend to a room. People just 1:47:53.320 --> 1:47:57.200 couldn't stand the smell. So later factory inspectors will find 1:47:57.360 --> 1:48:00.759 match women living on the outskirts of hounds and sishes, 1:48:00.840 --> 1:48:04.240 almost like lepers in the final stages of the disease, 1:48:04.439 --> 1:48:07.000 and match men as well. There were matched dippers who 1:48:07.040 --> 1:48:09.599 were often men, and they suffered from it as well. 1:48:10.920 --> 1:48:13.560 As If all of this wasn't bad enough, Brian and 1:48:13.640 --> 1:48:16.719 they constantly made it worse. And one of the reasons 1:48:16.880 --> 1:48:18.600 they made it worse was they should have provided a 1:48:18.680 --> 1:48:21.439 separate dining room so that women could eat out of 1:48:21.600 --> 1:48:24.320 the fumes, eat their own food. By the way, Branton 1:48:24.360 --> 1:48:26.800 may weren't going to provide them a single crumb, but 1:48:27.000 --> 1:48:30.479 perhaps their own bitter, stale bread if they were lucky 1:48:30.560 --> 1:48:32.800 that they brought him for home, so they would set 1:48:32.840 --> 1:48:35.920 it on their workbench until it was time to eat, 1:48:36.320 --> 1:48:38.559 and then cram it down as quickly as they could 1:48:38.640 --> 1:48:41.840 when they could. And if you imagine, the phosphorus particles 1:48:41.920 --> 1:48:45.040 in the air have settled now on your lunch, so 1:48:45.120 --> 1:48:49.240 you've got this deadly seasoning and so it's immediately in 1:48:49.560 --> 1:48:53.080 your mouth and it's got a way into your guns. 1:48:54.600 --> 1:48:58.520 And Briant and May's attitude to this was complete indifference. 1:48:59.320 --> 1:49:01.360 If they saw a woman who seemed to be coming 1:49:01.400 --> 1:49:04.439 down with the foss, perhaps your doorbone would start to 1:49:04.640 --> 1:49:07.360 swell and you look very toothache and a bit mumpsy. 1:49:07.920 --> 1:49:11.360 They would stack you. So the women would cover up 1:49:11.479 --> 1:49:14.560 their faces with kerchiefs. And even though they knew this 1:49:14.720 --> 1:49:17.880 disease was deadly, it didn't always kill you, and it 1:49:17.960 --> 1:49:20.880 didn't kill you as quickly as starvation. So that was 1:49:20.960 --> 1:49:26.080 the kind of awful calculations and accommodations that they had 1:49:26.160 --> 1:49:29.920 to make. While brianson May were literally living in oh, 1:49:30.040 --> 1:49:33.640 the most incredible country estates. You know, Mansions isn't in it. 1:49:33.800 --> 1:49:37.120 One of them was the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. I always 1:49:37.160 --> 1:49:39.400 think it should have been the Sheriff of nottingham Shire, 1:49:39.520 --> 1:49:42.120 like in robin Hood, because they were such terrible people. 1:49:42.800 --> 1:49:46.040 But they're making a fortune, that's the awful thing. While 1:49:46.160 --> 1:49:51.240 this is happening, the company is absolutely flourishing. Would you 1:49:51.280 --> 1:49:58.840 describe from the Gladstone statue and what what kind of 1:49:58.920 --> 1:50:03.560 reaction it provoked? Now this is absolutely fascinating and this 1:50:03.800 --> 1:50:06.720 really gives us a flavor of the spirit of the 1:50:06.840 --> 1:50:11.519 match women and their eye for a good political gesture. 1:50:12.280 --> 1:50:14.519 So Brian and may as I said, we're very well 1:50:14.760 --> 1:50:18.120 in with the Liberal Party. And Gladstone was always being 1:50:18.160 --> 1:50:20.880 Prime Minister during this period, is prime minister for several 1:50:20.960 --> 1:50:25.439 different terms. So the ultimate act of sucking up my 1:50:25.560 --> 1:50:29.080 goodness talk about as kissing Brian. And they just said 1:50:29.120 --> 1:50:32.840 they will build a statue of William Gladstone and they 1:50:32.880 --> 1:50:35.160 will build it on the Bow Road. And it's actually 1:50:35.360 --> 1:50:40.120 gesturing with the right hand towards their factory. Such humidity. 1:50:40.280 --> 1:50:43.280 You know, there's Gladstone saying you look at this wonderful factory. 1:50:43.760 --> 1:50:46.240 So they decided they're going to build it. They could 1:50:46.240 --> 1:50:47.840 have paid for it themselves. They could have paid for 1:50:47.880 --> 1:50:51.799 a thousand statues themselves, I'm sure, very easily. But again, 1:50:52.080 --> 1:50:54.679 why would you when you can make your work is pay. 1:50:55.479 --> 1:50:59.839 So what they do is to take involuntary deductions, forced 1:51:00.080 --> 1:51:03.960 deductions from the girls, already incredibly low paid, to pay 1:51:04.080 --> 1:51:07.960 for this statue. Women not happy, you could understand, women 1:51:08.080 --> 1:51:10.439 not pleased at all with this, but they don't have 1:51:10.479 --> 1:51:14.040 any say in it. And then they announced the foremen, 1:51:14.280 --> 1:51:17.360 who were the sort of line managers I suppose, and 1:51:17.479 --> 1:51:19.800 often quite violent. They would hit the women and they 1:51:19.840 --> 1:51:23.760 were really unpleasant to them, and they were real company men. 1:51:23.840 --> 1:51:26.479 They'd lived on site, they had lovely cottages on site, 1:51:26.520 --> 1:51:30.040 so they were really brought and painful. Came in and said, oh, 1:51:30.120 --> 1:51:33.000 you're all very lucky. You're getting half afternoon off tomorrow. 1:51:33.040 --> 1:51:35.320 You're getting half the day off to go and see 1:51:35.360 --> 1:51:38.000 this statue being unveiled. And the women are like, well, 1:51:38.040 --> 1:51:40.400 are we being paid for that? And they say no, 1:51:40.920 --> 1:51:43.200 you're very lucky, you're getting some time off work. And 1:51:43.280 --> 1:51:45.959 the women say, you know you can stuff that. Basically 1:51:46.160 --> 1:51:49.439 whether's son doesn't shine. We don't want no holidays on 1:51:49.600 --> 1:51:52.960 those terms. Quite rightly, they want to be paid. And 1:51:53.000 --> 1:51:54.720 the former say, look, if you want to work here, 1:51:54.960 --> 1:51:57.640 you're going to turn up in your best bib and 1:51:57.680 --> 1:51:59.920 tucker your best hat and you're going to be pulled 1:52:00.040 --> 1:52:04.600 light and you're gonna stand and pullaue put applaud politely 1:52:05.160 --> 1:52:07.479 while this statue and right in the middle of the 1:52:07.520 --> 1:52:10.519 bow road it couldn't be more prominent, is unveiled. So 1:52:10.600 --> 1:52:12.439 the match, when we have a plan, they say all right, 1:52:12.479 --> 1:52:15.519 then we'll be there, and they are there, and you 1:52:15.600 --> 1:52:18.880 can just imagine the scene. The great and the good 1:52:18.960 --> 1:52:22.640 are gathered because Brian and may never miss an opportunity 1:52:22.760 --> 1:52:25.240 to show off. So all the Brant boys and their 1:52:25.280 --> 1:52:29.240 wives and their children, and their shareholders and prominent liberals 1:52:29.280 --> 1:52:32.520 are all there, and there are features and it's all tremendous. 1:52:32.600 --> 1:52:37.120 And finally this statue is unveiled and then the match 1:52:37.160 --> 1:52:39.800 were in move as one. They run up to the 1:52:39.880 --> 1:52:44.439 posire of the statue shouting out, our blood paid for 1:52:44.520 --> 1:52:47.800 this statue. And they pricked their fingers, which must have 1:52:47.880 --> 1:52:49.800 been with happins, because of what else would you do 1:52:49.880 --> 1:52:54.040 it with? They have these incredibly long, sharp, vicious happens 1:52:54.040 --> 1:52:55.840 which they used a self defense when they had to, 1:52:56.280 --> 1:52:59.479 in their beautiful hats prick their fingers and held their 1:52:59.560 --> 1:53:03.559 hands and dripped their blood onto the statue and said, 1:53:03.720 --> 1:53:08.519 our blood paid for this, which is just incredible. It's 1:53:08.520 --> 1:53:11.240 a shame it's not recorded anywhere, but I would imagine 1:53:11.280 --> 1:53:16.000 that Bryant's must have been incandescent. Talk about ruining their moment, 1:53:16.720 --> 1:53:20.280 but it was absolutely brilliant. And that if that's not political, 1:53:20.479 --> 1:53:22.960 and if that's not resistance I don't know what is 1:53:23.120 --> 1:53:25.960 because they waited for their moment and they just timed 1:53:26.000 --> 1:53:32.960 it beautifully. Ah. So let's start talking about who some 1:53:33.080 --> 1:53:36.120 of these who some of these women were, and one especially, 1:53:36.200 --> 1:53:39.960 let's talk about married risk call Um, who was married 1:53:40.080 --> 1:53:44.880 risk all A. Mary Diskill was only fourteen at the 1:53:45.000 --> 1:53:47.479 time of the strike, but that wasn't one of these. 1:53:47.520 --> 1:53:50.120 That wouldn't have been one of the youngest girls. She's 1:53:50.200 --> 1:53:53.360 in if anyone's seen that, the most famous photograph of 1:53:53.439 --> 1:53:55.920 the women, when they're actually standing outside the factory and 1:53:55.920 --> 1:53:58.200 they're looking into the camera, they look very nervous and 1:53:58.360 --> 1:54:02.080 very pale. She's the allst woman at the back wearing 1:54:02.120 --> 1:54:04.320 a hat. His granddaughter came up to me and said, 1:54:04.320 --> 1:54:08.479 I think that's my grandmother now. She was born in 1:54:08.800 --> 1:54:12.720 eighteen seventy four. Both her parents were Irish and had 1:54:12.760 --> 1:54:15.960 come over from Ireland. She started working when she was 1:54:16.000 --> 1:54:21.200 a very young girl, and she was really prominent in 1:54:21.439 --> 1:54:25.040 the factory. She was very well respected, and her granddaughter 1:54:25.120 --> 1:54:28.720 told me that although she was quiet, she was quite 1:54:28.760 --> 1:54:32.960 a reticent woman. She had what Joan called an Irish temper, 1:54:33.440 --> 1:54:37.120 and she absolutely took no nonsense. So later in life, 1:54:37.560 --> 1:54:40.200 when one of the women in her street is being 1:54:40.240 --> 1:54:43.800 assaulted by her husband. It's Mary who goes out there 1:54:43.840 --> 1:54:47.320 with the poker from the fireplace and chases him down 1:54:47.840 --> 1:54:51.080 and tells him to stop beating up his wife. And 1:54:51.160 --> 1:54:53.320 at the time of her strike the strike, not just 1:54:53.920 --> 1:54:57.680 Mary but her sister Paul, also known as mog because 1:54:57.720 --> 1:54:59.920 people do very strange things, was named in the Victory 1:55:00.160 --> 1:55:03.360 period and also known as Margaret. It's working there as well. 1:55:04.400 --> 1:55:08.600 And in the picture Paul has her hand on Mary's shoulder. 1:55:09.320 --> 1:55:12.400 And I've seen pictures of these two going right towards 1:55:12.480 --> 1:55:14.880 the ends of their lives where they always stand like that. 1:55:15.000 --> 1:55:17.440 They're so close and so fond of each other that 1:55:17.640 --> 1:55:20.280 one's always got their hand on the other one's shoulder. 1:55:21.080 --> 1:55:23.840 But Mary had an incredibly hard life. She married a 1:55:24.040 --> 1:55:27.240 dock laborer, and that's really common as well. Match women 1:55:27.280 --> 1:55:30.680 and dockers tended to marry each other. Not surprisingly, they 1:55:30.720 --> 1:55:32.960 lived in the same streets and houses. They were all 1:55:33.680 --> 1:55:38.200 pretty much Irish heritage. They had all those connections. They 1:55:38.280 --> 1:55:41.640 were the casual workers of these dens, and the docks 1:55:41.680 --> 1:55:44.720 were a huge employer of men. The match works were 1:55:44.720 --> 1:55:48.240 a huge employer of women. But she had a really 1:55:48.360 --> 1:55:52.040 hard life with him. He was an alcoholic and he 1:55:52.240 --> 1:55:55.680 was violent occasionally as well, and in fact, when she 1:55:55.840 --> 1:55:58.880 was pregnant. Once during one of her pregnances, he knocked 1:55:58.920 --> 1:56:02.960 her down the stairs and she miscarriage and was extremely 1:56:03.120 --> 1:56:09.400 ill afterwards. When Thomas eventually died, it was on the docks, 1:56:10.240 --> 1:56:14.080 although there were stories that he'd actually got into a fight, 1:56:14.240 --> 1:56:19.440 so it wasn't really an industrial accident. However, Mary finally 1:56:19.600 --> 1:56:24.440 got a stroke of luck because she got compensation because 1:56:24.440 --> 1:56:26.680 of the doctor's strike, which had followed on from her 1:56:26.760 --> 1:56:31.440 own strike. Conditions were better and there was workers compensation available, 1:56:31.520 --> 1:56:35.160 so this made a huge difference to her, and instantly 1:56:36.040 --> 1:56:40.320 she was incredibly sensible and went and bought herself a shop. 1:56:40.760 --> 1:56:43.160 Now that sounds really fancy, doesn't It Only a shop, 1:56:43.680 --> 1:56:46.000 But shops at that time we're tiny. They could be 1:56:46.080 --> 1:56:48.040 quite whole in the corner of fairs. They could be 1:56:48.120 --> 1:56:51.400 just front rooms of little houses on East end streets 1:56:52.040 --> 1:56:55.720 that she eventually owned two shops, a corn chandler's like 1:56:55.800 --> 1:56:59.840 a general groceres and a cat's meat shop. Now, when 1:56:59.840 --> 1:57:03.120 I say cats meat shop, people often say, oh my god, 1:57:03.560 --> 1:57:08.840 were there that poor? Were people eating cats? Well? No, 1:57:09.520 --> 1:57:12.160 not as far as we know. Not on the whole. 