Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Dr Louise Raw. Dr Raw is
Speaker 1: a labor historian with a background in the trade union
Speaker 1: movement and political campaigning. She has spoken across the world
Speaker 1: telling the story of the Match Women's Strike of her
Speaker 1: book Striking a Light set a new direction for British
Speaker 1: labor history. In addition to organizing an annual festival in
Speaker 1: the Match Women's Honor, Dr Raw has served as a
Speaker 1: historical consultant for the BBC and appeared on camera in
Speaker 1: series like The Victorian Slum which is available in the
Speaker 1: US as Victorian Slumhouse. She has written regularly for British
Speaker 1: newspapers including The Independent, of The Morning Star and New European.
Speaker 1: She drops in on BBC Radio London and contributes to
Speaker 1: programs on BBC Radio Four. It's a privilege to have
Speaker 1: her here on Unobscured. Researcher Karl Neelli sat down virtually
Speaker 1: and talked with Dr Raw for this season of Unobscured,
Speaker 1: and you'll hear that a storm rolls in part way
Speaker 1: through their convert station, but Louise couldn't be stunted I'm
Speaker 1: grateful for that, and I think you will be too.
Speaker 1: Carl and Dr Raw begin their conversation with the winding
Speaker 1: route into studying and writing forgotten stories from the past.
Speaker 1: This is the Unobscured Interview series for season three. I'm
Speaker 1: Aaron Minky. I'm a historian, but I like to call
Speaker 1: myself an accidental historian because that's really accurate in terms
Speaker 1: of what happened. I'm not an academic historian who always
Speaker 1: thought they would do that. I'd lass school of fifteen
Speaker 1: and I've done. You know, the jobs you do when
Speaker 1: you leave school of fifteen really pubs and restaurants and shops.
Speaker 1: And I really, through being involved in the trade junior movement,
Speaker 1: fell into becoming the historian, in particular of a strike
Speaker 1: that happened in the East End of London in that
Speaker 1: big year of the strike of the Branton main match
Speaker 1: from him and I really started as an essay on
Speaker 1: a trade in Labe, a history course about Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't like to say how long ago, but twenty plus
Speaker 1: years shall we say. And I'm still writing that essay
Speaker 1: Coal really because I'm still researching the match and I'm
Speaker 1: still finding out new things about them and They were
Speaker 1: my teachers. They really were. They may be dead, but
Speaker 1: let's not hold that against them. They were my best teachers.
Speaker 1: Through them, I learned so much about how history, as
Speaker 1: I don't need to say to you or your listeners,
Speaker 1: isn't just a neutral record of everything that happened. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly political. It can be incredibly biased. It's also very
Speaker 1: very powerful. We need it. We as human beings, need
Speaker 1: stories of where we come from. We need stories of
Speaker 1: people like us. That's really important, whether we're black, or
Speaker 1: working class or female. We need stories about people like us,
Speaker 1: our achievements and our importance to our country. That's so
Speaker 1: vital to a sense of our identity. And I learned
Speaker 1: from my research that British history, of course, is incredibly
Speaker 1: bad at that it is a forgetting machine, really that
Speaker 1: forgets all the bad things. Well, the Britain's done all
Speaker 1: the bad things about the empire. Americans may need to
Speaker 1: be told that Britain did do some bad things historically.
Speaker 1: You know, we've not been wonderful through the years. You
Speaker 1: will be stunned, I know, to hear this. But it's
Speaker 1: not just about the empire. All the achievements of anyone
Speaker 1: who's not the kind of great white individual, really preferably
Speaker 1: a great white man. We allow a few women to
Speaker 1: sneak in as well. Anyone who doesn't fit that mole
Speaker 1: gets really excluded from the narrative. We just can't believe
Speaker 1: they kind of achieved anything. I realized how important that was,
Speaker 1: and it became my obsession really to be a collector
Speaker 1: of those stories and a teller of those stories, because
Speaker 1: I think history should do something. It's not just there
Speaker 1: to be interesting and fascinating, just about who we are
Speaker 1: and what we're capable of, and it's so important to
Speaker 1: inspire us today in terms of what we can achieve.
Speaker 1: People like the match women were supposed to be powerless.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to be completely irrelevant. Although they're part
Speaker 1: of the majority of the country, the working classes, they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be completely irrelevant to it. They're just toiling away.
Speaker 1: We don't need to know their names. There are kind
Speaker 1: of undifferentiated blob of the masses, and we don't need
Speaker 1: to know anything about them because they're not really people.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's the humanizing. Of course, it's very dangerous
Speaker 1: politically to go down that route, and we need these stories.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to really turn the spotlight of history
Speaker 1: onto those stories that have been kept in the dark
Speaker 1: or pushed into the dark. So part of the way
Speaker 1: that you have shined a light on some of these
Speaker 1: stories is with a fantastic book called Striking a Light
Speaker 1: that tells the story of the brandon a Match Women's Strike,
Speaker 1: what they won, the durable union that they built. UM,
Speaker 1: that had kind of all in victim to that forgetting machine.
Speaker 1: As you say, UM, can you describe you mentioned the
Speaker 1: amount of time that you've spent learning their story. Can
Speaker 1: you describe some of the process of what it took
Speaker 1: to learn their story? What did that take? As a
Speaker 1: loving description, it really was like wrestling with this beast
Speaker 1: of history and trying to get it to give up
Speaker 1: these stories that it was obscuring. It was a bit
Speaker 1: like who done it? When you know who done it,
Speaker 1: but nobody wants to believe you about who done it.
Speaker 1: So I had to prepare a case, and of course
Speaker 1: I had no witnesses. That was the first problem. The
Speaker 1: first thing that I did was to go to the archives.
Speaker 1: I kind of toddled down in my lunch break. I
Speaker 1: remember from work, I happen to be working quite close
Speaker 1: to where that Brian to Make Company archives would then kept,
Speaker 1: which was in the basement of a to local history museum.
Speaker 1: And I had not been in an archive. I had
Speaker 1: to tell you, I did not know what that entails
Speaker 1: at all. So I was completely fronting it out. Oh yeah, hello,
Speaker 1: I'm here to look at it. I know exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. And they took me down to this basement
Speaker 1: and they brought me loads and loads of enormous cardboard boxes.
Speaker 1: Now this is not how archival work is done. Now
Speaker 1: you're ordering one document at a time if you're lucky.
Speaker 1: But then they just left me with these boxes, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I have no idea what to do here.
Speaker 1: So I opened the boxes started routing through papers in
Speaker 1: there from the sixties, the nineteen sixties. It's all jumbled up, fascinating.
Speaker 1: So I just had a route through and very quickly
Speaker 1: came upon some evidence that the strike was not at
Speaker 1: all as I've been taught it. Those historians who had
Speaker 1: written about it, the mainly manly historians, the mainly manly Marxists.
Speaker 1: That you had written about the strike, I've only done
Speaker 1: so very briefly. There would be the odd line about it,
Speaker 1: or this strike happened, but it wasn't very important. It
Speaker 1: was just a few girls. It was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And crucially that the strike was led from the outside
Speaker 1: by a socialist called Abbescent. She's chiefly pushing to the
Speaker 1: role of strike leader because she was middle class. That
Speaker 1: meant it's not a real, proper worker organized strike. So
Speaker 1: that means immediately it's downgraded. It's not an important fact
Speaker 1: of labor, of working class history, because what are the
Speaker 1: match girls in that scenario. Puppets? They're just puppets. They
Speaker 1: have been told what to do. So I'm in the archives.
Speaker 1: I quickly come upon a note the foreman had made
Speaker 1: the formula a factory saying these are the women who
Speaker 1: we think are the troublemakers and the ring leaders of
Speaker 1: this strike. And I thought, oh, hello, Well, if this
Speaker 1: is a strike that was completely organized from the out side,
Speaker 1: how can there be ring leaders from inside? So I
Speaker 1: started to draw up a timeline to prove I suppose
Speaker 1: I was trying to prove myself wrong, because I'm not
Speaker 1: an academic at this point at all. As I say,
Speaker 1: I'm less called at fifteen, and you know, men have
Speaker 1: written in books that this was not an important strike
Speaker 1: and that this was led from the outside. Who am
Speaker 1: I to question that? And yet I'm a trade unionist.
Speaker 1: I didn't know at the time that, you know, my
Speaker 1: whole life really had been a preparation, and that I
Speaker 1: had the advantage of not being an academic, of having
Speaker 1: been involved with strikes, that having been involved with workers
Speaker 1: a bit like this. So I had to prove it,
Speaker 1: and I started drawing up a time and my goodness,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd love to say I was following some
Speaker 1: kind of classical academic tradition, but I kind of made
Speaker 1: it up as I went along, just to pursue this story.
Speaker 1: How do you do it? There's no timeline of events.
Speaker 1: We only have a few lines on it. Though some
Speaker 1: girls went on strike, wasn't a big deal. Nothing to
Speaker 1: see here, and move along until some men do it
Speaker 1: with the ducks strike the next year. So I'm thinking, right,
Speaker 1: I need a timeline. So I literally done in the
Speaker 1: middle of my front room, put a line of papers,
Speaker 1: wrote dates on them, and then got every bit of
Speaker 1: evidence I possibly could, from newspapers, from people's journals, from
Speaker 1: any kind of commentary. I could find local papers, national papers,
Speaker 1: you know, George Bernard Shaw's diary, any Besson's journal, William Morris,
Speaker 1: any of the celebrities socialists who were around at the time,
Speaker 1: and working through these I managed to piece together. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it seems to have this seems to have been
Speaker 1: what really begun the strike. This seems to have been
Speaker 1: what happened next. And I went to the Colindale newspaper library,
Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful. Ruined my eyesight, you know, looking at microvision
Speaker 1: micro film of reports in local papers, because local papers
Speaker 1: did carry the strike. Actually there was a paper called
Speaker 1: The Star that was very interesting, sent reporters down there.
Speaker 1: But and from that I did manage to come up
Speaker 1: with a good, solid timeline which told a completely different
Speaker 1: story from the orthodox version. This is a proper strike.
Speaker 1: It's a spontaneous strike. It's a reaction to management bullying,
Speaker 1: and they're brilliantly organized. They're not just these little girls
Speaker 1: who are who are being told you have. The orthodox
Speaker 1: version would suggest that any Vescent, who was a journalist
Speaker 1: at the time, went down to the factory and sort of,
Speaker 1: for no apparent reason, told the match girls they were
Speaker 1: going on strike. I say, girls who know you don't
Speaker 1: know me, but George Bynature and I who don't know
Speaker 1: either have had a vote, and we've decided for no
Speaker 1: real reason. You know, it's a Wednesday, we're board, we've
Speaker 1: decided you're all going on strike. I mean, how ludicrous.
Speaker 1: And supposedly the women just said, oh god, Bleshamama, certainly,
Speaker 1: whatever you say, we'll be there. This is not how
Speaker 1: strikes happened. This is not how real life happens at
Speaker 1: all all. So I had to really claw back, and
Speaker 1: once I had the timeline, I had immensely contradictory accounts,
Speaker 1: you know, orthodocs history, and he bessn't led the strike,
Speaker 1: and he besn't Oh my god, the match wouldn't have
Speaker 1: gone on strike, and paraphrasing obvious legion actually said that,
Speaker 1: and she's thinking, oh no, this is a disaster. Why
Speaker 1: are they gone on strike? We can't afford to support
Speaker 1: these people financially. Oh shit, or the Victorian equivalent to that,
Speaker 1: not knowing the strike has happened, And I'm thinking, my goodness,
Speaker 1: if I can find this out, what the hell is
Speaker 1: happening here? How have historians who have looked at this
Speaker 1: strike managed to conclude that this woman who's who's who's
Speaker 1: like sort of that shaggy song. It wasn't me, that's
Speaker 1: Sammy Best. She's running around and I did not stop
Speaker 1: that strike. That was not my idea, she said. I
Speaker 1: think it's a terrible idea that they've gone on strike.
Speaker 1: Why did they have to do it? And yet historians
Speaker 1: have looked at that and gone yet finitely started by
Speaker 1: this middle class woman. That's how blinkered we are, isn't it?
Speaker 1: In terms of class? We just can't accept anything else.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, I've got these accounts, but
Speaker 1: they're mostly middle class accounts. They're from journalists or as
Speaker 1: I say, from your Morris Is and your George Burnit shures,
Speaker 1: and there's this kind of hilarious incomprehension of middle class
Speaker 1: people observing what working class people are doing. Is if
Speaker 1: there are another species. Really, And one journalist goes along
Speaker 1: to the picket line and he says, well, is it
Speaker 1: really extraordinary looking women? Gosh, they are strange. They seem
Speaker 1: to have this sort of style where their clothes they've
Speaker 1: got wear patches on their clothes and they have very
Speaker 1: broken boots and it's very odd. Yes, this is not
Speaker 1: a fashion fella. They are poor. You know, there's complete
Speaker 1: the class is just there's such a gulf between a
Speaker 1: middle class journalist and a working class match battery woman.
Speaker 1: There's complete incomprehension. So I thought, I'm trying to put
Speaker 1: a case here without the witnesses, without the real witnesses,
Speaker 1: who are of course the women themselves. What do we
Speaker 1: do about that when they are very, very dead by
Speaker 1: the time I'm researching this, And I thought, well, the
Speaker 1: closest I'm going to get, isn't it is to get
Speaker 1: to their descendants, if possible, if I can possibly find grandchildren,
Speaker 1: maybe even great grandchildren by this point, that's as close
Speaker 1: as I'm possibly going to get. And goodness, lots of
Speaker 1: historians advised me not to do this. That's a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to trace women forward through history, to
Speaker 1: trace their families. It is hard, by the way, that's
Speaker 1: completely true. But also again I felt, there was this class,
Speaker 1: and why would you want to talk to their descendants?
Speaker 1: They probably won't know anything about the strike. They might
Speaker 1: be a bit old and perhaps a bit do dally
Speaker 1: by this stage. Would they even would they know? Would
Speaker 1: they understand the importance of it? And you sort of
Speaker 1: think more to be just there, probably working class still,
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows. They may not be at its point,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they won't know anything about this event. But
Speaker 1: to me, that seems to be the impression that I
Speaker 1: was being given a really really bad I did to
Speaker 1: do that, but I persevered. I wrote a little piece
Speaker 1: for the Irish Times because I thought a family that
Speaker 1: have gone back to Ireland. I knew that a lot
Speaker 1: of these women were Irish or Irish heritage, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really get me anywhere. Got me a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting letters, but nothing that really connected me. And then
Speaker 1: I was doing a talk at the Docklins Museum in
Speaker 1: London and I was saying, oh, I'm talking about the match,
Speaker 1: and I was saying, oh, and I'm looking for descendants,
Speaker 1: but it's so difficult to find. And at the end
Speaker 1: a woman came up to me, a woman called Joan Harris,
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, sorry to bother you love. I
Speaker 1: know you're trying to probably get away, but I think
Speaker 1: the photograph you showed of the women, I think that's
Speaker 1: my grandmother in there in the back, and probably her
Speaker 1: sister as well, my great aunt. And I was sort
Speaker 1: of like, lock the doors, did not let this woman escape.
Speaker 1: You are going nowhere, madam, until I have your address.
Speaker 1: And I immediately went around to interview her like like
Speaker 1: an arrest. I've been drained by as quickly as I could.
Speaker 1: That's where it all began, fascinating story of Mary Driscoll,
Speaker 1: who was her grandmother. There I spoke at another museum,
Speaker 1: the Ragged School Museum, and I was talking about that.
Speaker 1: I was saying, and would you believe I got so lucky.
Speaker 1: I met this woman who was a descendant and two
Speaker 1: bloats at the back where we'll actually love. Yeah, our
Speaker 1: our grandmothers were matched with it as well. And again
Speaker 1: I was like, go nowhere, oh nowhere. And I met
Speaker 1: Jim Best and Ted Lewis. These were so valuable, so valuable.
Speaker 1: You know, all history can be looked down on a
Speaker 1: little bit is not not quite proper, not quite documentary.
Speaker 1: But these people taught me so much. I would walk
Speaker 1: around the East End with Ted Lewis and he was
Speaker 1: a historian. You know, he might not have been a
Speaker 1: professional one, but he was a historian, that man to
Speaker 1: his bones. Because he could take me around the modern
Speaker 1: East End and make me see past the concrete and say,
Speaker 1: well over there, girl, there was a music all over there.
Speaker 1: Over there, that's the pub where my grandma used to go.
Speaker 1: That's where she used to buy her jelly deals. That's
Speaker 1: where she used to go to the market. And suddenly
Speaker 1: you see it. You see it, and it's real, and
Speaker 1: those people are brought closer to you, so that but
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened without those descendants, and they are I
Speaker 1: was learning from them, you know, there was none of
Speaker 1: this thing of the historian goes to interview the informants
Speaker 1: who were very minor in the process. I learned everything
Speaker 1: really from them about how it really was and about
Speaker 1: how how events were remembered in the East End, which
Speaker 1: runs parallel but separate from how their grandmothers have been
Speaker 1: remembered in conventional history. They don't have this Annie bess
Speaker 1: at this top down version of this story. They have
Speaker 1: that was my grandma and her mates, and they were
Speaker 1: pretty proud of it. They were quite pleased about their story, Lave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were pretty pleased about that. Didn't have much time
Speaker 1: to think about it because they were straight back to work,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have time to sit around and write
Speaker 1: your books like you're doing. But they were Yeah, they
Speaker 1: used to talk about it and they were pretty pleased,
Speaker 1: and that's amazing. That's a you know, an uncorrupted, sort
Speaker 1: of preserved in amber version, and that's just close to
Speaker 1: the horse's mouth as you're going to get m hm.
Speaker 1: And I love reading the book because you can see
Speaker 1: their stories shining through. I mean, I think I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you that you met up with them and
Speaker 1: talked with them, because it gave so much life to
Speaker 1: your book. So I hope we'll spend especially a few
Speaker 1: more minutes talking about Mary Driscoll later on. Um, but
Speaker 1: let's let's go now. Can you take us a little
Speaker 1: bit back to that London of the late eighteen hundreds. Um,
Speaker 1: let's start with getting oriented in the place. What's the
Speaker 1: geography of London like from the big picture to the
Speaker 1: East End? Well, we really only have an East End
Speaker 1: from around this period. Of course, London's always had an
Speaker 1: Eastern basis. It's not new. They don't suddenly stick it
Speaker 1: on in the eighteen eighties, but it only starts to
Speaker 1: be talked about as the East End around this period.
Speaker 1: And London is such a separate collection of communities and
Speaker 1: such disparate areas, it's it's hard to conceive really of
Speaker 1: how cut off different bits of London are from one another,
Speaker 1: and particularly along a class line. This is really really crucial.
Speaker 1: You can't look at London without that, and people start
Speaker 1: to talk about east End to West End, worst End
Speaker 1: to best End, and that's what we're talking about. We're
Speaker 1: talking about posh London and disreputable London, which is what
Speaker 1: the East End becomes. Everything really changes with industrialization. London
Speaker 1: becomes much more divided. Before that, you've had rich and
Speaker 1: poor living fairly cheap by gewl So imagine a typical
Speaker 1: London square if anybody's ever seen EastEnders, You've still got
Speaker 1: some of those old houses facing onto a square, and
Speaker 1: the rich people are living in those lovely big houses,
Speaker 1: and then behind them rows and rows of sort of
Speaker 1: service streets really where people live who are perhaps working
Speaker 1: for them, but people are close together. And then we
Speaker 1: have industrialization. Everything changes. People come in from the countryside
Speaker 1: from working in you know, perhaps on farms or working
Speaker 1: in a very feudal set up really perhaps the lord
Speaker 1: of the manner in some capacity. They come flooding into
Speaker 1: the new towns and cities in especially London to work
Speaker 1: in the new factories. Nothing's ready for them. Nothing's prepared,
Speaker 1: so they just come rowding into London and the rich
Speaker 1: get the hell out as soon as they can, and
Speaker 1: scheme trains, of course make that possible. Suddenly we have
Speaker 1: new suburbs, so you can get out, you can come
Speaker 1: back into London for work, and then you can get
Speaker 1: away from all the dirt and the dust and the
Speaker 1: disorder of industrialization. And you know, it's a pretty stinky process, industrialization,
Speaker 1: particularly in the East n where you had a lot
Speaker 1: of slaughter houses as well, absolutely dank on Sundays. So
Speaker 1: they could get out, and they left the poor, particularly
Speaker 1: in the East End, just to get the hell on
Speaker 1: with it. They had very little infrastructure, you know, forget
Speaker 1: about social services or really good schooling or any sort
Speaker 1: of help. Of course, there are no welfare benefits at
Speaker 1: all in those days. They're just left to get on that.
Speaker 1: They haven't even got street lighting in the East End
Speaker 1: when you read about you know, the darkest East and
Speaker 1: the dark streets where they really were dark because they
Speaker 1: were unlit a lot of the time. And we start
Speaker 1: to find that people even who live quite near to
Speaker 1: the East End claim they don't know where it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds so bizarre, but literally Jack London
Speaker 1: finds this. He asks people. I think he asked some shopkeepers. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find this place called the East End.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me sort of where does it start?
Speaker 1: Where does it begin? How do I go? And these,
Speaker 1: you know, quite well, quite respectable shop teams, I've heard
Speaker 1: tell of it, But I am afraid I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you where such a place as I would never go there.
Speaker 1: One one simply would never go there. And people would
Speaker 1: pretend they couldn't find the East End on a map.
Speaker 1: Of course they could, but it became this embodiment of
Speaker 1: sin and depravity and disreputable policy. So you were not
Speaker 1: respectable if you had connections in the East End, if
Speaker 1: you had friends there, if you went there apart from business.
