Oh What A Time... - #13 Victorians

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

This week we're dipping back through time to spend some time with the Victorians; those in the working class eating jellied eels from dirty cups, the middle classes and all their lovely spare time and the upper classes who, frankly, are having a whale of a time. Elsewhere, there's more ONE DAY TIME MACHINE with one listener choosing to go back in time to witness possibly the greatest guitar duel ever. And there's even more facts that would mark you out in 500AD as an absolute genius. If you’ve got a one day time machine or anything else, drop us an email here: [e-mail] And guess what, we're back every Monday at the moment; got an episode idea? Do let us know. Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Oh and please follow us on Twitter at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod And thank you to Dr Daryl Leeworthy for his help with this week’s research. Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). And thank you for listening! We’ll see you next week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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assets and start with the 10 bucks in your pocket. Easy. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. See Kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was

absolutely rubbish. I'm Chris Scull. I'm Tom Crane. And I'm Ellis James. Each week on this show we'll be looking at a new historical subject and today we're going to be discussing the classes of Victorian Britain. The upper classes, the middle classes and some of you will be ahead of me, the working classes as well. The job lot. Well when you got to working classes people were really hoping you'd say working classes. All went, yes! High-fiving. The upper classes, the middle classes, and Fanny Blankers-Cohen.

All right, so we're going to be talking about Victorian classes. But before we get into that, let's have a little bit of correspondence. Thank you to Billy Lucas, who's been on. And he's from Dagenham, Billy Lucas, and he says, I was a boy from Dagenham. Although my mum wasn't a sugar in tea drinker, I was very often given tea in a baby bottle as a toddler and it was definitely quite normal in my very large extended family in Essex so I think this may well be an Essex thing

but it always seemed perfectly normal to me I think we've got to the bottom of this it's something that occurred only in Essex We should probably give the context for people who didn't hear that episode this isn't an email that's come apropos of nothing that guy's just decided to tell us about his tea in bottles chris was served tea in a bottle as a baby with a couple of sugars in it as well and absolutely fun very i mean very appropriate for today's episode but a very 1880s approach to parenting. They were trying to get the most out of you as you tried to operate the spinning Jenny, that loom,

missing a couple of fingers, age five, bringing valuable pennies into the household. So last week we asked for facts that would be demonstrably true in 500 AD. Andrew's been on. You go back in time, 500 AD, you go up to a bloke and you go this is his idea

tusks are congealed hair. Oh nice. I don't think there's anyone in 500 AD who'd believe you. No chance. Here I am in 2023 and I'm not impressed. I just don't think they'd believe you i think

they'd say why are you lying yeah where are you from wearing these crazy future clothes your teeth are in fantastic nick and why are you lying to me about that of all things i also think ellis at that time they'd have had more important things to be dealing with than facts. I think survival, basic survival, saying I haven't got the time to deal with this. You're hustling someone who's been fighting off a woolly mammoth. Exactly. I don't know, 500 AD, 500 years after the birth of Christ, you've had the invention of agriculture. People are quite settled.

They're eating grain. Okay. Yes, that's true. That's's very true you've got religion you've got agriculture you've got you know like some early towns which still exists would be recognizable so yeah you'd be like yeah i'm ready for some facts i'm not saying they'd be having a lunch break ready for some facts they're not having a tea break when does it start when does it start getting really hairy if you go at 100 000 bc is that where you're having to wake up and wrestle a saber-tooth tiger before breakfast well then you've got neanderthals around so you're like listen don't don't have sex with him because in a hundred thousand years time that's going to cause a couple of autoimmune-based illnesses.