1:57:12.320 --> 1:57:15.080 This was meat forecats, because people, even though they were poor, 1:57:15.160 --> 1:57:17.879 they wanted to have pets and they still loved animals, 1:57:18.560 --> 1:57:21.840 so they would buy the cheapest cuts of meat for cats. 1:57:22.520 --> 1:57:27.960 She was an amazing shop owner, according to her granddaughter Joan. 1:57:28.440 --> 1:57:31.600 She said that although she never learned to read or write, 1:57:31.800 --> 1:57:35.440 my God, could she add up? She would know anytime 1:57:35.480 --> 1:57:39.040 she could be running total in her head of exactly 1:57:39.120 --> 1:57:42.240 what was in the tills, exactly how much should be 1:57:42.320 --> 1:57:44.720 in the tills of either shop at any one time, 1:57:45.360 --> 1:57:48.000 and when the aunts, when her daughters would want to 1:57:48.040 --> 1:57:50.400 sneak out on dates, she'd be, where are you going? 1:57:50.440 --> 1:57:52.960 You're supposed to be working in the shop. So really 1:57:53.160 --> 1:57:57.960 everything was dedicated to this family business. She did reasonably 1:57:58.040 --> 1:58:02.400 well for herself in that God, but she was also 1:58:03.280 --> 1:58:07.320 so interesting political to the extent of being a huge 1:58:07.440 --> 1:58:11.560 fan of the Irish rebels, and her granddaughter Jones, said 1:58:11.720 --> 1:58:14.520 that whenever she was in drink, when she'd had a gym, 1:58:14.640 --> 1:58:18.800 she did enjoy gin. She would sing Irish rebel songs 1:58:18.880 --> 1:58:22.080 as she would sing the bold Robert Emmett, and she 1:58:22.440 --> 1:58:26.040 had pictures of Michael Collins in the nineties sixteen uprising 1:58:26.160 --> 1:58:28.840 much later in her life obviously, and Robert Emma, and 1:58:28.920 --> 1:58:32.400 she didn't own much, but those were never pawned or sold. 1:58:32.760 --> 1:58:36.200 Those were taken with her to every house that she 1:58:36.360 --> 1:58:40.440 lived in. Now. She enjoyed the gin to an extent 1:58:40.640 --> 1:58:43.880 that she had a mother in law that the mother 1:58:44.040 --> 1:58:46.920 of her cruel and abusive husband, so she didn't get 1:58:46.920 --> 1:58:50.120 on with either. And she took out a small life 1:58:50.160 --> 1:58:54.000 insurance policy on her mar in law. And when mother 1:58:54.080 --> 1:58:56.920 in law died, she was so delighted. She had a 1:58:57.000 --> 1:58:59.800 party and she spent all of that life and she 1:59:00.040 --> 1:59:06.320 wants money on Jim. She was the most amazingly strong woman. 1:59:07.040 --> 1:59:11.960 She survived to the blitz of World War two, and 1:59:12.120 --> 1:59:15.720 Mary remembers her telling the story that when the bombs 1:59:15.800 --> 1:59:21.520 were falling, one of Mary's daughters had a baby terror. 1:59:21.560 --> 1:59:23.760 What a terrifying time to be giving birth, but she 1:59:23.840 --> 1:59:26.480 gave birth and Mary ran through the streets with this 1:59:26.600 --> 1:59:29.080 grandchild in her arms. Goodness says what the new mom 1:59:29.160 --> 1:59:32.280 thought about this in order to get her baptized, because 1:59:32.320 --> 1:59:34.640 she was Catholic and it was really important to her 1:59:35.000 --> 1:59:40.920 to get this baby baptized. Joan absolutely adored Mary. She 1:59:41.320 --> 1:59:44.800 was the matriarch of the family, absolutely no question about that. 1:59:45.440 --> 1:59:50.040 And because Joan's own mom was ill, Mary basically brought 1:59:50.080 --> 1:59:52.520 her up to the point where she adored her grandmother 1:59:52.680 --> 1:59:55.360 so much that her own mother would say, well, she 1:59:55.440 --> 1:59:58.600 has got her faults, you know, she's not perfect. But 1:59:58.680 --> 2:00:00.800 the accommodation she was living thing, and Mary just there 2:00:00.880 --> 2:00:03.600 was a very fastidious woman. She was very house proud 2:00:03.640 --> 2:00:06.120 where she could be. But she was living in a 2:00:06.200 --> 2:00:09.960 house with black beetles all over it, with no toilet, 2:00:10.040 --> 2:00:12.760 with no running water, toilet out in a courtyard of 2:00:12.800 --> 2:00:17.320 shared toilet horrible. And when one of her daughters moved 2:00:17.400 --> 2:00:19.520 slightly out of the East End into one of the 2:00:19.640 --> 2:00:23.680 new semi detached houses, Mary was, for the first time 2:00:23.720 --> 2:00:27.360 in her life, absolutely speechless. She just stared at this house, 2:00:27.560 --> 2:00:29.680 very very small house, you know, too up to down, 2:00:30.080 --> 2:00:33.680 but with his own toilet and its own bathroom, and 2:00:33.840 --> 2:00:38.240 she said, oh, my goodness, this is a palace. And 2:00:38.360 --> 2:00:42.320 she was so pleased that her own children were doing 2:00:42.400 --> 2:00:47.440 better than she had done. And she died finally during 2:00:47.480 --> 2:00:50.800 World War two, and her granddaughter Joan was in the 2:00:51.080 --> 2:00:55.400 Women's Army and had to plead to get leave to 2:00:55.560 --> 2:00:59.320 go home and see her beloved granddaughter. Grandmother in her 2:00:59.440 --> 2:01:01.680 last moment went So she was furious with her sergeant 2:01:01.720 --> 2:01:03.560 who didn't want to give her leave, and she said 2:01:03.640 --> 2:01:06.040 to her, it's only your grandmother. And Janes said, she 2:01:06.240 --> 2:01:08.760 might seem like only a grandmother, but she's all the 2:01:08.880 --> 2:01:13.440 world to me and just just the most incredible woman. 2:01:14.440 --> 2:01:17.560 M there's one little story that you tell in the 2:01:17.680 --> 2:01:22.160 book about her attitude towards the Salvation Army in the 2:01:22.280 --> 2:01:24.680 East End when she was young. Do you want to 2:01:24.720 --> 2:01:28.720 read tell that little Yes, she was not stupid. There 2:01:28.760 --> 2:01:31.120 were no flies on Mary. She was a very clever woman, 2:01:31.200 --> 2:01:34.760 and like all Eastern moms, she did whatever she had 2:01:34.800 --> 2:01:38.320 to do to survive. And the Salvation Army, the Sally 2:01:38.360 --> 2:01:42.160 Anne was some of the people that would do good 2:01:42.280 --> 2:01:46.160 work amongst the poor and crucially ran soup kitchens and 2:01:46.280 --> 2:01:50.160 would give out soup and give out free food and Mary. 2:01:50.320 --> 2:01:53.720 But only if you were, you know, a good Protestant. 2:01:53.880 --> 2:01:55.320 They were not in the business of giving it out 2:01:55.360 --> 2:02:00.200 to Jewish people of Catholic people. So Mary train all 2:02:00.240 --> 2:02:04.520 her children to sing Salvation Army hymns and they would 2:02:04.560 --> 2:02:07.440 go along to these soup kitchens sing these hymns, you know, 2:02:07.600 --> 2:02:10.400 passionately pretend to be religious, a salvation army who would 2:02:10.440 --> 2:02:13.440 be terribly impressed, and they would get their free soup. 2:02:15.640 --> 2:02:19.200 Oh now, what sort of work did Mary do for 2:02:19.720 --> 2:02:24.800 Brian and May? So she worked in She and her 2:02:24.880 --> 2:02:29.680 sister both worked in the key workshops for Brian and May, 2:02:29.800 --> 2:02:34.040 and throughout their careers there did various kinds of jobs. 2:02:34.080 --> 2:02:37.160 So they would be working in the book stores, they 2:02:37.200 --> 2:02:41.000 would be filling the match boxes with matches and also 2:02:41.120 --> 2:02:45.320 doing cutting down and it was all very arduous because 2:02:45.360 --> 2:02:47.680 it was all done standing. You had to stand at 2:02:47.720 --> 2:02:50.920 your workbench, you weren't allowed to sit down, and it 2:02:51.000 --> 2:02:54.720 was at least a twelve hour day. You weren't supposed 2:02:54.720 --> 2:02:57.720 to talk, and you weren't supposed to laugh or joke 2:02:57.840 --> 2:03:00.680 with your fellow factory hands. And then I mentioned before, 2:03:00.720 --> 2:03:04.720 there was this business of burnt The matches dipped in 2:03:04.760 --> 2:03:09.200 white phosphors were incredibly flammable. I mean, obviously matches are 2:03:09.240 --> 2:03:12.600 supposed to be flammable, but these were dangerously so. What 2:03:12.720 --> 2:03:16.800 they called lucifer matches, which were people's favorite matches at 2:03:16.840 --> 2:03:19.040 the time because you didn't have to buy a whole 2:03:19.120 --> 2:03:22.000 box and carry it around, which is quite expensive thing 2:03:22.080 --> 2:03:24.840 to buy. You could just buy a few matches and 2:03:25.000 --> 2:03:28.320 carry them with you and strike them anywhere. Them called 2:03:28.360 --> 2:03:31.400 strike anywhere matches. So men used to apparently like to 2:03:31.480 --> 2:03:33.720 show off to the ladies by striking them on the 2:03:33.880 --> 2:03:37.200 flies of their trousers and on their boots. And I 2:03:37.240 --> 2:03:38.960 don't know if that would have impressed in women then, 2:03:38.960 --> 2:03:43.240 I'm not sure it would now. But they were prone 2:03:43.520 --> 2:03:47.120 to catching fire in the process. Absolutely not the workers 2:03:47.200 --> 2:03:50.560 full and yet they would be fined for it, So 2:03:50.840 --> 2:03:54.480 you know, it was really grim and arduous work. M 2:03:55.560 --> 2:03:58.280 Who was Martha Robinson and and how old was she 2:03:58.440 --> 2:04:01.720 at the time of the strike. Martha Robertson was the 2:04:02.120 --> 2:04:07.160 grandmother of one of my best witnesses and friends. I'm 2:04:07.200 --> 2:04:10.360 glad to say I became very friendly with her grandson, 2:04:10.600 --> 2:04:12.840 ted lewis a wonderful man and only died a couple 2:04:12.880 --> 2:04:18.000 of years ago. And she was born only a nation two, 2:04:18.600 --> 2:04:21.560 so how on earth? Because she had been working in 2:04:22.840 --> 2:04:26.320 but she was she was making matches for Brian to May, 2:04:27.680 --> 2:04:29.960 and she was such a matriarch in her family that 2:04:30.040 --> 2:04:33.960 we do have a wonderful record that was recorded by 2:04:34.040 --> 2:04:37.080 the family they wrote down some of her reminiscences, and 2:04:37.200 --> 2:04:38.920 thank god they did. You know, this is the whole 2:04:38.960 --> 2:04:41.160 story and stream, isn't it. I was like, give me 2:04:41.320 --> 2:04:44.440 that book. I kept borrowing it and looking at it 2:04:44.480 --> 2:04:47.040 and finding more things. And it was hand written with 2:04:47.200 --> 2:04:50.240 photographs as well. But it was a scrap book really, 2:04:50.360 --> 2:04:55.560 but it was really wonderful memoir of the family. So 2:04:56.000 --> 2:04:59.080 she would get up as a six year old. I 2:04:59.120 --> 2:05:01.280 always tell my son this, you know, when he doesn't 2:05:01.280 --> 2:05:03.160 feel like doing his homework or doesn't feel like helping 2:05:03.160 --> 2:05:04.920 around the house. And you could have been working from 2:05:04.920 --> 2:05:07.360 the age of six, my lad. She'd get up at 2:05:07.440 --> 2:05:11.680 five in the morning and lay sweep at the fireplace 2:05:12.000 --> 2:05:15.160 and lay the fire for the family. She was one 2:05:15.200 --> 2:05:17.920 of six children, then later another three, so she became 2:05:18.000 --> 2:05:21.400 one of nine. She would look under the stairs where 2:05:22.120 --> 2:05:24.880 the shoe collection, the family shoe collection was, because you 2:05:24.880 --> 2:05:27.200 didn't have your own pairs of shoes. It was just 2:05:27.320 --> 2:05:29.080 whatever you could find. You know, you might find a 2:05:29.120 --> 2:05:30.760 shoe in the street and bring it home and try 2:05:30.800 --> 2:05:33.000 and make it fit by stuff with newspaper. Because shoes 2:05:33.040 --> 2:05:36.000 were so expensive, she tried to find a vaguely matching 2:05:36.040 --> 2:05:38.960 pair pad them out if she had to, and off 2:05:39.080 --> 2:05:44.000 she'd walk to the factory. She would pick up everything 2:05:44.080 --> 2:05:47.320 she needed from Brian and May to make the matchboxes, 2:05:47.360 --> 2:05:49.880 so the cardboard, and she would have to buy her 2:05:49.920 --> 2:05:53.720 own paste and come home and make as many of 2:05:53.840 --> 2:05:56.840 the boxes as she could and then take them back 2:05:56.880 --> 2:05:59.440 to the factory and get paid, so she'd get paid 2:05:59.560 --> 2:06:03.120 like on her piece work. And then she'd walk home 2:06:03.400 --> 2:06:05.800 six years old. Again, I have to stress and buy 2:06:05.960 --> 2:06:08.880 bread for the family. So if she didn't do that, 2:06:09.200 --> 2:06:11.720 she wasn't feeling well. One day they didn't get to eat. 2:06:12.400 --> 2:06:17.400 So it is the most incredibly responsible position. And she 2:06:17.880 --> 2:06:23.320 got married to James Laken and he was a rifleman 2:06:23.760 --> 2:06:26.680 in World War One. She was still working at Brianton 2:06:26.760 --> 2:06:31.760 May then sometimes in the factory. Between children, people generally 2:06:31.840 --> 2:06:33.280 would work in the factory and then when you had 2:06:33.320 --> 2:06:35.960 a new baby you might switch to making match boxes 2:06:36.000 --> 2:06:39.640 again at home. And he went missing. He was missing 2:06:39.800 --> 2:06:44.760 in action, presumed dead, and Martha had three children by them, 2:06:45.400 --> 2:06:49.400 and she was one of these incredibly well respected women 2:06:49.520 --> 2:06:52.200 in the community and in the street. She was there. 