Speaker 1: So it's so bizarre, isn't it. We have this area
Speaker 1: which is producing a lot of the wealth of the country,
Speaker 1: that we have all these important factories there, we're unloading
Speaker 1: the wealth of empire at the docks there. It's crucial,
Speaker 1: crucial to the glittering success of the Victorian Empire. And
Speaker 1: we're pretending it doesn't exist, We're pretending we don't know
Speaker 1: it's there, and we're calling it the Darkest East as
Speaker 1: orientalist language, as if it's a strange terror incognito, this
Speaker 1: weird place completely cut a drift, sort of culturally and mentally,
Speaker 1: cut a drift from the rest of London. So London
Speaker 1: is a divided place. And if we say what was
Speaker 1: life like in London, we'd have to say, well, whose
Speaker 1: life and where? It completely depends on how much money
Speaker 1: you have, I mean doesn't it always, but particularly at
Speaker 1: this time and in this place, and what kind of
Speaker 1: life are you doing and where are you? Completely different
Speaker 1: to the extent that there are events in history, there
Speaker 1: are marches and protests, and the match Women Strike is
Speaker 1: one of them, where the poor leave their district, you know,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't allowed at all. People were horrified knowing
Speaker 1: your place literally keeping in your place is geographical as
Speaker 1: well as cultural, and people would throw things. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have protest marches in theies where the servants of
Speaker 1: the posh clubs in Palman, you know, the gentlemen's clubs
Speaker 1: in Palma come out on the door sorts and throw
Speaker 1: things at the poor who were marching past them. They
Speaker 1: throw heavy glass asteries, they throw shoes, you know, they're
Speaker 1: cleaning the gentlemen's shoes and they get their carrier, they
Speaker 1: throw them at the poor. You know, go home, what
Speaker 1: are you doing here? Get out of here? So who's
Speaker 1: London for the poor? They were told this is your
Speaker 1: part of London. The rest of it does not belong
Speaker 1: to you, and you shouldn't even be there. When the
Speaker 1: match women during this marched Parliament, it literally stopped the traffic.
Speaker 1: People stopped and stead and cat called and hurled abuse
Speaker 1: at them because the poor were, yes, supposed to be
Speaker 1: preferably not seen as well as not heard. You were
Speaker 1: supposed to be invisible. That was a lot more comfortable,
Speaker 1: of course, for the rich if you were invisible. So
Speaker 1: it's just this hugely divided place at this point. And
Speaker 1: you've mentioned that you've started to bring in the context
Speaker 1: of London as the largest city in the world at
Speaker 1: the time, the nerve center of a global empire. How
Speaker 1: would you describe the conditions of working people? You know,
Speaker 1: do you have a few more comments on the relationship
Speaker 1: between the conditions of working people to London's financial significance
Speaker 1: to its imperial significance at the time. As somebody said
Speaker 1: on observing the doctors at work, there's this huge contradiction
Speaker 1: because they're unloading the wealth and the riches and the
Speaker 1: silks and the spices and the teas and all this wonderful,
Speaker 1: luxurious stuff, and they're touching all things and tasting none.
Speaker 1: They're dealing in these goods they can never ever afford
Speaker 1: them their unloading tea that they will never taste, their
Speaker 1: unpacking spices, that they will never be able to enjoy,
Speaker 1: silks that their wives will never be able to wear.
Speaker 1: So there's this immense and it seems to modernize immensely
Speaker 1: hypocritical division. Here we are this incredibly rich, I mean
Speaker 1: mostly because we stole and stuff from other people around
Speaker 1: the world. But you know, that is how the British
Speaker 1: do things, as a little tradition of ours to do that.
Speaker 1: But we have become incredibly rich off the backs of
Speaker 1: other people, including our own poor people. So they are
Speaker 1: the engine of our prosperity, and they're not getting to
Speaker 1: share in it whatsoever. We treat them almost like machinery.
Speaker 1: You can process things, you can produce our wealth, there's
Speaker 1: nothing to do with you. You don't get a share
Speaker 1: in it whatsoever. And yet we have this jingoistic sort
Speaker 1: of flag waving narrative that's in the music halls at
Speaker 1: the time, and in all the songs, everyone in Britain
Speaker 1: is doing well. We're also incredibly proud to be British.
Speaker 1: And yet most of Britain is being excluded and might
Speaker 1: let him wave a flag occasionally, but they're being excluded
Speaker 1: from any of those benefits. Huge wealth is being made
Speaker 1: and people are working twelve sixty nowadays and starving to death.
Speaker 1: How do you square that? How is that in any
Speaker 1: way fair? Even according to the fairly simplistic christian Ish
Speaker 1: Victorian narrative that everyone's in their place, and God puts
Speaker 1: you in your place, and you know, the rich man
Speaker 1: in his castle, the poor man at the gap, be
Speaker 1: happy with your place in life. Even then, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit hard to argue that the people making the wealth,
Speaker 1: helping to make the wealth, should be actually starving to
Speaker 1: death whilst working. What do the Victorians do about this?
Speaker 1: Where they could have reformed things, They could have improved housing,
Speaker 1: they could have improved working conditions, But why would you
Speaker 1: do that? That's expensive. It's a lot easier to divide
Speaker 1: the poor into the deserving and the undeserving. Virtually no
Speaker 1: one is deserving poor. Really, even if you are, they'll
Speaker 1: find a way that you're doing something wrong and being
Speaker 1: the wrong sort of poor person. So we can blame
Speaker 1: these people, Oh, well they must be drinking, or well
Speaker 1: they can't really be working hard enough. And when there
Speaker 1: are occasional stories of a doctor being called to a
Speaker 1: woman who's who's working sixteen hour days and who's literally
Speaker 1: died of malnutrition, it's all a bit awkward and embarrassing
Speaker 1: and quite now what to do about that, So tend
Speaker 1: to do nothing really, but she probably had a husband
Speaker 1: who drank. It's probably some kind of you know, properly
Speaker 1: behavior was going on there. And it's really only when
Speaker 1: the upper classes absolutely have to I mean, there are
Speaker 1: some exceptions, of course, there are reformers and philanthropists, but
Speaker 1: really it's when there's something like cholera and they realized
Speaker 1: that disease doesn't necessarily respect class boundaries. That we get
Speaker 1: people going into the East den missions to the East
Speaker 1: End to try to help these poor souls, but in
Speaker 1: very much a top down way. There's no equality there.
Speaker 1: It's so this poor souls, this poor there's massive people
Speaker 1: called the poor who are always with us, as Jesus
Speaker 1: sale and will go in and pat them on ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit and tell them to clean themselves up
Speaker 1: and sort themselves out, and give them a little bit
Speaker 1: of rather cold charity. So there's no there's no respect
Speaker 1: really for working class people at all. They are written
Speaker 1: about as animals a lot of the time. The terrible
Speaker 1: conditions that they're living in are blamed on them, as
Speaker 1: if they're choosing, you know, as if a family of
Speaker 1: Irish migrants who are living fift into a room have
Speaker 1: chosen that, you know, they could have lived in a
Speaker 1: five story town, has what they decided they did much
Speaker 1: rather or live in one room with no running water
Speaker 1: and granny dying in the corner and much more fun.
Speaker 1: That's what they like to do. So we stigmatize and
Speaker 1: we blame people for conditions that are absolutely no fault
Speaker 1: of their own MHM. In the book, in Striking a Light,
Speaker 1: you cite an argument that in the Victorian era, um
Speaker 1: here's the quote from the book, the power, social standing,
Speaker 1: and influence of the industrial industrial bourgeoise increased exponentially to
Speaker 1: the point where it had been argued it became the
Speaker 1: hedgemonic class that its values eventually suffusing and dominating the
Speaker 1: entire society. Did you find this sort of thing to
Speaker 1: be true as you conducted your research? And to what
Speaker 1: extent does that include ideals about domestic femininity among working
Speaker 1: class women? So how true was it that really it
Speaker 1: was middle class rather even than than upper class kind
Speaker 1: of culture that became the dominant culture in Victorian society. Yes,
Speaker 1: we definitely do see that happen. We see what people
Speaker 1: might be familiar with as the angel in the house
Speaker 1: narrative that the little woman should be embroidering by the
Speaker 1: fire and making a lovely domestic haven for her man
Speaker 1: to come houmet. Now we think of that as just
Speaker 1: being old fashioned, like that's an idea that's always been there,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. You See, this is a new idea.
Speaker 1: What the men who and it is generally men that
Speaker 1: are always who make money through being capitalists by owning factories.
Speaker 1: For the first time, there's a real social mobility that's
Speaker 1: possible for working class people. If they have enough money
Speaker 1: to buy a factory to set up production of matches, say,
Speaker 1: which is actually quite cheap, it's quite a low capital
Speaker 1: in kind of thing to do, then they can start
Speaker 1: to rise up a social scale in a way that
Speaker 1: Jess wasn't possible before. Suddenly they've got money, Suddenly they
Speaker 1: have status, and they look around and think, well, what
Speaker 1: are we going to do about the fact that we're
Speaker 1: still looked down on by the upper classes who say
Speaker 1: a gentleman doesn't work. Now, these aristocratic sorts, you know,
Speaker 1: they're always a bit short of cash, so they're very
Speaker 1: happy to have their sons marry our daughters. They're very
Speaker 1: happy to borrow money off us because they're always short
Speaker 1: of the old readies. Aren't they to heat their hope
Speaker 1: their massive country piles. But they look down on us.
Speaker 1: No gentlemen would be involved in trade. We can't have that.
Speaker 1: So they decide how they want to be seen, and
Speaker 1: obviously they scrapped the idea that no gentleman can be
Speaker 1: involved in trade. But what they take from the aristos
Speaker 1: they like this idea of the lady of leisure. They
Speaker 1: think we'll have some of that for ourselves. We like that,
Speaker 1: we like the idea of being able to show our
Speaker 1: far wealth and stages by the fact that our daughters
Speaker 1: and wives don't work, and that they can be decorative
Speaker 1: and that they can keep a lovely home for us.
Speaker 1: So they take that idea. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to hold at least two contradictory ideas in your head
Speaker 1: at anyone time to be a Victorian really really important
Speaker 1: if you're going to be a middle rock class Victorian.
Speaker 1: So you have to consider that these men are going
Speaker 1: in two factories where the labor is very often female.
Speaker 1: Seventy five percent of the workers who industrialized first were women.
Speaker 1: So women have always worked, despite the myth that they hadn't.
Speaker 1: So you have to go into work, make your money
Speaker 1: from sort of Elsie and Mary and Martha and all
Speaker 1: those women who are making your fortune for you. Then
Speaker 1: go home and say, well, women shouldn't work, disgraceful women
Speaker 1: working as Darib was not respectable. They should be the
Speaker 1: piano and riding horses and looking pretty. So it's very
Speaker 1: very strange, and us have an effect on the people
Speaker 1: that it's criticizing. It really does. We do see women
Speaker 1: saying working class women who said they didn't work after
Speaker 1: they got married, because this was the idea. You know,
Speaker 1: once you're a married lady, you shouldn't the breadwinner wage
Speaker 1: of things, which never existed and was a complete fantasy.
Speaker 1: Your man will look after you. You should be at home,
Speaker 1: looking after the children and making the house lovely for him.
Speaker 1: This myth does penetrate the minds of working class women,
Speaker 1: and you can see that when you're going around trying
Speaker 1: to do all history interviews and saying to people, tell
Speaker 1: me about your your granny or your great granny or
Speaker 1: your mom. Did they work? Oh? No, they never worked
Speaker 1: after they were married. Well, I mean they took in laundry,
Speaker 1: and they did a bit of canning for the local factory,
Speaker 1: and they actually made match boxes at home. And in fact,
Speaker 1: these women never start working. They worked any four seven.
Speaker 1: But it's the narrative gets adopted to the extent of
Speaker 1: people saying, oh, yes, I'm not really working because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just working to pin money. Not true at all.
Speaker 1: And we also see the working classes sometimes completely rejecting
Speaker 1: this respectability narrative, which is the big thing for Victorian's respectability.
Speaker 1: They love a bit of that, at least in theory,
Speaker 1: not so much impractice as it turns out, but they adapt.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. So you'll get people who will say, well,
Speaker 1: my family were respectable, but the Pitaways down at number seventeen,
Speaker 1: they definitely weren't respectable, or we were respectable, but two
Speaker 1: streets over they weren't respectable, so everyone redefines it to
Speaker 1: suit themselves. Factory girls are the most looked down on, probably,
Speaker 1: and they're looked down on by servants as being really
Speaker 1: common and rough and probably a moral But they in
Speaker 1: turn look down on servant women and say, well, you're
Speaker 1: basically enslaved. You we are free. So everyone's are keying
Speaker 1: for position and defining and redefining, but they are very
Speaker 1: creative with it. They don't and obviously they can't just
Speaker 1: accept this notion of respectability and say, oh no, we're
Speaker 1: not respectable, we're terrible people. We shouldn't be working. They
Speaker 1: know they have to. But we also see people completely
Speaker 1: rejecting it. We see people whose parents who are trade unions,
Speaker 1: are very poor and working class will say to them,
Speaker 1: don't ever let anyone look down on you. Who We'll
Speaker 1: walk them around London and say, look at these beautiful
Speaker 1: buildings in brush London. Who do you think built them?
Speaker 1: That was our lord, that was us from the back slums.
Speaker 1: Always remember that, remember who has created London really, from
Speaker 1: the navies, you know, building the railways and the canals.
Speaker 1: We have made this and always be proud and always
Speaker 1: remember that, so you do get a lot of that
Speaker 1: resistance as well. It's a really fascinating time for that.
Speaker 1: In writing about middle class stereotypes, you describe the symbolic
Speaker 1: triad of the good wife, the celibate spinster, and the
Speaker 1: prostitute as kind of the three categories that were possible
Speaker 1: to imagine for women, and you also write that, of course,
Speaker 1: as you've been saying, working class women who were working
Speaker 1: outside the home, particularly alongside men, they didn't exactly fit
Speaker 1: any of those three, but they risked classification, mostly as prostitutes,
Speaker 1: if they were going to be shoehorned into one of
Speaker 1: those three. Would you offer a few more comments on
Speaker 1: on perceptions maybe of sex work and factory work for
Speaker 1: women at the time, and why it was so easy
Speaker 1: for especially middle class Victorians to equate those two. It's
Speaker 1: no coincidence that the term working girl becomes a euphamiss
Speaker 1: them for prostituted women or for sex workers at this time.
Speaker 1: A study of Victorian literature really fascinated me because they
Speaker 1: conclude to that if a novelist wanted to have her
Speaker 1: reader sympathized with her there down on their luck heroin,
Speaker 1: they would make her a prostitute rather than a factory girl,
Speaker 1: because nobody had any sympathy with factory girls. They're sort
Speaker 1: of worse in some ways because at least with prostituted women.
Speaker 1: There's this fallen woman narrative, which the Victoria's get terribly
Speaker 1: excited about. They love a fallen woman because a fallen
Speaker 1: woman can be redeemed. You see, she can realize how
Speaker 1: ghastly and beastly her behavior has been, and she can
Speaker 1: come to Jesus and she can be forgiven. But somebody
Speaker 1: who's working, well, that's a little bit different, isn't it,
Speaker 1: because they're probably going to continue doing it. You see
Speaker 1: this incredible judgmental and very sexualized by the way narrative.
Speaker 1: Even in labor reports of the period, there was one
Speaker 1: mining commissioner, you know, who knows what working life is like,
Speaker 1: you would think, and yet he looks at the terrible
Speaker 1: conditions down mines where you've got girls, women, boys, men
Speaker 1: crawling through tunnels all day on their hands and knees,
Speaker 1: you know, naked to the waist with chains around their waist,
Speaker 1: pulling carts of coal. Absolutely horrific. Imagine that heat imagined
Speaker 1: the difficulty in breathing. Imagine the physical horror of that.
Speaker 1: But he looks at that and doesn't say, well, yes,
Speaker 1: the conditions are pretty awful. He writes about it as
Speaker 1: if it's some sort of orgy going on, because the
Speaker 1: women are partly dressed, partially dressed as you would be
Speaker 1: in those conditions. You're not gonna wear your best dress,
Speaker 1: are to crawl on your hands and knees through a
Speaker 1: coal shaft. And he says the conditions that the site,
Speaker 1: the spectacle of these women at work was absolutely revolting, disgusting.
Speaker 1: It was seen. No brothel can beat it. And first
Speaker 1: that you think, well, Mr Mining commission you seem a
Speaker 1: bit well versed and exactly what a brothel is like.
Speaker 1: I wonder what Mrs Mining Commissioner might have had to
Speaker 1: say about up that one. But also how bizarre, how bizarre,
Speaker 1: and how sort of pervy really and slightly fetishistic do
Speaker 1: you have to be to look at children, you know,
Speaker 1: in those awful conditions and say, oh, good grief, they're
Speaker 1: partially closed or they must all be having you know,
Speaker 1: they must be all be having sex with each other,
Speaker 1: disgraceful and disgusting, as if these people I must have thought, well,
Speaker 1: a chance to be a fine thing. You know, these
Speaker 1: people are exhausted, they're absolutely exhausted, and they're starving. And
Speaker 1: yet that is what we see. We look at a
Speaker 1: factor and we see women working alongside men and we say, well,
Speaker 1: she's clearly no better than she should be. But again,
Speaker 1: that's a lovely way to be humanized people. It's a
Speaker 1: lovely way to stigmatize them and blame them. Well, you
Speaker 1: no wonder you're Paul. Look at the way you're carrying on.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely disgraceful. And yeah, that symbolic triad is absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating in this the fact that working women don't figure
Speaker 1: in it at all. When we do hear about working women,
Speaker 1: there are always comments on their morality. We have people
Speaker 1: like Charles Booth, who reported an investigated London posit poverty,
Speaker 1: and he will always say about groups of women, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they're a bit rough, but they're not too
Speaker 1: bad morally. That's always significant. One of his causes of
Speaker 1: publicies I really love actually was having a drunken or
Speaker 1: fectless wife. I think we'd all like to be that
Speaker 1: drunken and effectless wife. But these are the judgments. There's
Speaker 1: always is incredible sexual judgments, and they're only really put
Speaker 1: on women, they're not really put on men at all.
Speaker 1: And we see it in the Contagious Diseases Acts, where
Speaker 1: the government decides to act as if women are giving
Speaker 1: themselves scenarial disease in cases of prostitution, as if women
Speaker 1: are doing prostitution all by themselves. No one else is
Speaker 1: doing it. There can't be anyone else in bold. Of course,
Speaker 1: the reality is that midd class and upper class men
Speaker 1: are sneaking into poor areas and using them as sexual playgrounds.
Speaker 1: Who on earth is visiting the artles Paul Working men
Speaker 1: often can't afford to. And there are also lots of
Speaker 1: incidences of people, you know, sexual predators, trying to drag
Speaker 1: women and children as well away from groups down the
Speaker 1: darkened back alleys. That's a very dangerous place. But we
Speaker 1: do get this siren idea that it's it's the women
Speaker 1: of the Eastern, the women of the poor areas, alluring
Speaker 1: these poor innocent men who are just trying to get
Speaker 1: home to their wives. Leave me alone, you wretched women.
Speaker 1: They're being dragged into these brothels. It's incredibly bizarre, and
Speaker 1: even the people who are supposed to be in sympathy
Speaker 1: with these women, you're Josephine Butler's and your child's Dickens.
Speaker 1: There's incredibly patronizing and judgmental language about the women, as
Speaker 1: if they are somehow corrupt, as if they are somehow
Speaker 1: eugenically degraded. And even if, like Charles Dickens did, you
Speaker 1: can save them from themselves and rehabilitate them from prostitution,
Speaker 1: you better and get them to move abroad, because we
Speaker 1: don't really want them staying in London. Josephine Butler who
Speaker 1: has a dying prostitute to live with her at the
Speaker 1: end of her days, which sounds lovely, but she assures
Speaker 1: everyone she's not letting her children go anywhere near this
Speaker 1: woman or see this woman, this poor girl who's tying
Speaker 1: and consumpted, because they could be corrupted. So there really
Speaker 1: is this horribly eugelic idea of bad, bad women, contrasted
Speaker 1: with the angel in the house who you know, oh
Speaker 1: reathed in clouds of glory, the shining example, ghastly poem.
Speaker 1: I have to say apologist to Coventry pat more fans,
Speaker 1: but ghastly poem epic poem by Coventry back pat more,
Speaker 1: where he writes about the life of the perfect you know,
Speaker 1: surrendered wife really, who completely subjugates herself to the needs
Speaker 1: of her man and casts herself down the gulf of
Speaker 1: his old necessities more falling and flinging and casting. There's
Speaker 1: an awful lot of that forman A currently written about
Speaker 1: his first wife who died young, and I could only say,
Speaker 1: I really don't blame her. I think if I had
Speaker 1: to listen too much epic poetry like that, I would
Speaker 1: have chosen to die young as well. So again it's
Speaker 1: just incredibly hypocritical, and a woman's place in the East
Speaker 1: End of London is in the wrong. You can't do
Speaker 1: right for doing wrong at this period. That gives us
Speaker 1: a pretty well rounded picture of how middle class Victorians
Speaker 1: were thinking about working women in the East End. Um.