You're going to be called ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn's disease. That will all come from you finding that Neanderthal attractive, so leave it. You know what it's like with daughters. You say, don't get with that guy. That's only going to make him on. And I don't mean Neanderthal as a pejorative. I mean, he's a different species to you,

so just please leave it. All right. I think Shane Keighley wins 500 AD fact of the week. So Shane's going back to 500 AD. And he says, I would know the component parts to make gunpowder in 500 AD. Oh, my God. Yeah. parts to make gunpowder in 500 AD. Oh my God, yeah. He does add that, unfortunately, he does not know where to find or process the involved

ingredients, therefore making the task somewhat difficult. But then he can't do everything, can he? I mean, surely being the ideas man is enough of that. It's all right to go, do you know what, I've done that legwork. man is enough of that. It's all right to go, do you know what? I've done that legwork. There's that famous book, Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies. And it's why Eurasia and North African civilisations have survived and conquered others. It came out about 25 years ago. It's a great book. I think it won the Pulitzer Prize, right? I'm actually looking at my copy of it right now. But imagine how hard it'd be if you could go back in time with a machine gun.

You'd be like, bring it on, mate. Just you wait till I pull the trigger on this. You know what? If I was going to mass manufacture a time machine, stick a little machine gun in there. Yeah. Because you're pretty much, you're fine. Yes. You can go back wherever you want.

There's absolutely, you'd be so confident. You'd be like walking into a pub with a hard block. Isn't this once again just the storylines of the Terminator? Isn't that what it is? Yes, yeah. We've once again stumbled into. Like clockwork, this podcast has stumbled once again into the storyline of the Terminator. Yeah, unfortunately, I watched the Terminator quite recently,

so it will, everything comes back to the Terminator. Last week, we asked you to send on if you have any distant historical relatives of note, and Richie Peel's been on. Recently, he's noticed that a Napoleon movie is out and he thinks we might like a relative of his. His great-grandad played the side drum at Napoleon's funeral. This is when Napoleon was exiled on St Helena by the British. His great-grandad was stationed there with the Lancashire Fusiliers.

He says, my grandad had the very drumsticks that were used until some kid from down the street took up playing the drums and his soft-hearted grandad gave them to the kid because he couldn't afford to buy them. Wow. He says, they may not have been worth Maradona's shirt levels of cash, but probably would have fetched quite a few quid at auction. That's incredible.

You know, that's an incredible story. But also the amount of historical relics that just no one knew what they were. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I did get in a time machine and went back to 580, any time anyone was going to put something in the bin, I'd be like, leave that! It's fine! We'll use that!

That's very valuable. We'll try and piece together the way you lived in about 1,500 years' time. We kind of need it. Don't put it in the recycling, please! That's quite a good thing to take back in the DeLorean with you, then. Just some black bin bags. You can just fill them up with loads of loot whatever they've got

chris are we going to address the elephant in the room which is that clearly neither of us it's embarrassing to say on history podcast we're entirely sure which way 500 ad was what do you mean both of us i arrogantly said that people would be worried about survival, wouldn't be interested in the task thing. Well, I still think it's hairy. I think life is still difficult in 580. Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine. I accept you're not beating off woolly mammoths, but it's still hairy. You're not waking up in 580 going, do you know what?

Yesterday was a piece of piss. Do you know what piss I would describe life as hairy until the late 80s once you get forensics that's the only point at which I would be comfortable even the 60s, the 50s

I'd be nervous yeah, my parents tell me stuff about their upbringing in the 50s and I'm like, that sounds absolutely bonkers. Like, my mother, when she was in what would now be called reception class, was walking to school on her own. It was like three miles. Yeah.

And I said, but, Mum, like, what do you mean? She said, oh, there were other children on the route. There were other lost children who'd been out there for days. Yeah, she said, oh, there were other children on the route. There were other lost children who'd been out there for days. Yeah, she said, no, no. Imagine letting your kid in reception class out. Just opening the door, go and have a good day. See you later. It's absolutely crackers.

My dad was getting the bus to different villages at about three. to different villages and above three. In case anyone sort of retrospectively worries about my mother's welfare, everyone did this and it was fine. But just 60 years on, well, 65 years on, it seems absolutely crazy. Shall we end the correspondence on a one-day time machine? Cue the jingle. It's the one-day time machine. It's a one-day time machine? Cue the jingle.