2:06:52.360 --> 2:06:54.080 She was the one who call if someone died. She 2:06:54.120 --> 2:06:57.040 would help you lay out the dead because of that. 2:06:58.240 --> 2:07:02.320 She was so well respected that the army came to 2:07:02.440 --> 2:07:05.280 her because they had a problem. They had a number 2:07:05.360 --> 2:07:08.760 of soldiers who had been so badly wounded in the 2:07:09.000 --> 2:07:12.760 horrors of World War One that they were unidentifiable. They 2:07:12.800 --> 2:07:16.120 were alive just about, but they were impossible to identify. 2:07:16.160 --> 2:07:19.440 They couldn't speak, they'd lost all their identity tags. There 2:07:19.520 --> 2:07:22.160 was a whole ward of them, and so they bought 2:07:22.240 --> 2:07:25.360 him women in good standing in the neighborhood to help 2:07:25.760 --> 2:07:29.440 if they could identify some of their neighbors. It's just 2:07:29.520 --> 2:07:31.840 absolutely bizarre, isn't it that the army could not have 2:07:32.040 --> 2:07:35.760 known who these people were. And she went around with 2:07:35.880 --> 2:07:39.680 her sons, and she was drawn to one man in particular, 2:07:39.840 --> 2:07:42.680 who was just completely bandaged from head to toe. I 2:07:42.760 --> 2:07:44.880 picture of being like the invisible man wh she can 2:07:45.000 --> 2:07:47.680 just about see his eyes and that's all and you 2:07:47.760 --> 2:07:50.520 can't speak. He's just sort of making noises. But she 2:07:50.720 --> 2:07:53.520 feels drawn to him for some reason, and he's trying 2:07:53.560 --> 2:07:56.000 to make eye contact with her, and she suddenly says, Jim, 2:07:56.240 --> 2:07:59.840 is that you And she realizes that yes, it's her 2:08:00.080 --> 2:08:03.480 husband who was supposed to be dead, and she fainted. 2:08:03.720 --> 2:08:07.480 She fainted into the arms of her son's and then 2:08:08.320 --> 2:08:11.520 she had to look after him. Now, forget about any 2:08:11.680 --> 2:08:15.080 kind of help to do that. Don't forget no NHS, 2:08:15.160 --> 2:08:19.000 no natural health, so there's no benefits whatsoever. She's just expected, 2:08:19.120 --> 2:08:23.760 whilst working, whilst looking after her kids, to look after 2:08:23.880 --> 2:08:26.680 this man as well, who's completely deformed and disfigured by 2:08:26.720 --> 2:08:29.480 the way. He's had half a face blown away and 2:08:29.720 --> 2:08:33.400 in the photographs it's bad that the deformity is really bad, 2:08:33.440 --> 2:08:34.960 and it must have been very difficult for him to 2:08:35.080 --> 2:08:38.240 even eat, and he was never the same again. They 2:08:38.280 --> 2:08:41.760 went on to have three more children together, but he 2:08:42.040 --> 2:08:44.600 really was never the same person. He was very I 2:08:44.680 --> 2:08:47.840 suppose depressed and probably had what we've now called PTSD, 2:08:48.160 --> 2:08:51.120 you know, post combat stress. So he was really a 2:08:51.160 --> 2:08:52.880 miserable brother, I think, and he would just sit in 2:08:52.960 --> 2:08:54.920 the corner and shout at the kids. That's what everyone 2:08:55.000 --> 2:08:59.560 remembers of him. But she stayed with him until he 2:09:00.640 --> 2:09:04.800 and she did marry again. She married a longstanding sweetheart 2:09:05.240 --> 2:09:08.880 of hers and had a much happier second marriage until 2:09:08.960 --> 2:09:12.000 he died as well. But what a character she was. 2:09:12.240 --> 2:09:17.040 She was absolutely one hell of a force. And her 2:09:17.160 --> 2:09:21.280 grandson Ted Lewis told me what she was like. He said, well, 2:09:21.320 --> 2:09:24.520 we'd go out drinking, because he, again, like Joan Harris, 2:09:24.680 --> 2:09:27.360 adored his grandmother and spent an awful lot of time 2:09:27.440 --> 2:09:30.280 with her as a boy, and when he was old 2:09:30.360 --> 2:09:32.200 enough to drink and they go to the pub together, 2:09:32.720 --> 2:09:34.720 he said, she was always the same Martha. She was 2:09:34.840 --> 2:09:37.920 really artful, she was really cunning. You'd say to her, 2:09:38.000 --> 2:09:40.040 oh can I get you a drink and she'd say, 2:09:40.080 --> 2:09:41.680 oh no, no, no, no, dear, no, no no no 2:09:41.880 --> 2:09:43.960 no you you you keep your money, and she'd make 2:09:44.000 --> 2:09:46.320 you insist, oh no no, no, Granna buy you a drink, 2:09:46.400 --> 2:09:48.760 all right? Then dig Or bets you. So he'd always 2:09:48.880 --> 2:09:51.480 end up paying for the drinks. But if there was 2:09:51.560 --> 2:09:53.440 a fight in the pub, and there often were fights 2:09:53.480 --> 2:09:56.800 in the pub, she could to fight back, even as 2:09:56.840 --> 2:09:59.200 an old lady. He remembered. Once she'd had a hip 2:09:59.240 --> 2:10:01.800 operation and he took her out as her first time 2:10:01.880 --> 2:10:06.800 out in public since she'd had this operation, and they 2:10:06.840 --> 2:10:09.160 were in a pub and it all started to kick off. 2:10:09.320 --> 2:10:13.000 So she heaved herself up from her chair and she said, right, said, 2:10:13.480 --> 2:10:15.880 propped me up in the corner, give me my stick 2:10:16.000 --> 2:10:19.040 and our bloody take all the buggers on and she 2:10:19.160 --> 2:10:23.440 did as well. And even when she was ill and 2:10:23.880 --> 2:10:28.600 she was in bed in her house, friends would come 2:10:28.640 --> 2:10:31.000 and see her. She was always she always had open 2:10:31.080 --> 2:10:33.640 out house. When she was a younger woman, people will 2:10:33.680 --> 2:10:35.800 come back from the pubs with her and played the piano. 2:10:35.920 --> 2:10:38.280 And it sounds such a cliche, you know, around the 2:10:38.320 --> 2:10:40.720 old Joanna, the old cockneys having your knees up, But 2:10:40.800 --> 2:10:43.200 you know this cliche has come from somewhere. They really did. 2:10:44.120 --> 2:10:46.800 She always managed to pay the bills and keep a 2:10:46.840 --> 2:10:48.960 good roof over their head. And Ted said this was 2:10:49.000 --> 2:10:51.920 because she got about a bit. So she had a 2:10:52.000 --> 2:10:54.880 lot of lovers basically, and I think the landlord might 2:10:54.920 --> 2:10:56.880 have been one of them, because he would visit and say, 2:10:57.720 --> 2:11:00.120 you're supposed to have only three people in here, and 2:11:00.160 --> 2:11:01.920 you seem to have about seven or eight. They're always 2:11:01.960 --> 2:11:05.080 new children. But she managed to charm him somehow so 2:11:05.400 --> 2:11:08.800 they didn't get evicted. And finally, when she was dying, 2:11:09.680 --> 2:11:12.880 her room was always crowded because she was still holding court. 2:11:13.000 --> 2:11:16.280 That many people would come and visit her. And she 2:11:16.440 --> 2:11:19.360 always said that she didn't need an alarm clock because 2:11:19.440 --> 2:11:22.600 from where she was in bed she could hear a 2:11:22.760 --> 2:11:26.080 man who sold pots and pants, a street trader who'd 2:11:26.160 --> 2:11:28.680 walked down the road about seven in the morning with 2:11:28.840 --> 2:11:31.560 his barrow, and she said, do you know, Love, there's 2:11:31.600 --> 2:11:34.960 a dodgy manhole cover and he always hits it, that 2:11:35.160 --> 2:11:38.400 silly bugger. He always goes over it and he loses 2:11:38.440 --> 2:11:41.000 the look. And hear his whole his whole will barrow, 2:11:41.080 --> 2:11:43.760 his whole barrow, everything falling off it. And she would 2:11:43.800 --> 2:11:46.400 laugh herself sick at this. I wonder the poor son's 2:11:46.440 --> 2:11:48.200 got anything left us out? And she said that was 2:11:48.280 --> 2:11:50.640 better than alarm clock, and that was what always woke 2:11:50.680 --> 2:11:54.240 her up in the morning. So again, there's just this 2:11:54.400 --> 2:11:58.840 incredible spirit. She when she was even though she was 2:11:58.880 --> 2:12:01.480 often without food, she would always make sure that the 2:12:01.640 --> 2:12:05.320 children ate, and later her grandchildren. She had ducks in 2:12:05.640 --> 2:12:09.320 her tiny little backyard, and when Ted visited, he'd say, 2:12:09.400 --> 2:12:11.280 what are we having for dinner, Grandma? And she always 2:12:11.320 --> 2:12:14.240 look at him and smile and say, duck. Do you think, 2:12:14.280 --> 2:12:16.920 Oh no, she's eating with ducks. Were eating the ducks. 2:12:16.960 --> 2:12:19.640 That's terrible. And she was just winding him up because 2:12:19.800 --> 2:12:21.760 then he realized after a couple of years, hang on 2:12:21.760 --> 2:12:23.760 a minute, there's always the same number of ducks out 2:12:23.800 --> 2:12:25.640 the side, out of the back. She was just using 2:12:25.680 --> 2:12:29.400 them for eggs and they were probably eating baggots, really 2:12:29.480 --> 2:12:32.680 cheat cuts and meat or something completely different. But you know, 2:12:32.800 --> 2:12:38.800 she's the archetypal I suppose woman who just has, on 2:12:38.960 --> 2:12:41.920 the surface, on paper, such a terrible life and goes 2:12:42.000 --> 2:12:45.160 through so much, but still manages to be a community 2:12:45.320 --> 2:12:48.400 leader and a real force, not just as in her family, 2:12:49.000 --> 2:12:51.560 but in her widest streets and neighborhood to you know, 2:12:51.680 --> 2:12:56.120 a highly respected queen of the East End. Um, let's 2:12:56.160 --> 2:12:59.320 talk a little bit about the strike itself. What were 2:12:59.360 --> 2:13:05.640 the events that kicked off the walkout and how did 2:13:05.720 --> 2:13:11.480 the strike committee for mm hmm. I really had to 2:13:11.600 --> 2:13:14.720 dig to work this out because when it came to it, 2:13:14.880 --> 2:13:17.000 all I knew was that there had been a strike 2:13:17.960 --> 2:13:22.320 and that it had been led from the outside. So obviously, 2:13:22.400 --> 2:13:24.880 because of that, we had no details about the real 2:13:25.000 --> 2:13:27.160 strike because it was supposed to have been a case 2:13:27.360 --> 2:13:29.120 is women were just told to go on strike by 2:13:29.160 --> 2:13:32.520 them with the classes. But what actually happened is so 2:13:33.040 --> 2:13:39.440 much more fascinating. Annie Besson was this middle class journalist 2:13:39.640 --> 2:13:43.200 and fabian a kind of socialist society that George Burnet 2:13:43.240 --> 2:13:46.200 Sure was a member of two and she was at 2:13:46.240 --> 2:13:52.720 a Fabian meeting in June and heard someone speak about 2:13:52.800 --> 2:13:58.160 the terrible conditions that working women particularly experienced in the 2:13:58.240 --> 2:14:01.640 East End and the terrible exploit a ship. She didn't 2:14:01.720 --> 2:14:04.360 know enough about the