Speaker 1: But a lot of your work has been to try,
Speaker 1: as you've said, through talking with Descendance um and through
Speaker 1: the other kinds of research that you did in archives
Speaker 1: and and all the rest, to try to get a
Speaker 1: sense of what life was like for those people. And
Speaker 1: maybe could you offer us what life was like for
Speaker 1: those people in the East End if if we're when
Speaker 1: they could have expressed it themselves, what was life like
Speaker 1: actually in the East End, Not through the eyes of
Speaker 1: a Victorian journalist or a Victorian Victorian novelist, but from
Speaker 1: a Victorian worker. M Again, there's obviously no one East
Speaker 1: End life and no one account of East End life,
Speaker 1: but you can draw out some common themes for children
Speaker 1: in particular. People look back on their Eastern childhood and
Speaker 1: they would tell me that they remembered the warmth and
Speaker 1: the comfort of very close families. I mean literally very close,
Speaker 1: because you'll be sleeping six to her bed sometimes if
Speaker 1: you had a bed, of course, but they remember that
Speaker 1: it's really comforting. And later, if they did make enough
Speaker 1: money to move out and have their own places, they
Speaker 1: kind of missed that, I kind of missed having their
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters all around them. But then they would
Speaker 1: tell you it was incredibly hard. Mean, being poor is exhausting.
Speaker 1: It's exhausting now, it was particularly exhausting. And then you're
Speaker 1: working long hours and you may be all snugg in
Speaker 1: that bed together, but also your room is probably crawling
Speaker 1: with insects. It was a nightly process for kids to
Speaker 1: get their shoes and bash the black beetles that infested
Speaker 1: the tenements. And the rooms of the Eastern so that
Speaker 1: they could go to sleep without being woken up by
Speaker 1: being bitten. And people would sleep outside actually on rules
Speaker 1: if they couldn't to the nineteen twenties to escape that.
Speaker 1: So nighttime, when you desperately need to sleep, is really noisy.
Speaker 1: There's always dogs barking, drunk people shouting, people doing moonlight flips,
Speaker 1: the fine eestent tradition to try and get ahead of
Speaker 1: the landlord and the rent and load everything into a
Speaker 1: cart at midnight and flit off to your next address.
Speaker 1: But people do remember extraordinary solidarity, really, and the ingenuity
Speaker 1: that people used to help each other, but to do
Speaker 1: it so everyone could preserve their dignity. So if you
Speaker 1: knew that someone in your tenement was really struggling, and
Speaker 1: perhaps husband had been laid off at the docks and
Speaker 1: they had no money, you wouldn't help them in that
Speaker 1: sort of patronizing, lady bountiful way that you know you
Speaker 1: resent being helped yourself by the middle classes. You send
Speaker 1: little Jimmy over to knock on the door with a
Speaker 1: saucepan and say, oh, all right, Mrs Jones, mom's made
Speaker 1: too much food tonight. You know, silly old mayor. She
Speaker 1: made too much food, so she said, could you please
Speaker 1: use this for us, because we're just going to have
Speaker 1: to throw away otherwise. So you really would give people
Speaker 1: your dignity their dignity. The way that the poor organized
Speaker 1: themselves into these incredible communities. Every street had its queen,
Speaker 1: every street had its auntie. They weren't by different names,
Speaker 1: but there was a woman in every street who was
Speaker 1: the go to gal. So if you were skinned, if
Speaker 1: you were in trouble, you would go to this woman
Speaker 1: and she would help you out. And this could be
Speaker 1: by the woman who was an official midwife before the NHS,
Speaker 1: the unofficial undertaker, and the person who would tell you
Speaker 1: which butcher you could go to if you were really skinned,
Speaker 1: and he'd give you the bones out the back door
Speaker 1: so you can make soup out of them. Who tell
Speaker 1: you which shopkeepers would give you tick, would give you credit,
Speaker 1: Who tell you when to go to the market to
Speaker 1: pick up what they called the specs that the fruit
Speaker 1: and vege that got dropped on the ground. So it
Speaker 1: was all about your mates. You could survive. You had
Speaker 1: to be quite popular. Your social skills had to be
Speaker 1: pretty good, because if you're obnoxious. No one's going to
Speaker 1: help you. When the landlord or the bailiff comes knocking,
Speaker 1: no one's going to look after you. But as long
Speaker 1: as you played by the rules and have this community spirit,
Speaker 1: people will help you. If your husband's violent, your neighbors
Speaker 1: will come in and help you. If dad is trying
Speaker 1: to sexually assault or attack the children when he comes
Speaker 1: home drunk from the pub, your neighbors will pull your
Speaker 1: children over the back fence and hide them in theirs
Speaker 1: until dad's calmed down. But it would be wrong to
Speaker 1: say that all these dempool were drunken, violent, not at all.
Speaker 1: They couldn't have survived. There had to be very, very sensible,
Speaker 1: very practical, very hard working people, often women, who could
Speaker 1: make something out of nothing, who could feed ten children
Speaker 1: on not much more than fresh air, really, and make
Speaker 1: do and mend and repair and keep your place as
Speaker 1: clean as you could with no running water, you know,
Speaker 1: going down three flights of stairs, bringing the water up,
Speaker 1: heating out over the fire to get any sort of
Speaker 1: hot water, and yet keeping things just hygienic enough so
Speaker 1: that everybody survives. It's a mammoth task. It's the policy Olympics.
Speaker 1: You wonder how anyone managed to survive this, let alone
Speaker 1: to thrive. But they did. And people look back with
Speaker 1: incredible respect on their moms and their grandma's who had
Speaker 1: all these skills and all this ingenerity. So it's a
Speaker 1: very very mixed picture. Of course, there's misery. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's death and horror and disease and violence. Of course,
Speaker 1: there is in starvation hunger all the time. But there's
Speaker 1: also people who are very united. And they're particularly united
Speaker 1: because they know that they're judged and their look down
Speaker 1: on by everybody else, so they unite. So they take
Speaker 1: on this Eastender identity, which is an insult by the way.
Speaker 1: That's how it starts. East Ender is an insult, and
Speaker 1: they what we call revalorize that. They turn that around
Speaker 1: and they say, know, we're very proud of our streets,
Speaker 1: We're proud of our community. We're proud of our friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors. We all work together, we all stick together.
Speaker 1: And they had a great deal of totally justified pride
Speaker 1: in that there were incredible people m and thinking about
Speaker 1: how these neighborhoods were changing shape around the working people.
Speaker 1: UM you talked about in Industrial Industrialism Reshaping London. UM
Speaker 1: in the book, you mentioned that when the St. Catharine's
Speaker 1: Docks were built, they displaced eleven thousand, more than eleven
Speaker 1: thousand people who undertook that dock building project. And what
Speaker 1: happened with those people who were displaced? What did that
Speaker 1: look like for this east end of London where these
Speaker 1: communities were living. This was a disaster because even though
Speaker 1: their houses were pretty grim and pretty ghastly, they were
Speaker 1: at least houses. This was their home, this was near
Speaker 1: to work. Often these were dockers often who were displaced
Speaker 1: by the building of this new docks. A dock company
Speaker 1: was set up. They've been trying to develop this area
Speaker 1: since the seventeen hundreds. They could see the profit in it.
Speaker 1: And it was Robert Telford and the famous Robert Telford,
Speaker 1: the engineer. It was his only big building and development
Speaker 1: project in London. And it was not just St Catherine's Docks.
Speaker 1: This happened as well when they built the underground they
Speaker 1: were just knocked down poor houses. Are that so much
Speaker 1: as by your leave? If you were better off and
Speaker 1: the property owner, then you've got compensation. If you didn't
Speaker 1: tough on, you go. And we presume because nobody bothered
Speaker 1: to record where people went that they just went deeper
Speaker 1: into London. They just increased the overcrowding everywhere else they
Speaker 1: would have had no choice, perhaps stay with friends, go
Speaker 1: wherever you could. A lot of them would just have
Speaker 1: been homeless, and there was a large increase in homelessness.
Speaker 1: But again this is very typical of London. We think
Speaker 1: of pulling down the tenements as a good thing, of
Speaker 1: flump clearance as a good thing, and of course getting
Speaker 1: rid of insanitary housing is a good thing. But if
Speaker 1: you're not providing any alto latives for people, how can
Speaker 1: it be? And that's what's so extraordinary. Very few people
Speaker 1: at the time wrote about that. They wrote about isn't
Speaker 1: this wonderful We're getting rid of all this awful housing?
Speaker 1: Was Hello, there are people in those houses. Where are
Speaker 1: they going to go? They probably rather have a really grotty,
Speaker 1: dirty roof over their head with their family and friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors around them than no roof over their head
Speaker 1: at all. And of course if they're homeless, they get
Speaker 1: judged and castigated for being homeless. And it's really it's
Speaker 1: quite surprising that that has still been talked about as
Speaker 1: this really interesting, huge development and how good that it
Speaker 1: got rid of terrible slums, And there's been very little
Speaker 1: comment even now on what a disaster it was to
Speaker 1: lose your home and how completely discombobulating. As if life
Speaker 1: wasn't bad and uncertain enough, suddenly you've got to move
Speaker 1: and you need to be near work because you can't
Speaker 1: afford to get public transports, so you're working. So it
Speaker 1: could be a disaster. Couldn't it have to be four
Speaker 1: or five miles away from your work? Just everything just
Speaker 1: makes poverty worse. That's really what happens in London of
Speaker 1: this series, just about everything that happens happens to the
Speaker 1: poor and makes their lives so much worse. MM. So
Speaker 1: you've you've talked a little bit about that middle class
Speaker 1: culture that shaped Victorian thinking about poverty in London. UM,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little more about the role of journalism
Speaker 1: specifically and especially stories like The Maiden Tribute of Modern
Speaker 1: Babylon series or The Bitter Cry about Castle London UM
Speaker 1: in creating an imaginative geography of the East End for
Speaker 1: London readers. Like we've talked about those two pieces you
Speaker 1: mentioned in your book, how influential were they and what
Speaker 1: kind of substance. Did they add to the the general
Speaker 1: ideas about the East End. Yes, it's a very interesting
Speaker 1: period for the sensationalist press. And it all comes about
Speaker 1: because they dropped a tax on newspapers, so suddenly it's
Speaker 1: possible and quite cost effective to publish daily and in
Speaker 1: order to keep readers interested. We get these serializations have
Speaker 1: often very dramatic and quite salacious stories, so we certainly
Speaker 1: get that with W. T. Stead, the journalist who wrote
Speaker 1: the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon, and what that was
Speaker 1: about was the supposed sex trafficking of young London girls
Speaker 1: to foreign bruthels. And again, you know the foreign it's
Speaker 1: much easier to be outraged and to deal with and
Speaker 1: look at these things when it's not bruthels here in England.
Speaker 1: It's those foreigners taking our girls. But what he actually did,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna said, don't think you get away with this now,
Speaker 1: was smuggled a young girl away to France just to
Speaker 1: prove that it could be done. He struggled to get
Speaker 1: accounts for various reason of that really proved this was
Speaker 1: happening extensively. So he did this too, at least show
Speaker 1: that it could be done, and to be honest, the
Speaker 1: whole thing was highly dubious. He seems to have paid
Speaker 1: this girl's mother to effectively by her, and there's no
Speaker 1: suggestion that anything went on between him and this girl.
Speaker 1: I should stipulate, but the whole thing, you know, it's
Speaker 1: highly ethically questionable, to say the very least. But of
Speaker 1: course readers lap this up. Innocent young girls have been
Speaker 1: trafficked into prostitution. You can see how that's going to
Speaker 1: sell papers. But it also casts the people of the
Speaker 1: East End in a ghastly light, doesn't it. They're selling
Speaker 1: their children these awful It proves everything, doesn't it that
Speaker 1: we've suspected about these people who are degraded and not
Speaker 1: really proper humans and their animals. And they will even
Speaker 1: sell their own children, that's how low they will go.
Speaker 1: So well, he's trying to get the age of consent
Speaker 1: raised with this, and ultimately he does achieve that, so
Speaker 1: his aim is good. It's just is more demonization of
Speaker 1: the poor and more suggestion that the East End is
Speaker 1: this ghastly in moral criminal place where all these ghastly
Speaker 1: acts begin. And in fact, there was this idea that
Speaker 1: the poor didn't love their children which is a really
Speaker 1: strange one. How separate of a species have you got
Speaker 1: to be considered if people question whether you love your children?
Speaker 1: And there are even some commentators who say, you know,
Speaker 1: I've talked to some of this poor pl and jin
Speaker 1: know they actually do, they actually love their children. The
Speaker 1: poor used their children. Well, they're very surprised about this.
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't they well, of course because their children are working.
Speaker 1: And again the ludicrousness to modern eyes of making people
Speaker 1: so poor that everyone in the family has to work
Speaker 1: from six years old and then saying well, do you
Speaker 1: love your children? I feel making them work is so
Speaker 1: hypocritical to eyes. And then we have means the bitter
Speaker 1: cry of Outcast London, which again is a very very
Speaker 1: famous piece, but outcast the very language of it. You know,
Speaker 1: there are people who are beyond the pale, that outside
Speaker 1: normal society, and it is judgmental. It's very top down.
Speaker 1: We're looking down on these people. Were saying, well, they
Speaker 1: don't attend church very often, they're not regular attenders at worship.
Speaker 1: Men's talks about that. An awful lot talks about immorality,
Speaker 1: very obsessed with that, the fact that in these crowded
Speaker 1: houses and what people are sleeping together in the same head.
Speaker 1: You know, there could be incests, there could be immorality.
Speaker 1: That's always the implication, and that if we're not careful
Speaker 1: in means his eyes, one of the reason we should
Speaker 1: do something about this, and definitely is saying that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't do something about this because we might have revolution otherwise,
Speaker 1: and revolution the ultimate terror. So it's not let's be
Speaker 1: fair to the pool because it's fair, or let's stop
Speaker 1: people starving and die because we're a very rich country
Speaker 1: and nobody needs to starve and die. It's there will
Speaker 1: be consequences if we don't. There could be revolution if
Speaker 1: there don't. There could be people having the wrong sort
Speaker 1: of sex with the wrong sort of people if we don't.
Speaker 1: So there's always this need to justify why on earth
Speaker 1: we should help these people who are you know, in
Speaker 1: the East and there within a stone strow of Posh London.
Speaker 1: They're so close to Parliament. And that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is another reason that the Eastern becomes so feared and
Speaker 1: watch and people are keeping an eye on it for
Speaker 1: signs of revolution because they there is this uneasy awareness
Speaker 1: that's so close to the sender to repower. Are all
Speaker 1: these thousands upon thousands of people who we are working
Speaker 1: to death basically, and who we are making staff to death,
Speaker 1: and my goodness, we're all in trouble if they get
Speaker 1: a bit upperty m hm hm and over and over again.
Speaker 1: This is something that you mentioned a little bit earlier,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to explore with a few more comments, um,
Speaker 1: the way that writers compared East London to the Imperial borderlands,
Speaker 1: and the kind of mystique, the kind of Orientalists thinking
Speaker 1: that was used to talk about the Middle East or
Speaker 1: or India were applied to bethnal Green and whopping um,
Speaker 1: could you give us an example of that kind of
Speaker 1: writing that drew the imperial logic into London itself. We
Speaker 1: hear it absolutely constantly when people talk about the East End.
Speaker 1: It's the mysterious East. It's the darkest East. It's a
Speaker 1: terror in coordin eater, it's a darkened land. It's a
Speaker 1: place that we cannot find on a map. It's this
Speaker 1: alien culture. And of course that's again super handy if
Speaker 1: you want to justify the fact that you are letting
Speaker 1: people start is to say, well, they're not like us.
Speaker 1: To see, we can't really comment on how other cultures
Speaker 1: in other countries live. That's up to them. That's not
Speaker 1: our business how they run themselves. And this is a
Speaker 1: separate country within our own country. These are not really
Speaker 1: people like us. They're not even really human. They're certainly
Speaker 1: not really normal English people. So what can we do?
Speaker 1: They choose to live like this, and it's another way
Speaker 1: of demonizing people and other in people. And we see
Speaker 1: the result of this in what's known as plumbing. What
Speaker 1: people like to do who had read these sensationalist, dramatic
Speaker 1: tales of the Darkest East was to go and visit it,
Speaker 1: often with a couple of policemen who were paid to
Speaker 1: accompany them, and they would go around and stare at
Speaker 1: the poor. Basically, so they would go into the slums,
Speaker 1: into the tenements and look at how they lived. And
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be I suppose sometimes somewhat philanthropic.
Speaker 1: Oh dear, they could exclaim about, oh dear, how terrible.
Speaker 1: You know, I do at least understand the conditions of
Speaker 1: the poor, because I bothered to go and see it.
Speaker 1: But then there were a lot of posh, young ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen who just thought it was a laugh, really,
Speaker 1: and it was a freak show. So it was akin
Speaker 1: to go and laugh at the bearded lady at the circus,
Speaker 1: to laugh at the freaks, and how awful that must
Speaker 1: have been to experience. I worked on a TV show
Speaker 1: for the BBC a few years ago called The Victorian Slum.
Speaker 1: Loved working on it because they recreated a plum, essentially
Speaker 1: a tenement, and for an as geek historian like me,
Speaker 1: that's as close as you were going to get. It
Speaker 1: was gremendously exciting to be in those beautifully recreatible I said,
Speaker 1: beautifully that horrible living a conversation, but to be almost
Speaker 1: in it was incredible. But what I've never forgotten about that,
Speaker 1: and I'm still friends with some of the people that
Speaker 1: were the cast. When I say the cast, they weren't acting,
Speaker 1: they weren't trying to pretend they were Victorian. They were
Speaker 1: sending modern people to dress like it and live like it,
Speaker 1: and see if they could earn money, see if they
Speaker 1: could survive without the welfare state. It was really eye opening.
Speaker 1: But I remember one day I went into do filming
Speaker 1: and they were furious, so angry and so agitated, and
Speaker 1: I said, what on earth it's wrong with you? You
Speaker 1: all you've all got faces like thunder. And they said, oh,
Speaker 1: we filmed this thing this morning where people came slumming
Speaker 1: and they came into our rooms, they came into our
Speaker 1: boarding house, as they came into our courtyards, and they
Speaker 1: filmed us. They actually like we weren't there. They didn't
Speaker 1: talk to us, and they were even though they knew
Speaker 1: that this was the two thousand's, even though they knew
Speaker 1: these people had, you know, were not really laughing at them.
Speaker 1: It hurt them emotionally. It caused them so much pain
Speaker 1: and in fact, one of the fathers that one of
Speaker 1: the families had to have counseling after doing that. Chauffeur,
Speaker 1: I think it was three weeks because it was just
Speaker 1: so awful not to be able to protect and help
Speaker 1: your family, not be able to protect and help his
Speaker 1: children and his grandchildren as he wanted to. So I
Speaker 1: think that gives you some idea of what it's like
Speaker 1: to be right there in London and to have people saying,
Speaker 1: where is this mysterious country that is strange and mysterious
Speaker 1: denizens living And you're thinking, Hi, I'm right here, can
Speaker 1: you not see me? But you're being cast adrift. You
Speaker 1: are being outcast by your own society and community. M HM.
Speaker 1: I will say in in I love that that program.
Speaker 1: I watched it last year. Um. It's marketed in the
Speaker 1: United States as slum House. I think I hope for
Speaker 1: any listeners of unobscured who want to get a little
Speaker 1: more of that tangible feeling, who want to try to
Speaker 1: experience some of the rhythms of Victorian working class life,
Speaker 1: uh slum house or the Victorian slum that program is
Speaker 1: brilliant for that. UM. So I really commend that too. Listeners,
Speaker 1: go check it out, give it a watch. It's it's very,
Speaker 1: very worth it. In in striking a Light, Louise you right,
Speaker 1: um that the socialist groups which have been so well studied, um,
Speaker 1: they only represented a very small minority of the people
Speaker 1: who actually lived in the East End, and that membership
Speaker 1: was generally highest among the middle classes and men from
Speaker 1: more affluent sections of the working class. UM. And if
Speaker 1: most of the socialists or the radical known to us
Speaker 1: today we're a middle class people, what can we actually
Speaker 1: say about the politics of East London's working classes and
Speaker 1: and poor. And what's so interesting is that we've just
Speaker 1: gone ahead and assumed that working class people in the
Speaker 1: East End were not political, as if somehow, just because
Speaker 1: you hadn't read car marks cover to cover the fact
Speaker 1: that you were starving and dying and being worked to death,
Speaker 1: wouldn't wouldn't really occur to you. You wouldn't really realize
Speaker 1: unless somebody middle class came and told you. And even
Speaker 1: some historians that I greatly respect have written about that
Speaker 1: and said, you know, politics stirs them very little. Was
Speaker 1: the phrase that was used at the time about the
Speaker 1: working classes. They're not moved by politics. They're just so
Speaker 1: busy trying to get ahead, trying to get work, try
Speaker 1: mine to live, that they will climb on each other,
Speaker 1: you know, they will do each other down in order
Speaker 1: to survive. And you could understand it, frankly, if that
Speaker 1: had been the case, because working those hours, that struggled
Speaker 1: to survive, that struggled to feed your family, what does
Speaker 1: it leave you for political thinking? But what's so fascinating
Speaker 1: is it's not true at all. Working class people again
Speaker 1: and again have told us when talking about their childhoods,
Speaker 1: that they were incredibly politicized. It tends to be assumed
Speaker 1: that literacy, that being able to read is the be
Speaker 1: all and end all and if they were illiterate. I've
Speaker 1: often been told this, you know, don't you think you
Speaker 1: make too much louise about the poor being? Don't you
Speaker 1: think you're romanticizing them when you say that they were political,
Speaker 1: because after all, they couldn't read all right. Well, humanity
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to read all right for a great
Speaker 1: deal of our history. And yet you know, we've managed
Speaker 1: pretty well. And for example, the Irish community maintained a
Speaker 1: real sense of politicization through telling tales around the fireside. Literally,
Speaker 1: families would gather of an evening and they would, as
Speaker 1: one man called John Gibbons his reminiscences, unpublished Reminiscences of
Speaker 1: his Childhood I read, said, we would tell the tales
Speaker 1: of Erin's wrongs, and they would talk about all the
Speaker 1: terrible things that the Bricks had done in Ireland, and
Speaker 1: my goodness, there were enough to keep you going for
Speaker 1: several evenings, I would imagine. And he they would talk
Speaker 1: about Robert Emmett, the Irish rebel who was executed and
Speaker 1: how he died, and somebody would recite his speech from
Speaker 1: the dock, and he said, how can we not grow
Speaker 1: up to be dreamers? Of them? Roast romantic dreams. How
Speaker 1: could those people not become passionate about Irish home rule,
Speaker 1: about Irish affair is, how could they not become passionate
Speaker 1: about their people? And this was recreated with non Irish
Speaker 1: people as well. I mentioned before that one doctor's daughter
Speaker 1: remembered her dad taking them around for Sunday walks and saying,
Speaker 1: look at that beautiful building. Are people built that? And
Speaker 1: there were organizations like the Clarion Cycling Club. There was
Speaker 1: also a journal that was really widely read and Marry England,
Speaker 1: the wonderful book by the Clarions Robert Blatchford, which people
Speaker 1: would read. And there was a tale that I read
Speaker 1: of a little girl's thinking. I remember that my dad
Speaker 1: would read to us from that from Mary England, and
Speaker 1: my mom would shout up the stairs, those children should
Speaker 1: be in bed, it's past their bedtime. Stop reading to them,
Speaker 1: let's go to sleep. And he would say, what I
Speaker 1: am telling them will do them much more good than sleep.
