Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Real Bridgerton

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

The first series of Bridgerton broke viewership records and became the biggest series on Netflix ever when it first came out. But a raunchy period drama is nothing new, shows with an eroticised view of the past have always been popular. Think Game of Thrones, The Tudors, Peaky Blinders...they’re all at it!But can we even call Bridgerton history? How accurate is the series? From the fashion, to the sex, to the dental hygiene. Yep, we’re even going to be talking about dentures made from teeth taken from men who died at the Battle of Waterloo in this episode. Surprisingly the Bridgerton actors weren’t asked to rock a pair for filming the series.Today Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with historian Catherine Curzon find out the real Regency history behind Bridgerton.You can buy Catherine's book, Inside the World of Bridgerton: True Stories of Regency High Society here.Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Charlotte Long and Matt Peaty.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Paper Twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your fair do's warning to protect you from me, to protect you from yourself, and certainly to protect you from today's guest. We are talking about the real Bridgeton, the history behind the series, how accurate it is, etc., etc.,

and inevitably we will be straying into some saucy subjects. You just might not be in the space to listen to that right now. You just might want something a bit more wholesome and nourishing than the absolute smut that you're going to be exposed to if you stick around with us today. Are you still there? Are you still there? Okay, for those of you that are still there, I'm ready if you are.

If anyone ever thought that the general public are not interested, passionately interested in history, then the success of Bridgeton confirmed exactly the opposite. We are very, very interested in history, especially if that history happens to be a duke seductively licking a spoon or perhaps emerging from a lake, a nice historical muscular man perhaps in a soaking wet shirt. We're all history buffs then, aren't we?

But can we even call Bridgeton history? How accurate is the series? From the fashion to the sex to the dental, mental hygiene. Yep, we are going to be talking about dentures. Specifically, dentures made from teeth taken from the men who died at the Battle of Waterloo. Sounding less and less sexy as we go on, isn't it? And surprisingly, the actors were not asked to put in a pair of those for the filming. Hmm. Today we are finding out the real Regency history behind Bridgeton.

What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button Yes, social courtesy does make a difference Goodness, for beautiful time Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets,

The History of Sex Scandal and Society With me, Kate Lester When the first series of Bridgeton emerged It broke all viewership records and became the biggest series on Netflix ever. The steamy first series came out at a perfect time. In the middle of a pandemic, we were all locked up, we were all starved of company touch and affection,

and to be honest, none of us looked very glammed, did we? We were isolated and alone. And then suddenly, a raunchy, fictionalised period drama emerged to titillate us and promise us with a brighter, better future, or past in this case. Hmm. A bodice ripper, a sexy period drama is nothing new. We love watching a show with an eroticised view of the past. There are loads of them. Game of Thrones, the Tudors, even peeky blinders, everyone. They are all at it.

And today I am joined by Regency historian Catherine Curzon, and we are getting betwixt the sheets to try and unpick's fact from fiction. Did they really wear clothes as brightly colourful as that? Would they really have been having as much sex as that? and, crucially, what did he smell like? Enjoy. Welcome to Betwitwitwit's shades. It's Catherine Curzon. How are you? I am ridiculously excited.

And I've got a Bonnie Tyler Husky voice as well, so I'm doubly excited for that. I am very excited to finally meet you because you are one of my Twitter friends who followed for years and years, loved all of the stuff that you do and all of your research. And I've never actually met you. And it's crazy because we live like 20 miles apart

But here we are at last Online meeting It's so stupid that isn't it Honestly we could just stack this off and go at the pub I know it'd be so much easier We won't do that Charlotte That's my producer She's having panics

But we could go to the pub after this Right Actually one of the reasons we might not have met Is because you are an 18th century Regency specialist And Bridgeton dropped That might be why actually And now everyone wants to know about the actual proper, real Bridgeton that period in history.

You must have been busy as. I have been incredibly busy because before, everybody wanted to know about Jane Austen. But now Bridgeton's like elbowed her out. I'm sure loads of Austin fans will get really upset now. Oh, they will do. But Austin's perennial. She'll be there forever and ever and ever. She is.

What is it about Bridgeton, do you think? Like once in a while, these sort of zeitgeist things come along, don't they? And they really capture everyone's attention. What is it? Is it the shagging? Is it the costumes? Is it what? What is it? Do you know, I actually think you've nailed it. I think it's a mixture of shagging and costumes. I actually genuinely do. Because it's the one thing everyone talks about, whenever I've mentioned to someone, oh, I'm writing about Bridgeton or they go, oh, it's really rude. They either say it's really rude or they say, oh, the dresses are lovely. That's all that we need. So those are, you've nailed it there. Yeah. We should work for Netflix, just identifying.

thing. That was Game of Thrones as well, although the dresses weren't quite as lovely, but that was definite wall-to-wall shagging in a vaguely historical-ish garb, which seems to do something quite interesting, doesn't it? Do you feel like the crown missed out on that? The crown always had to walk quite a delicate line, didn't it? It did it, didn't it? I mean, to be fair, it actually had quite a lot of material to work with if they really did want to uncover some of the more juicy things. We should start with a real basic beginning.

going to question. Bridgeton is set in the regency era. What is the regency era? So the regency era is 1811 to 1820. It's the time when George III became too unwell to basically be the king. So they handed over the reins of power to his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who became the infamous Prince Regent. So Prinney and the man Lord Byron described as the Leviathan of the Tun.