match were going to realize that 2:14:04.400 --> 2:14:07.560 the speaker was actually talking about box makers. The match 2:14:07.640 --> 2:14:12.080 box makers the homeworkers who worked in their homes. She assumed, well, 2:14:12.120 --> 2:14:14.200 as a brand and mayfactory in Fairfield, and it must 2:14:14.240 --> 2:14:17.960 be them. So she thought, well, I'll go and see 2:14:18.360 --> 2:14:22.920 if that's true. She wasn't convinced that it was. She 2:14:23.080 --> 2:14:25.920 went down and she waited until some of the women 2:14:26.000 --> 2:14:28.480 came off shift there. They worked different shifts and came 2:14:28.520 --> 2:14:31.120 out of the gates and onto the boat road, and 2:14:31.320 --> 2:14:34.840 she stopped them and said, I'm a journalist. I would 2:14:34.840 --> 2:14:38.640 like to talk to you about your conditions. It was 2:14:38.800 --> 2:14:41.920 that from this that we know everything that we do 2:14:42.040 --> 2:14:44.640 know about their conditions, From what those women told her 2:14:44.680 --> 2:14:48.160 about the fossy jaw, about the finds, about the fact 2:14:48.200 --> 2:14:53.000 that they were earning less now than in and the 2:14:53.120 --> 2:14:55.680 wonderful story of the statue. This all came out in 2:14:55.760 --> 2:15:00.280 that initial interview. She went back and wrote it up 2:15:01.320 --> 2:15:05.280 really hard hitting piece called White Slavery in London. And 2:15:05.360 --> 2:15:09.240 now there we can hark back to the maiden tribute 2:15:09.520 --> 2:15:12.640 to modern Babylon and this kind of obsession with the 2:15:13.200 --> 2:15:17.280 sexual exploitation of working class women, because white Slavery was 2:15:17.440 --> 2:15:22.200 one of the phrases used to refer to that. It's 2:15:22.240 --> 2:15:24.240 a very good title. I think. Also I wonder if 2:15:24.240 --> 2:15:26.720 any Beston wasn't having a pop that one of the 2:15:27.040 --> 2:15:31.440 Bryants who had been named Wilberforce Bryant after William Morberforce, 2:15:31.880 --> 2:15:35.480 the abolition campaigner, And I wonder if she wasn't having 2:15:35.520 --> 2:15:37.880 a goal because she's basically saying to Brian, and may 2:15:38.760 --> 2:15:43.560 you treat these people actually worse than enslaved people, because 2:15:43.800 --> 2:15:48.320 enslaved people at least are usually fed, you know, just 2:15:48.520 --> 2:15:50.320 enough so they can do the work, probably not well, 2:15:50.800 --> 2:15:53.840 but they are usually fed and housed. And your women 2:15:54.000 --> 2:15:56.720 girls don't even have that. They have to pay out 2:15:56.760 --> 2:16:01.640 of these terrible wages, terribly low ages after you find them, 2:16:01.680 --> 2:16:04.200 and the wages have gone done even further for all 2:16:04.320 --> 2:16:08.040 of that as well. And it was meant to be 2:16:08.360 --> 2:16:12.280 incredibly hard hitting, and it was, and to make sure 2:16:12.720 --> 2:16:16.040 that Brian and they knew about it. She telegrammed them 2:16:16.320 --> 2:16:19.480 and said, please do buy my paper, which is called 2:16:19.520 --> 2:16:22.400 The Link, a socialist journal, Please do buy it. I 2:16:22.440 --> 2:16:24.840 think there's nascar we're going to be very interested in. 2:16:25.360 --> 2:16:28.400 And of course they did buy it, and we're incandescent 2:16:28.520 --> 2:16:33.760 with rage. What was she hoped was not for a strike. 2:16:34.400 --> 2:16:37.560 There's no mention of that at all in White Slavery 2:16:37.600 --> 2:16:40.960 in London, despite the fact she's been called a strike leader. 2:16:41.560 --> 2:16:43.360 And in fact, one of the first things I was 2:16:43.480 --> 2:16:47.120 able to do, thanks to Brian to May, was to 2:16:47.280 --> 2:16:52.280 look at the initial the original article White Slavery in London, 2:16:52.320 --> 2:16:54.240 because it was in those boxes. I looked at in 2:16:54.240 --> 2:16:56.240 the archive and they'd ripped it out. It looked like 2:16:56.280 --> 2:16:59.320 it had been angrily ripped out of the paper it 2:16:59.440 --> 2:17:03.199 was and thrown into the archives. But I then looked 2:17:03.240 --> 2:17:05.600 at the whole edition of that paper in the newspaper 2:17:05.720 --> 2:17:10.280 library and it was quite illuminating. She's written a little 2:17:10.320 --> 2:17:16.119 bit further on about the idea of unionizing the casual poor, 2:17:16.600 --> 2:17:19.040 the very poor, the underclass women like this, and she 2:17:19.240 --> 2:17:23.680 actually said consider the women of Bryant Made that I 2:17:23.760 --> 2:17:27.440 wrote about in another column, and she's arguing against unionizing them. 2:17:27.480 --> 2:17:30.320 By the way, it would be impossible because if they 2:17:30.480 --> 2:17:32.640 tried to go on strike, they would just be sacked. 2:17:32.800 --> 2:17:35.959 And there's such high unemployment in this London that all 2:17:36.040 --> 2:17:38.760 their bosses are going to do is to hire someone else. 2:17:38.959 --> 2:17:41.959 It just wouldn't work. She's saying, it's not the way 2:17:42.040 --> 2:17:43.920 we do it, which is kind of interesting, isn't it 2:17:44.120 --> 2:17:49.240 a strike leader arguing against strikes. Well, you might think 2:17:49.240 --> 2:17:51.760 perhaps she's been tactical, she doesn't want the employers to 2:17:51.840 --> 2:17:54.199 know what she's up to. But in fact, the faber 2:17:54.200 --> 2:17:59.000 in society were really against strikes. M. George Bernard sure 2:17:59.200 --> 2:18:02.120 busterly complain about strikes and what they cost the economy. 2:18:02.680 --> 2:18:07.680 What they want, there's a much more respectable reform. They 2:18:07.760 --> 2:18:13.320 want the upper echelons of labor, the labor aristocracy as 2:18:13.360 --> 2:18:15.840 they're called then, to be the ones who are in 2:18:15.920 --> 2:18:18.680 trading is because you know they're they're proper people with 2:18:18.840 --> 2:18:21.160 top hats. They might be working class, but my goodness, 2:18:21.160 --> 2:18:24.360 at least they're decent people, not like these underclass proles. 2:18:24.400 --> 2:18:26.800 We don't really want anything to do with them. So 2:18:27.440 --> 2:18:32.320 she was absolutely typical of her class of socialists in 2:18:32.480 --> 2:18:37.280 suggesting that striking was a terrible mistake. So then Brian 2:18:37.360 --> 2:18:40.040 to May get this article and they are furious. But 2:18:40.320 --> 2:18:42.880 rather than what she thinks they're going to do, which 2:18:42.959 --> 2:18:46.240 is to sue her, and that's what she wants. She thinks, right, 2:18:46.280 --> 2:18:48.959 they'll sue me, I'll go to court and defend myself. 2:18:49.080 --> 2:18:52.120 She's done this before, and this gives me a forum. 2:18:52.440 --> 2:18:55.680 This will be reporting the papers forum for my message. 2:18:55.680 --> 2:18:58.320 I can then say these workers are being treated terribly 2:18:58.640 --> 2:19:01.039 and I can advise people to boycott brant to May. 2:19:01.760 --> 2:19:04.360 I think about that she's not talking to working class people. 2:19:04.480 --> 2:19:07.560 She's talking to consumers. That's middle class to middle class, 2:19:07.720 --> 2:19:11.800 over the heads of the workers. But in fact Brian 2:19:11.879 --> 2:19:14.080 to May threatened to see what they never do. They 2:19:14.120 --> 2:19:16.040 probably know they haven't got a leg to stand on. Actually, 2:19:16.480 --> 2:19:20.440 what they do is to gather together the workers, give 2:19:20.520 --> 2:19:23.680 them pre printed statesments which are laid around in every 2:19:23.720 --> 2:19:27.040 work for him by the foreman, which pre prepared and 2:19:27.120 --> 2:19:29.280 they say, you know, we love working for Brian to May. 2:19:29.320 --> 2:19:32.199 They're wonderful employers. We don't mind about the fossy journey. 2:19:32.360 --> 2:19:35.080 Didn't actually say that, but this is the idea. They're 2:19:35.080 --> 2:19:38.680 supposed to say this journalist has lied. Nothing she said 2:19:38.800 --> 2:19:41.720 is true. We couldn't be happier. And they know they'll 2:19:41.760 --> 2:19:45.160 be sacked if they don't sign those papers, and they 2:19:45.280 --> 2:19:48.359 need their jobs, they need them desperately, but they refuse. 2:19:48.800 --> 2:19:51.000 Every single one of these women, I'm so proud of them, 2:19:51.760 --> 2:19:56.000 refuses to sign. And when the foreman come back into 2:19:56.080 --> 2:19:59.600 the room, there are these blank sheets of paper and 2:19:59.760 --> 2:20:04.320 they absolutely livid. So what are the employers going to 2:20:04.400 --> 2:20:06.960 do next? While employers haven't been a trade unis, I 2:20:06.959 --> 2:20:08.920 can say they do the absolutely typical thing. And they 2:20:09.000 --> 2:20:12.600 pick on one young girl, one worker who's very popular 2:20:12.760 --> 2:20:15.640 with the others, and they sack her on a pretext. 2:20:15.760 --> 2:20:18.800 They're clever enough not to do it because they think 2:20:18.879 --> 2:20:21.000 she's one of the ones who's spoken to Lesson. But 2:20:21.040 --> 2:20:23.880 I think she probably is. They suck her and so 2:20:24.080 --> 2:20:26.840 she's not doing her work properly. How she goes now, 2:20:27.120 --> 2:20:32.000 talk about underestimating your workforce. As one the women laid 2:20:32.040 --> 2:20:36.760 down their tools, wipe their hands on their aprons, and 2:20:37.080 --> 2:20:42.080 stream out of these imposing gates of the fair Field 2:20:42.160 --> 2:20:46.199 Works Match factory, onto the fair Field Road and onto 2:20:46.480 --> 2:20:50.000 the Bow Road. What do they do then? Well, if 2:20:50.080 --> 2:20:53.800 they were these a political people who you know, weren't 2:20:53.920 --> 2:20:57.320 educated and didn't really realize what their conditions were or 2:20:57.360 --> 2:20:59.680 that they were being exploited. Well, what they're done. They 2:20:59.680 --> 2:21:01.920 would have was in gone all, BlimE me, Elisa, we've 2:21:02.000 --> 2:21:04.600 gone on strike by mistake. What shall we do now? 2:21:04.680 --> 2:21:06.600 What are we like? And I don't know, gone down 2:21:06.640 --> 2:21:10.600 the pub or something. But they didn't. They swung into action. 2:21:11.240 --> 2:21:15.119 They had an election there at the gates and they 2:21:15.320 --> 2:21:21.520 elected six women from all the major significant workshops within 2:21:21.600 --> 2:21:24.120 the factory, one from each to go back in and 2:21:24.200 --> 2:21:26.840 put their demands. So instantly they walked back in and 2:21:26.920 --> 2:21:29.440 they confront the directors. I can just imagine how this 2:21:29.520 --> 2:21:33.800 went down, and said, right, we'll come back, but only 2:21:34.160 --> 2:21:37.200 if you let us form a union. BlimE me. They 2:21:37.240 --> 2:21:39.800 were not bright and they were not expecting that, and 2:21:39.879 --> 2:21:42.360 they immediately widen their demands. I didn't just say we 2:21:42.440 --> 2:21:45.279 want that girl room, stated they said, we want a union. 2:21:45.440 --> 2:21:47.320 And I tell you another thing while we're here, we 2:21:47.480 --> 2:21:49.960 want a separate dining room to eat our dinners in 2:21:50.040 --> 2:21:52.480 to each our breading. Because they knew about Fossy Jewel 2:21:53.720 --> 2:21:55.640 Bright and May told them to do what I can 2:21:55.760 --> 2:21:58.920 imagine the language must have been pretty strong, because they 2:21:58.959 --> 2:22:01.960 would have been out rage How dare you you know? 2:22:02.040 --> 2:22:05.520 How dare you underclass women? How dare you tell us 2:22:05.720 --> 2:22:09.000 what to do? So back out the women go and 2:22:09.080 --> 2:22:11.800 they tell their colleagues, no, go, we're going to have 2:22:11.920 --> 2:22:14.880 to strike, and as everyone else comes on shift, they 2:22:15.000 --> 2:22:18.439 gradually pull all this workforce out. It's a huge workforce, 2:22:18.520 --> 2:22:21.760 by the way, we have four hundred people on strike 2:22:21.959 --> 2:22:26.040 by the end of the day. Now what do you do. 2:22:26.480 --> 2:22:29.280 You don't have access to the press, you don't have 2:22:29.400 --> 2:22:32.320 Twitter or Facebook. I can tell you as a historian, 2:22:32.400 --> 2:22:34.320 we did not have those things in those days. So 2:22:34.440 --> 2:22:37.320 how on earth do you tell people that you're on strike? 