Speaker 1: So there was this awareness by parents that we have
Speaker 1: to politicize our kids, we have to give them a
Speaker 1: sense of class pride. Another um reminiscence that I read
Speaker 1: was ever woman saying, well, we were told we were
Speaker 1: supposed to look up to our so called betters. But
Speaker 1: you know, my mom was was in service and she
Speaker 1: dusted the sideboard of old Lord Ponson b Smithe and
Speaker 1: she knew what he was like. She had to pick
Speaker 1: up after him. We weren't impressed by these people because
Speaker 1: we knew from our parents we were told that they
Speaker 1: were no better than us. And in fact, there are
Speaker 1: constant attempts to unionize. There are constant attempts to protest
Speaker 1: and to rebel by working people. It's just that they
Speaker 1: often get their skulls broken by the police and the
Speaker 1: armies when they try it. It's not that they don't
Speaker 1: try it, but then these stories also get misrepresented. There
Speaker 1: was an incident in six that led to violence when
Speaker 1: a protectionist group, so a group that are supposedly representing
Speaker 1: working people, are speaking in Trafalgar Square and they're saying
Speaker 1: we've got to keep these foreigners out of our British
Speaker 1: jobs and all that awful rhetoric that unfortunately is still
Speaker 1: with us, and this led to violence. This has been
Speaker 1: written about by historians saying, look you see, you see
Speaker 1: this is what working class people were like then. They
Speaker 1: were so ready to fight foreigners. They were so ready
Speaker 1: to be sort of borderline racist and xenophobic, and they
Speaker 1: were so ready to riot all the time. But actually
Speaker 1: it doesn't take much research to prove that that whole
Speaker 1: thing was a front for employers organizations. It was them
Speaker 1: who are up on the posiums in Trafalgar Square speaking
Speaker 1: about the need to get rid of foreign workers and
Speaker 1: to fight foreign competition. It wasn't genuine working people, and
Speaker 1: in fact, genuine working people who were listening were pretty
Speaker 1: disgusted and fought back against those speakers, and that's what
Speaker 1: caused the violence. And yet even comparatively re historians have
Speaker 1: written about that as an example of these uneducated, selfish,
Speaker 1: a political poor people. But I would say you couldn't
Speaker 1: be a political and survive as a poor person in
Speaker 1: the East End of London if you take politics in
Speaker 1: its widest sense, if you didn't have enough sense of
Speaker 1: solidarity to say, look, we're all in this together, we
Speaker 1: all need to help each other, we all need to
Speaker 1: make sure Mrs so and so next door has got
Speaker 1: enough food because it could be us tomorrow. That very
Speaker 1: basic sense of basically important sense of networking and solidarity.
Speaker 1: People brought that into factories and women in particular bought
Speaker 1: their networks of support and solidarity into the new factories
Speaker 1: and the new industrial jobs, and why wouldn't they? And
Speaker 1: really these things get dismissed sometimes by the serious label historians. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's not really a form of politics, but I think
Speaker 1: it's definitely, to my mind it is. And that was
Speaker 1: really the basis for trade unionism. For modern trade unisn't
Speaker 1: begins with this idea that we all need to help
Speaker 1: each other. We know who, we know, we have class
Speaker 1: enemies and we all need to unite to fight them,
Speaker 1: and a wrong to one is a wrong to all,
Speaker 1: if you like, that's a lesson that you learned pretty
Speaker 1: quickly in the backslums of the East End. What's jumped
Speaker 1: forward a little bit um. What was it like to
Speaker 1: be Irish in London's East End? What was distinctive about
Speaker 1: the Irish community there? What was that experience like and
Speaker 1: was it typical of the Irish experience in other places
Speaker 1: in London. Yeah, there's no one Irish experience in London,
Speaker 1: of course, but certainly it's a very different experience. If
Speaker 1: you're arriving from Ireland and extremely poor, with perhaps nothing
Speaker 1: but the clothes you stand up in and settling perhaps
Speaker 1: around spittle fields. That was always the zone of transmission,
Speaker 1: that was where people often began. Then if you'll say
Speaker 1: an Irish lawyer or a playwright, or if you're Oscar Wild,
Speaker 1: you know there's Irish people in Irish people at this time.
Speaker 1: But it was said that if there was one thing
Speaker 1: an English working person despised more than a policeman, it
Speaker 1: was an irishman. So there were these awful divisions of
Speaker 1: Karl Marks commented on that. He said, oh, we have
Speaker 1: to stop this racist conception where workers don't unite together.
Speaker 1: They see the Irish is competition and they try and
Speaker 1: drive them out of the employment market. They need to
Speaker 1: unite with them. Isn't that always the problem? And it's
Speaker 1: also a problem for women workers that male trade uniors
Speaker 1: would see them as taking their jobs because they were
Speaker 1: forced to work for less. So we do see Irish
Speaker 1: people being accused of causing their own povericy. This happens
Speaker 1: with Jewish people as well. It happens with most waves
Speaker 1: of migrant workers. They're accused of bringing down wages, they're
Speaker 1: accused of causing overcrowding. To set against this, they do
Speaker 1: have really strong networks, so through culture, through music, through pubs.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Irish pubs in London at
Speaker 1: this time and they're very important to the political life
Speaker 1: of London. And through the church, Irish people are very united,
Speaker 1: and we see a lot of what they call chain migration,
Speaker 1: which means you go to a certain area because your
Speaker 1: friends are there, so your friends are settled in London,
Speaker 1: you come over and settle there. And we see entire
Speaker 1: streets becoming categorized as Irish that is an Irish area.
Speaker 1: And from the seventeen hundreds we hear people saying yes,
Speaker 1: in certain districts of London, you won't hear English spoken
Speaker 1: at all. People are speaking Irish or people speaking gaily.
Speaker 1: There's a priest who says, because I speak Irish, I'm
Speaker 1: really in demand for giving confession because most people can
Speaker 1: only access to English priests. So I'm working flat out
Speaker 1: dealing with all the Irish people, and I never hear
Speaker 1: English spoken from morning tonight. And we also see in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds horrible anti Irish riots in which people
Speaker 1: are actually killed. It's it's not written about it very much,
Speaker 1: but there were some awful periods of xenophobia going to
Speaker 1: attack Irish hands. I mean, how terrifying must it have been?
Speaker 1: You know, for several days and nights, English people were
Speaker 1: told to put a candle in their window to show
Speaker 1: they weren't Irish, otherwise they could get their house pulled down.
Speaker 1: Irish pubs were attacked, Irish homes were attacked, Irish people
Speaker 1: were attacked. Apparently an Irish person was shot and actually
Speaker 1: killed in Brick Lane in the seventeen hundred. There's very
Speaker 1: little evidence of that's not written about very much. So
Speaker 1: Irish people are dealing with all of that, and there
Speaker 1: is a tendency, certainly from middle class commentators to look
Speaker 1: down on them even more than they're looking down on
Speaker 1: the English working class that we hear about, you know,
Speaker 1: the dirty Irish and the black Irish and all Irish
Speaker 1: and drinkers, all Irish criminals, they're all tinkers. Terrible bias,
Speaker 1: not helped by the fact that the Victorians, of course,
Speaker 1: we should never forget that the Victorians begin eugenics. You know,
Speaker 1: the Nazis really do a lot with it. We have
Speaker 1: fair they really pick up on it. But it's another
Speaker 1: wonderful thing that the British invented around this period, and
Speaker 1: one of the justifications for the conditions of poor, working
Speaker 1: class Irish people was that the Victorians decided, on no
Speaker 1: basis whatsoever, that they were a black race, a Negroid race,
Speaker 1: and therefore, of course inferior to the only superior people
Speaker 1: who were white English upper class men, incdentally considering a
Speaker 1: lot of the people that were writing the studio science
Speaker 1: were white English upper class and then they just happened
Speaker 1: that they were the superior ones. So you're really up
Speaker 1: against it, I think it's fair to say if you're Irish.
Speaker 1: But they do have the advantage of these strong networks
Speaker 1: and solidarity, and also this politicization that I've talked about.
Speaker 1: They are very politicized by what happens back home in Ireland,
Speaker 1: by their treatment at the hand of the British, and
Speaker 1: they come over here and they're very unenthusiastic about the British,
Speaker 1: just as much as we are about them. They're not grateful,
Speaker 1: and people complain about this. You know, they're coming over
Speaker 1: here and they're not at all grateful. They don't like
Speaker 1: the English. I mean, how dare they were giving them
Speaker 1: a roof over their head, So they were already pre
Speaker 1: politicized if you like, and that is a great weapon
Speaker 1: to fight being mothered and being demonized and dehumanized is
Speaker 1: your sense of self. And this is something with the
Speaker 1: Irish community that's quite remarkable is that even three general
Speaker 1: rations in London ISS would say I am Irish, even
Speaker 1: if they've never been to Ireland. They really maintained that
Speaker 1: sense of identity and that was very important. That's how
Speaker 1: you survive, I suppose, when you're really up against it,
Speaker 1: by a sense of pride in your identity. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about um, politicized communities and political forces working on
Speaker 1: some of these groups and in these neighborhoods. Um, would
Speaker 1: you describe the influence that Fenian movements and the Fenian
Speaker 1: bombings of the eighties had on Irish life in London
Speaker 1: at the time. M Yes, just as the community I
Speaker 1: suppose was getting a little bit more settled and a
Speaker 1: little bit more established. I wouldn't say massively accepted, but
Speaker 1: getting that way. There was First of all, in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven there was the bombing at Clarkenwell Prison which
Speaker 1: was to release Richard was Sullivan Bok, who was an
Speaker 1: Irish rebel leader who was being held there and unfortunately
Speaker 1: it went horrifically wrong and six people were killed, and
Speaker 1: it was working class people who suffered. They put gunpower
Speaker 1: against the prison war, but there were crowded, you know,
Speaker 1: working class houses cheap by jail, right up against the
Speaker 1: prison And as Karl Marks remarked at the time, people
Speaker 1: have previously shown great sympathy for the Irish cause, and
Speaker 1: there was an awful lot of sympathy for it, but
Speaker 1: they will be driven into the arms of the government
Speaker 1: by this. You cannot expect the English proletariat to accept
Speaker 1: being blown up just because it believes in the political cause.
Speaker 1: So this did cause a lot of descent within the
Speaker 1: Irish community as well. The cause was a good one,
Speaker 1: but yes, when you kill working class supporters, it's never
Speaker 1: going to be a good move. And then there were
Speaker 1: the eight and eight three bombs at train stations and
Speaker 1: at underground stations, and that's why Special Branch was set up,
Speaker 1: of course, So suddenly you have all the these in
Speaker 1: four months from the Irage community. And within the Irage community,
Speaker 1: you know, you are the most suspect group in London.
Speaker 1: People write about the Irage at this time or they're
Speaker 1: all Fenian terrorists. Fenian was used as an insult against
Speaker 1: Irish people. There was an area of London around Gayle
Speaker 1: Street that was known as the Fenian Barracks. And Charles
Speaker 1: Booth writes about a policeman telling him about the Fenian Barracks,
Speaker 1: and he says, men here are not human, they are
Speaker 1: wild beasts. If you try and arrest anyone, he said,
Speaker 1: from that area, they all unite together. They will barricade
Speaker 1: themselves in. They will throw anything they can get their
Speaker 1: hands on, furniture, anything at you. They will never allow
Speaker 1: one of their numbers to be arrested. And he says,
Speaker 1: not an Englishman nor a Scotsman would live among them.
Speaker 1: So here we are, even in the East End, which
Speaker 1: is being divided from the rest of London, even the
Speaker 1: working class, which has been divided from the rest of society,
Speaker 1: is dividing itself. And we're guessing these divisions, these false
Speaker 1: divisions between Irish and English, and the Irish are coming
Speaker 1: to personify the worst and least respectable poor of all,
Speaker 1: and all suspects, all being suspected of terrorism. Mhm. Of
Speaker 1: course you write in Striking a Light that many of
Speaker 1: the Metro when were Irish and you've mentioned that again today. Um,
Speaker 1: you have a section of your first chapter dedicated to
Speaker 1: perceptions of women who worked in factories, and again you've
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about the factory girl in the
Speaker 1: middle class imagination. What was the reputation of factory women
Speaker 1: in the neighborhoods where they live. Yes, now that is
Speaker 1: a very different thing. Of course, how push London, how
Speaker 1: they're so called betters, viewed them, and how the local
Speaker 1: spewed them is completely different. So taking the match women
Speaker 1: as one example, because they are the largest pool of
Speaker 1: female so called casual workers in the East Stand at
Speaker 1: that time, so they're quite a good example. They were
Speaker 1: so looked down upon by commentators, you know, a rough
Speaker 1: set of girls. Their own employers said said that about them,
Speaker 1: and people would write about the incredibly patronizing lee or
Speaker 1: they're always drunk and they're always consorting with men of
Speaker 1: the very worst type. And they're also written about. When
Speaker 1: they're not written about like that, they're written about us children.
Speaker 1: So match girls, it's always match girls, and they're written
Speaker 1: about being a little bit simple, having no intelligence whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So they're the lowest of the low really because they're
Speaker 1: east Enders and Irish origin and industrially working women factory girls.
Speaker 1: That is three massive strikes against you. This is appalling.
Speaker 1: You know, it's bad enough being a woman really in
Speaker 1: Victorian England, but insisting on being working class and Irish
Speaker 1: only standa isn't really taking the proverbill. So the way
Speaker 1: they're looked at in their area though, is completely different.
Speaker 1: So fascinating. You could get away with a lot of
Speaker 1: sins against the Victorian narrative if you were the right
Speaker 1: sort of woman, So if you were really gutsy, if
Speaker 1: you fronted it out. That's a really important term in
Speaker 1: the East End, fronting it out, you know, having the competence,
Speaker 1: holding your head high and not taking any nonsense from anybody,
Speaker 1: having self respect I supposed to. Really, you could get
Speaker 1: away with an awful lot of stuff. You know. There
Speaker 1: are women who had lovers, which were supposed to be
Speaker 1: a terrible sin, and yet they were still a great
Speaker 1: standing in the community because they were just wonderful people.
Speaker 1: They were good to their friends. They were the aunts
Speaker 1: and queens of the street. They were the midwife, they
Speaker 1: were the undertakers. They filed incredibly important functions. So where
Speaker 1: we are told any woman who does anything immoral, is
Speaker 1: completely outcast. Nobody would speak to her, her reputation is ruined.
Speaker 1: That's not true at all. That's the middle class perception.
Speaker 1: And the Pool were a lot less judgmental and a
Speaker 1: lot more flexible, and the match Woden were kind of
Speaker 1: really the cool girl gang in the neighborhood. Actually, or
Speaker 1: despite the way, it's such a contrast between the way
Speaker 1: that the middle classes looked down on them, they were
Speaker 1: the ones who knew all the musical songs of the day.
Speaker 1: I discovered that when I've read a magistrate who lived
Speaker 1: in the Eastern complaining about, Oh, these match women they
Speaker 1: wake me up, you know, occasionally when they have enough
Speaker 1: money to go out, maybe on the back holiday, they
Speaker 1: come back from the musicals and they're singing all the
Speaker 1: way home. They're singing Tar Bundier knocked him in the
Speaker 1: old Road. And I'm trying to sleep, I've got caught
Speaker 1: in the morning and I'm being woken up by them.
Speaker 1: But when you think about what that means, you could
Speaker 1: only know the words of musical songs if you manage
Speaker 1: to get into those performances. And they were their hit
Speaker 1: the coolest songs at the time, so it's like dropping
Speaker 1: bars from the latest grime artists, being able to recite
Speaker 1: those songs, being able to sing them walking arm in
Speaker 1: arm down the street. That's pretty cool. That makes you
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They all said something else they loved about them,
Speaker 1: which gave me a real clue to their personalities. And
Speaker 1: it's really common of working class people over the world,
Speaker 1: actually not just in England at this period, and certainly
Speaker 1: not just in the East End, was that when they
Speaker 1: could go out, which was rare, but sometimes somebody, one
Speaker 1: of the better paid workers would stand treat as it
Speaker 1: was called, and who said I'll pay for you all
Speaker 1: to have tea, and they'd be really excited. They might
Speaker 1: get a cup of tea in a cafe and jam
Speaker 1: on their bread. This was a real highlight, maybe even
Speaker 1: some cake. And when they got to go out, they
Speaker 1: were going to look their better as a matter of
Speaker 1: pride and partly as a retort to the people they
Speaker 1: knew were looking down on them. They were going to
Speaker 1: look absolutely dressed up to the nines and probably the
Speaker 1: tents when they were walking down the streets. They couldn't
Speaker 1: afford it though on their own they couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: buy the beautiful hats that every Victorian woman needed to
Speaker 1: be really cool. So they formed what they called feather clubs,
Speaker 1: and actually a lot of factory women did this. The
Speaker 1: match women had a feather club, and what was it.
Speaker 1: It was a communal hat club. Feather club. Because the
Speaker 1: hats were so befeathered at the times, entire flocks of
Speaker 1: poor little birds died to make these hats, and they
Speaker 1: would pay in to the club. And I presume that
Speaker 1: when there was enough money, Elsie would pop up to
Speaker 1: the milliners, or perhaps somebody would make a hat. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but they would have these beautiful hats. So
Speaker 1: they knew when they walked down the bow row, when
Speaker 1: they promenaded down the bow row with their friends singing
Speaker 1: these really a lot, you know, up to the minute
Speaker 1: musical songs, they looked incredible. And that was a kind
Speaker 1: of political resistance. Really. It was like, Okay, you might
Speaker 1: want to look down on us, but look at us.
Speaker 1: We look bloody fantastic, and we know we do. And
Speaker 1: the descendants that I talked to, we're really good at
Speaker 1: explaining how these notions, these received notions that were forced
Speaker 1: on them from above, were rejected and were turned around
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm really glad you're writing about my
Speaker 1: grand and her friends, because they were wonderful and nobody
Speaker 1: thinks they were. And I had to grow up with that.
Speaker 1: I had to grow up with these incredible powerhouse women,
Speaker 1: strong characters, brave, amazing, you know, did the impossible on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, fed huge families, and people treated them
Speaker 1: like dirt. And people would say they weren't ladies, but
Speaker 1: to us they were. They were East End ladies. And
Speaker 1: that's so key, that distinction between women and lady. Anyone
Speaker 1: can be a woman, but certainly not everyone, according to
Speaker 1: the Victorians, could be a lady, and a lady was
Speaker 1: an absence. Really, what is a lady? Well, it's what
Speaker 1: she's not. She's not loud, she's not drunk, she's not sexy,
Speaker 1: she's not having a good time. Really, she's sitting quietly,
Speaker 1: as quiet and still as you can possibly be, as
Speaker 1: as devoid of humanity as you can possibly be. It's
Speaker 1: no coincidence that the angel in the house that an
Speaker 1: angel isn't human, is above humanity. But the east Enders
Speaker 1: rejected this. They had their own much more liberated, I suppose.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds strange to talk about. I'm not
Speaker 1: suggesting that every doctor was a rampant feminist in this period,
Speaker 1: but they had far more liberated conceptions and far more
Speaker 1: real conceptions of what a woman was than they're supposing.
Speaker 1: Betters m What did working women in the Eastern think
Speaker 1: of the police? Did they have a relationship with the
Speaker 1: police that was antagonistic? Was there was there a general
Speaker 1: class alignment of the London police at the time that
Speaker 1: was very evident? What can we say about that? This
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating because the police had a healthy respect,
Speaker 1: shall we say, for working class women, and there were
Speaker 1: reasons for this. You hear policemen talking. Sometimes commentators like
Speaker 1: Child's Booth will seek out the opinion of the police
Speaker 1: are sort of respectable authority figures who also know the
Speaker 1: working classes because they're from the working classes on the whole.
Speaker 1: About people like the matchwomen and they will tell them, well,
Speaker 1: the matchment are very well respected in the area. They
Speaker 1: have a famous sense of unity. They settle all their
Speaker 1: disputes really quickly. But if they have a dispute and
Speaker 1: you know you're working with people, they get on your nerves.