And that's accurate in all sorts of ways. So that's specifically what it was. It was that little period in time. So this is Mad King George, who was very unwell for lots of periods. And this is his son who Byron, I think he was quite delicate with that. He was a bit of a plait, wasn't he? Yeah, he was. The Prince of Wales.

He was an absolute. That's it. You can't, let's try and define that a little bit more. Why was he an absolute arse? What was he doing that made, even Byron, who let's face it, is in a very precarious position to be questioning anyone's morals and behaviour. But even he was going, actually this is a bit much for me. What was this Prince of Wales doing? He was kind of the epitome of, you know, like somebody to whom no one ever says no.

He was like the ultimate diva. So growing up, his dad had been fairly strict because he'd been quite a pious, religious guy who didn't like to spend money. So he wanted his son to grow up exactly like that. So he fed him really simple meals and gave him a little plot of agricultural land to tend and basically tried to teach him, you know, though we're immensely privileged, we don't shout about it and we don't spend it if we can help it. But we worship God and we live piously. Instead of breeding this incredibly pious man who at gruel and tended the crops,

it created this Prince of Wales who ate 19-course dinners and when he got tired of a palace, just tore it down. And also someone who was incredibly self-indulgent and incredibly entitled. So he'd spend tens of thousands of pounds on horses and stables and treated people most famously incredibly badly. So he famously had a secret. wife, Maria Fitzherbert, who he treated appallingly. And because of who he was, and we still see it now,

you know, with super famous people, people kind of just lined up to enable it. Yeah. He doesn't come across well. He's not one of those people where you read the reports and you read the diaries and you think, oh, you know, he was just a little bit out of control. He comes across as somebody who would have been fairly horrendous, I think. Having a secret wife, that's a pretty big thing to do when you are the Prince regent. Right? That's weird for any human being to do. It is. And she came about after he had pretty much used and dropped multiple women and of course their reputations were wrecked.

And his first crush when he was a teenager was on a lady called Mary Hamilton. And a lot of people kind of painted it as this sort of incredibly romantic thing. But really, he harassed her and he did that to Maria Fitzherbert. he'd turn up her house and wail on the door and force her to come to the door and behaved in a way that, you know, it's not really lovable. It's actually really horrible. And because it's the prince, like, what are you going to do with that? What are you going to do? You're going to call the police? And he actually got her in the end by faking a suicide attempt. And she came to see him and he asked her if he'd take a ring, you know, kind of like my last wish is to give you my ring,

Maria. And they borrowed a ring from the famous Duchess of Devonshire. And the minute she put it on her hand, he threw off the covers and said, oh, it's a miracle. I'm cured. Winy little bitch boy. Yeah, no. In the ultimate rejection, she ran away to Europe. But he just kept right into her and eventually she caved and she married him. And it was a huge mistake. Did he marry her and then go, actually, I've changed her mind about this one. Well, he married her. And it was kind of that thing. She kept rejecting him.

She wouldn't sleep with him. She wouldn't do anything. She was a good Catholic widow. She wasn't having her. He married her, but she came back to England, which is when they married back in London. And they kind of lived as the kind of king and queen in Brighton. Right. Not married, but they were and kind of everyone knew. And yeah, basically, as with all of his lovers, once he'd got her, he kind of went, oh. She was expecting him at dinner one night and he just sent a letter saying, well, I'm not coming. And then it was on again and off again for years until it was permanently off. He's not nice, is it? Of all of our royals, he's definitely one of the more repugnant. Yeah, he is. And it's this entitled thing. You know, we all

hate an entitled rich boy. Yeah. And he was the king of him. And he was the king of them. Absolutely. So his reputation presumably survived all of this because he's the prince. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't liked. He was heavily criticized in some portions of the media.

But again, you know, nothing changes. And they're also incredibly supportive media that turned the glare on the women instead. Yeah. But yeah, he's the prince. And I think the key to it is he didn't care. there's no evidence of any introspection ever, just careering from one catastrophe to another. But they were never catastrophes for him.