2:22:37.560 --> 2:22:40.760 How on earth do you get strike funds? Well, surely 2:22:40.840 --> 2:22:42.800 that if Annye Bessel led the strike, she would have 2:22:42.840 --> 2:22:47.000 been there. No, she's nowhere to be seen. So what 2:22:47.160 --> 2:22:51.320 they do is rather wonderful. They march around the streets 2:22:51.360 --> 2:22:54.560 of the East End arm in arm On maths hundreds 2:22:54.600 --> 2:22:59.440 of them, and they sing very loudly and very rude 2:22:59.480 --> 2:23:02.360 I'm afraid songs about their employers and what they would 2:23:02.400 --> 2:23:04.200 like to do to their employers, which are not nice. 2:23:04.240 --> 2:23:08.039 Though is mentioned of hanging old Brian On a sour apple. 2:23:08.200 --> 2:23:12.160 Tree's absolutely suposed to the tune of John Brown's Body, 2:23:12.200 --> 2:23:14.360 which is so interesting, isn't it that they're using battle 2:23:14.400 --> 2:23:17.560 him if the Repubic. They're using that tune to sing 2:23:17.680 --> 2:23:20.120 their protests on which they've just made up on the spot. 2:23:20.160 --> 2:23:22.640 But you know, there's are women who like musical songs. 2:23:22.720 --> 2:23:26.320 They're they're very creative. They enjoy lyrics, and as they 2:23:26.400 --> 2:23:30.119 walk around people hear them, obviously, and this draws attention. 2:23:30.240 --> 2:23:32.760 People come out onto their balconists, they open their windows, 2:23:32.840 --> 2:23:34.680 they come out to their doors, and what earth are 2:23:34.680 --> 2:23:37.920 you lot doing? And they say, well, we're the match women, 2:23:38.120 --> 2:23:40.760 as you probably know, because they would have known. They 2:23:40.840 --> 2:23:43.480 all had very distinct styles. You could tell a much woman. 2:23:44.160 --> 2:23:46.280 And we're on stripe because our bodies are a bunch 2:23:46.280 --> 2:23:49.720 of bastards and they've sat one of us for talking 2:23:49.760 --> 2:23:52.640 to a journalist and they treat it supportingly anyway, And 2:23:52.720 --> 2:23:54.800 we're bullied by management and our wages are shopping and 2:23:54.920 --> 2:23:57.840 we're not having any more, and we're on strike. And 2:23:58.040 --> 2:24:01.440 so people threw down to them coins, whatever money they 2:24:01.480 --> 2:24:03.760 could get their hands on, and the women wore these 2:24:03.920 --> 2:24:07.920 long white aprons to cover their dresses. And they caught them. 2:24:08.040 --> 2:24:11.600 They helped them out and they caught these coins in 2:24:12.040 --> 2:24:15.600 their aprons and that was their first strike funds. It's 2:24:15.680 --> 2:24:19.800 really impressive. Then they held mass meetings on mile end Ways, 2:24:19.840 --> 2:24:23.959 traditionary place where people met, and they had speakers. People 2:24:24.000 --> 2:24:27.320 came along to hear them. Other trade unionst Lewis Lions, 2:24:27.920 --> 2:24:32.119 famous from the Jewish Taylor's Union of famously militant trade unionsts, 2:24:32.160 --> 2:24:35.920 came along and they really started to garner support. The 2:24:36.080 --> 2:24:38.560 Star newspaper sent down its journalists, who was, you know, 2:24:38.680 --> 2:24:42.200 most discombobulated by the site of poor women looking poor 2:24:42.640 --> 2:24:45.080 and also by the fact that they were in Telliger. 2:24:45.200 --> 2:24:48.040 This was a real shocker to the middle classes, just 2:24:48.240 --> 2:24:50.640 like to the MPs when they finally marched a parliament. 2:24:50.680 --> 2:24:54.080 This journalist is saying, what goodness is women actually quite eloquent, 2:24:54.080 --> 2:24:57.240 and they're actually expressing themselves quite politically, and they're saying, 2:24:57.959 --> 2:25:00.480 we are typical of working people who are treated like 2:25:00.560 --> 2:25:02.240 this and we can't put up with it anymore. They're 2:25:02.320 --> 2:25:04.879 really rather surprised. This is not what we've been told 2:25:05.520 --> 2:25:08.560 about the inhabitants of the Darkest East. They're supposed to 2:25:08.640 --> 2:25:11.160 be all savages, and animals. You know, savages is a 2:25:11.360 --> 2:25:14.840 term that it's literally used about them. So they carry 2:25:14.879 --> 2:25:19.680 on meeting and at one point Annie Bessent finally, finally, 2:25:20.000 --> 2:25:22.560 a couple of days on from this, enters the picture 2:25:22.600 --> 2:25:25.320 a bit weird for a supposed strike leader. And I 2:25:25.400 --> 2:25:28.000 looked at her journal and she says, well, I was 2:25:28.080 --> 2:25:30.600 working in my rooms in Fleet Street and I heard 2:25:30.600 --> 2:25:32.880 a commotion and I looked out of the window and 2:25:32.920 --> 2:25:35.600 there was just s gaggle of of you know, quite 2:25:35.680 --> 2:25:39.879 rough looking girls, hundred or so, and they were blocking 2:25:39.920 --> 2:25:42.480 the pavement. You know, my goodness, this is nice London. 2:25:42.600 --> 2:25:44.920 People are trying to walk past, and there's working class people. 2:25:44.959 --> 2:25:46.640 It's a bit of it. It's it's you know. It 2:25:46.760 --> 2:25:49.600 causes a bit of an uproar. So she sends a 2:25:49.720 --> 2:25:52.600 note down and basically says, who the hell are you now? 2:25:52.680 --> 2:25:54.760 That should put the kai bosh on the fact that 2:25:54.840 --> 2:25:57.120 she was a strike leader. You can't recognize a strike 2:25:57.200 --> 2:26:00.040 you can't recognize your strikers. And they said were the 2:26:00.080 --> 2:26:04.240 match women. She entertained a couple of them to tea. 2:26:04.760 --> 2:26:06.400 She wouldn't have them all up. We'll go down to 2:26:06.560 --> 2:26:08.920 them because they are they're not quite sure what the 2:26:08.959 --> 2:26:11.520 rebel is going to do, and she says they're quite respectable. 2:26:12.000 --> 2:26:13.840 And they tell her they're on strike, and she is 2:26:13.879 --> 2:26:17.600 not pleased. She writes in her political paper, the Link 2:26:17.840 --> 2:26:20.400 the match Women, the Revolt of the Matchmakers. The match 2:26:20.480 --> 2:26:22.440 women have gone on strike, but she says the girls 2:26:22.560 --> 2:26:25.240 will go back to work. In this huge ban of headline, 2:26:25.240 --> 2:26:27.440 they will go back to work. Desperately hoping they will, 2:26:28.480 --> 2:26:30.520 and she says, you know, this was so ridiculous that 2:26:30.560 --> 2:26:32.200 they went on strike. They should have let a few 2:26:32.240 --> 2:26:34.920 people be sacked. We could have afforded to support a 2:26:35.000 --> 2:26:37.840 few people. But my god, now we have fourteen hundred 2:26:37.920 --> 2:26:40.080 people on strike. What on earth are we going to 2:26:40.160 --> 2:26:42.920 do to feed them? Again? This is not the rhetoric 2:26:43.000 --> 2:26:44.720 of a strike leader. Is that she's supposed to know 2:26:44.840 --> 2:26:46.880 about this strike. She's supposed to have brought it about. 2:26:47.400 --> 2:26:52.160 Why hasn't she got funds in place? Women march to Parliament. 2:26:52.200 --> 2:26:54.560 There's a lot of public key that's really helps with that. 2:26:54.760 --> 2:26:58.720 She writes letters to the newspaper attacking Brian to make 2:26:58.800 --> 2:27:01.840 she writes to the Times, Times published her, they published 2:27:01.879 --> 2:27:04.600 Bryant and May's response, it's like tennis. It goes back 2:27:04.640 --> 2:27:08.000 and forth. Everyone's accusing everyone else and things the matter 2:27:08.120 --> 2:27:10.520 in march to Parliament and this is where people are 2:27:10.560 --> 2:27:13.879 so shocked to see these poor girls out of their 2:27:13.959 --> 2:27:17.560 area that they get shouted at, you know, can't stop 2:27:17.600 --> 2:27:19.320 in the streets. Things are thrown at them, what on 2:27:19.400 --> 2:27:21.200 earth are you doing? Get back to the East End. 2:27:21.360 --> 2:27:23.520 But they won't. They help, They hold their heads high, 2:27:24.640 --> 2:27:28.320 and when they're finally in with the MPs again this 2:27:28.560 --> 2:27:32.920 fascinating clash of classes. The MP's are probably never sat 2:27:33.000 --> 2:27:35.840 and talked to an Eastern woman on an equal basis 2:27:35.959 --> 2:27:37.840 or a working class woman. They might have talked to 2:27:37.879 --> 2:27:41.160 their own servants, but that's not an equal relationship. So 2:27:42.280 --> 2:27:44.080 when they're in the room, one of the girls, who's 2:27:44.080 --> 2:27:47.800 about twelve, takes off her bonnet and they see that 2:27:47.920 --> 2:27:51.960 she's balls completely bald on top of her head, and 2:27:52.160 --> 2:27:54.880 she says, can you see my head? I've been working 2:27:55.000 --> 2:27:57.240 for Brian and May since I was an infant, carrying 2:27:57.320 --> 2:27:59.280 palettes and matches on my head, and it's worn my 2:27:59.400 --> 2:28:02.520 hair away completely. Now this is brilliant because they've probably 2:28:02.560 --> 2:28:05.320 got young daughters about the same age with those beautiful 2:28:05.400 --> 2:28:08.520 Victorian ringulets, and this really hits them where they live. 2:28:09.240 --> 2:28:11.560 These reps have invested in Brian and May. This is 2:28:11.640 --> 2:28:15.119 all rather embarrassing, isn't it. Liberal MPs who were supposed 2:28:15.120 --> 2:28:18.040 to support the poor, and yet they're profiting off this. 2:28:18.760 --> 2:28:21.120 They tell them about fosse A jewel and the MPs 2:28:21.200 --> 2:28:25.640 are impressed that they're so intelligent and so eloquent. They 2:28:25.879 --> 2:28:29.200 start to swing on side, but brianton May fight a 2:28:29.280 --> 2:28:32.200 great rearguard action. A lot of the newspapers are on 2:28:32.320 --> 2:28:36.200 their side and saying, look at this disgraceful situation, these 2:28:36.879 --> 2:28:41.000 poor women and the worst sorts of people parading around 2:28:41.040 --> 2:28:43.240 the usea and I mean, how dare they It's disgraceful, 2:28:43.240 --> 2:28:46.000 They've got jobs. They should be grateful Brian to their gentlemen, 2:28:46.120 --> 2:28:50.320 all that rhetoric that we're so used to. But the 2:28:50.480 --> 2:28:54.440 tide starts to turn very quickly, because once the MPs 2:28:54.760 --> 2:28:58.240 are on side, respectable people are on side. They call 2:28:58.440 --> 2:29:02.840 for an independent investigation into conditions at the factory. And 2:29:03.360 --> 2:29:08.320 this investigation shows that what any bestness said wasn't quite right, 2:29:09.160 --> 2:29:13.119 because actually conditions are worse. Things are far far worse 2:29:13.600 --> 2:29:18.000 than she'd touched on in white slavery in London, Brian 2:29:18.080 --> 2:29:21.440 and they have nowhere to go at that point because 2:29:21.520 --> 2:29:25.520 their shareholders are coming to them and say, for God's say, 2:29:25.560 --> 2:29:28.320 you've got to do something about this. You know, share 2:29:28.400 --> 2:29:32.120 prices are dropping, that's capitalists do care about that, don't they. 2:29:32.440 --> 2:29:34.520 You're going to have to back down. The government are 2:29:34.600 --> 2:29:38.400 telling them that they do need to back down at 2:29:38.440 --> 2:29:41.200 this point. And they're so angry about It's so angry 2:29:41.520 --> 2:29:43.959 you can see it in the company archives. They're feeling 2:29:44.000 --> 2:29:47.120 about it absolutely decade whenever there's a mention of this type. 2:29:47.760 --> 2:29:51.279 But they have to climb down with the worst possible grace. 