Speaker 1: If they have a dispute at work, they can't resolve. Well,
Speaker 1: let's just say they had a rather non Industrial Relations
Speaker 1: approved method of sorting that out. So this police been said,
Speaker 1: a ring will be formed, they will fight like men,
Speaker 1: and we, as the police, do not interfere. So they'd
Speaker 1: have punch ups if they really couldn't sort out a
Speaker 1: problem at work, and the police would back off. Isn't
Speaker 1: that interesting? The police were scared or certainly respectful of
Speaker 1: these incredibly tough working class women. And then one of
Speaker 1: the other tales that I was told was that, in
Speaker 1: order to amuse themselves of an evening, of course there
Speaker 1: wasn't much on Telly because there wasn't telly. Working class
Speaker 1: people would observe the coppers who were parading around their neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and who would often go in pairs because famously we
Speaker 1: always here, don't we. You know, you wouldn't patrol that
Speaker 1: neighborhood with less than two of you because it was
Speaker 1: so dangerous and also dark. So they'd watched the coppers
Speaker 1: strolling around and they think, interesting, their walk over a
Speaker 1: manhole there, and that's quite a large manhole. I wonder
Speaker 1: what would happen if we removed that manhole cover? And
Speaker 1: it's dark and the coppers wouldn't see that. So one
Speaker 1: of their forms are fun was to remove the manhole
Speaker 1: covers the poor coppers walking around, and they wait and
Speaker 1: see if one of them just dropped and ended up
Speaker 1: beneath the street, down the manhole, and then, as if
Speaker 1: that wasn't bad enough, if they if they could, if
Speaker 1: they could get away with it, they sneak out and
Speaker 1: put the manhole cover back on and leave the poor
Speaker 1: bobby down there. Now I don't think forever. I mean
Speaker 1: I presume eventually his workmates got him out. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're still down there skeletons of policemen below the
Speaker 1: streets at the east End. But I think this gives
Speaker 1: you an idea of the shall we say, mischievous regard
Speaker 1: in which the east Enders held the police. Now, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a great deal of respect there because they saw
Speaker 1: the police on the whole as forces of the establishment.
Speaker 1: You know, they're the people that are on these damned
Speaker 1: plumbing tours. So these are people coming to your neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: leading the knobs, the talks, the posh people laughing at us.
Speaker 1: They're being led by police. So how can you see
Speaker 1: them as being on your side when there are demonstrations
Speaker 1: and protests. Who who's hitting over here with a truncheon.
Speaker 1: It's the police. So no, there isn't much class solidarity.
Speaker 1: There are some police at the time who say, well,
Speaker 1: we are trying to do good for our neighborhood and
Speaker 1: you know, we need a job. We're not trying to
Speaker 1: oppress our working class neighbors. But now I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that they're not incredibly well thought of
Speaker 1: by the people of the East. And when the match
Speaker 1: from the strike happened, I was really interested to read
Speaker 1: in the local press that battalions of police were rushed
Speaker 1: into the area. I love this idea of women on
Speaker 1: strike and young women girls in many cases, being so
Speaker 1: terrified to the establishment they're all police leave was canceled.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, people eye on these dangerous match women
Speaker 1: said police are rushed in. But I think another reason
Speaker 1: is probably the local police were not key at all
Speaker 1: on trying to police the match women strike. They were like, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Let let people from outside who don't know
Speaker 1: what they're dealing with it and we can see the
Speaker 1: spirit of the match women. There was an event in
Speaker 1: the seventies when match workers were protesting against a proposed
Speaker 1: tax on matches which have been really bad for their trade.
Speaker 1: Now I have to say that their employers were really
Speaker 1: happy with them, encouraged them to protest. Actually, so that's
Speaker 1: not a complete revolution. React that they marched to Parliament
Speaker 1: and they're very young, a lot for people marching, and
Speaker 1: they have banners that they've made themselves to say two
Speaker 1: MPs do not don't bring this tax in. Now the
Speaker 1: police cattle them like this might have been one of
Speaker 1: the first examples ever of cattling, when the police around
Speaker 1: protesters and they try to snatch their banners and there's
Speaker 1: an all all out, free for all punch up. By
Speaker 1: the side of the tents, there are match women throwing
Speaker 1: rocks at the police, very well aimed apparently as well.
Speaker 1: They're they're finding their targets and breaking through, refusing to
Speaker 1: surrender their banners. Banners are a very important thing in
Speaker 1: protest at this period. It's like an army. You don't
Speaker 1: let the other side take your banners. And there's some
Speaker 1: of them managed to get free and they managed to
Speaker 1: get as far as Parliament to present their petition. But
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea as well. These are children
Speaker 1: on the whole. But my goodness, they can be fierce
Speaker 1: and they can fight, and the police, you know, the
Speaker 1: police know it. Mhm. Let's step forward a little in time,
Speaker 1: but follow those girls, those women who protesting in the seventies. Um,
Speaker 1: But what was the context in which they were working.
Speaker 1: Let's hear a little bit more about the factory. What's
Speaker 1: her little bit more about Brian and May. How significant
Speaker 1: a company was it? And you know in the book
Speaker 1: you've you've described that that company had an irresistible rise
Speaker 1: from quaker grocers to powerful and ruthless cartel. Can you
Speaker 1: offer that story kind of in in brief they're really
Speaker 1: the Victorian dream Brian to May. There is an original
Speaker 1: mis to Brian and then Mr May. And they start
Speaker 1: out as grossest, they're not particularly rich. They're trying a
Speaker 1: number of things, trying their hand at various things, so
Speaker 1: making candle making, all trying to make their fortune. And
Speaker 1: eventually they come to London because they're from Plymouth originally,
Speaker 1: and they leased this factory site on the Fairfield Road,
Speaker 1: very near the Bow Road, one of the most important
Speaker 1: roads in the East End. It was three factories. That's
Speaker 1: how large their ambition is really. And they construct this
Speaker 1: incredible Gothic castle. It's it looks like from the outside
Speaker 1: in which to make matches. They become this huge, huge firm.
Speaker 1: There are a household name. Matches are hugely important of
Speaker 1: course at the time, because you've got no lighting, you've
Speaker 1: got no heating, you've got no fire, you've got no
Speaker 1: hot water, you've got no hot food, let alone lighting
Speaker 1: your fag, your cigarettes or your pipes or your cigars.
Speaker 1: So matches are everywhere and they're an absolute essential for
Speaker 1: every household. And they very quickly because it is a
Speaker 1: low investment industry, huge profits, very little money to put in.
Speaker 1: They become massive within a generation. The original Mr Bryan
Speaker 1: and Mr May are still alive when this firm really
Speaker 1: carries all before it, and they're incredibly in with the
Speaker 1: Liberal Party that in the politicians. They're very significant. They
Speaker 1: become huge exporters as well, something factors all over the country.
Speaker 1: It's not just in the East End of Well This
Speaker 1: is a very significant one in the East End. And
Speaker 1: they're so important to the government that the government will
Speaker 1: tailor it's policies to Briant May. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: ghastly white phosphorus that they used to make matches gets
Speaker 1: banned in the rest of Europe quicker than it does
Speaker 1: in England because we don't want to aspect Brian and made.
Speaker 1: That's how important they become. The original Mr May, who's
Speaker 1: the nicer of the two. Francis May, I think, gets
Speaker 1: forced out by the Bryants. We don't know why. I'd
Speaker 1: love to know why something happens. He alludes Mr May
Speaker 1: to this terrible thing that Bryants have done that he
Speaker 1: can't forgive. I would love to know. I love a
Speaker 1: bit of gossip, but we don't know. The sons of
Speaker 1: the original Brant takeover and they are absolutely ruthless, capitalistic
Speaker 1: bastards in a very modern sense too. They've got a
Speaker 1: huge regard for public relations, so they're constantly showing rich
Speaker 1: people in journalists around the factory and saying, look at
Speaker 1: our lovely working conditions. Obviously they're making everything look good
Speaker 1: for those days. The girls are dressed up in their
Speaker 1: finest clothes that they probably got out of the pawn broker,
Speaker 1: so they're really aware of their public image and they
Speaker 1: just become second to none. They're one of the most
Speaker 1: successful countries in the company, so people assume that conditions
Speaker 1: must be good, it must be all right working for them,
Speaker 1: because look how rich they are. They've become a firm
Speaker 1: Innate and eighty four and very quickly shareholders they're getting
Speaker 1: return on their investment. That's massive. Also, shareholders are often
Speaker 1: liberal MPs because they're very tied in with the Liberal
Speaker 1: Party and clergymen. So again people think, well, they must
Speaker 1: be a fairly kindly respectable company because look at all
Speaker 1: these good men who are very concerned about the pool,
Speaker 1: who are investing in them. And it's really not until
Speaker 1: the strike that the match when managed to show us
Speaker 1: what's really going on. Behind this facards that looks like
Speaker 1: this gothic castle with gatehouses and turrets. Women are working
Speaker 1: twelve hour days and starving to death. Women are contracting
Speaker 1: necrosis from white phosphorus. Their jaws are rotting and decaying
Speaker 1: while they're still alive. But it takes this huge event
Speaker 1: that a striper comes to show us this because we
Speaker 1: don't want to see it. We want to assume Brian
Speaker 1: to mayar this lovely success story. And we all have
Speaker 1: their match boxes at home, and they have this wonderful
Speaker 1: patriotic designs on their match boxes, and it's all very Imperial.
Speaker 1: It's all very royal. We want to believe that they
Speaker 1: are good employers as much as we would bother thinking
Speaker 1: about match match work is we want to believe that
Speaker 1: they're good, but they're not. And they're also buying up
Speaker 1: rival firms at an incredible rate. So when people hear
Speaker 1: about conditions and they want to boycott Branton May, they say, right, well,
Speaker 1: will buy our matches from Bells or from this other
Speaker 1: companies instead. They don't realize that Briant to me are
Speaker 1: chuckling wig go and go on them because we actually
Speaker 1: own those companies. Sometimes they would buy out rivals who
Speaker 1: would maintain their own name. So you know, really it
Speaker 1: looks like David versus Goliath. It looks like the matter
Speaker 1: and have no chance. They've done everything to ensure their positions.
Speaker 1: They've not only managed to push wages down for no reason,
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be done, but wages are lower in
Speaker 1: eight and they were in eighteen seventy eight, just because
Speaker 1: why not, you know, more profits for the shareholders. And
Speaker 1: they've done this relentless pr campaign. They're in with government
Speaker 1: who can possibly stop them, who is possibly going to
Speaker 1: take them on? They think no one but of course
Speaker 1: they've underestimated the women who are right under their noses.
Speaker 1: Can you describe what kind of life was possible on
Speaker 1: a branton May wage and how did it compare to
Speaker 1: other sorts of are available in the in the East End.
Speaker 1: It was lower paid that brianton May didn't even know that.
Speaker 1: That's what's so fascinating. They just paid as little as
Speaker 1: they could get away with. During the strike, when people
Speaker 1: start saying, you are paying your women a very low rate,
Speaker 1: even the best pay, because everyone got different ways they're paid,
Speaker 1: depending what they did, how how long they've been there,
Speaker 1: how good they were at the job. You are paying
Speaker 1: your women way below the average. And brianton May say,
Speaker 1: we're absolutely not. But behind this scenes, if you look
Speaker 1: in their company correspondence file, they're desperately writing if the
Speaker 1: other factors going what do you pay? What do you pay?
Speaker 1: Can you please tell us what you pay? And they
Speaker 1: find out that yes, pretty much everywhere is paying more
Speaker 1: than their pay, so very little life a toy. We
Speaker 1: can't really call it a life. When you look at
Speaker 1: what some women were earning, they'd be earning a few
Speaker 1: shillings four shillings a week, the rent of one room,
Speaker 1: would be two shillings, and then you've got your bills,
Speaker 1: and then you've got food, so you are just about
Speaker 1: scraping by if that. And they're constantly having to rely
Speaker 1: on each other. They're in and out of the pawn
Speaker 1: break at Broker's like a revolving door. You know that
Speaker 1: wonderful song, Pop goes the weasel up and down the
Speaker 1: city road in that diaesel, Pop goes the weasel. What
Speaker 1: that means is you're popping your pawning your weasel, which
Speaker 1: wasn't dressmaker's iron. So working women are constantly having to
Speaker 1: pawn even the tools of their trade to get them
Speaker 1: to the end of the week until I get paid again.
Speaker 1: And that was certainly the case for the match women,
Speaker 1: palling everything they could, their clothes, their boots and their
Speaker 1: hats that probably didn't have jewelry, but anything they did have,
Speaker 1: and helping each other, lending to each other, constantly supporting
Speaker 1: each other. So when they were sacked by Brian and
Speaker 1: May for anything, oh god, it could be anything, you know,
Speaker 1: getting pregnant if you weren't married, laughing, any kind of
Speaker 1: in subordination, you would just be sacked. And they would
Speaker 1: literally pass the hat, and it was a hat and
Speaker 1: probably a beautiful feathered one for each other. So life
Speaker 1: was impossible, and it was starvation rates unless you were
Speaker 1: helped out, and even those who did have the support
Speaker 1: of their friends were so malnourished by that When Annie
Speaker 1: Besset comes along and meet some women for the first time,
Speaker 1: she notices they're very small and frail, even for working
Speaker 1: class women at this time. They were not healthy and robust.
Speaker 1: You don't have a chance to be. But they're particularly
Speaker 1: small because these low wages. Brian and Mayor pushed the
Speaker 1: wages down, so they're lower than they were ten years before.
Speaker 1: So you're a young girl, you're getting that terribly below
Speaker 1: starvation rate of pay when you should be hitting puberty.
Speaker 1: So you're just not developing properly. You're just so malnourished
Speaker 1: that you're unable to grow and develop as you should
Speaker 1: have done. So really very little life was possible. Yet
Speaker 1: they still, you know, girls just want to have fun. Still,
Speaker 1: they would enjoy life whenever they could, their feather clubs,
Speaker 1: standing treat going out to tea whenever they could. They
Speaker 1: would still enjoy life, So you know, they weren't as
Speaker 1: beaten down and as oppressed, as their employers like to think,
Speaker 1: and as you think they might have been. They had
Speaker 1: this incredible spirit and they had pride in being matched women.
Speaker 1: They decided to turn that around. Other people may look
Speaker 1: down on us, but we are proud. We are the
Speaker 1: match girls. Who the hell are you? And they were
Speaker 1: proud of their identity, and still some of them remained friends,
Speaker 1: you know, forty forty years after they finished working in
Speaker 1: the factory and still went drinking together whenever they could. M.
Speaker 1: Can you describe the kinds of work needed to produce
Speaker 1: a briant in May match? M. Yes, it wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to be skilled work, but in fact, the way that
Speaker 1: we decide what is skilled and what is not as
Speaker 1: pretty arbitrary. Generally decide that if men do it, it's skilled.
Speaker 1: Even when a job has been female, when it becomes male,
Speaker 1: suddenly we decided that it's skilled. But they had to
Speaker 1: work incredibly fast and incredibly accurately, not just to earn
Speaker 1: their wages, but to avoid being fined, because Bright and
Speaker 1: May would put illegal fines onto their wages if they
Speaker 1: made the slightest thing wrong, if the matches caught fire
Speaker 1: in the process, so you would initially have would that
Speaker 1: was divided into splints, which would go on to make
Speaker 1: the matches. Each splint was divided into two to make
Speaker 1: a match. These were set into a frame. The frame
Speaker 1: was then dipped into the white phosphorus, this horrible toxic chemical,
Speaker 1: and that was what made these matches so incredibly flammable.
Speaker 1: They were then left to dry. They were then cut
Speaker 1: down and they were then boxed and the fillers, by
Speaker 1: the way, the people who filled the boxes were incredible.
Speaker 1: Could throw any kind of different box or any kind
Speaker 1: of different match at them and they would hardly stop.
Speaker 1: Their fingers were just moving all the time. They knew
Speaker 1: exactly how many matches to grab to fit into a box.
Speaker 1: They were just incredibly skilled women. But a note on
Speaker 1: white phosphorus. People who have heard a little bit about
Speaker 1: the match them may have heard of Fossey jewel, this
Speaker 1: ghastly industrial disease. The thing about it was it's completely unnecessary.
Speaker 1: Brianton May didn't have to use it. Red phosphorus was
Speaker 1: available and it was safe, but it was more expensive,
Speaker 1: it was more difficult to produce, it took a little
Speaker 1: longer to produce, so why should they bother? They claimed,
Speaker 1: they didn't know about the effects of Fosse jewel. They
Speaker 1: claimed they didn't have any cases of it in their factory.
Speaker 1: They absolutely did know, and they absolutely did have people
Speaker 1: dying of it. And what would happen was that if
Speaker 1: you went into the area of the factory where the
Speaker 1: phosphorus was, you would immediately smell the ghastly fumes of phospterus.
Speaker 1: Absolutely stinks phosphorus, and you would perhaps be sick straightaway.
Speaker 1: People would vomit immediately on breathing it in, or they
Speaker 1: would pass out. That was really common. Whomen had to
Speaker 1: go outside and faint and then go back to work.
Speaker 1: If it caught hold of your teeth, as the women said,
Speaker 1: if it got into your jawbone, often throw holes in
Speaker 1: your teeth because you couldn't afford the dentists in those days.
Speaker 1: It would start to rot and decay your jawbone. So
Speaker 1: you're still alive, but you've got this horrible, separating, stinking abscesses. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I thying was just eaten in your gun and pieces
Speaker 1: of bone, your own bone. You're spitting them out there
Speaker 1: working their way out through these abscesses. It was a
Speaker 1: horrible disease, particularly because sufferers couldn't always live under the
Speaker 1: same roof as their families. Loved ones couldn't stand it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're living tend to a room. People just
Speaker 1: couldn't stand the smell. So later factory inspectors will find
Speaker 1: match women living on the outskirts of hounds and sishes,
Speaker 1: almost like lepers in the final stages of the disease,
Speaker 1: and match men as well. There were matched dippers who
Speaker 1: were often men, and they suffered from it as well.
Speaker 1: As If all of this wasn't bad enough, Brian and
Speaker 1: they constantly made it worse. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: they made it worse was they should have provided a
Speaker 1: separate dining room so that women could eat out of
Speaker 1: the fumes, eat their own food. By the way, Branton
Speaker 1: may weren't going to provide them a single crumb, but
Speaker 1: perhaps their own bitter, stale bread if they were lucky
Speaker 1: that they brought him for home, so they would set
Speaker 1: it on their workbench until it was time to eat,
Speaker 1: and then cram it down as quickly as they could
Speaker 1: when they could. And if you imagine, the phosphorus particles
Speaker 1: in the air have settled now on your lunch, so
Speaker 1: you've got this deadly seasoning and so it's immediately in
Speaker 1: your mouth and it's got a way into your guns.
Speaker 1: And Briant and May's attitude to this was complete indifference.
Speaker 1: If they saw a woman who seemed to be coming
Speaker 1: down with the foss, perhaps your doorbone would start to
Speaker 1: swell and you look very toothache and a bit mumpsy.
Speaker 1: They would stack you. So the women would cover up
Speaker 1: their faces with kerchiefs. And even though they knew this
Speaker 1: disease was deadly, it didn't always kill you, and it
Speaker 1: didn't kill you as quickly as starvation. So that was
Speaker 1: the kind of awful calculations and accommodations that they had
Speaker 1: to make. While brianson May were literally living in oh,
Speaker 1: the most incredible country estates. You know, Mansions isn't in it.
Speaker 1: One of them was the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. I always
Speaker 1: think it should have been the Sheriff of nottingham Shire,
Speaker 1: like in robin Hood, because they were such terrible people.
Speaker 1: But they're making a fortune, that's the awful thing. While
Speaker 1: this is happening, the company is absolutely flourishing. Would you
Speaker 1: describe from the Gladstone statue and what what kind of
Speaker 1: reaction it provoked? Now this is absolutely fascinating and this
Speaker 1: really gives us a flavor of the spirit of the
Speaker 1: match women and their eye for a good political gesture.
Speaker 1: So Brian and may as I said, we're very well
Speaker 1: in with the Liberal Party. And Gladstone was always being
Speaker 1: Prime Minister during this period, is prime minister for several
Speaker 1: different terms. So the ultimate act of sucking up my
Speaker 1: goodness talk about as kissing Brian. And they just said
Speaker 1: they will build a statue of William Gladstone and they
Speaker 1: will build it on the Bow Road. And it's actually
Speaker 1: gesturing with the right hand towards their factory. Such humidity.
Speaker 1: You know, there's Gladstone saying you look at this wonderful factory.
Speaker 1: So they decided they're going to build it. They could
Speaker 1: have paid for it themselves. They could have paid for
Speaker 1: a thousand statues themselves, I'm sure, very easily. But again,
Speaker 1: why would you when you can make your work is pay.
Speaker 1: So what they do is to take involuntary deductions, forced
Speaker 1: deductions from the girls, already incredibly low paid, to pay
Speaker 1: for this statue. Women not happy, you could understand, women
Speaker 1: not pleased at all with this, but they don't have
Speaker 1: any say in it. And then they announced the foremen,
Speaker 1: who were the sort of line managers I suppose, and
Speaker 1: often quite violent. They would hit the women and they
Speaker 1: were really unpleasant to them, and they were real company men.