He just created them for other people. What happened to the first secret, not very secret wife? She pretty much stayed loyal to him. And he finally ended it with her, because they were on and off and on and off. He ended it with her when he invited her to a big sort of state occasion, but told her she was going to be sitting at the furthest end of the dining room,

pretty much next to the kitchen. And he said, that's where your rank dictates you should sit. Wow. So she wrote back and said, I'll sit where my actual rank should put me or I'm not coming in. And that was the end of it. But she stayed, I think, in her heart and head, if you like, she stayed loyal to him.

She really did love him. And when she died, she became a big philanthropic sort of figure in Brighton. When she died, her family put a statue in the church to her, and they put three wedding rings on her finger, so two of her widowed marriages and a third. But she was too good for him. She was. Well, I think you'd be hard pushed to find someone that wasn't too good for her.

Yeah, that's fair. And he famously hated his official wife, didn't he? And if my history serves me correctly, he married her because his dad basically said, if you marry her, I'll pay off all of your debts. Yeah, so he did. Again, horrendous to her from minute one, literally the first time he saw her.

He said, you know, she stinks, she's ugly. He went to his mum for a cuddle and a glass of brandy. But she also said, Caroline, the bride, sort of asked everyone present at the meeting. Oh, who's this fat man? Where's that handsome prince from the boardroom? Oh, no. So she was just there going, I'm sorry, who's this fatty? Who's this?

Yeah, who is this? You know, and no sympathy for him at all because he entirely bought that on himself as well. Who meets their future bride and says, oh, she's horrible? Does she smell? Do we have any corroborating evidence or is that just him being just a little bitch? Well, Lord Malmesbury, who was asked to go and collect her and bring her over to England, who did try to be very gentlemanly. He did say she was a bit too quick with her toilette. Oh, that's a very delicate way of putting it. It was. The advisor that the prince was very fastidious and she might like to take a bit longer.

On the voyage, one of her teeth fell out. So she just gave it. it to Lord Malmsbury like, look what I've got for you. Ooh. And I think at that point, he thought, oh, no, this is going to be a disaster. Oh, dear. She just wasn't into it. You know, she wanted to get dressed and get out of her. One of the key parts of Bridgeton, apart from the nice frocks and the sex, a lot of it hinges on reputation, doesn't it? And about this delicate balance that everybody is doing between, I really like sex and I want to have sex. I definitely want to have sex. It's very handsome person. person over here, but nobody can know about it. This weird dance that they do. How accurate is that

to actual regency time periods? Because clearly, reputation wasn't really an issue for the prince, because he's the prince and he'll do what the fuck he likes. But what about sort of the more landed aristocracy that you see in Bridgeton? How important was reputation? It was very, very important, but you, I'm sure, will not be surprised to know that it was a completely different set of rules if you're a man to if you're a woman. So if you're a man, your reputation was pretty much, are you rich?

Have you got a title? Do you just have some money? Yeah, in which case, you know, if it's yes to pretty much either of those, then... Fine. Okay, you can... It was this weird thing if you could behave appallingly

so long as you behaved appallingly with some discretion. It's weird, that, isn't it? Because it's like that people knew, but they're not supposed to know. And it's like, at what point does the damn breach and it becomes an open secret? I've always wondered that.

Georgie boy's secret wife it's not that secret if they're living together in Brighton it wasn't and there were loads of people whispering about it but as soon as a woman put literally in some cases a foot in the wrong place that's it, it's over. So you know it's this thing that if you had one dance with a man at a ball that's fine

two dances signalled you were getting close three dancers you may as well be married because everyone was going to be like whoa wow so it was that that much of a thing. And as I say, for women, once you lost your reputation, it's gone forever. It's done. Was there any insulation with money?

Was there examples of women who are just, they're so loaded that like, well, go on then, come at me? Well, not massively, actually, because it was this sort of social reputation and other women didn't want to be seen with you. So you got somebody like Lady Blessington who had a really famous menager-toire with her husband. and a young Frenchman. And although she was loaded and she was celebrated, she was another one Byron loved. But because she was seen as tainted, she had no social circle at all,

apart from the one that she created herself, which was sort of like bohemian. Yeah, yeah. But in terms of polite society, you were ostracized because other women didn't want to be tainted by hanging out with someone who was seen as soiled. Whereas if you're a guy, again, it's fine. Your wife could be ruined by sleeping with one of your peers,

but he could still hang out with you and enjoy a full reputation while she was consigned to sort of the waste heat. And there's also the fact that men could also enjoy a bad reputation because there's no such thing as bad publicity. I'm thinking of our mate Byron here. Yeah. He had a bad reputation, didn't he? He had, but he was also, it was quite adored at it.