It's the one-day time machine. It's the one-day time machine. It's the one-day time machine. It's the one-day time machine. Sam Allen's been on. He says many of his preferred daydreams for a one-day time travel pass are related to music and seeing bands that he never got the chance to see. However, no matter how special the gig even live aid it's still just a gig but then he says recently he found out about the harrison clapton guitar duel over patty boyd ellis have you heard

about this i know that patty boyd left george harrison for clapton and they remained friends the two of them harrison and Clapton, had a guitar duel. And this is what Sam Allen would like to go back to see. He says, see these two in their prime dueling to best one another over the love of a woman. I just don't think that could be topped. I looked into this a bit. I'd never heard of this. So Harrison invited Clapton and Boyd to his Oxfordshire mansion, where it was suggested they battle it out for Boyd

over guitar solos. And just to make it even more mad, actor John Hurt, who was a friend of Harrison, was there and watched it. Hurt later said, George needed a smaller audience. He got two guitars, two amplifiers, put them up in the hall.

When Eric turned up with Patty, George invited him to play, and George had given Eric an inferior guitar and amplifier. It's like something out of wrestling. Clapton's biographer, Ray Coleman, said the two men improvised for two hours in a historic guitar battle of superstars, and that ultimately Clapton won. What a thing to go back and witness.

That is amazing. I didn't know that. I'm a big Beatles nut, amazing i didn't know that i'm a big beatles nut and i didn't know about that the opposing point of view that i think that would be the most cringeworthy awkward thing you could ever say i know they're incredible musicians but two men playing for two hours trying to do really cool guitar licks to impress something is the lamest thing i've ever heard it's's like something out of Bill and Ted. Sam Allen's going back to watch it. It would be fascinating.

Well, there you go. If you've got any more correspondence, anything on any of those subjects we just touched on, here's how you can get in touch with the show. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show you can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com

and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod now clear off well this week we are discussing the Victorians and we've gone uh working class middle class upper class slash the aristocrats and i'll be discussing the aristocrats and i'll be talking

about the middle classes and i'm going to be talking about the working classes and more specifically their eating habits and how they dramatically changed over time so boys the i think it's worth giving a bit of context before we get into this the no section of british society during the victorian era in the 19th century in general changed more than the working classes there was a huge shift in where they were at the beginning of victoria's reign and to the end now one of the sort of Victoria's reign and to the end. Now, one of the fundamental changes, of course, was at the start of Victoria's reign, relatively few of them had any access to formal education. By the end of her reign, primary education was compulsory.

Now, first of all, I want to ask you about this. How would you feel? Do you think you'd be pleased as a school child if you were the first lot to have to go to school? My grandmother, my father's mother, was really, really poor in the 20s and 30s. She lived in a pit village and her father had died in World War I. So I had, you know, threatened with a workhouse, all that kind of stuff. World War I. So I had, you know, threatened with a workhouse, all that kind of stuff.

And her brother was very bright and passed his 11 plus, but then had to leave school because he couldn't afford the books. And that really, really affected my grandmother. So fast forward to the 90s, when I was at school, I had quite a lackadaisical attitude to homework and revision. And she would almost be in tears saying, your Uncle Will would have loved to have had your opportunities. Do you think, Tom, that I gave a fuck? Do you think that had any impact on me at all? Or do you think that I continue to watch television and coast through school?

So this was kind of one of the fundamental changes was the access to education. But one of the other key changes in the experience of being poor or working class in Victorian Britain was the way that they ate. So life, I think we can agree if anyone's seen watched any documentaries or seen Oliver any of this lot you realize that life was hard basically if you're working class in Victorian Britain infant mortality was high pregnancy was dangerous infectious diseases like tuberculosis influenza whooping cough were like everywhere work was extremely dangerous and they didn't even have good food to look forward to. Now, I'm like, it's having a good meal.

Look, food is such a thing for me. I don't know if you're like this, but if I'm having a bad day, I have to focus on what I'm going to get to eat. If I think I'm not going to be able to eat something nice, I really panic. Yeah. I think I might be the opposite.