Speaker 1: They'd lived on site, they had lovely cottages on site,
Speaker 1: so they were really brought and painful. Came in and said, oh,
Speaker 1: you're all very lucky. You're getting half afternoon off tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You're getting half the day off to go and see
Speaker 1: this statue being unveiled. And the women are like, well,
Speaker 1: are we being paid for that? And they say no,
Speaker 1: you're very lucky, you're getting some time off work. And
Speaker 1: the women say, you know you can stuff that. Basically
Speaker 1: whether's son doesn't shine. We don't want no holidays on
Speaker 1: those terms. Quite rightly, they want to be paid. And
Speaker 1: the former say, look, if you want to work here,
Speaker 1: you're going to turn up in your best bib and
Speaker 1: tucker your best hat and you're going to be pulled
Speaker 1: light and you're gonna stand and pullaue put applaud politely
Speaker 1: while this statue and right in the middle of the
Speaker 1: bow road it couldn't be more prominent, is unveiled. So
Speaker 1: the match, when we have a plan, they say all right,
Speaker 1: then we'll be there, and they are there, and you
Speaker 1: can just imagine the scene. The great and the good
Speaker 1: are gathered because Brian and may never miss an opportunity
Speaker 1: to show off. So all the Brant boys and their
Speaker 1: wives and their children, and their shareholders and prominent liberals
Speaker 1: are all there, and there are features and it's all tremendous.
Speaker 1: And finally this statue is unveiled and then the match
Speaker 1: were in move as one. They run up to the
Speaker 1: posire of the statue shouting out, our blood paid for
Speaker 1: this statue. And they pricked their fingers, which must have
Speaker 1: been with happins, because of what else would you do
Speaker 1: it with? They have these incredibly long, sharp, vicious happens
Speaker 1: which they used a self defense when they had to,
Speaker 1: in their beautiful hats prick their fingers and held their
Speaker 1: hands and dripped their blood onto the statue and said,
Speaker 1: our blood paid for this, which is just incredible. It's
Speaker 1: a shame it's not recorded anywhere, but I would imagine
Speaker 1: that Bryant's must have been incandescent. Talk about ruining their moment,
Speaker 1: but it was absolutely brilliant. And that if that's not political,
Speaker 1: and if that's not resistance I don't know what is
Speaker 1: because they waited for their moment and they just timed
Speaker 1: it beautifully. Ah. So let's start talking about who some
Speaker 1: of these who some of these women were, and one especially,
Speaker 1: let's talk about married risk call Um, who was married
Speaker 1: risk all A. Mary Diskill was only fourteen at the
Speaker 1: time of the strike, but that wasn't one of these.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't have been one of the youngest girls. She's
Speaker 1: in if anyone's seen that, the most famous photograph of
Speaker 1: the women, when they're actually standing outside the factory and
Speaker 1: they're looking into the camera, they look very nervous and
Speaker 1: very pale. She's the allst woman at the back wearing
Speaker 1: a hat. His granddaughter came up to me and said,
Speaker 1: I think that's my grandmother now. She was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four. Both her parents were Irish and had
Speaker 1: come over from Ireland. She started working when she was
Speaker 1: a very young girl, and she was really prominent in
Speaker 1: the factory. She was very well respected, and her granddaughter
Speaker 1: told me that although she was quiet, she was quite
Speaker 1: a reticent woman. She had what Joan called an Irish temper,
Speaker 1: and she absolutely took no nonsense. So later in life,
Speaker 1: when one of the women in her street is being
Speaker 1: assaulted by her husband. It's Mary who goes out there
Speaker 1: with the poker from the fireplace and chases him down
Speaker 1: and tells him to stop beating up his wife. And
Speaker 1: at the time of her strike the strike, not just
Speaker 1: Mary but her sister Paul, also known as mog because
Speaker 1: people do very strange things, was named in the Victory
Speaker 1: period and also known as Margaret. It's working there as well.
Speaker 1: And in the picture Paul has her hand on Mary's shoulder.
Speaker 1: And I've seen pictures of these two going right towards
Speaker 1: the ends of their lives where they always stand like that.
Speaker 1: They're so close and so fond of each other that
Speaker 1: one's always got their hand on the other one's shoulder.
Speaker 1: But Mary had an incredibly hard life. She married a
Speaker 1: dock laborer, and that's really common as well. Match women
Speaker 1: and dockers tended to marry each other. Not surprisingly, they
Speaker 1: lived in the same streets and houses. They were all
Speaker 1: pretty much Irish heritage. They had all those connections. They
Speaker 1: were the casual workers of these dens, and the docks
Speaker 1: were a huge employer of men. The match works were
Speaker 1: a huge employer of women. But she had a really
Speaker 1: hard life with him. He was an alcoholic and he
Speaker 1: was violent occasionally as well, and in fact, when she
Speaker 1: was pregnant. Once during one of her pregnances, he knocked
Speaker 1: her down the stairs and she miscarriage and was extremely
Speaker 1: ill afterwards. When Thomas eventually died, it was on the docks,
Speaker 1: although there were stories that he'd actually got into a fight,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't really an industrial accident. However, Mary finally
Speaker 1: got a stroke of luck because she got compensation because
Speaker 1: of the doctor's strike, which had followed on from her
Speaker 1: own strike. Conditions were better and there was workers compensation available,
Speaker 1: so this made a huge difference to her, and instantly
Speaker 1: she was incredibly sensible and went and bought herself a shop.
Speaker 1: Now that sounds really fancy, doesn't It Only a shop,
Speaker 1: But shops at that time we're tiny. They could be
Speaker 1: quite whole in the corner of fairs. They could be
Speaker 1: just front rooms of little houses on East end streets
Speaker 1: that she eventually owned two shops, a corn chandler's like
Speaker 1: a general groceres and a cat's meat shop. Now, when
Speaker 1: I say cats meat shop, people often say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: were there that poor? Were people eating cats? Well? No,
Speaker 1: not as far as we know. Not on the whole.
Speaker 1: This was meat forecats, because people, even though they were poor,
Speaker 1: they wanted to have pets and they still loved animals,
Speaker 1: so they would buy the cheapest cuts of meat for cats.
Speaker 1: She was an amazing shop owner, according to her granddaughter Joan.
Speaker 1: She said that although she never learned to read or write,
Speaker 1: my God, could she add up? She would know anytime
Speaker 1: she could be running total in her head of exactly
Speaker 1: what was in the tills, exactly how much should be
Speaker 1: in the tills of either shop at any one time,
Speaker 1: and when the aunts, when her daughters would want to
Speaker 1: sneak out on dates, she'd be, where are you going?
Speaker 1: You're supposed to be working in the shop. So really
Speaker 1: everything was dedicated to this family business. She did reasonably
Speaker 1: well for herself in that God, but she was also
Speaker 1: so interesting political to the extent of being a huge
Speaker 1: fan of the Irish rebels, and her granddaughter Jones, said
Speaker 1: that whenever she was in drink, when she'd had a gym,
Speaker 1: she did enjoy gin. She would sing Irish rebel songs
Speaker 1: as she would sing the bold Robert Emmett, and she
Speaker 1: had pictures of Michael Collins in the nineties sixteen uprising
Speaker 1: much later in her life obviously, and Robert Emma, and
Speaker 1: she didn't own much, but those were never pawned or sold.
Speaker 1: Those were taken with her to every house that she
Speaker 1: lived in. Now. She enjoyed the gin to an extent
Speaker 1: that she had a mother in law that the mother
Speaker 1: of her cruel and abusive husband, so she didn't get
Speaker 1: on with either. And she took out a small life
Speaker 1: insurance policy on her mar in law. And when mother
Speaker 1: in law died, she was so delighted. She had a
Speaker 1: party and she spent all of that life and she
Speaker 1: wants money on Jim. She was the most amazingly strong woman.
Speaker 1: She survived to the blitz of World War two, and
Speaker 1: Mary remembers her telling the story that when the bombs
Speaker 1: were falling, one of Mary's daughters had a baby terror.
Speaker 1: What a terrifying time to be giving birth, but she
Speaker 1: gave birth and Mary ran through the streets with this
Speaker 1: grandchild in her arms. Goodness says what the new mom
Speaker 1: thought about this in order to get her baptized, because
Speaker 1: she was Catholic and it was really important to her
Speaker 1: to get this baby baptized. Joan absolutely adored Mary. She
Speaker 1: was the matriarch of the family, absolutely no question about that.
Speaker 1: And because Joan's own mom was ill, Mary basically brought
Speaker 1: her up to the point where she adored her grandmother
Speaker 1: so much that her own mother would say, well, she
Speaker 1: has got her faults, you know, she's not perfect. But
Speaker 1: the accommodation she was living thing, and Mary just there
Speaker 1: was a very fastidious woman. She was very house proud
Speaker 1: where she could be. But she was living in a
Speaker 1: house with black beetles all over it, with no toilet,
Speaker 1: with no running water, toilet out in a courtyard of
Speaker 1: shared toilet horrible. And when one of her daughters moved
Speaker 1: slightly out of the East End into one of the
Speaker 1: new semi detached houses, Mary was, for the first time
Speaker 1: in her life, absolutely speechless. She just stared at this house,
Speaker 1: very very small house, you know, too up to down,
Speaker 1: but with his own toilet and its own bathroom, and
Speaker 1: she said, oh, my goodness, this is a palace. And
Speaker 1: she was so pleased that her own children were doing
Speaker 1: better than she had done. And she died finally during
Speaker 1: World War two, and her granddaughter Joan was in the
Speaker 1: Women's Army and had to plead to get leave to
Speaker 1: go home and see her beloved granddaughter. Grandmother in her
Speaker 1: last moment went So she was furious with her sergeant
Speaker 1: who didn't want to give her leave, and she said
Speaker 1: to her, it's only your grandmother. And Janes said, she
Speaker 1: might seem like only a grandmother, but she's all the
Speaker 1: world to me and just just the most incredible woman.
Speaker 1: M there's one little story that you tell in the
Speaker 1: book about her attitude towards the Salvation Army in the
Speaker 1: East End when she was young. Do you want to
Speaker 1: read tell that little Yes, she was not stupid. There
Speaker 1: were no flies on Mary. She was a very clever woman,
Speaker 1: and like all Eastern moms, she did whatever she had
Speaker 1: to do to survive. And the Salvation Army, the Sally
Speaker 1: Anne was some of the people that would do good
Speaker 1: work amongst the poor and crucially ran soup kitchens and
Speaker 1: would give out soup and give out free food and Mary.
Speaker 1: But only if you were, you know, a good Protestant.
Speaker 1: They were not in the business of giving it out
Speaker 1: to Jewish people of Catholic people. So Mary train all
Speaker 1: her children to sing Salvation Army hymns and they would
Speaker 1: go along to these soup kitchens sing these hymns, you know,
Speaker 1: passionately pretend to be religious, a salvation army who would
Speaker 1: be terribly impressed, and they would get their free soup.
Speaker 1: Oh now, what sort of work did Mary do for
Speaker 1: Brian and May? So she worked in She and her
Speaker 1: sister both worked in the key workshops for Brian and May,
Speaker 1: and throughout their careers there did various kinds of jobs.
Speaker 1: So they would be working in the book stores, they
Speaker 1: would be filling the match boxes with matches and also
Speaker 1: doing cutting down and it was all very arduous because
Speaker 1: it was all done standing. You had to stand at
Speaker 1: your workbench, you weren't allowed to sit down, and it
Speaker 1: was at least a twelve hour day. You weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to talk, and you weren't supposed to laugh or joke
Speaker 1: with your fellow factory hands. And then I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: there was this business of burnt The matches dipped in
Speaker 1: white phosphors were incredibly flammable. I mean, obviously matches are
Speaker 1: supposed to be flammable, but these were dangerously so. What
Speaker 1: they called lucifer matches, which were people's favorite matches at
Speaker 1: the time because you didn't have to buy a whole
Speaker 1: box and carry it around, which is quite expensive thing
Speaker 1: to buy. You could just buy a few matches and
Speaker 1: carry them with you and strike them anywhere. Them called
Speaker 1: strike anywhere matches. So men used to apparently like to
Speaker 1: show off to the ladies by striking them on the
Speaker 1: flies of their trousers and on their boots. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if that would have impressed in women then,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it would now. But they were prone
Speaker 1: to catching fire in the process. Absolutely not the workers
Speaker 1: full and yet they would be fined for it, So
Speaker 1: you know, it was really grim and arduous work. M
Speaker 1: Who was Martha Robinson and and how old was she
Speaker 1: at the time of the strike. Martha Robertson was the
Speaker 1: grandmother of one of my best witnesses and friends. I'm
Speaker 1: glad to say I became very friendly with her grandson,
Speaker 1: ted lewis a wonderful man and only died a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. And she was born only a nation two,
Speaker 1: so how on earth? Because she had been working in
Speaker 1: but she was she was making matches for Brian to May,
Speaker 1: and she was such a matriarch in her family that
Speaker 1: we do have a wonderful record that was recorded by
Speaker 1: the family they wrote down some of her reminiscences, and
Speaker 1: thank god they did. You know, this is the whole
Speaker 1: story and stream, isn't it. I was like, give me
Speaker 1: that book. I kept borrowing it and looking at it
Speaker 1: and finding more things. And it was hand written with
Speaker 1: photographs as well. But it was a scrap book really,
Speaker 1: but it was really wonderful memoir of the family. So
Speaker 1: she would get up as a six year old. I
Speaker 1: always tell my son this, you know, when he doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like doing his homework or doesn't feel like helping
Speaker 1: around the house. And you could have been working from
Speaker 1: the age of six, my lad. She'd get up at
Speaker 1: five in the morning and lay sweep at the fireplace
Speaker 1: and lay the fire for the family. She was one
Speaker 1: of six children, then later another three, so she became
Speaker 1: one of nine. She would look under the stairs where
Speaker 1: the shoe collection, the family shoe collection was, because you
Speaker 1: didn't have your own pairs of shoes. It was just
Speaker 1: whatever you could find. You know, you might find a
Speaker 1: shoe in the street and bring it home and try
Speaker 1: and make it fit by stuff with newspaper. Because shoes
Speaker 1: were so expensive, she tried to find a vaguely matching
Speaker 1: pair pad them out if she had to, and off
Speaker 1: she'd walk to the factory. She would pick up everything
Speaker 1: she needed from Brian and May to make the matchboxes,
Speaker 1: so the cardboard, and she would have to buy her
Speaker 1: own paste and come home and make as many of
Speaker 1: the boxes as she could and then take them back
Speaker 1: to the factory and get paid, so she'd get paid
Speaker 1: like on her piece work. And then she'd walk home
Speaker 1: six years old. Again, I have to stress and buy
Speaker 1: bread for the family. So if she didn't do that,
Speaker 1: she wasn't feeling well. One day they didn't get to eat.
Speaker 1: So it is the most incredibly responsible position. And she
Speaker 1: got married to James Laken and he was a rifleman
Speaker 1: in World War One. She was still working at Brianton
Speaker 1: May then sometimes in the factory. Between children, people generally
Speaker 1: would work in the factory and then when you had
Speaker 1: a new baby you might switch to making match boxes
Speaker 1: again at home. And he went missing. He was missing
Speaker 1: in action, presumed dead, and Martha had three children by them,
Speaker 1: and she was one of these incredibly well respected women
Speaker 1: in the community and in the street. She was there.
Speaker 1: She was the one who call if someone died. She
Speaker 1: would help you lay out the dead because of that.
Speaker 1: She was so well respected that the army came to
Speaker 1: her because they had a problem. They had a number
Speaker 1: of soldiers who had been so badly wounded in the
Speaker 1: horrors of World War One that they were unidentifiable. They
Speaker 1: were alive just about, but they were impossible to identify.
Speaker 1: They couldn't speak, they'd lost all their identity tags. There
Speaker 1: was a whole ward of them, and so they bought
Speaker 1: him women in good standing in the neighborhood to help
Speaker 1: if they could identify some of their neighbors. It's just
Speaker 1: absolutely bizarre, isn't it that the army could not have
Speaker 1: known who these people were. And she went around with
Speaker 1: her sons, and she was drawn to one man in particular,
Speaker 1: who was just completely bandaged from head to toe. I
Speaker 1: picture of being like the invisible man wh she can
Speaker 1: just about see his eyes and that's all and you
Speaker 1: can't speak. He's just sort of making noises. But she
Speaker 1: feels drawn to him for some reason, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to make eye contact with her, and she suddenly says, Jim,
Speaker 1: is that you And she realizes that yes, it's her
Speaker 1: husband who was supposed to be dead, and she fainted.
Speaker 1: She fainted into the arms of her son's and then
Speaker 1: she had to look after him. Now, forget about any
Speaker 1: kind of help to do that. Don't forget no NHS,
Speaker 1: no natural health, so there's no benefits whatsoever. She's just expected,
Speaker 1: whilst working, whilst looking after her kids, to look after
Speaker 1: this man as well, who's completely deformed and disfigured by
Speaker 1: the way. He's had half a face blown away and
Speaker 1: in the photographs it's bad that the deformity is really bad,
Speaker 1: and it must have been very difficult for him to
Speaker 1: even eat, and he was never the same again. They
Speaker 1: went on to have three more children together, but he
Speaker 1: really was never the same person. He was very I
Speaker 1: suppose depressed and probably had what we've now called PTSD,
Speaker 1: you know, post combat stress. So he was really a
Speaker 1: miserable brother, I think, and he would just sit in
Speaker 1: the corner and shout at the kids. That's what everyone
Speaker 1: remembers of him. But she stayed with him until he
Speaker 1: and she did marry again. She married a longstanding sweetheart
Speaker 1: of hers and had a much happier second marriage until
Speaker 1: he died as well. But what a character she was.
Speaker 1: She was absolutely one hell of a force. And her
Speaker 1: grandson Ted Lewis told me what she was like. He said, well,
Speaker 1: we'd go out drinking, because he, again, like Joan Harris,
Speaker 1: adored his grandmother and spent an awful lot of time
Speaker 1: with her as a boy, and when he was old
Speaker 1: enough to drink and they go to the pub together,
Speaker 1: he said, she was always the same Martha. She was
Speaker 1: really artful, she was really cunning. You'd say to her,
Speaker 1: oh can I get you a drink and she'd say,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, no, dear, no, no no no
Speaker 1: no you you you keep your money, and she'd make
Speaker 1: you insist, oh no no, no, Granna buy you a drink,
Speaker 1: all right? Then dig Or bets you. So he'd always
Speaker 1: end up paying for the drinks. But if there was
Speaker 1: a fight in the pub, and there often were fights
Speaker 1: in the pub, she could to fight back, even as
Speaker 1: an old lady. He remembered. Once she'd had a hip
Speaker 1: operation and he took her out as her first time
Speaker 1: out in public since she'd had this operation, and they
Speaker 1: were in a pub and it all started to kick off.
Speaker 1: So she heaved herself up from her chair and she said, right, said,
Speaker 1: propped me up in the corner, give me my stick
Speaker 1: and our bloody take all the buggers on and she
Speaker 1: did as well. And even when she was ill and
Speaker 1: she was in bed in her house, friends would come
Speaker 1: and see her. She was always she always had open
Speaker 1: out house. When she was a younger woman, people will
Speaker 1: come back from the pubs with her and played the piano.
Speaker 1: And it sounds such a cliche, you know, around the
Speaker 1: old Joanna, the old cockneys having your knees up, But
Speaker 1: you know this cliche has come from somewhere. They really did.
Speaker 1: She always managed to pay the bills and keep a
Speaker 1: good roof over their head. And Ted said this was
Speaker 1: because she got about a bit. So she had a
Speaker 1: lot of lovers basically, and I think the landlord might
Speaker 1: have been one of them, because he would visit and say,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have only three people in here, and
Speaker 1: you seem to have about seven or eight. They're always
Speaker 1: new children. But she managed to charm him somehow so
Speaker 1: they didn't get evicted. And finally, when she was dying,
Speaker 1: her room was always crowded because she was still holding court.
Speaker 1: That many people would come and visit her. And she
Speaker 1: always said that she didn't need an alarm clock because
Speaker 1: from where she was in bed she could hear a
Speaker 1: man who sold pots and pants, a street trader who'd
Speaker 1: walked down the road about seven in the morning with
Speaker 1: his barrow, and she said, do you know, Love, there's
Speaker 1: a dodgy manhole cover and he always hits it, that
Speaker 1: silly bugger. He always goes over it and he loses
Speaker 1: the look. And hear his whole his whole will barrow,
Speaker 1: his whole barrow, everything falling off it. And she would
Speaker 1: laugh herself sick at this. I wonder the poor son's
Speaker 1: got anything left us out? And she said that was
Speaker 1: better than alarm clock, and that was what always woke
Speaker 1: her up in the morning. So again, there's just this
Speaker 1: incredible spirit. She when she was even though she was
Speaker 1: often without food, she would always make sure that the
Speaker 1: children ate, and later her grandchildren. She had ducks in
Speaker 1: her tiny little backyard, and when Ted visited, he'd say,
Speaker 1: what are we having for dinner, Grandma? And she always
Speaker 1: look at him and smile and say, duck. Do you think,
Speaker 1: Oh no, she's eating with ducks. Were eating the ducks.