You know, like bloomers were hitting the floor all over the place. In fact, it wasn't until he had anal sex with his wife or tried to shag his sister that people went, right, that really is enough now. Yeah, exactly. You're not to leave the country. Whereas obviously famously someone like Lady Caroline Lamb, absolutely besotted with Byron, you know, to the nth degree. Initially, she was pointed out and laughed at for this. And then people sort of went, oh, it's gone too far, but it was all, they sort of said, or he's behaving really badly. You still see it today.

People go, well, yeah, but that's men are programmed that way. Yeah. That old chestnut, whereas she was, again, pretty much ostracized. She was just seen as damaged goods. So, like, the marriage market is incredibly important in the regency period. I mean, it really is up until really quite recently

when women have been able to earn, in theory, their own money. You have to get married pretty. Like, your options for women are pretty fucking limited. Even if you are working class and you can go and maybe try and earn pittance, you're not going to earn enough to be able to sustain yourself. You need to have the support of a man who can earn more money than you. And that's just kind of universal, unless you've inherited the money.

Unless you're an heiress or hopefully a widow, which I think is what everyone was hoping for. Like marry rich and then he dies within a year. And then you're just like, woohoo. Yay. Honestly, it's so wholesome this setup. And you see that in Jane Austen, don't you? The obsession with getting married. And I always think that line of Mrs. Bennets when she's just like,

when you've got six daughters, tell me what else. will occupy your attention. And she's obsessed with it, getting everyone married off. Of course she is, because otherwise what they're going to do. Under that level of pressure of get married, get married, get married, get married, but don't let anyone think that you're slutty. Did they know anything about sex before they got married? Bridgeton kind of suggests that people knew when it was a bit saucy,

but did they know about sex before marriage? Well, in Bridgeton, there's a moment where Daphne is sort of schooled, only verbally schooled by a friendly sort of maid who's been there done that, you know, and she tells her all about it. But we don't actually get much indication that women were. And really, unless your mother was quite forward looking, I think. Or unless you were lucky enough to maybe an elder sister or a member of staff, certainly my research, which has been upper class and royal mostly, there wasn't a whole lot of instruction. It was that old chestnut of, you know, itchy duty.

Lie back, think of, think a handbags. Think of Empire Lion gown. Think of the jewels. That's what my mother told me. Lie back and think the jewelry. That's not true. My mum is a respectable woman. But you're absolutely right that you pretty much had to get married.

You have to get married. Yeah. There's an awful but, you know, tellable story of the richest commoner in England. Catherine Tilney Long, who inherited her. Her father's fortune. Ching. There was no son. But she immediately became the target of the worst fortune hunters.

Of course. In Europe, really. And among them was the Duke of Clarence, later William IV. He was 25 years older than her. And she eventually fell for, you know, you were saying men can have a reputation. She fell for a rake who was William Wellesley Pole, who became nickname Mr. Longpole. Oh, hello. Right.

Okay. Yeah. And he had. Absolutely wooed her. You know, when members of his family saw him needed medical care, he did mercy dashes miles on horseback to bring doctors. And he danced with her and he performed. It's pretty slick, isn't it?

Acrobatics on horseback and all of that. Oh, did he? And almost as soon as she married him, he started spending. And he burned through this fortune. She'd inherited Wonstead House. It was one of the great houses of England. He burned through the fortune to the extent they had to sell it and all its content. He openly cheated on her.

He lived with another woman. And it wasn't until he started saying, I'm going to take the kids off you. Wow. That that was it. And he absolutely ruined her. He gave her multiple STIs. Oh.

And she died really young. And pretty much by the standard she was at in penury, because he had just burned through this fortune. And it's one of those awful stories that the sad part of it is after she died, the press kind of said, well, you know, women, you should learn a lesson from this. You should be more careful who you married. I think that's the thing that we sort of forget about as well is that when you married, in most of history in the West, is everything you had, including yourself, now belong to your husband.

So even though this poor woman had some serious bank on her own, as soon as she signed that contract, it's his. All of it is his. Yeah. And she had an allowance, which was really generous, but he took that as well. And a lot of the time that you could inherit these great fortunes, but often they would be placed in the trust of a male relative. That's pretty much what saved her from absolute ruin. They sort of kept back some money.

But ultimately, when it was given to her, he would bully it out of her anyway. And this was often the case that the money was placed in trust by men because you, as a woman, couldn't be trusted to manage your own money. Christ, oh, my boy. And yeah, that was it. You were done for. And, you know, if something went horribly wrong, your husband could divorce you

and he would keep everything you brought to that marriage. Wow. Where people often think that when we watch Bridgeton, they think, oh, it's like women looking for rich husbands. But there were loads of men looking for rich wives, well-connected wives, women with a big fat dowry. It certainly wasn't, you know, all kind of like women fluttering their eyelashes of men.