Really? Yeah, I think my wife's been away for a few days this week. It's been stressful looking after both kids on my own. And then when it gets to dinner time, the last thing I want to do is cook anything that's going to require some mental capacity. So, field pasta. The cottage pie that's been in the freezer for about ten years.

Yeah. Ten years. I don't care. Get it in Essentially a relic Of a different time Topped with potatoes that were Pulled up before the Berlin Wall fell

So food was kind of It was interesting Part of the reason that eating was not That fun During the early years of victoria's reign was because um food was so expensive and that was partly because the corn laws kept food prices artificially high and a lot of workers were paid a proportion of their wages in the form of credit it was only spendable in company stores yes big thing in wales it's the truck shop yes

exactly yeah so so you couldn't go and spend your money wherever you wanted to it was these these particular stores that were run by the businesses that you worked for and often the food there was adulterated so give you a couple examples see how you feel about these milk was watered down with a blended residue of animal brains that was the way that was the milk was often sold in these truck stores thoughts on that do you know what i'll have a black coffee that's fine i'll have oat milk that's fine and then generally if they weren't buying from the truck stores people had to rely on local seasonal vegetables so the cheapest being the onion which was half a penny for 12 so onions basically were eaten with everything now i'm a fan of an onion i've got a problem with that thoughts on that are you pro onion a friend of mine his dad thinks that

society needs to be completely reordered so that basically we go back to walk into work no long commutes yeah and that we and then we start cooking our own eating our own vegetables that we've grown ourselves so you only eat seasonal produce okay so i could tell you in my london garden i could grow a maximum of four carrots that is the space that i have available to me outside i could not make a salad with the amount of earth that i have available out there to be one meal it'd be a year's work for one meal i've got i tell you i've been running i've been having running battles in my garden i've got a pear tree and the all the local wildlife has been coming to pilfer from it so i caught i had loads of pears on it then one day i come down i was like

there's about a third of these pears are missing and then one day i caught a squirrel like stealing the pears of my pear tree i chased him out with the broom this morning i was sat there eating some scrambler looking out into the garden two parakeets flew down one parakeet started eating the pear then the other one started having a fight with the one who started eating this i had to again chase them out. Is it worth thinking you live in the Galapagos Islands? We should point out that parakeets, bizarrely, there are thousands of them in London. I don't know.

They are far and wide. And until I lived in London, I thought that was a joke. I thought that the entire city of London was taking the piss. But no, they are bloody everywhere. They're all round where I live, in East London. Have thought that the entire city of London was taking the piss, but no, they are bloody everywhere. They're all round where I live, in East London. Have you heard the big, here's the half-remembered historical facts about the parakeets, that Jimi Hendrix had several and released them.

That's a popular rumour, have you heard that? I have heard that, yes. The other one was that they brought them into film to make a film and they escaped. Oh my God! The real history lies in the film of The African Queen and they escaped. Oh, my God. The real history lies in the film of The African Queen in 1951. The film stars Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn were filming at Isleworth Studios. The director, John Houston, wanted the film to look as realistic as possible,

so he ordered for a flock of parakeets to be brought on set ready for their appearance on the silver screen. The birds became bored of waiting and they escaped and they've grown stealthily in number ever since. How would you mean they got bored waiting on something? He's looking at a flock of

barraquettes going, we're losing them. We're losing them. Do you want to hear a story of one of the most mortifying things I've ever done? I was in a movie a few years ago called Gloves Off, which is i was in a movie a few years ago called gloves off which is a british comedy movie about boxing and the one of the leads in it was ricky tomlinson

oh yeah the royal family yeah i was in my trailer and um i went and had a wee use the toilet and then I pressed the flush, and the flush didn't work. The wee was still there. But there was a loud noise. I didn't know what was going on. I thought, maybe you just need to wait for it to power up. We kept the button down.