Speaker 1: That's terrible. And she was just winding him up because
Speaker 1: then he realized after a couple of years, hang on
Speaker 1: a minute, there's always the same number of ducks out
Speaker 1: the side, out of the back. She was just using
Speaker 1: them for eggs and they were probably eating baggots, really
Speaker 1: cheat cuts and meat or something completely different. But you know,
Speaker 1: she's the archetypal I suppose woman who just has, on
Speaker 1: the surface, on paper, such a terrible life and goes
Speaker 1: through so much, but still manages to be a community
Speaker 1: leader and a real force, not just as in her family,
Speaker 1: but in her widest streets and neighborhood to you know,
Speaker 1: a highly respected queen of the East End. Um, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the strike itself. What were
Speaker 1: the events that kicked off the walkout and how did
Speaker 1: the strike committee for mm hmm. I really had to
Speaker 1: dig to work this out because when it came to it,
Speaker 1: all I knew was that there had been a strike
Speaker 1: and that it had been led from the outside. So obviously,
Speaker 1: because of that, we had no details about the real
Speaker 1: strike because it was supposed to have been a case
Speaker 1: is women were just told to go on strike by
Speaker 1: them with the classes. But what actually happened is so
Speaker 1: much more fascinating. Annie Besson was this middle class journalist
Speaker 1: and fabian a kind of socialist society that George Burnet
Speaker 1: Sure was a member of two and she was at
Speaker 1: a Fabian meeting in June and heard someone speak about
Speaker 1: the terrible conditions that working women particularly experienced in the
Speaker 1: East End and the terrible exploit a ship. She didn't
Speaker 1: know enough about the match were going to realize that
Speaker 1: the speaker was actually talking about box makers. The match
Speaker 1: box makers the homeworkers who worked in their homes. She assumed, well,
Speaker 1: as a brand and mayfactory in Fairfield, and it must
Speaker 1: be them. So she thought, well, I'll go and see
Speaker 1: if that's true. She wasn't convinced that it was. She
Speaker 1: went down and she waited until some of the women
Speaker 1: came off shift there. They worked different shifts and came
Speaker 1: out of the gates and onto the boat road, and
Speaker 1: she stopped them and said, I'm a journalist. I would
Speaker 1: like to talk to you about your conditions. It was
Speaker 1: that from this that we know everything that we do
Speaker 1: know about their conditions, From what those women told her
Speaker 1: about the fossy jaw, about the finds, about the fact
Speaker 1: that they were earning less now than in and the
Speaker 1: wonderful story of the statue. This all came out in
Speaker 1: that initial interview. She went back and wrote it up
Speaker 1: really hard hitting piece called White Slavery in London. And
Speaker 1: now there we can hark back to the maiden tribute
Speaker 1: to modern Babylon and this kind of obsession with the
Speaker 1: sexual exploitation of working class women, because white Slavery was
Speaker 1: one of the phrases used to refer to that. It's
Speaker 1: a very good title. I think. Also I wonder if
Speaker 1: any Beston wasn't having a pop that one of the
Speaker 1: Bryants who had been named Wilberforce Bryant after William Morberforce,
Speaker 1: the abolition campaigner, And I wonder if she wasn't having
Speaker 1: a goal because she's basically saying to Brian, and may
Speaker 1: you treat these people actually worse than enslaved people, because
Speaker 1: enslaved people at least are usually fed, you know, just
Speaker 1: enough so they can do the work, probably not well,
Speaker 1: but they are usually fed and housed. And your women
Speaker 1: girls don't even have that. They have to pay out
Speaker 1: of these terrible wages, terribly low ages after you find them,
Speaker 1: and the wages have gone done even further for all
Speaker 1: of that as well. And it was meant to be
Speaker 1: incredibly hard hitting, and it was, and to make sure
Speaker 1: that Brian and they knew about it. She telegrammed them
Speaker 1: and said, please do buy my paper, which is called
Speaker 1: The Link, a socialist journal, Please do buy it. I
Speaker 1: think there's nascar we're going to be very interested in.
Speaker 1: And of course they did buy it, and we're incandescent
Speaker 1: with rage. What was she hoped was not for a strike.
Speaker 1: There's no mention of that at all in White Slavery
Speaker 1: in London, despite the fact she's been called a strike leader.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the first things I was
Speaker 1: able to do, thanks to Brian to May, was to
Speaker 1: look at the initial the original article White Slavery in London,
Speaker 1: because it was in those boxes. I looked at in
Speaker 1: the archive and they'd ripped it out. It looked like
Speaker 1: it had been angrily ripped out of the paper it
Speaker 1: was and thrown into the archives. But I then looked
Speaker 1: at the whole edition of that paper in the newspaper
Speaker 1: library and it was quite illuminating. She's written a little
Speaker 1: bit further on about the idea of unionizing the casual poor,
Speaker 1: the very poor, the underclass women like this, and she
Speaker 1: actually said consider the women of Bryant Made that I
Speaker 1: wrote about in another column, and she's arguing against unionizing them.
Speaker 1: By the way, it would be impossible because if they
Speaker 1: tried to go on strike, they would just be sacked.
Speaker 1: And there's such high unemployment in this London that all
Speaker 1: their bosses are going to do is to hire someone else.
Speaker 1: It just wouldn't work. She's saying, it's not the way
Speaker 1: we do it, which is kind of interesting, isn't it
Speaker 1: a strike leader arguing against strikes. Well, you might think
Speaker 1: perhaps she's been tactical, she doesn't want the employers to
Speaker 1: know what she's up to. But in fact, the faber
Speaker 1: in society were really against strikes. M. George Bernard sure
Speaker 1: busterly complain about strikes and what they cost the economy.
Speaker 1: What they want, there's a much more respectable reform. They
Speaker 1: want the upper echelons of labor, the labor aristocracy as
Speaker 1: they're called then, to be the ones who are in
Speaker 1: trading is because you know they're they're proper people with
Speaker 1: top hats. They might be working class, but my goodness,
Speaker 1: at least they're decent people, not like these underclass proles.
Speaker 1: We don't really want anything to do with them. So
Speaker 1: she was absolutely typical of her class of socialists in
Speaker 1: suggesting that striking was a terrible mistake. So then Brian
Speaker 1: to May get this article and they are furious. But
Speaker 1: rather than what she thinks they're going to do, which
Speaker 1: is to sue her, and that's what she wants. She thinks, right,
Speaker 1: they'll sue me, I'll go to court and defend myself.
Speaker 1: She's done this before, and this gives me a forum.
Speaker 1: This will be reporting the papers forum for my message.
Speaker 1: I can then say these workers are being treated terribly
Speaker 1: and I can advise people to boycott brant to May.
Speaker 1: I think about that she's not talking to working class people.
Speaker 1: She's talking to consumers. That's middle class to middle class,
Speaker 1: over the heads of the workers. But in fact Brian
Speaker 1: to May threatened to see what they never do. They
Speaker 1: probably know they haven't got a leg to stand on. Actually,
Speaker 1: what they do is to gather together the workers, give
Speaker 1: them pre printed statesments which are laid around in every
Speaker 1: work for him by the foreman, which pre prepared and
Speaker 1: they say, you know, we love working for Brian to May.
Speaker 1: They're wonderful employers. We don't mind about the fossy journey.
Speaker 1: Didn't actually say that, but this is the idea. They're
Speaker 1: supposed to say this journalist has lied. Nothing she said
Speaker 1: is true. We couldn't be happier. And they know they'll
Speaker 1: be sacked if they don't sign those papers, and they
Speaker 1: need their jobs, they need them desperately, but they refuse.
Speaker 1: Every single one of these women, I'm so proud of them,
Speaker 1: refuses to sign. And when the foreman come back into
Speaker 1: the room, there are these blank sheets of paper and
Speaker 1: they absolutely livid. So what are the employers going to
Speaker 1: do next? While employers haven't been a trade unis, I
Speaker 1: can say they do the absolutely typical thing. And they
Speaker 1: pick on one young girl, one worker who's very popular
Speaker 1: with the others, and they sack her on a pretext.
Speaker 1: They're clever enough not to do it because they think
Speaker 1: she's one of the ones who's spoken to Lesson. But
Speaker 1: I think she probably is. They suck her and so
Speaker 1: she's not doing her work properly. How she goes now,
Speaker 1: talk about underestimating your workforce. As one the women laid
Speaker 1: down their tools, wipe their hands on their aprons, and
Speaker 1: stream out of these imposing gates of the fair Field
Speaker 1: Works Match factory, onto the fair Field Road and onto
Speaker 1: the Bow Road. What do they do then? Well, if
Speaker 1: they were these a political people who you know, weren't
Speaker 1: educated and didn't really realize what their conditions were or
Speaker 1: that they were being exploited. Well, what they're done. They
Speaker 1: would have was in gone all, BlimE me, Elisa, we've
Speaker 1: gone on strike by mistake. What shall we do now?
Speaker 1: What are we like? And I don't know, gone down
Speaker 1: the pub or something. But they didn't. They swung into action.
Speaker 1: They had an election there at the gates and they
Speaker 1: elected six women from all the major significant workshops within
Speaker 1: the factory, one from each to go back in and
Speaker 1: put their demands. So instantly they walked back in and
Speaker 1: they confront the directors. I can just imagine how this
Speaker 1: went down, and said, right, we'll come back, but only
Speaker 1: if you let us form a union. BlimE me. They
Speaker 1: were not bright and they were not expecting that, and
Speaker 1: they immediately widen their demands. I didn't just say we
Speaker 1: want that girl room, stated they said, we want a union.
Speaker 1: And I tell you another thing while we're here, we
Speaker 1: want a separate dining room to eat our dinners in
Speaker 1: to each our breading. Because they knew about Fossy Jewel
Speaker 1: Bright and May told them to do what I can
Speaker 1: imagine the language must have been pretty strong, because they
Speaker 1: would have been out rage How dare you you know?
Speaker 1: How dare you underclass women? How dare you tell us
Speaker 1: what to do? So back out the women go and
Speaker 1: they tell their colleagues, no, go, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to strike, and as everyone else comes on shift, they
Speaker 1: gradually pull all this workforce out. It's a huge workforce,
Speaker 1: by the way, we have four hundred people on strike
Speaker 1: by the end of the day. Now what do you do.
Speaker 1: You don't have access to the press, you don't have
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. I can tell you as a historian,
Speaker 1: we did not have those things in those days. So
Speaker 1: how on earth do you tell people that you're on strike?
Speaker 1: How on earth do you get strike funds? Well, surely
Speaker 1: that if Annye Bessel led the strike, she would have
Speaker 1: been there. No, she's nowhere to be seen. So what
Speaker 1: they do is rather wonderful. They march around the streets
Speaker 1: of the East End arm in arm On maths hundreds
Speaker 1: of them, and they sing very loudly and very rude
Speaker 1: I'm afraid songs about their employers and what they would
Speaker 1: like to do to their employers, which are not nice.
Speaker 1: Though is mentioned of hanging old Brian On a sour apple.
Speaker 1: Tree's absolutely suposed to the tune of John Brown's Body,
Speaker 1: which is so interesting, isn't it that they're using battle
Speaker 1: him if the Repubic. They're using that tune to sing
Speaker 1: their protests on which they've just made up on the spot.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's are women who like musical songs.
Speaker 1: They're they're very creative. They enjoy lyrics, and as they
Speaker 1: walk around people hear them, obviously, and this draws attention.
Speaker 1: People come out onto their balconists, they open their windows,
Speaker 1: they come out to their doors, and what earth are
Speaker 1: you lot doing? And they say, well, we're the match women,
Speaker 1: as you probably know, because they would have known. They
Speaker 1: all had very distinct styles. You could tell a much woman.
Speaker 1: And we're on stripe because our bodies are a bunch
Speaker 1: of bastards and they've sat one of us for talking
Speaker 1: to a journalist and they treat it supportingly anyway, And
Speaker 1: we're bullied by management and our wages are shopping and
Speaker 1: we're not having any more, and we're on strike. And
Speaker 1: so people threw down to them coins, whatever money they
Speaker 1: could get their hands on, and the women wore these
Speaker 1: long white aprons to cover their dresses. And they caught them.
Speaker 1: They helped them out and they caught these coins in
Speaker 1: their aprons and that was their first strike funds. It's
Speaker 1: really impressive. Then they held mass meetings on mile end Ways,
Speaker 1: traditionary place where people met, and they had speakers. People
Speaker 1: came along to hear them. Other trade unionst Lewis Lions,
Speaker 1: famous from the Jewish Taylor's Union of famously militant trade unionsts,
Speaker 1: came along and they really started to garner support. The
Speaker 1: Star newspaper sent down its journalists, who was, you know,
Speaker 1: most discombobulated by the site of poor women looking poor
Speaker 1: and also by the fact that they were in Telliger.
Speaker 1: This was a real shocker to the middle classes, just
Speaker 1: like to the MPs when they finally marched a parliament.
Speaker 1: This journalist is saying, what goodness is women actually quite eloquent,
Speaker 1: and they're actually expressing themselves quite politically, and they're saying,
Speaker 1: we are typical of working people who are treated like
Speaker 1: this and we can't put up with it anymore. They're
Speaker 1: really rather surprised. This is not what we've been told
Speaker 1: about the inhabitants of the Darkest East. They're supposed to
Speaker 1: be all savages, and animals. You know, savages is a
Speaker 1: term that it's literally used about them. So they carry
Speaker 1: on meeting and at one point Annie Bessent finally, finally,
Speaker 1: a couple of days on from this, enters the picture
Speaker 1: a bit weird for a supposed strike leader. And I
Speaker 1: looked at her journal and she says, well, I was
Speaker 1: working in my rooms in Fleet Street and I heard
Speaker 1: a commotion and I looked out of the window and
Speaker 1: there was just s gaggle of of you know, quite
Speaker 1: rough looking girls, hundred or so, and they were blocking
Speaker 1: the pavement. You know, my goodness, this is nice London.
Speaker 1: People are trying to walk past, and there's working class people.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of it. It's it's you know. It
Speaker 1: causes a bit of an uproar. So she sends a
Speaker 1: note down and basically says, who the hell are you now?
Speaker 1: That should put the kai bosh on the fact that
Speaker 1: she was a strike leader. You can't recognize a strike
Speaker 1: you can't recognize your strikers. And they said were the
Speaker 1: match women. She entertained a couple of them to tea.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't have them all up. We'll go down to
Speaker 1: them because they are they're not quite sure what the
Speaker 1: rebel is going to do, and she says they're quite respectable.
Speaker 1: And they tell her they're on strike, and she is
Speaker 1: not pleased. She writes in her political paper, the Link
Speaker 1: the match Women, the Revolt of the Matchmakers. The match
Speaker 1: women have gone on strike, but she says the girls
Speaker 1: will go back to work. In this huge ban of headline,
Speaker 1: they will go back to work. Desperately hoping they will,
Speaker 1: and she says, you know, this was so ridiculous that
Speaker 1: they went on strike. They should have let a few
Speaker 1: people be sacked. We could have afforded to support a
Speaker 1: few people. But my god, now we have fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: people on strike. What on earth are we going to
Speaker 1: do to feed them? Again? This is not the rhetoric
Speaker 1: of a strike leader. Is that she's supposed to know
Speaker 1: about this strike. She's supposed to have brought it about.
Speaker 1: Why hasn't she got funds in place? Women march to Parliament.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of public key that's really helps with that.
Speaker 1: She writes letters to the newspaper attacking Brian to make
Speaker 1: she writes to the Times, Times published her, they published
Speaker 1: Bryant and May's response, it's like tennis. It goes back
Speaker 1: and forth. Everyone's accusing everyone else and things the matter
Speaker 1: in march to Parliament and this is where people are
Speaker 1: so shocked to see these poor girls out of their
Speaker 1: area that they get shouted at, you know, can't stop
Speaker 1: in the streets. Things are thrown at them, what on
Speaker 1: earth are you doing? Get back to the East End.
Speaker 1: But they won't. They help, They hold their heads high,
Speaker 1: and when they're finally in with the MPs again this
Speaker 1: fascinating clash of classes. The MP's are probably never sat
Speaker 1: and talked to an Eastern woman on an equal basis
Speaker 1: or a working class woman. They might have talked to
Speaker 1: their own servants, but that's not an equal relationship. So
Speaker 1: when they're in the room, one of the girls, who's
Speaker 1: about twelve, takes off her bonnet and they see that
Speaker 1: she's balls completely bald on top of her head, and
Speaker 1: she says, can you see my head? I've been working
Speaker 1: for Brian and May since I was an infant, carrying
Speaker 1: palettes and matches on my head, and it's worn my
Speaker 1: hair away completely. Now this is brilliant because they've probably
Speaker 1: got young daughters about the same age with those beautiful
Speaker 1: Victorian ringulets, and this really hits them where they live.
Speaker 1: These reps have invested in Brian and May. This is
Speaker 1: all rather embarrassing, isn't it. Liberal MPs who were supposed
Speaker 1: to support the poor, and yet they're profiting off this.
Speaker 1: They tell them about fosse A jewel and the MPs
Speaker 1: are impressed that they're so intelligent and so eloquent. They
Speaker 1: start to swing on side, but brianton May fight a
Speaker 1: great rearguard action. A lot of the newspapers are on
Speaker 1: their side and saying, look at this disgraceful situation, these
Speaker 1: poor women and the worst sorts of people parading around
Speaker 1: the usea and I mean, how dare they It's disgraceful,
Speaker 1: They've got jobs. They should be grateful Brian to their gentlemen,
Speaker 1: all that rhetoric that we're so used to. But the
Speaker 1: tide starts to turn very quickly, because once the MPs
Speaker 1: are on side, respectable people are on side. They call
Speaker 1: for an independent investigation into conditions at the factory. And
Speaker 1: this investigation shows that what any bestness said wasn't quite right,
Speaker 1: because actually conditions are worse. Things are far far worse
Speaker 1: than she'd touched on in white slavery in London, Brian
Speaker 1: and they have nowhere to go at that point because
Speaker 1: their shareholders are coming to them and say, for God's say,
Speaker 1: you've got to do something about this. You know, share
Speaker 1: prices are dropping, that's capitalists do care about that, don't they.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to back down. The government are
Speaker 1: telling them that they do need to back down at
Speaker 1: this point. And they're so angry about It's so angry
Speaker 1: you can see it in the company archives. They're feeling
Speaker 1: about it absolutely decade whenever there's a mention of this type.
Speaker 1: But they have to climb down with the worst possible grace.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not Christmas Carol type scenario. They haven't
Speaker 1: been visited by ghosts and become nice Scrooge and in
Speaker 1: the error of their ways at all. They're forced into
Speaker 1: this as they see an undignified climbed down and within
Speaker 1: a little over two weeks they had to grant these
Speaker 1: women the right to form the largest union of women
Speaker 1: and girls in the entire country, and better rates of pay,
Speaker 1: and their separate dining room to eat in, and the
Speaker 1: right to take their grievances over the heads of the
Speaker 1: foremen to the directors. I love to think of how
Speaker 1: furiously piste off the foreman must have been about this,
Speaker 1: that the women could go sailing out of the room
Speaker 1: and say, sorry for it. I'm going to complain to
Speaker 1: the directors that don't like the way you're running things
Speaker 1: down here. It was a complete rebalancing of power, and
Speaker 1: they swept back victoriously into work and I would imagine
Speaker 1: they would have had their beautiful cats from their feather
Speaker 1: clubs as they did. So, absolutely victorious, absolutely unexpected. Nobody
Speaker 1: expected that was going to be the upcome. Not the
Speaker 1: first strike by women, by the way, not even by
Speaker 1: these women. They've been on strike before. It was the
Speaker 1: only weapon that very poor people had but to win,
Speaker 1: and to win against one of the most powerful employers
Speaker 1: in the country was absolutely unprecedented, brilliant. So um, the
Speaker 1: strike was June, right, yeah, second in July, I think
Speaker 1: it started, Yes, it did, okay, okay, So the peace
Speaker 1: white slavery in London that came out in June, and
Speaker 1: then there was just this little bit of build up,
Speaker 1: right um. So of course, then in this season of Unobscured,
Speaker 1: we are following the murders in Whitechapel investigation and we're
Speaker 1: really going to be looking at you know, what the
Speaker 1: police were doing and the tourism on Hanbury Street, you know,
Speaker 1: starting with any Chapman's murder, that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: all of that is in the months after the September um.
Speaker 1: But at the beginning of October, no kind of the
Speaker 1: middle of October um that that radical newspaper The Star
Speaker 1: reports that Briant and May have received a letter signed
Speaker 1: signed by the Ripper. Um. Do you have the text
Speaker 1: of it there? Do ared you be willing to read
Speaker 1: that for us? And then? And then and then tell
Speaker 1: us what does that letter reveal to us about how
Speaker 1: working women who lived across the East End we're experiencing
Speaker 1: the panic that fall, which some writers have called the
Speaker 1: Autumn of terror. How would that have been felt by
Speaker 1: the people whose neighborhoods this was. It's so interesting and
Speaker 1: it's so revealing. So we hear from the newspaper. Intimation
Speaker 1: was given to the city police on Saturday morning that
Speaker 1: Messrs Brianton May had received a better signed j Ripper
Speaker 1: and couched in the following terms. I hereby notify you
Speaker 1: that I'm going to pay your girls a visit. I
Speaker 1: hear they are beginning to say what they will do
Speaker 1: with me. I'm going to see what a few of
Speaker 1: them have in their stomachs, and I will take it
Speaker 1: out of them so that they will have no more
Speaker 1: to do on the quiet, Signed John Ripper, p S.
Speaker 1: I am in Popular today. Well, it's an incredible letter,
Speaker 1: whether or not it was a hoax, what it says
Speaker 1: is so revealing even a few lines if we break
Speaker 1: it down. So this person says the reason is going
Speaker 1: to attack the match women? Is I hear they are
Speaker 1: beginning to say what they will do with me? Well,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? That means that the match women,
Speaker 1: rather than being understandably terrified that there is a killers
Speaker 1: talking their streets, are furious because what this means they're
Speaker 1: going to say what they will do with me? They're
Speaker 1: presumably saying, right, we're going to find that bastard, wait
Speaker 1: till we get our hands on him. They are threatening
Speaker 1: the Ripper, basically, and there weren't the only ones doing that.
Speaker 1: Of course, there were vigilante commitsteers who are going around
Speaker 1: trying to keep an eye on the Ripper. It would
Speaker 1: be fascinating to know whether the match were men were
Speaker 1: doing that themselves. I love to think of them parading
Speaker 1: the back alleys of White Chapel with that happens at
Speaker 1: the ready just in case. But that's what he's retaliating against.