It was a lot of men floating their eyelashes. This is business, isn't it? When you kind of boil it down to it, especially when you're dealing with anyone with a level of money or someone that needs money or anything like that. Marriage is business. As soon as you've signed that contract on the dotted line, that's what everybody's looking out for.

So it certainly isn't just women fluttering their eyelids, but it's definitely women that pay the greater price if their reputation is impugned. And as well, if you were, once you were married, obviously there's a chance you could end up with her. And if you were savvy, you would negotiate a settlement in your marriage contract because you were entitled to a joint which is a payment of one third of your husband's estates

after his death. It's help you, some of you to live on. But Bridgeton's got a storyline, Lady Featherington, her husband gambles everything away. And when he dies, she has nothing. What's left goes to her son, so she relies on him. He cuts her daughter's dowry, so their chance of marriage is pretty much.

in the dust unless you can negotiate something with him. And when you're a widow, this was the problem. If you'd had a bad husband, you had some independence because you were widowed. But if you didn't have financial independence, what did you do? You could choose the independence you had as a person on limited means or you could make another marriage, hopefully a good one and kind of hope for the best. It was not good. It's grim, isn't it?

And obviously, once you do get married, if you do get married and find out that your spouse is a complete shit. At least if you're the man, you've got the option of multiple mistresses, which is absolutely fine, whereas the women can't do that. And you've got the option of divorce as well if you're the man. Yeah, yeah, you can get divorced, absolutely. I'll be back with Catherine to talk more Bridgeton after this short break. I mean, I know Bridgeton is it's not real, it's a fantasy, it's playing with a fantasy in this very eroticised view of the past, which we seem to do a lot in our period dramas. We turn the past, if it's medieval history or whatever it is, Game of Thrones did it as well.

We make it raunchy and sexy. We make it so like everyone is just knobbing everyone. And obviously people were having sex. Of course they were. But I'm just not sure that they would have been quite as orgy focused almost as they are in Bridgeton. Because of what was at stake here? Yeah. I think that's a problem.

And Bridgeton sort of tries to have its cake and eat it. So there's a moment Bridgeton fans will know where Daphne kisses the Duke. Shocking. And her brother goes ballistic and challenges him to a. duel of honour, that would be enough to wreck her reputation. But then, yeah, you're right, that in the next, not literally the next scene, but in the next scene, they're kind of at it like knives as my granddad. Going at it like a herd of turtles. Exactly. And Bridgeton does do some things. It does kind of, it pinpoints other parts of that reputational thing quite well.

Eloise is hanging out with a guy called Theo because they've both got an interest in a different sort of life. They don't want to tread by society's rules and it gets reported on and it gets gossiped about. So her entire family gets sort of put under the microscope because their daughter's reputation is in question. So it does all of that really well. It's this kind of erotic side of it as well that it is, which I'm sure people hate me saying it, but it's kind of bodice ripper as well. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But you know, that's why a lot of people watch it. It's why we love it. Because it's not real past, is it? It's make-believe past. It's a fantasia, Bridgeton.

You buy into its world. Yeah. It's not supposed to be the Regency particularly as we recognise it. No. But it's like a sort of fantasia version. Speaking of realistic versions of the past, one thing that I always know is when I'm watching historical dramas and reenactments, things like that.

And of course, Bridgeton came under fire a lot because of its racially diverse cast and there's all one of these lunatics going, it wasn't historically accurate. One of the thing that I think about when I look at stuff like, is, well, how historically accurate do you want to be? because very rarely do period dramas have accurate regency hygiene practices in force. I look at them and I think, yeah, but all these people have got all of their teeth.

Like no one's got like horrible pockmarked skin from smallpox. Everyone's got their noses. Like when you watch Bridgeton, like watch your syphilis, you know, people's noses cave in. Yeah, yeah, of course. What's your taking that when you watch Bridgeton as a historian of the Readercy Period? You just sit there and watch it and go, they're fine. too clean. Do you know, by the time I get to Bridgeton, I'm mellow enough, I'm over it. But a few years ago, I watched a film called Perfume, the story of a murderer with my husband. I watched that.

It was, that was good. But you know the bit that I couldn't let go, the big audio at the end, everyone's got shaven armpits. Yes, they do. And I know it sounds really weird, but I was like, no. They wouldn't, though, would they? They wouldn't. No, they should be airy. Well, because, like, would you let a cutthroat razor neon armpit? I'm not sure if they had waxing treatments about then. But yeah, things like that. People would have been hairy. They wouldn't have been these smooth bodies.

I think we have an idea that in the past everyone understands. Regency people were quite fastidious about cleanliness, actually. They weren't really into it. And they had all sorts of brilliant homemade preparations that they splashed all over themselves to try and smell sweet. And, I mean, I think there would have been a sort of stand. that, you know, if you think of like the gents wrapping their tails of their shirts around

under their bums and that kind of thing. But if you're not clean, there's going to be an owner. I think there's no nice way of putting it. And as you say, you know, we know that there have been reports of Caroline of Brunswick having a bit of a pawn, whether they're trustworthy reports.