And then I heard, Oh, whoa, whoa, what's going on? Oh, no, what's going on? Oh, no, oh, no. I was like, what's going on? That's a bit weird. Let's get the finger down. Someone came banging on the door. Open it up. What I was like what's going on that's a bit weird let's get the finger down someone came banging on the door

opened it up what I was doing was my trailer was joined to Ricky Tomlin's trailer and I was moving the central partition wall and making his room smaller and smaller

and smaller like in Indiana Jones you know that scene so his desk was coming in on him everything was falling off the walls. It was going like, oh no, oh God!

He nearly crushed Ricky Tomlinson. It was like the width of Ricky Tomlinson. I thought you were going to say that you did a film with Ricky Tomlinson and Ricky Tomlinson got bored and escaped and that's why there's flocks of Ricky Tomlinson all around London. But he survived. That's the main thing.

Okay, shall we get back to Victorian food? Now, meat wasn't an option for the Victorian poor because it was so expensive. Fish actually was. So a lot of fish was eaten, especially in coastal towns and villages where cod and haddock was eaten a a lot and in london and in cities shellfish so you can see this in the east end of london so cockles mussels whelks oysters and of course jellied eels i mean have you tried jellied eels chris you grew up in the area where they're sort of sold do you you tried them where they're sold well there is there's a shop around

the corner from you where there was in one stead that sold them i find them disgusting well the way they were sold then which i find quite funny it was it was from street vendors um you would be served your jelly eels in a cup and you could put vinegar on it if you wanted a bit of butter which would cost extra but you had to eat it quickly because the vendor would need his cup back god i think eating eels is one thing but being forced to eat eels at speed well the gut by the big cube behind you is like tutting and if you're worried about hygiene the vendor would sometimes dip the cup in a bucket of dirty dirty water before giving it to you they often wouldn wouldn't. I think at that point, it's not rocket science.

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whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 or older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. All right, I'm here to talk to you about the middle classes in Victorian Britain. Now, obviously, talking about middle classes here, quite a large range within the middle classes. You have at the very top, the upper middle classes, the gentry, likely kind of landowning gentlemen women farmers there

some of them may even have titles a knighthood for example they may earn an income from the land and then you've got down at the bottom the kind of lower middle classes the petty bourgeoisie the white collar workers or small business owners and shopkeepers that could be found everywhere that also has teachers in a country village or bankers or clerks in a market town. I remember the day we learnt about Marxism, and I remember saying to my dad, my dad grew up in a flat in Ilford, next to the 0406 if you're over that way, those tall ones, five of them, like a two-bed flat.

And he was quite proud to be working class. And I remember saying to him, I'm learning a bit of Marxism. I said, well, because my dad owns a factory. He was like, well, you own a factory. You own the means to production. Technically, you're middle class now. And he was violently angry. He's like, I'm not.

I'm not. No way. Yeah. Wow. It has an extraordinary impact on the British psyche class. And if you are told that you are not the class you think you are or relate to or identify as, that can cause... Yeah, yeah. People can get really wound up by it.

So the middle classes in Victorian Britain are kind of defined as a society that has kind of a group of people that have no choice but to work. But its members in the middle classes were able to secure jobs that were overall far more pleasant than those taken by the working class. And therefore, they could also ascend the social ladder a bit easier. If you want a good example of the social backdrop of a late victorian middle class house apparently mary poppins and the banks family that's a really good example you've got

maids the bourgeoisie house was designed to show off again this thing about status demonstrating your status the middle class middle class bourgeoisie house was designed to show off possessions and the new riches of wealth made in the professions. Everything was solid and beauty meant decoration. So the middle classes in Victorian Britain, famous for dollies and drapes, wallpapers, cushions scattered, the latest magazines on the coffee tables, bookcases containing all the right sorts of things, household manuals, collections of the three-vol three volume novel the so-called