2:29:51.879 --> 2:29:57.119 You know, it's not Christmas Carol type scenario. They haven't 2:29:57.160 --> 2:30:00.040 been visited by ghosts and become nice Scrooge and in 2:30:00.160 --> 2:30:03.119 the error of their ways at all. They're forced into 2:30:03.200 --> 2:30:07.320 this as they see an undignified climbed down and within 2:30:07.560 --> 2:30:10.800 a little over two weeks they had to grant these 2:30:10.879 --> 2:30:15.040 women the right to form the largest union of women 2:30:15.080 --> 2:30:19.600 and girls in the entire country, and better rates of pay, 2:30:20.160 --> 2:30:23.240 and their separate dining room to eat in, and the 2:30:23.400 --> 2:30:26.160 right to take their grievances over the heads of the 2:30:26.320 --> 2:30:31.000 foremen to the directors. I love to think of how 2:30:31.200 --> 2:30:34.760 furiously piste off the foreman must have been about this, 2:30:35.320 --> 2:30:37.240 that the women could go sailing out of the room 2:30:37.280 --> 2:30:39.360 and say, sorry for it. I'm going to complain to 2:30:39.440 --> 2:30:41.280 the directors that don't like the way you're running things 2:30:41.360 --> 2:30:45.080 down here. It was a complete rebalancing of power, and 2:30:45.160 --> 2:30:50.000 they swept back victoriously into work and I would imagine 2:30:50.000 --> 2:30:52.760 they would have had their beautiful cats from their feather 2:30:52.840 --> 2:30:58.480 clubs as they did. So, absolutely victorious, absolutely unexpected. Nobody 2:30:58.600 --> 2:31:01.080 expected that was going to be the upcome. Not the 2:31:01.160 --> 2:31:03.520 first strike by women, by the way, not even by 2:31:03.640 --> 2:31:06.160 these women. They've been on strike before. It was the 2:31:06.240 --> 2:31:09.600 only weapon that very poor people had but to win, 2:31:10.400 --> 2:31:13.119 and to win against one of the most powerful employers 2:31:13.200 --> 2:31:21.120 in the country was absolutely unprecedented, brilliant. So um, the 2:31:21.240 --> 2:31:26.160 strike was June, right, yeah, second in July, I think 2:31:26.200 --> 2:31:29.959 it started, Yes, it did, okay, okay, So the peace 2:31:30.000 --> 2:31:32.360 white slavery in London that came out in June, and 2:31:32.440 --> 2:31:34.200 then there was just this little bit of build up, 2:31:34.480 --> 2:31:39.599 right um. So of course, then in this season of Unobscured, 2:31:40.240 --> 2:31:46.800 we are following the murders in Whitechapel investigation and we're 2:31:46.840 --> 2:31:48.880 really going to be looking at you know, what the 2:31:48.959 --> 2:31:53.920 police were doing and the tourism on Hanbury Street, you know, 2:31:54.040 --> 2:31:56.880 starting with any Chapman's murder, that kind of thing, and 2:31:57.000 --> 2:32:02.640 all of that is in the months after the September um. 2:32:03.040 --> 2:32:06.400 But at the beginning of October, no kind of the 2:32:06.440 --> 2:32:10.480 middle of October um that that radical newspaper The Star 2:32:11.320 --> 2:32:15.600 reports that Briant and May have received a letter signed 2:32:15.920 --> 2:32:20.400 signed by the Ripper. Um. Do you have the text 2:32:20.440 --> 2:32:24.080 of it there? Do ared you be willing to read 2:32:24.120 --> 2:32:26.640 that for us? And then? And then and then tell 2:32:26.720 --> 2:32:31.520 us what does that letter reveal to us about how 2:32:31.640 --> 2:32:36.040 working women who lived across the East End we're experiencing 2:32:37.400 --> 2:32:40.080 the panic that fall, which some writers have called the 2:32:40.160 --> 2:32:44.680 Autumn of terror. How would that have been felt by 2:32:44.800 --> 2:32:49.040 the people whose neighborhoods this was. It's so interesting and 2:32:49.120 --> 2:32:54.240 it's so revealing. So we hear from the newspaper. Intimation 2:32:54.400 --> 2:32:57.440 was given to the city police on Saturday morning that 2:32:57.680 --> 2:33:02.039 Messrs Brianton May had received a better signed j Ripper 2:33:02.879 --> 2:33:07.600 and couched in the following terms. I hereby notify you 2:33:07.720 --> 2:33:10.680 that I'm going to pay your girls a visit. I 2:33:10.879 --> 2:33:13.040 hear they are beginning to say what they will do 2:33:13.200 --> 2:33:16.280 with me. I'm going to see what a few of 2:33:16.320 --> 2:33:19.880 them have in their stomachs, and I will take it 2:33:20.000 --> 2:33:22.160 out of them so that they will have no more 2:33:22.280 --> 2:33:26.960 to do on the quiet, Signed John Ripper, p S. 2:33:27.120 --> 2:33:31.879 I am in Popular today. Well, it's an incredible letter, 2:33:32.440 --> 2:33:34.840 whether or not it was a hoax, what it says 2:33:35.240 --> 2:33:38.080 is so revealing even a few lines if we break 2:33:38.120 --> 2:33:42.760 it down. So this person says the reason is going 2:33:42.840 --> 2:33:45.840 to attack the match women? Is I hear they are 2:33:45.879 --> 2:33:48.400 beginning to say what they will do with me? Well, 2:33:48.480 --> 2:33:51.480 what does that mean? That means that the match women, 2:33:52.320 --> 2:33:57.440 rather than being understandably terrified that there is a killers 2:33:57.480 --> 2:34:01.800 talking their streets, are furious because what this means they're 2:34:01.800 --> 2:34:03.720 going to say what they will do with me? They're 2:34:03.760 --> 2:34:07.160 presumably saying, right, we're going to find that bastard, wait 2:34:07.280 --> 2:34:10.400 till we get our hands on him. They are threatening 2:34:10.560 --> 2:34:13.840 the Ripper, basically, and there weren't the only ones doing that. 2:34:13.879 --> 2:34:17.000 Of course, there were vigilante commitsteers who are going around 2:34:17.160 --> 2:34:19.199 trying to keep an eye on the Ripper. It would 2:34:19.200 --> 2:34:22.520 be fascinating to know whether the match were men were 2:34:22.600 --> 2:34:25.960 doing that themselves. I love to think of them parading 2:34:26.040 --> 2:34:28.640 the back alleys of White Chapel with that happens at 2:34:28.680 --> 2:34:33.039 the ready just in case. But that's what he's retaliating against. 2:34:33.160 --> 2:34:36.280 They're threatening him. And then of course he issues his 2:34:36.480 --> 2:34:39.320 disgusting threat and says they will have no more to 2:34:39.440 --> 2:34:43.080 do on the choir. And that is about prostitution. So 2:34:43.360 --> 2:34:47.000 whoever this is is implying that as working girls, they're 2:34:47.080 --> 2:34:50.640 also doing things on the quiet. They are also engaging 2:34:50.840 --> 2:34:55.480 in sex work or prostitution. So for just a few lines, 2:34:55.760 --> 2:34:58.400 it really tells us a lot. Now we know people 2:34:58.480 --> 2:35:00.800 were scared. Of course they were scared. We know that 2:35:00.920 --> 2:35:06.600 women working in prostitution were trying to get into workhouses overnight, 2:35:06.680 --> 2:35:10.240 and that was unusual. The poor fear the workhouses like 2:35:10.480 --> 2:35:14.480 nothing else. That was the real nightmare scenario was being 2:35:14.600 --> 2:35:18.760 placed in a workhouse, awful conditions. If you had children, 2:35:18.879 --> 2:35:21.520 you were separated from them. It was really really brutal. 2:35:22.400 --> 2:35:25.440 But for once they're thinking they are safer off the streets, 2:35:26.120 --> 2:35:28.840 but not the match women, and I would bet not 2:35:29.160 --> 2:35:32.360 all women either, because the sad truth of it is, 2:35:32.560 --> 2:35:37.600 although this these murders, this murderer gets so taken up 2:35:37.640 --> 2:35:41.560 by the press and get so sensationalized. People killing women 2:35:41.840 --> 2:35:46.200 is nothing new in the East End. People killing prostituted 2:35:46.240 --> 2:35:49.040 women is nothing new in the East End. Had it 2:35:49.200 --> 2:35:54.720 not been so dramatized and sensationalized, perhaps they wouldn't would 2:35:54.840 --> 2:35:59.320 scarcely have known what was happening. But certainly two people 2:35:59.400 --> 2:36:01.240 like the match him and this was just a sense 2:36:01.320 --> 2:36:04.560 of outrage. These are our streets, this is our manner. 2:36:04.920 --> 2:36:09.320 How dare some bloke come on to our manner and 2:36:09.520 --> 2:36:13.600 behave like this? Two women like us to Eastern women 2:36:13.680 --> 2:36:16.640 and girls, they're absolutely outrage and I think that's tells 2:36:16.760 --> 2:36:21.720 us an awful lot about their spirit. M hm hm, brilliant. 2:36:22.320 --> 2:36:28.440 Do we actually know any details about the lives of, um, 2:36:29.040 --> 2:36:32.640 some of the girls like Mary Driscoll, Martha Robinson in 2:36:32.760 --> 2:36:36.600 those months after the strike while these things were happening, Um, 2:36:37.120 --> 2:36:40.080 what were the first few months of you know, union 2:36:40.560 --> 2:36:45.400 life like? Yeah, the union was really active and they 2:36:45.560 --> 2:36:50.320 were probably more concerned and busy with that than they 2:36:50.400 --> 2:36:53.080 would have been worrying about the rip. I'm not saying 2:36:53.120 --> 2:36:55.760 they didn't worry. I'm sure when they walked down the 2:36:55.800 --> 2:36:59.200 streets at night they were concerned. But you see, they 2:36:59.280 --> 2:37:02.680 were always in danger the Eastern was never a safe 2:37:02.959 --> 2:37:05.200 space if you were a working class women, so they 2:37:05.240 --> 2:37:08.800 always traveled in gangs. Middle classes hated this because there 2:37:08.840 --> 2:37:11.280 were noisy gangs, and they were disrespectful gangs, and they 2:37:11.320 --> 2:37:14.160 would be singing and they would be using terrible language, 2:37:14.200 --> 2:37:16.680 and people would get their kids off the street when 2:37:16.800 --> 2:37:18.760 all the match women are coming off shift. Come along, 2:37:18.800 --> 2:37:21.840 deer inside inside, stop your ears. These vile women are 2:37:21.879 --> 2:37:23.800 out in the streets being being a bit rough and 2:37:23.879 --> 2:37:26.640 working class. So they always did that. They were really 2:37:26.840 --> 2:37:30.640 used to taking precautions, so probably life didn't change that 2:37:30.800 --> 2:37:33.640 much for them, and you always had someone in a family. 2:37:34.000 --> 2:37:35.920 All the women had to learn to fight, you know, 2:37:36.040 --> 2:37:38.560 not just because they were horrible violent people, because you 2:37:38.680 --> 2:37:41.760 had to. There were always people trying to grab you 2:37:41.879 --> 2:37:44.560 down a you know, drag you down a dark alley, 2:37:44.640 --> 2:37:46.760 and those were often people from outside the area who 2:37:46.800 --> 2:37:49.120 would come in and people would be raped, children would 2:37:49.200 --> 2:37:51.960 would be kidnapped. Their awful things used to happen in 2:37:52.000 --> 2:37:55.680 those dark streets, so they had to defend themselves. And 2:37:55.760 --> 2:37:58.000 there was a wonderful story I got from one of 2:37:58.120 --> 2:38:01.560 the descendants about how how good the women were at forcing, 2:38:01.640 --> 2:38:07.119 which really illustrates the fact that outsiders, like posh outsiders 2:38:07.160 --> 2:38:10.360 were really noticed in the Eastern as well. And he 2:38:10.760 --> 2:38:14.480 told this story about one of his relatives being in 2:38:15.120 --> 2:38:16.560 a book is. I think it was one of his 2:38:16.680 --> 2:38:18.680 great antswers in the book is one day lining up 2:38:18.720 --> 2:38:23.480 to place her bet and behind her incomes a top 2:38:23.600 --> 2:38:26.240 with a top hat, a rich guy for some reasons 2:38:26.280 --> 2:38:30.520 in the area and stands behind her to place his bet. 2:38:31.080 --> 2:38:32.920 And some of the local lads who are in there 2:38:33.000 --> 2:38:36.560 think this is an opportunity here for a bit of mischiefs. 2:38:36.959 --> 2:38:41.240 So they reached around said top and they pinch aunt 2:38:41.400 --> 2:38:45.160 his bottom. Now, she does not ask any questions at 2:38:45.200 --> 2:38:47.760 this point, by the way, she just wheels round, leading 2:38:47.800 --> 2:38:51.920 with her fist and knocks the bloke out with one punch. 2:38:52.040 --> 2:38:55.560 So one good right hook and this port off top hat, 2:38:55.680 --> 2:38:58.840 doubtless flying across the blacks floor is spark out on 2:38:58.920 --> 2:39:01.760 the floor. So that tells you how violent, you know, 2:39:01.840 --> 2:39:03.840 how dangerous life was for women. They had to be 2:39:03.920 --> 2:39:07.680 prepared to come out fighting and no questions asked. So 2:39:08.520 --> 2:39:10.680 I think in that respect they would have been much 2:39:10.840 --> 2:39:13.720 more careful, but they were always used to being careful. 2:39:13.760 --> 2:39:16.440 They were always used to being on their guard and 2:39:16.600 --> 2:39:20.000 to not being particularly safe in their own streets. And 2:39:20.120 --> 2:39:22.600 the union was so busy because you said they didn't 2:39:22.640 --> 2:39:26.160 rest on their laurels. If they hadn't been involved in 2:39:26.200 --> 2:39:28.800 their own strike, if they had been passive puppets, you 2:39:28.920 --> 2:39:30.960 imagine they would have just thought, well, we've done it. 2:39:31.080 --> 2:39:32.960 Now we've got a union, we've done really well. Life 2:39:33.040 --> 2:39:37.920 goes on. But actually they didn't. They kept unionizing. They 2:39:38.080 --> 2:39:41.480 kept taking the message to other groups of workers. So 2:39:41.640 --> 2:39:45.520 the girls that worked in nearby confectionary factors, the sweetie 2:39:45.560 --> 2:39:50.640 girls who worked in jam factories, the wives of eastern dockers, 2:39:50.879 --> 2:39:54.400 they were constantly having meetings and trying to unionize them 2:39:54.480 --> 2:39:58.600 as well. And there's a really amusing account from one 2:39:58.680 --> 2:40:02.480 of the lead weeks of with the class women, philanthropic 2:40:02.520 --> 2:40:06.320 women who were trying to organize working class women but 2:40:06.400 --> 2:40:09.360 in a bit of a middle class top down where 2:40:09.360 --> 2:40:12.600 we didn't always go down very well with the women themselves. 