So people did have all kinds of different things that they did. But I think you're right with the teeth in particular. it's what I always call Hollywood teeth. Yes. Everyone's teeth aren't just white. They're white than normal teeth. Like weirdly white.

And sort of in the regents era, they use tooth powder, which would be a kind of, depending on how rich you were, it could be anything from crushed up bone china to crushed up brick dust. And you just kind of rub it into your teeth. Does that work? I guess it's got the abrasive thing. No, no, because they'd still be recommending it, wouldn't they? No one's saying brush your teeth with a brick.

A brick, no. I can't think as well. I'm not entirely sure. on the standards that they would be checking with things like the bricks or where the dust had come from. And also because they loved sugar. We've loved sugar since it first turned up. And sugar was extremely luxuriant.

So rich people ate and ate a lot of it. So their teeth rotted extremely quickly, didn't they? They did. So you buy yourself some dentures. And something that if ever I mention it on social media, people love, and I'm sure you've heard of it, Waterloo teeth. If you had money, because these were a premium item, after the Battle of Waterloo, people gathered teeth from the dead soldiers at Waterloo. Of course they did.

Why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you? They boiled them down and they set them in ivory and they made dentures. And when you see them now, they look horrendous, these things. And people's natural reaction is, oh, that must have been an option if you had no money at all. This was your last ditch. but these were a premium tooth. Wow.

You know, these were the teeth. If you had money, you get yourself some Waterloo Ivory dentures. And they were sold in sort of sets of upper and lower, and you could buy just the raw teeth, or you could buy the dentures. And the raw teeth, there are still summing museum collections. They're really abject

because they could have held together with wire. You're like, oh. Like now you've got denture glue, don't you, and denture tape and stuff. How did they keep that in their mouth, just this big ball of ivory? and dead kids teeth. You know, like, I don't know, like, joked false teeth

that you just sort of hold in with willpower almost. They must have been talking to people and their teeth falling out all of the time. I bet they were. I've certainly read diary entries where people will talk about so-and-so, just take their teeth out. Wow.

You know, mid-chat, they'll just take them out. If all of your teeth are fallen out of your head, that is very disfiguring, isn't it? And there's absolutely no escape. I suppose you would be willing to give almost anything a go to cover that up. I think you would, just to make life easier as well, to be honest.

Was it just at the Battle of Waterloo they were doing this? It was this a regular occurrence that we'll have a battle and then we'll gather teeth. Yeah, it was a regular thing. You corpse dentures and things like that. And obviously you had money. If you could afford to pay someone to boil some corpse teeth to make teeth just for you. Oh, it's grim. You could put them on Instagram today, but I look like I'm a tea.

Right. Turkey teeth they call them now. Everyone's going over at Turkey. Yeah. He's a waterloo teeth. It's due a revival, surely. No, let's not. Let's not do that.

So the teeth in Bridgeton are not realistic. We're not going for that. We're not going for that. They can't have that. As you said, they did have hygiene standards. They were very concerned about how they smelled. But I think if you could transpose us back there right now, to us, they would smell really bad because we, everything is scrubbed within an inch of our lives. Like we've got deodorants and body sprays and everything's anti-back, this, that and the other.

And we've got running sewers. And they would have accustomed to themselves. to a level of smells that I don't think that we would deal with today. How often could they change their clothes? Because would the clothes have got smelly? If you were in the upper class, if you were Bridgeton, you know, in the ton, you'd be changing them three or four times a day.

Really? That's... Yeah. Oh, okay. You'd start with your morning dress, which you'd wear at home. It'd be pretty simple. You'd wear that sort of go through your correspondence,

chat to your housekeeper, you know? What's like a morning dress staple? A morning dress would be just like a really plain, kind of like a white linen dress and you put something in hold your hair up you know and yeah it's your doing dress if you like okay you'd go off on your calls or you go promenading so you might put on your riding habit or your promenade outfit and each time you change you get a bit more a bit more fancy a bit more on point that's because that's interesting because I do exactly the opposite I get it in the morning and like right I need to do some work we will be dressed like a

proper human being today and then sometime round about lunchtime where And like the fitted trousers that I put on are digging in a bit too much. And then I'll just, I'll just put my sweats on. And then by the time I get home in the evening, it's like wonsie time. And then it's all just downhill from there. So it's interesting that they're doing that the other way around. Like, and fancier as they go on. Yeah, they get fancy.

Then in the afternoon, you get into half dress. Half dress. It's a bit more than smart casual. So it's what you'd wear to go somewhere that's nice. Not like you'd wear to go to someone's wedding, if that makes it. Yeah, something like that you might wear to go out for drinks. Yes. Okay.