triple decker sheets of music and there was always a piano in the bourgeoisie home and just to establish my newfound middle class roots we had a piano growing up and if you need old mcdonald had a farm banging out i can do that on request god it sounds like a great life lovely isn't it okay so you're in so far yeah big house everyone can see your stuff it sounds fabulous so here we go right this is the thing it sounds great but middle class life in victorian britain now, has a vulnerability in financial failure. Bankruptcy haunted this section of society like no other. Downward social mobility was just as likely as the reverse. Small shopkeepers, especially at risk, bankruptcy columns of newspapers were full of grocers,

bakers, fruiterers, painters, decorators, drapers, and the like who had run out of money. And that's why I think that, and that's, hey, Tom, that's why you're working 20-hour days. It's the fear. Social mobility downwards is a thing. And I mean, for you, Tom, to have such a lack of a plan B, no wonder you work so hard. You've got fucking nothing. If comedy goes wrong for you you're dead

yeah we want to make this more about victorian britain but i have to tell you tom you are on the precipice one rock one strong wind away from yeah falling off the cliff. Here's another thing I'm really interested to talk about. Is that the Victorians for me, when I think of the Victorians, they are obsessed with sex. But in a really kind of pious way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all about living

the most pious life possible and there's a religious element to that. William Gladstone, former Prime Minister, I'm sure you all know him, the grand old man of Victorian politics, regarded as something of a stiff, upstanding paragon of virtue, he would take

long walks through the streets of London looking for fallen women and he was generally observed to be rescuing the prettiest ones and whenever he would generally he was generally observed to be rescuing the prettiest ones and oh really whenever he would feel a kind of pang of desire he would beat it out of himself with a whip self-flagellation bloody hell this is known you can people have uh read his diaries and they know exactly when he did it because he would code in his diaries with a whip symbol when he did it.

Every time he self-flagellated himself. I just leave that out of your diary. I just sort of focus on... Why do you want to know? For whose benefit is that? Where I'd, you know, what I'd been up to, what I had for breakfast rather than sort of... You don't have to put everything in, do you?

Yeah, you don't have to be that honest. You're not taking minutes on your life, William. Everything has to be in there. Maybe he was tired and he'd run out of coffee and he thought, I need to finish this diary entry. If I whip myself, that'll wake me up i i reckon but but by the second time i'd whip myself i think to myself was it that bad do i need to whip myself can i can i not just have a stern word with myself Right, well, I am going to talk about the upper classes, the aristocrats. Now, the interesting thing with the aristocracy, I've met working class people, I've met middle class people.

The aristocrats, the proper elite, the inner circle, are still a kind of mystery to me. I've met one or two, obviously. I've met people, we're friends with people who've gone to Eton. But you're sort of, you're higher echelons. The ones who are getting invites to royal weddings and royal funerals and stuff. It's just, it's not my world. What you tom no i haven't chris in ilford dagonham i've met i've met a few posh people in my time really really posh people are all right but there there is an element of their lives i just don't understand yes absolutely yeah absolutely. Yeah, yeah. How it works.

The first time I was asked which school I'd gone to, because they expected to know the public school, I was like, well, I just went to a school in Carmarthen. They're like, oh, right. Like on Titanic. Yeah. When Leonardo DiCaprio goes for dinner. Yeah, you're like, oh, right, right.

Are you from the Boston Jameses? Now, Britain's 19th century aristocracy was the most fortunate in the world. This is such a good point when you think about it. Having avoided the fate of the continental elites, you know, dates with the guillotine, poverty and the whims of enthroned despots in in the uk the barons yep i'm gonna do it like i'm um like i'm a football pundit your barons your vicar counts your marquises your earls your dukes they were just left to make a fortune either from land or from industry or from commerce or from empire

um or from politics as well now they must have been when you consider the revolutions that were happening in europe they must have they must have sat there thinking and thinking themselves god we got away with this one haven't we how have we managed this we are lucky or salt fair play. During Victoria's reign, no fewer than eight aristocrats from both political parties, Liberal and Conservative, held the office of Prime Minister. Two Viscounts, not the Biscuit, five Earls and a Marquess, and many more obviously held cabinet and sub-cabinet rank. So almost all the governors, the Governor-Generals of India were peers, for instance.