2:40:13.000 --> 2:40:15.519 But they recorded at the time that they were absolutely 2:40:15.600 --> 2:40:18.960 worn out with these match women because they kept coming 2:40:19.000 --> 2:40:21.440 to them as saying, all right, um, we want you 2:40:21.480 --> 2:40:23.760 to help us, because we want to have another union meeting. 2:40:23.840 --> 2:40:26.880 Please with the jam factory girls, and we'd like you 2:40:26.959 --> 2:40:29.040 to help us find a venue please, and then we 2:40:29.080 --> 2:40:31.560 would like tea and cakes, and we would like some 2:40:31.640 --> 2:40:34.240 Irish music. And they were like, oh my god, you know, 2:40:34.280 --> 2:40:36.080 I've got to try and find an Irish musician. How 2:40:36.160 --> 2:40:39.440 its short noticed, But I love this idea of a 2:40:39.600 --> 2:40:42.920 union meeting that involves tea and cach and Irish dancing. 2:40:43.080 --> 2:40:46.199 How fantastic. And I have a little match Wents festival 2:40:46.320 --> 2:40:48.840 every year right close to their old factory and bow 2:40:49.000 --> 2:40:51.960 and I have music and tea and well not so 2:40:52.080 --> 2:40:54.240 much tea and cakes as gin, but anyway, I like 2:40:54.360 --> 2:40:57.040 to think it's very much in the spirit of the 2:40:57.120 --> 2:41:01.360 match women. So they were incredibly busy unionizing, you know, 2:41:01.440 --> 2:41:03.840 they weren't messing about. And it's so interesting that they 2:41:03.920 --> 2:41:07.480 took this message to the dockers as well. Now, the 2:41:07.600 --> 2:41:13.880 big Great dock Strike of nine has traditionally been what 2:41:14.160 --> 2:41:17.240 historians of the labor movement, the union movement looked to 2:41:17.600 --> 2:41:20.640 as a big starting event, very important. This is where 2:41:20.720 --> 2:41:24.880 modern trade Juanism, that is, trade unism with a political 2:41:24.959 --> 2:41:27.720 objective to liberate the working class really as opposed to 2:41:27.879 --> 2:41:32.360 just sort of boys club really that the previous unions 2:41:32.400 --> 2:41:36.519 were to keep people out of the profession, to organize apprenticeships, 2:41:36.560 --> 2:41:38.440 to keep your own labor price high. This is a 2:41:38.600 --> 2:41:42.959 very different thing when trade Juanism, and it's been dated 2:41:43.080 --> 2:41:47.400 from the dock strike, and historians, those historians have even 2:41:47.480 --> 2:41:49.440 bothered to write about the match women in a line 2:41:49.520 --> 2:41:52.199 or two have said, well, this was just a vague, 2:41:52.240 --> 2:41:56.280 sort of minor harbinger of the dock strike. And you think, 2:41:56.320 --> 2:41:59.400 what does that mean exactly if it happened first, is 2:41:59.440 --> 2:42:02.200 it not part the same movement but the start of it? 2:42:02.440 --> 2:42:04.760 Would you not think that I've had his story. Say 2:42:04.760 --> 2:42:08.400 to me, Olouise, you're really failing to understand the way 2:42:08.440 --> 2:42:10.480 this work. As I'm standing, come from a trade union background, 2:42:10.520 --> 2:42:12.560 are not real an academic, but now this is not 2:42:12.720 --> 2:42:15.120 really the way this happens a dock strike. These were 2:42:15.160 --> 2:42:18.720 just girls dock strikes far more important. Well, I went back, 2:42:19.040 --> 2:42:23.040 in my sort of nerdy peeky way and started those 2:42:23.160 --> 2:42:28.680 months after the match from strike really intensely, really really intensely. 2:42:29.000 --> 2:42:34.440 I got out the record of incidents of strikes, which 2:42:34.520 --> 2:42:37.720 were recorded for like every week after the match from 2:42:37.760 --> 2:42:39.800 his strike and every week before. I looked at the 2:42:40.280 --> 2:42:42.560 years and years of this stuff, and I found that 2:42:42.680 --> 2:42:46.879 strikes shut up, shut up right after the match from 2:42:46.879 --> 2:42:49.000 a strike. And there's no other way to explain it, 2:42:49.040 --> 2:42:51.080 because I looked. I went right back and looked at 2:42:51.160 --> 2:42:54.600 averages and years. Everyone in the East End is going 2:42:54.640 --> 2:42:58.480 on strike. The tailors, the seamstresses, you know, the jam factories, 2:42:58.520 --> 2:43:01.840 the furblous everyone's going on strike, you know, because working 2:43:01.879 --> 2:43:05.039 people aren't stupid. They see an example here. Oh look, 2:43:05.200 --> 2:43:08.640 they are workers like us. They're supposed to be powerless, blimy. 2:43:09.000 --> 2:43:11.680 They're now trade union leaders and they've got better conditions. 2:43:11.720 --> 2:43:14.080 You know, how dumb do we think working people are? 2:43:14.640 --> 2:43:17.000 But this would be lost on them. Of course, it 2:43:17.160 --> 2:43:20.600 wasn't lost on them and the doctors union we find 2:43:21.680 --> 2:43:24.760 go to the matchments Union and they say, can you 2:43:24.920 --> 2:43:28.000 help us? Basically, can you help us? So so far 2:43:28.160 --> 2:43:30.600 from what historians have said, Oh, these are two totally 2:43:30.680 --> 2:43:34.240 different groups of workers. There's no connection, and there's a year, 2:43:34.400 --> 2:43:36.720 by the way between the strikes, so it can't have 2:43:36.920 --> 2:43:39.560 any cart of be inspired by the match froom. Actually 2:43:39.640 --> 2:43:43.080 they try to strike in the autumn. That was totally 2:43:43.160 --> 2:43:46.080 inspired by the match women who said so the leaders 2:43:46.120 --> 2:43:49.240 of the Dockers unions said so themselves. You know, their 2:43:49.520 --> 2:43:52.160 people came to speak to us. We tried to strike. 2:43:52.520 --> 2:43:56.720 It wasn't successful, but it was a rehearsal for nine. 2:43:57.160 --> 2:44:00.600 In eighteen eight nine, they pulled this strike off big time. 2:44:00.680 --> 2:44:04.240 It was a humongous strike that spread to become almost 2:44:04.280 --> 2:44:07.800 a general strike really, and spread to other countries as well. 2:44:07.840 --> 2:44:11.480 They had support from other countries. The whole of London 2:44:11.680 --> 2:44:14.000 was almost doubt. It was like a city of the dead, 2:44:14.320 --> 2:44:18.600 because in those days you could take what's called second reaction. 2:44:18.959 --> 2:44:21.240 So if someone comes out and strike, you can do 2:44:21.320 --> 2:44:23.520 a secondary strike. You can come out and strike to 2:44:23.520 --> 2:44:26.320 support them. I'm old enough to just about remember those 2:44:26.440 --> 2:44:28.720 petty days and you can still do that. You can't now. 2:44:29.440 --> 2:44:32.200 So everyone came out and supported them, including match women, 2:44:32.360 --> 2:44:34.720 by the way, came out and strike and supported them. 2:44:35.440 --> 2:44:39.200 Now can we prove though, that Dockers were inspired by 2:44:39.280 --> 2:44:42.760 match women when all the mainly manly historians have said 2:44:42.800 --> 2:44:46.040 they definitely weren't. Well, apart from the fact that I 2:44:46.200 --> 2:44:49.400 looked at census records, voy did I look at census records. 2:44:49.400 --> 2:44:53.680 I haunted those censors offices, and Mattalin and Dockers are 2:44:54.200 --> 2:44:57.360 so much the same people. Practically. Jim Best, one of 2:44:57.400 --> 2:45:00.280 the descendants I've talked you, said, no, they're the same people. 2:45:00.360 --> 2:45:04.039 There's no separation between these people. Matched were married doctors, 2:45:04.879 --> 2:45:07.400 matched women and the mothers of offers. The sisters are offers, 2:45:07.400 --> 2:45:10.200 they're friends of doctors. You know, working people do inspire 2:45:10.240 --> 2:45:14.400 each other. They do talk, of course, and this strike 2:45:14.840 --> 2:45:18.680 is unquestionably a huge event, but it's unsuccessful at first. 2:45:18.760 --> 2:45:22.480 The Dot company really fight back and John Burns, one 2:45:22.560 --> 2:45:25.600 of the key leaders who goes on to bring MP says, 2:45:25.720 --> 2:45:27.960 drough the strike to a mass meeting of hundreds of 2:45:28.040 --> 2:45:32.480 thousands of men. Don't give up, stand shoulder to shoulder. 2:45:32.959 --> 2:45:37.080 Remember the match girls who won their fight and formed 2:45:37.200 --> 2:45:40.240 a union? Well, I mean wow. And he says that 2:45:40.320 --> 2:45:43.080 kind of thing constantly. By the way, he doesn't say, oh, 2:45:43.320 --> 2:45:45.320 some match women. You probably haven't heard of them. They 2:45:45.360 --> 2:45:47.880 were from Brian to May, down the road. They apparently 2:45:47.920 --> 2:45:49.960 had a strike, he says, the match girls, and he 2:45:50.080 --> 2:45:53.760 knows everyone knows. Hundreds of thousands of men listening, they 2:45:53.840 --> 2:45:56.120 all know damn well who the match were. Enough, that's 2:45:56.160 --> 2:45:59.240 how inspiring they are. When the leaders wrote their memoirs, 2:45:59.320 --> 2:46:01.160 they said things like it was the match women that 2:46:01.320 --> 2:46:05.039 started it. They they were the first signs, They were 2:46:05.080 --> 2:46:07.959 the first encouragement, the first inspiration. They were the start 2:46:08.000 --> 2:46:11.040 of new unions. And what more do you need than that? 2:46:11.440 --> 2:46:15.120 And yet historians have seen that presumably if I can 2:46:15.200 --> 2:46:17.800 find it, you can find it, and just missed it 2:46:18.040 --> 2:46:21.280 and said no, no, no, no, match girls not really important. 2:46:22.400 --> 2:46:25.560 Two different from the doctors, wouldn't have influenced them. Too 2:46:25.680 --> 2:46:28.720 distant a year apart. Absolutely, the two strikes had nothing 2:46:28.760 --> 2:46:30.959 to do with each other. And when you look at 2:46:30.959 --> 2:46:36.520 all the evidence, that is absolutely extraordinary. So yes, long 2:46:36.680 --> 2:46:40.680 story short, the match women weren't really busy throughout all 2:46:40.760 --> 2:46:43.680 that time. They came out on strike to support the doctors, 2:46:43.720 --> 2:46:46.640 as I've said, but also as doctors wise, they were 2:46:46.720 --> 2:46:50.840 involved in rent strikes. Rent strikes really incredibly powerful weapon 2:46:50.920 --> 2:46:54.520 that women often employed, actually employed a great effect. And 2:46:54.680 --> 2:46:57.840 they strung a banner I presume made of sheets. I 2:46:57.879 --> 2:46:59.800 don't know how else they would have done it across 2:46:59.879 --> 2:47:04.520 the commercial road and they said, our husbands are on strike. 2:47:05.200 --> 2:47:08.160 For us wives, it is not honey, So we do 2:47:08.320 --> 2:47:11.400 not think that it is right to give the landlords money. 2:47:11.959 --> 2:47:15.120 In other words, tough lads, you can whistle for your rents. 2:47:15.600 --> 2:47:20.039 You're getting nothing until this strike is settled. So yes, 2:47:20.160 --> 2:47:21.760 there was one hell of a lot more going on 2:47:22.080 --> 2:47:26.200 in this period than one, you know, inadequate psychopath murdering women. 2:47:28.440 --> 2:47:33.360 M And you mentioned that this was the beginning of 2:47:33.480 --> 2:47:38.480 this new unionism in Britain. Um, what ended up being 2:47:38.560 --> 2:47:43.520 the fruits of this period of unionism? What did it? 2:47:43.760 --> 2:47:47.520 What did it bring? What did it result in in Britain? 