Yeah, that makes you feel good about yourself. A bit of effort's gone into that. Okay. Yeah. And then you go out for the evening, because if you're up, upper, upper class, you're going out for the evening and you're wearing full dress, which is... The full shebang. All the best stuff.

It's the best fabric. It's your best jewels. Not too many, though, because you don't want to put ostentatious. Yes. That's the other thing we like about Bridgeton is it's very blingy. It's very, very, very like, oh, the shiny things. We like the shiny things. Exactly.

But actually, this is a generation that grew up in the shadow of the gillity. in the French Revolution, which, although it never actually got to Britain, it wasn't that far away, and the terror of it was phenomenal. Yeah. Did that have an impact? I mean, were people kind of going,

like, I have jewels, but they're not very big jewels, and they're ethically sourced? Yeah, it did. It had a massive impact on fashion. So if you think of sort of like 18th century fashion with the wide skirts and the tarring wigs, that when everything sort of went belly up in France,

people in England kind of said, oh, gold, you know. Take it down a notch. Got a bit too ostentatious, not what happened. And the skirts shrank, which obviously had the same effect of making everything a bit more revealing. So you can now see the female form. The wigs got thrown off in favour of just hair.

And it all started to look a bit, kind of like someone turned down the dial. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that started this in France were that modern tradition for the victim's balls that were after the terror where, you know, people who had lost people and the terror would, the sort of bright young things would turn up with their hair crop short,

wearing a red choke around their neck to symbolise those died on the gillotine. Wow. And they didn't wear those ostentatious dresses. They were dressed really simply. And I think as well, from a female perspective, that it was probably actually really nice to have that option to go, do you know what, I don't have to wear wide skirts and I don't have to wear a massive wig,

which is I personally love a massive wig. But Queen Charlotte, this is something Bridgeton has got really dead. right, Queen Charlotte, who was a traditionalist, Prince Regent's mum, she hated all that fashion. Oh. She absolutely loved big gowns and all the wigs. So when they show her dress like that in Bridgeton, that's actually pretty fair. That's dead on. Wow. But her ladies at court tried to combine the two, so they had the high empire waist with these wide round gown skirts and hoops, and it's a really weird and unflattering silhouette. Because it's sort of like your boobs. And then this skirt just coming

out from your boobs. That's not a good look, is it? No, it's not. And nobody could make it work. Like, you see drawings, nobody's work in it. Just, no. It's all over the place. No, three out of ten for that look.

So in Bridgeton as well, the other thing that's really appealing about it, is it's very colourful. Like, the dresses and the frocks, and it's like really lush. Would they have had colours like that, fabric colours like that? Because not only they're very expensive,

but was it in fashion? No, it wasn't, sadly. I mean, and I wish it was because I absolutely love bright clothes, you know, anyone that's seen my Twitter feed knows. But, you know, 80s sort of power dressing, I'm all over it. But Bridgeton has these like super standout gowns that are really heavily patterned. Yeah, you wouldn't have seen it, sadly. It wouldn't happen. It was muted shade.

You do see yellow maybe, something like that. You do see colours, but not those sort of blazing standout colours. it was all about let's be a bit subtle, you know, bow brummel kind of thing that it didn't do to be too loud. And they get out of their clothes pretty damn quick as well. One of my favorite things to do on TikTok, and there's a few people who do this and I love it,

is there's people that go and they recreate historical fashions and they show you what it would have been like to have put this stuff on. And even sped up, it takes a while. And like, I'm a historian. I've got an idea of what people wore. But like just watching someone put it on, you're just like, wow.

This is really labour intensive. It's skirt after skirt after skirt. And then there's a bustle and there's another thing that goes on. And it's, wow, that would have taken some time. I don't know if you can get that off as quickly as these people are doing. And there's a scene in Bridgeton

that gets costume historians in particular. There's currently some of one of my social media channels having a bit of a rant about it. And they're quite right. Daphne, leading lady of season one, being tight-laced into a corset. You know, it's a real Scarlet O'Hara moment. Yes.

She's got on some kind of silky drawers with a pocket in them. She's got no chemise under the corset, no shift under the corset. It's just a really wrong depiction. But it's used all over the place as the kind of like, you know, it was like a real moment, like a big, look at this sort of Scarlow horror lacing her in. It's silky and it's corseted and it's all that. So in terms of history, it's all kinds of wrong, but it really sort of captured people.

Alana McKnight is a fashion historian on the podcast a while ago talking very specifically about corsets and just making the point as you're doing there which is like well of course they didn't lace themselves into the point that they couldn't breathe because they needed to breathe. Yeah. It's just not true. So there are reports circulating today that Netflix is going to ban, completely ban, the use of corsets because people are getting injured. Yeah.