Speaker 1: They're threatening him. And then of course he issues his
Speaker 1: disgusting threat and says they will have no more to
Speaker 1: do on the choir. And that is about prostitution. So
Speaker 1: whoever this is is implying that as working girls, they're
Speaker 1: also doing things on the quiet. They are also engaging
Speaker 1: in sex work or prostitution. So for just a few lines,
Speaker 1: it really tells us a lot. Now we know people
Speaker 1: were scared. Of course they were scared. We know that
Speaker 1: women working in prostitution were trying to get into workhouses overnight,
Speaker 1: and that was unusual. The poor fear the workhouses like
Speaker 1: nothing else. That was the real nightmare scenario was being
Speaker 1: placed in a workhouse, awful conditions. If you had children,
Speaker 1: you were separated from them. It was really really brutal.
Speaker 1: But for once they're thinking they are safer off the streets,
Speaker 1: but not the match women, and I would bet not
Speaker 1: all women either, because the sad truth of it is,
Speaker 1: although this these murders, this murderer gets so taken up
Speaker 1: by the press and get so sensationalized. People killing women
Speaker 1: is nothing new in the East End. People killing prostituted
Speaker 1: women is nothing new in the East End. Had it
Speaker 1: not been so dramatized and sensationalized, perhaps they wouldn't would
Speaker 1: scarcely have known what was happening. But certainly two people
Speaker 1: like the match him and this was just a sense
Speaker 1: of outrage. These are our streets, this is our manner.
Speaker 1: How dare some bloke come on to our manner and
Speaker 1: behave like this? Two women like us to Eastern women
Speaker 1: and girls, they're absolutely outrage and I think that's tells
Speaker 1: us an awful lot about their spirit. M hm hm, brilliant.
Speaker 1: Do we actually know any details about the lives of, um,
Speaker 1: some of the girls like Mary Driscoll, Martha Robinson in
Speaker 1: those months after the strike while these things were happening, Um,
Speaker 1: what were the first few months of you know, union
Speaker 1: life like? Yeah, the union was really active and they
Speaker 1: were probably more concerned and busy with that than they
Speaker 1: would have been worrying about the rip. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: they didn't worry. I'm sure when they walked down the
Speaker 1: streets at night they were concerned. But you see, they
Speaker 1: were always in danger the Eastern was never a safe
Speaker 1: space if you were a working class women, so they
Speaker 1: always traveled in gangs. Middle classes hated this because there
Speaker 1: were noisy gangs, and they were disrespectful gangs, and they
Speaker 1: would be singing and they would be using terrible language,
Speaker 1: and people would get their kids off the street when
Speaker 1: all the match women are coming off shift. Come along,
Speaker 1: deer inside inside, stop your ears. These vile women are
Speaker 1: out in the streets being being a bit rough and
Speaker 1: working class. So they always did that. They were really
Speaker 1: used to taking precautions, so probably life didn't change that
Speaker 1: much for them, and you always had someone in a family.
Speaker 1: All the women had to learn to fight, you know,
Speaker 1: not just because they were horrible violent people, because you
Speaker 1: had to. There were always people trying to grab you
Speaker 1: down a you know, drag you down a dark alley,
Speaker 1: and those were often people from outside the area who
Speaker 1: would come in and people would be raped, children would
Speaker 1: would be kidnapped. Their awful things used to happen in
Speaker 1: those dark streets, so they had to defend themselves. And
Speaker 1: there was a wonderful story I got from one of
Speaker 1: the descendants about how how good the women were at forcing,
Speaker 1: which really illustrates the fact that outsiders, like posh outsiders
Speaker 1: were really noticed in the Eastern as well. And he
Speaker 1: told this story about one of his relatives being in
Speaker 1: a book is. I think it was one of his
Speaker 1: great antswers in the book is one day lining up
Speaker 1: to place her bet and behind her incomes a top
Speaker 1: with a top hat, a rich guy for some reasons
Speaker 1: in the area and stands behind her to place his bet.
Speaker 1: And some of the local lads who are in there
Speaker 1: think this is an opportunity here for a bit of mischiefs.
Speaker 1: So they reached around said top and they pinch aunt
Speaker 1: his bottom. Now, she does not ask any questions at
Speaker 1: this point, by the way, she just wheels round, leading
Speaker 1: with her fist and knocks the bloke out with one punch.
Speaker 1: So one good right hook and this port off top hat,
Speaker 1: doubtless flying across the blacks floor is spark out on
Speaker 1: the floor. So that tells you how violent, you know,
Speaker 1: how dangerous life was for women. They had to be
Speaker 1: prepared to come out fighting and no questions asked. So
Speaker 1: I think in that respect they would have been much
Speaker 1: more careful, but they were always used to being careful.
Speaker 1: They were always used to being on their guard and
Speaker 1: to not being particularly safe in their own streets. And
Speaker 1: the union was so busy because you said they didn't
Speaker 1: rest on their laurels. If they hadn't been involved in
Speaker 1: their own strike, if they had been passive puppets, you
Speaker 1: imagine they would have just thought, well, we've done it.
Speaker 1: Now we've got a union, we've done really well. Life
Speaker 1: goes on. But actually they didn't. They kept unionizing. They
Speaker 1: kept taking the message to other groups of workers. So
Speaker 1: the girls that worked in nearby confectionary factors, the sweetie
Speaker 1: girls who worked in jam factories, the wives of eastern dockers,
Speaker 1: they were constantly having meetings and trying to unionize them
Speaker 1: as well. And there's a really amusing account from one
Speaker 1: of the lead weeks of with the class women, philanthropic
Speaker 1: women who were trying to organize working class women but
Speaker 1: in a bit of a middle class top down where
Speaker 1: we didn't always go down very well with the women themselves.
Speaker 1: But they recorded at the time that they were absolutely
Speaker 1: worn out with these match women because they kept coming
Speaker 1: to them as saying, all right, um, we want you
Speaker 1: to help us, because we want to have another union meeting.
Speaker 1: Please with the jam factory girls, and we'd like you
Speaker 1: to help us find a venue please, and then we
Speaker 1: would like tea and cakes, and we would like some
Speaker 1: Irish music. And they were like, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got to try and find an Irish musician. How
Speaker 1: its short noticed, But I love this idea of a
Speaker 1: union meeting that involves tea and cach and Irish dancing.
Speaker 1: How fantastic. And I have a little match Wents festival
Speaker 1: every year right close to their old factory and bow
Speaker 1: and I have music and tea and well not so
Speaker 1: much tea and cakes as gin, but anyway, I like
Speaker 1: to think it's very much in the spirit of the
Speaker 1: match women. So they were incredibly busy unionizing, you know,
Speaker 1: they weren't messing about. And it's so interesting that they
Speaker 1: took this message to the dockers as well. Now, the
Speaker 1: big Great dock Strike of nine has traditionally been what
Speaker 1: historians of the labor movement, the union movement looked to
Speaker 1: as a big starting event, very important. This is where
Speaker 1: modern trade Juanism, that is, trade unism with a political
Speaker 1: objective to liberate the working class really as opposed to
Speaker 1: just sort of boys club really that the previous unions
Speaker 1: were to keep people out of the profession, to organize apprenticeships,
Speaker 1: to keep your own labor price high. This is a
Speaker 1: very different thing when trade Juanism, and it's been dated
Speaker 1: from the dock strike, and historians, those historians have even
Speaker 1: bothered to write about the match women in a line
Speaker 1: or two have said, well, this was just a vague,
Speaker 1: sort of minor harbinger of the dock strike. And you think,
Speaker 1: what does that mean exactly if it happened first, is
Speaker 1: it not part the same movement but the start of it?
Speaker 1: Would you not think that I've had his story. Say
Speaker 1: to me, Olouise, you're really failing to understand the way
Speaker 1: this work. As I'm standing, come from a trade union background,
Speaker 1: are not real an academic, but now this is not
Speaker 1: really the way this happens a dock strike. These were
Speaker 1: just girls dock strikes far more important. Well, I went back,
Speaker 1: in my sort of nerdy peeky way and started those
Speaker 1: months after the match from strike really intensely, really really intensely.
Speaker 1: I got out the record of incidents of strikes, which
Speaker 1: were recorded for like every week after the match from
Speaker 1: his strike and every week before. I looked at the
Speaker 1: years and years of this stuff, and I found that
Speaker 1: strikes shut up, shut up right after the match from
Speaker 1: a strike. And there's no other way to explain it,
Speaker 1: because I looked. I went right back and looked at
Speaker 1: averages and years. Everyone in the East End is going
Speaker 1: on strike. The tailors, the seamstresses, you know, the jam factories,
Speaker 1: the furblous everyone's going on strike, you know, because working
Speaker 1: people aren't stupid. They see an example here. Oh look,
Speaker 1: they are workers like us. They're supposed to be powerless, blimy.
Speaker 1: They're now trade union leaders and they've got better conditions.
Speaker 1: You know, how dumb do we think working people are?
Speaker 1: But this would be lost on them. Of course, it
Speaker 1: wasn't lost on them and the doctors union we find
Speaker 1: go to the matchments Union and they say, can you
Speaker 1: help us? Basically, can you help us? So so far
Speaker 1: from what historians have said, Oh, these are two totally
Speaker 1: different groups of workers. There's no connection, and there's a year,
Speaker 1: by the way between the strikes, so it can't have
Speaker 1: any cart of be inspired by the match froom. Actually
Speaker 1: they try to strike in the autumn. That was totally
Speaker 1: inspired by the match women who said so the leaders
Speaker 1: of the Dockers unions said so themselves. You know, their
Speaker 1: people came to speak to us. We tried to strike.
Speaker 1: It wasn't successful, but it was a rehearsal for nine.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eight nine, they pulled this strike off big time.
Speaker 1: It was a humongous strike that spread to become almost
Speaker 1: a general strike really, and spread to other countries as well.
Speaker 1: They had support from other countries. The whole of London
Speaker 1: was almost doubt. It was like a city of the dead,
Speaker 1: because in those days you could take what's called second reaction.
Speaker 1: So if someone comes out and strike, you can do
Speaker 1: a secondary strike. You can come out and strike to
Speaker 1: support them. I'm old enough to just about remember those
Speaker 1: petty days and you can still do that. You can't now.
Speaker 1: So everyone came out and supported them, including match women,
Speaker 1: by the way, came out and strike and supported them.
Speaker 1: Now can we prove though, that Dockers were inspired by
Speaker 1: match women when all the mainly manly historians have said
Speaker 1: they definitely weren't. Well, apart from the fact that I
Speaker 1: looked at census records, voy did I look at census records.
Speaker 1: I haunted those censors offices, and Mattalin and Dockers are
Speaker 1: so much the same people. Practically. Jim Best, one of
Speaker 1: the descendants I've talked you, said, no, they're the same people.
Speaker 1: There's no separation between these people. Matched were married doctors,
Speaker 1: matched women and the mothers of offers. The sisters are offers,
Speaker 1: they're friends of doctors. You know, working people do inspire
Speaker 1: each other. They do talk, of course, and this strike
Speaker 1: is unquestionably a huge event, but it's unsuccessful at first.
Speaker 1: The Dot company really fight back and John Burns, one
Speaker 1: of the key leaders who goes on to bring MP says,
Speaker 1: drough the strike to a mass meeting of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of men. Don't give up, stand shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 1: Remember the match girls who won their fight and formed
Speaker 1: a union? Well, I mean wow. And he says that
Speaker 1: kind of thing constantly. By the way, he doesn't say, oh,
Speaker 1: some match women. You probably haven't heard of them. They
Speaker 1: were from Brian to May, down the road. They apparently
Speaker 1: had a strike, he says, the match girls, and he
Speaker 1: knows everyone knows. Hundreds of thousands of men listening, they
Speaker 1: all know damn well who the match were. Enough, that's
Speaker 1: how inspiring they are. When the leaders wrote their memoirs,
Speaker 1: they said things like it was the match women that
Speaker 1: started it. They they were the first signs, They were
Speaker 1: the first encouragement, the first inspiration. They were the start
Speaker 1: of new unions. And what more do you need than that?
Speaker 1: And yet historians have seen that presumably if I can
Speaker 1: find it, you can find it, and just missed it
Speaker 1: and said no, no, no, no, match girls not really important.
Speaker 1: Two different from the doctors, wouldn't have influenced them. Too
Speaker 1: distant a year apart. Absolutely, the two strikes had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with each other. And when you look at
Speaker 1: all the evidence, that is absolutely extraordinary. So yes, long
Speaker 1: story short, the match women weren't really busy throughout all
Speaker 1: that time. They came out on strike to support the doctors,
Speaker 1: as I've said, but also as doctors wise, they were
Speaker 1: involved in rent strikes. Rent strikes really incredibly powerful weapon
Speaker 1: that women often employed, actually employed a great effect. And
Speaker 1: they strung a banner I presume made of sheets. I
Speaker 1: don't know how else they would have done it across
Speaker 1: the commercial road and they said, our husbands are on strike.
Speaker 1: For us wives, it is not honey, So we do
Speaker 1: not think that it is right to give the landlords money.
Speaker 1: In other words, tough lads, you can whistle for your rents.
Speaker 1: You're getting nothing until this strike is settled. So yes,
Speaker 1: there was one hell of a lot more going on
Speaker 1: in this period than one, you know, inadequate psychopath murdering women.
Speaker 1: M And you mentioned that this was the beginning of
Speaker 1: this new unionism in Britain. Um, what ended up being
Speaker 1: the fruits of this period of unionism? What did it?
Speaker 1: What did it bring? What did it result in in Britain?
Speaker 1: In British, Well, it comes right down to the Labor
Speaker 1: Party today. This is a chain of events. This is
Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of the most explode woitted workers who
Speaker 1: have been completely left out of any kind of consideration
Speaker 1: of unions and before on the whole saying we're going
Speaker 1: to do what they did. They used to strike as
Speaker 1: a means to force open the door to unionization. They
Speaker 1: forced the employers to let them the union movement. They
Speaker 1: didn't bother waiting for them to get around to them,
Speaker 1: which is what you're supposed to do if you're very poor,
Speaker 1: politely respectively wait to your turn, and maybe eventually the
Speaker 1: big boys of the union woman might bother to get
Speaker 1: around you. Probably not, but you never know your luck.
Speaker 1: But no, they forced the pace. They used strikes to
Speaker 1: force the right to form their own unions, and there
Speaker 1: were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them formed across
Speaker 1: the country as far Awaars Island too. It's incredible how
Speaker 1: news traveled in those days, and Irish theams just as
Speaker 1: unions wrote and said, we've heard about the match women,
Speaker 1: please come and tell us how to do it. We
Speaker 1: want to unionize as well. So it really was striking
Speaker 1: a light, you know. It really went like a fire.
Speaker 1: It just read and spread and spread. Although the employers
Speaker 1: fought back, I mean, of course employers always will. They
Speaker 1: fought back quite viciously, and a lot of those new
Speaker 1: unions did fold, but in a way that didn't really
Speaker 1: matter because things never went back. Things never went backwards.
Speaker 1: The Match Women's Union stayed active until nineteen twenty when
Speaker 1: it was merged into the g MB General and Municipal Boilermakers,
Speaker 1: one of our big unions. So it stayed through all
Speaker 1: that period and people that have written about it um
Speaker 1: and not many people have written about the strike itself,
Speaker 1: but I did read one paper that suggested, oh, it
Speaker 1: can't have bring an important strike because the union only
Speaker 1: lasted till nineteen twenty, well, rather outrage of the match
Speaker 1: men's behalf. Not only did it survive all that time
Speaker 1: when employers were kicking and fighting back with everything they had,
Speaker 1: but it survived and continued to become part of one
Speaker 1: of our most major unions. So it's an incredible achievement.
Speaker 1: And it's out of that modern labor movement, that modern
Speaker 1: trade union movement that the Labor Party of course began significantly.
Speaker 1: Whether or not it likes to remember it today, sometimes
Speaker 1: it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it's completely beholden to
Speaker 1: the union movement. And I was really pleased, after oh gosh,
Speaker 1: twenty years of plugging away at this message, flogging away
Speaker 1: at it, that these women were so important that Jeremy
Speaker 1: Corbyn said, um, I think it was an international women's
Speaker 1: dye in sixteen. He said we should hail the mothers
Speaker 1: of our movement, and he acknowledged my work, and he
Speaker 1: acknowledged the match women as the mothers as the trade
Speaker 1: union movement, and you know, I felt my job is done.
Speaker 1: I was incredibly happy with that. And maybe as a
Speaker 1: final grace note on our conversation today, can you describe
Speaker 1: that Glandstone statue? How it's still treated today. Well, this
Speaker 1: is so fascinating. The statue is still there and I
Speaker 1: have my match Womens Festival right next to it, actually
Speaker 1: in a lovely little venue called bow Arts on the
Speaker 1: Bow Road. It's still there. But there's one very significant
Speaker 1: thing about it that you would notice if you were
Speaker 1: walking along the borough and having a look at Gladstone.
Speaker 1: As I said, he's got one of his arms outstretched,
Speaker 1: one of his hands outstretched, and it's pointing kind over
Speaker 1: the direction of the Branton May Factory. You were to
Speaker 1: look fairly closely, you'd notice that that hand isn't red.
Speaker 1: It's a slightly faded red, but it's definitely red. Now,
Speaker 1: why on earth is that? Well it harks back to
Speaker 1: the match woman rushing the statue and saying, our blood
Speaker 1: paid for this all those decades before. I was told
Speaker 1: by Ted Lewis, the grandson of Martha Robertson. Actually it
Speaker 1: was his grandma and her friends who first threw paint
Speaker 1: over it. This statue kept annoying them. They were not
Speaker 1: done with this statue, from charging at it and dripping
Speaker 1: their blood on its. It was a constant source of
Speaker 1: annoyance to them. And you can imagine that it would
Speaker 1: have been. They had to walk past it at least
Speaker 1: twice a day in and out of work, and they
Speaker 1: must have thought our wages paid for that bloody statue.
Speaker 1: Why are its hands still read now? Though? Well? I've
Speaker 1: tried to find out who done it, and you can
Speaker 1: understand why people might not want to tell me, because
Speaker 1: I suppose it is criminal damage after all, isn't it
Speaker 1: not that I would dog them into the police. But
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily know that. But it's been done at
Speaker 1: least since the and by that I mean the hand
Speaker 1: regularly painted red. It may well have had paint chucked
Speaker 1: at it by match women as well for many years.
Speaker 1: But this is when the factory became a gated how
Speaker 1: was in community Brianson They moved their operations, they were
Speaker 1: taken over by Swedish Match and in the eighties this
Speaker 1: became what we used to call yuppy flats in those days,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of anger about that in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, this gentrification and Gladstone's hand, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell asking the council has been painted red
Speaker 1: ever since, and the council not happy by the way
Speaker 1: at all, and they've just given up. So what they
Speaker 1: used to do was to clean it every time the
Speaker 1: hand was painted red. But this was really expensive and
Speaker 1: it kept happening, so they just gave up and they've
Speaker 1: left it red, which I'm very pleased about because there's
Speaker 1: a lovely little historical reminder. I've asked and asked who
Speaker 1: might have done it, because I would like to shake
Speaker 1: them by the hand, whether or not it was covered
Speaker 1: in red paint, and buy them a drink. I was
Speaker 1: told once by somebody at talk I know someone who
Speaker 1: did that. It was one of my mates. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't massively political. She was just a bit drunk. She's
Speaker 1: been in the park and she happened to be walking
Speaker 1: past it. Now I love that story, but I don't
Speaker 1: buy it because this statue is up a massive flint
Speaker 1: in the middle of the bow rows. Now, you would
Speaker 1: need a ladder, and I doubt that you'd be in
Speaker 1: the pub with a pot of red paint, a paintbrush
Speaker 1: and a ladder in your handbag. I just can't see it.
Speaker 1: I really hope though, that one day I find out,
Speaker 1: and if you're listening and you know, please tell me.
Speaker 1: I promise I will not tell anybody. I would love
Speaker 1: to have the satisfaction of knowing who does it. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's brilliant. That's brilliant. I think that's where we'll wrap
Speaker 1: it up. Fantastic, Louise, thank you so much for telling
Speaker 1: the match women's story again for Unobscured and our listeners.
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to have you and to have
Speaker 1: this story to include in exploring the East End and beyond.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the podcast. That's it for
Speaker 1: this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short
Speaker 1: sponsor break for a pre you of what's in store
Speaker 1: for next week. We figured that the killer had to
Speaker 1: know White Chapel. He had to be able to move
Speaker 1: around White Chapel in Spittlefield without causing suspicion, and I
Speaker 1: had to know all these dark alleys and cut throughs.
Speaker 1: He had to appear to avoid police patrols, particularly as
Speaker 1: more and more police were put on the streets, particularly
Speaker 1: following the double event. So this is someone who needs
Speaker 1: to know his local environment, and that doesn't really fit
Speaker 1: with a doctor from outside, or a slumming top or
Speaker 1: any of these other people. It has to be a
Speaker 1: local man. I think you had to have somebody who
Speaker 1: had a clear motive for wanting to kill. In many
Speaker 1: of the books I've read about JACKI Ripard, I can't
Speaker 1: really understand why he would do the things he would do.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a bit that the writers don't tell
Speaker 1: you why would you do that? Now? I understand, of
Speaker 1: course that without knowing who the killer is, m without
Speaker 1: a confession, we can never know why somebody chooses to murder.
Speaker 1: But I feel you had to find a try and
Speaker 1: identify a motive, and in this case we found somebody
Speaker 1: who had the mains motive and opportunity. Unobscured was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research
Speaker 1: and writing for this season is all the work of
Speaker 1: my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad
Speaker 1: Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our
Speaker 1: contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows
Speaker 1: over at History unobscured dot com, and until next time,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Unobscured as a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Aaron Mank. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.