2:47:47.600 --> 2:47:51.760 In British, Well, it comes right down to the Labor 2:47:51.879 --> 2:47:55.840 Party today. This is a chain of events. This is 2:47:56.000 --> 2:48:01.120 hundreds and thousands of the most explode woitted workers who 2:48:01.160 --> 2:48:04.280 have been completely left out of any kind of consideration 2:48:04.320 --> 2:48:07.640 of unions and before on the whole saying we're going 2:48:07.680 --> 2:48:09.840 to do what they did. They used to strike as 2:48:09.879 --> 2:48:13.400 a means to force open the door to unionization. They 2:48:13.600 --> 2:48:17.320 forced the employers to let them the union movement. They 2:48:17.360 --> 2:48:19.680 didn't bother waiting for them to get around to them, 2:48:19.720 --> 2:48:21.840 which is what you're supposed to do if you're very poor, 2:48:22.000 --> 2:48:26.880 politely respectively wait to your turn, and maybe eventually the 2:48:27.000 --> 2:48:28.920 big boys of the union woman might bother to get 2:48:28.959 --> 2:48:31.119 around you. Probably not, but you never know your luck. 2:48:31.480 --> 2:48:35.040 But no, they forced the pace. They used strikes to 2:48:35.280 --> 2:48:39.080 force the right to form their own unions, and there 2:48:39.120 --> 2:48:42.039 were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them formed across 2:48:42.120 --> 2:48:45.160 the country as far Awaars Island too. It's incredible how 2:48:45.320 --> 2:48:48.280 news traveled in those days, and Irish theams just as 2:48:48.400 --> 2:48:50.640 unions wrote and said, we've heard about the match women, 2:48:50.920 --> 2:48:52.600 please come and tell us how to do it. We 2:48:52.680 --> 2:48:56.320 want to unionize as well. So it really was striking 2:48:56.360 --> 2:48:59.120 a light, you know. It really went like a fire. 2:48:59.240 --> 2:49:04.279 It just read and spread and spread. Although the employers 2:49:04.360 --> 2:49:07.480 fought back, I mean, of course employers always will. They 2:49:07.600 --> 2:49:11.720 fought back quite viciously, and a lot of those new 2:49:11.840 --> 2:49:16.160 unions did fold, but in a way that didn't really 2:49:16.240 --> 2:49:19.840 matter because things never went back. Things never went backwards. 2:49:20.400 --> 2:49:25.360 The Match Women's Union stayed active until nineteen twenty when 2:49:25.440 --> 2:49:30.599 it was merged into the g MB General and Municipal Boilermakers, 2:49:30.680 --> 2:49:33.520 one of our big unions. So it stayed through all 2:49:33.600 --> 2:49:37.600 that period and people that have written about it um 2:49:37.959 --> 2:49:40.240 and not many people have written about the strike itself, 2:49:40.320 --> 2:49:42.720 but I did read one paper that suggested, oh, it 2:49:42.800 --> 2:49:45.039 can't have bring an important strike because the union only 2:49:45.160 --> 2:49:48.640 lasted till nineteen twenty, well, rather outrage of the match 2:49:48.680 --> 2:49:51.800 men's behalf. Not only did it survive all that time 2:49:51.840 --> 2:49:55.119 when employers were kicking and fighting back with everything they had, 2:49:55.600 --> 2:49:58.720 but it survived and continued to become part of one 2:49:58.800 --> 2:50:02.040 of our most major unions. So it's an incredible achievement. 2:50:03.000 --> 2:50:06.000 And it's out of that modern labor movement, that modern 2:50:06.040 --> 2:50:11.119 trade union movement that the Labor Party of course began significantly. 2:50:11.720 --> 2:50:13.800 Whether or not it likes to remember it today, sometimes 2:50:13.840 --> 2:50:16.720 it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it's completely beholden to 2:50:17.000 --> 2:50:22.320 the union movement. And I was really pleased, after oh gosh, 2:50:22.640 --> 2:50:26.000 twenty years of plugging away at this message, flogging away 2:50:26.040 --> 2:50:29.360 at it, that these women were so important that Jeremy 2:50:29.480 --> 2:50:33.760 Corbyn said, um, I think it was an international women's 2:50:33.800 --> 2:50:37.240 dye in sixteen. He said we should hail the mothers 2:50:37.400 --> 2:50:39.880 of our movement, and he acknowledged my work, and he 2:50:39.920 --> 2:50:42.920 acknowledged the match women as the mothers as the trade 2:50:43.040 --> 2:50:46.320 union movement, and you know, I felt my job is done. 2:50:46.440 --> 2:50:50.840 I was incredibly happy with that. And maybe as a 2:50:50.959 --> 2:50:57.800 final grace note on our conversation today, can you describe 2:50:59.680 --> 2:51:07.000 that Glandstone statue? How it's still treated today. Well, this 2:51:07.360 --> 2:51:11.200 is so fascinating. The statue is still there and I 2:51:11.280 --> 2:51:14.040 have my match Womens Festival right next to it, actually 2:51:14.520 --> 2:51:17.040 in a lovely little venue called bow Arts on the 2:51:17.120 --> 2:51:20.760 Bow Road. It's still there. But there's one very significant 2:51:20.920 --> 2:51:23.240 thing about it that you would notice if you were 2:51:23.280 --> 2:51:25.640 walking along the borough and having a look at Gladstone. 2:51:26.200 --> 2:51:28.840 As I said, he's got one of his arms outstretched, 2:51:28.959 --> 2:51:31.760 one of his hands outstretched, and it's pointing kind over 2:51:31.800 --> 2:51:34.720 the direction of the Branton May Factory. You were to 2:51:34.840 --> 2:51:38.080 look fairly closely, you'd notice that that hand isn't red. 2:51:38.600 --> 2:51:41.640 It's a slightly faded red, but it's definitely red. Now, 2:51:41.760 --> 2:51:46.280 why on earth is that? Well it harks back to 2:51:46.840 --> 2:51:50.840 the match woman rushing the statue and saying, our blood 2:51:50.959 --> 2:51:55.880 paid for this all those decades before. I was told 2:51:56.160 --> 2:52:01.200 by Ted Lewis, the grandson of Martha Robertson. Actually it 2:52:01.400 --> 2:52:05.840 was his grandma and her friends who first threw paint 2:52:05.959 --> 2:52:09.080 over it. This statue kept annoying them. They were not 2:52:09.280 --> 2:52:13.000 done with this statue, from charging at it and dripping 2:52:13.040 --> 2:52:15.400 their blood on its. It was a constant source of 2:52:15.400 --> 2:52:17.680 annoyance to them. And you can imagine that it would 2:52:17.680 --> 2:52:20.040 have been. They had to walk past it at least 2:52:20.120 --> 2:52:21.920 twice a day in and out of work, and they 2:52:22.000 --> 2:52:24.960 must have thought our wages paid for that bloody statue. 2:52:25.720 --> 2:52:29.440 Why are its hands still read now? Though? Well? I've 2:52:29.560 --> 2:52:31.880 tried to find out who done it, and you can 2:52:32.000 --> 2:52:34.800 understand why people might not want to tell me, because 2:52:34.800 --> 2:52:37.440 I suppose it is criminal damage after all, isn't it 2:52:37.560 --> 2:52:39.480 not that I would dog them into the police. But 2:52:39.560 --> 2:52:44.120 they don't necessarily know that. But it's been done at 2:52:44.280 --> 2:52:48.840 least since the and by that I mean the hand 2:52:49.040 --> 2:52:51.760 regularly painted red. It may well have had paint chucked 2:52:51.800 --> 2:52:54.480 at it by match women as well for many years. 2:52:54.920 --> 2:52:59.840 But this is when the factory became a gated how 2:53:00.080 --> 2:53:04.400 was in community Brianson They moved their operations, they were 2:53:04.440 --> 2:53:07.560 taken over by Swedish Match and in the eighties this 2:53:07.720 --> 2:53:10.640 became what we used to call yuppy flats in those days, 2:53:11.280 --> 2:53:13.280 and there was a lot of anger about that in 2:53:13.360 --> 2:53:17.480 the neighborhood, this gentrification and Gladstone's hand, as far as 2:53:17.560 --> 2:53:20.600 I can tell asking the council has been painted red 2:53:20.640 --> 2:53:23.040 ever since, and the council not happy by the way 2:53:23.200 --> 2:53:26.440 at all, and they've just given up. So what they 2:53:26.560 --> 2:53:29.360 used to do was to clean it every time the 2:53:29.440 --> 2:53:32.520 hand was painted red. But this was really expensive and 2:53:32.640 --> 2:53:35.200 it kept happening, so they just gave up and they've 2:53:35.280 --> 2:53:37.360 left it red, which I'm very pleased about because there's 2:53:37.360 --> 2:53:41.800 a lovely little historical reminder. I've asked and asked who 2:53:42.240 --> 2:53:43.879 might have done it, because I would like to shake 2:53:44.000 --> 2:53:46.360 them by the hand, whether or not it was covered 2:53:46.400 --> 2:53:48.800 in red paint, and buy them a drink. I was 2:53:48.920 --> 2:53:52.080 told once by somebody at talk I know someone who 2:53:52.160 --> 2:53:53.880 did that. It was one of my mates. But it 2:53:54.080 --> 2:53:57.240 wasn't massively political. She was just a bit drunk. She's 2:53:57.280 --> 2:53:59.480 been in the park and she happened to be walking 2:53:59.560 --> 2:54:01.840 past it. Now I love that story, but I don't 2:54:01.920 --> 2:54:04.640 buy it because this statue is up a massive flint 2:54:05.280 --> 2:54:07.760 in the middle of the bow rows. Now, you would 2:54:07.840 --> 2:54:10.080 need a ladder, and I doubt that you'd be in 2:54:10.120 --> 2:54:12.560 the pub with a pot of red paint, a paintbrush 2:54:12.680 --> 2:54:15.600 and a ladder in your handbag. I just can't see it. 2:54:16.000 --> 2:54:18.920 I really hope though, that one day I find out, 2:54:18.920 --> 2:54:21.480 and if you're listening and you know, please tell me. 2:54:21.560 --> 2:54:24.000 I promise I will not tell anybody. I would love 2:54:24.080 --> 2:54:27.440 to have the satisfaction of knowing who does it. Oh, 2:54:28.160 --> 2:54:30.640 that's brilliant. That's brilliant. I think that's where we'll wrap 2:54:30.720 --> 2:54:35.520 it up. Fantastic, Louise, thank you so much for telling 2:54:35.640 --> 2:54:39.240 the match women's story again for Unobscured and our listeners. 2:54:39.440 --> 2:54:41.800 It's such a pleasure to have you and to have 2:54:42.000 --> 2:54:47.200 this story to include in exploring the East End and beyond. 2:54:47.360 --> 2:54:49.360 So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. 2:54:49.400 --> 2:54:54.040 I'm a big fan of the podcast. That's it for 2:54:54.200 --> 2:54:58.320 this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short 2:54:58.360 --> 2:55:01.240 sponsor break for a pre you of what's in store 2:55:01.400 --> 2:55:08.160 for next week. We figured that the killer had to 2:55:08.360 --> 2:55:10.440 know White Chapel. He had to be able to move 2:55:10.520 --> 2:55:14.840 around White Chapel in Spittlefield without causing suspicion, and I 2:55:14.920 --> 2:55:19.080 had to know all these dark alleys and cut throughs. 2:55:20.040 --> 2:55:23.040 He had to appear to avoid police patrols, particularly as 2:55:23.280 --> 2:55:26.440 more and more police were put on the streets, particularly 2:55:26.480 --> 2:55:29.959 following the double event. So this is someone who needs 2:55:30.000 --> 2:55:32.119 to know his local environment, and that doesn't really fit 2:55:32.240 --> 2:55:34.680 with a doctor from outside, or a slumming top or 2:55:34.680 --> 2:55:37.040 any of these other people. It has to be a 2:55:37.120 --> 2:55:40.160 local man. I think you had to have somebody who 2:55:40.200 --> 2:55:42.160 had a clear motive for wanting to kill. In many 2:55:42.200 --> 2:55:44.240 of the books I've read about JACKI Ripard, I can't 2:55:44.240 --> 2:55:46.800 really understand why he would do the things he would do. 2:55:47.400 --> 2:55:49.440 That's kind of a bit that the writers don't tell 2:55:49.520 --> 2:55:52.280 you why would you do that? Now? I understand, of 2:55:52.360 --> 2:55:55.400 course that without knowing who the killer is, m without 2:55:55.400 --> 2:55:59.080 a confession, we can never know why somebody chooses to murder. 2:55:59.320 --> 2:56:01.920 But I feel you had to find a try and 2:56:02.040 --> 2:56:04.400 identify a motive, and in this case we found somebody 2:56:04.440 --> 2:56:23.959 who had the mains motive and opportunity. Unobscured was created 2:56:24.000 --> 2:56:27.600 by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, 2:56:27.720 --> 2:56:31.520 and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research 2:56:31.600 --> 2:56:33.600 and writing for this season is all the work of 2:56:33.680 --> 2:56:36.440 my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad 2:56:36.520 --> 2:56:40.080 Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our 2:56:40.120 --> 2:56:44.039 contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows 2:56:44.240 --> 2:56:48.520 over at History unobscured dot com, and until next time, 2:56:49.240 --> 2:56:59.080 thanks for listening. Unobscured as a production of I Heart 2:56:59.160 --> 2:57:01.760 Radio and Aaron Mank. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, 2:57:01.879 --> 2:57:04.320 visit i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 2:57:04.400 --> 2:57:05.480 listen to your favorite shows.