And in terms of Regency period drama and Regency world in particular, that corset would have achieved nothing because that wasn't the silhouette. No. In the Regents that they were all short stays, which were kind of like, you know, a long-form bra. They're quite boobular, aren't they? The looks of the time. I mean, they've got to do something. How are you getting those tits up? But the intention wasn't to shrink your waist as small as you could get it, would have achieved nothing. And there's a moment in Bridgeton when one of the characters' mum says, oh, when I was her age, my waist was like an orange and a half wide. Well, was it? Why would it have been? Why would it fit?

The thing about banning corset wearing, I know some people who wear corsets and they wear them for sort of work, you know, costume work, or they just wear them in everyday life. And the one thing they all say is if it's hurting, it doesn't fit. It's not right, yeah.

So I'm wondering if for the lead actors are they made to measure, but does everyone else just get, oh, you're a 34C or whatever, this is corset, it doesn't fit? So I think probably what happened is that people still buy into that idea that corsets were extremely dangerous and that's what people think that they are. So they're lacing them up that tight because they think that that's what they're supposed to do.

I think you're right and I actually spoke to a radio station about this and the DJ was wearing a corset for the pot. There you go. And she said, oh, it's really tight. It's really uncomfortable and I can't speak. Then you've put it on wrong. Doesn't fit or you've got it too tight. But I think you're right. And I did read an interview with a performer in another film who said the first thing she did when she put the corset on would say oh, get as tight as you can. And obviously some people do wear that. Some people like to tight lace and that's a fashion that came in at one point.

But I think it's something that you sort of train yourself into, don't you? You get a bit tighter each. You don't just go pull it as tight as you can first time out. No. It's not going to do anything. Ribs cracking, organs displacing. No, bad, bad, bad. But I will say that the reports, I don't know whether it all turn out that they're true or not,

but the reports have got everybody talking about Bridgeton against the mission accomplished maybe. That's clever, isn't it? I could talk to you forever and ever, but I'm not allowed to. But if I can finish on one question, when you were watching Bridgeton, with all of your research and nods for a particular period, what were the moments that caught your attention? Did you have like a hairy armpit moment, like when you were watching perfume, something that either really grated you and just put,

No, that's not that, it's not right, that's not right. Or something that you just print. Oh, I'm Bridgeton. I see what you're doing. Well done. There wasn't anything that made me gnash my teeth because nowadays I'm way more mellow. If this had happened 15 years ago, there'd have been a ton of stuff. The moment that made me go, I like it, was when we saw Queen Charlotte and she is so imperious.

Nice. That performance, that the writing of her. I think in many ways, she's way more imperish than the real Queen Charlotte. But that moment. when we saw her and she looks like a relic from another age in her costume and her wig, but she's so fabulous as well. Immediately you see her on screen and you go, oh, I know what you're about. Yes.

And I loved it, but I will say with relation to that, I mentioned to someone earlier that I was going to be talking to you today. And she said, oh, are you going to talk about Queen Charlotte's Coke habit? What she had mistaken for was Queen Charlotte had a snuff habit. And when she did it in Bridgeton. And I actually Googled this and quite a... a few people have talked about it, going, oh, did you see it when they showed the queen? Oh, they think that she's snorting coke instead of snuff?

Yeah. So I wonder if in future episodes, future seasons, they'll clarify. No, they'll just like. So, yeah, so that was, Queen Charlotte seems to be the person that people go, and obviously she's now got a spin-off show, which I love because I, you know, the more Queen Charlotte the better. I mean, maybe they should give her a Coke habit. Why not? Let's just, yeah, run with it.

Well, maybe it'll turn out that they're right and I'm, that's what they decided to do. But I just thought it was really interesting because everybody talks about the sex and the and this one person said, oh, talk about the Queen's Coke. Don't forget the Queen had a Coke habit. What? Yeah, like, mention it. So job done. Catherine, you've been absolutely amazing to talk to it.

And if people want to know more about you, where can they find you? They can find me on my website, catherine curzon.com, or you can find me on Twitter by searching for the. the frocking fabulous hashtag or for Madam Gilflip my username and that's where I do most of my business so come and say hello oh thank you so much for talking to me today I've had so much fun brilliant thank you so much for listening to this special episode on bridgeton and thank you to Catherine for joining me I just adored talking to you and if you've enjoyed this podcast don't forget to like review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts that is the mantra of every

podcaster from here to the end of time We've got episodes on women in literature, naked feminism, and our very first listener suggested episode coming your way, and that one is on the history of periods. And if there is a topic you'd like us to explore, or if you just want to say hello, you can now email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. Until next time, my lovely betwixters, stay saucy.

This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sounds.