For instance, people like Lord Elgin, the marbles guy, Lord Dalhousie and Lord Curzon. Amongst the prime ministers, you had the Queen's early favourite, Viscount Melbourne, the lord whom she called Uncle. And then you had people like the Marquess of Salisbury. They were dominating political life in the 1880s and 1890s. But we shouldn't get too carried away, because even though it was a world of aristocratic government, the most important politicians of the 19th century were Robert Peel, William Gladstone, and Disraeli, and they weren't aristocrats.

Well, not really until later in life. They represented the future of British politics. There was a sort of decline of aristocratic power. And then you had the creation of modern civic life with the middle class at its heart, the kind of civic life that we recognise today. Now, on both sides of politics, you had writers, you had novelists, translators.

Benjamin Disraeli um who became the earl of beckonsfield he was noted for a series of one nation novels um then you had the earl of derby and he was known for his translation of homer's iliad so a bit a bit like some politicians i could name uh today they had stuff going on on the side do you know like um when i think of the prime minister or any kind of like modern leaders so much of what i think about their job is is like defense and really sophisticated sophisticated network of communications and you know i imagine their offices are very busy very you, a lot of technology there, and everything is kind of finely tuned down to the second.

And when I think about prime ministers in this era, are they just sat doing, like, are you doing nothing most of the time? What are you doing? Just having chats. Just walking around having chats. Yeah. I mean, it must have been, obviously, of course it was hard it's just I don't know

if the press had the same sort of impact on policy certainly not in the same in the way it would now I read Clement Attlee's biography quite recently and obviously he was when he was Prime Minister the press

was still enormously important but back then in the 1800s i don't know it's uh it's it's interesting i'm not sure you're turning out one bit like a four-page newspaper a day if you're lucky and it's only probably about 30 blokes who can read it yeah Yeah. Because literacy is there. So, you're like, oh, there's a big scoop in the paper. Who gives a shit? But those 30 blokes think you're great. They think you're doing a brilliant job. It's like a particularly,

not particularly popular blog nowadays, especially when someone runs on their website and they do a blog. And there's 25 followers. Someone does a tweet. They've only got 10 followers. It's easy to forget the aristocracy of Victoria's reign, which is 1837 to 1891,

was a tiny fraction of the population. So mid-century editions of de Bretts, which also included knights and baronets, run to 700 pages. But in those 700 pages, those people wielded most of the economic and political power. And so that group of people, people expanded and contracted throughout the period and some titles went, you know, others were created. The most successful businessmen, people like co-owners such as D.A. Thomas, who went on to be Lord Ron, then Alfred Thomas, who went on to be Lord Pontypridd. who went on to be Lord Pontypridd.

They were industrialists, but they all made a fortune and they all sought the validation of a peerage. And the thing with those industrialists as well, they were absurdly wealthy. So I remember studying Richard Crochet, who was the iron master in South Wales. So he lived 1739 to 1810. So when Wales was industrialising, he was the one,

especially in the Merthyr area, was the one making the money out of it. Like he was a partner in the business that started the Caerfyr ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil. By modern day standards, he'd be worth about 209 million quid. Wow.

Yeah. Wow, okay. Wow. I i mean the guy had money the guy once again yeah here this is a question we've posed before what are you spending that money on yeah i remember when we did i did i studied him for my gcses and i remember we were given a kind of inventory of his house and each doorknob was worth a thousand quid and all that kind of stuff. Others, including people like the Marquesses of Booth and the Barons of Tredegar and the Earl of Plymouth, they were bequeathed vast wealth by the growth of industry. wealth by the growth of industry. So this arose because the value of previously very provincial parcels of

land, particularly in places like South Wales and the north of England, land which up to that point, up to the Industrial Revolution, had been home to tenant farmers scratching a living. The wealth, the value of that land increased exponentially once coal and iron were discovered and extracted. So if

you owned that land, suddenly then you were sitting on absolute fortune. How interesting. Now, the education of the aristocracy was a matter for the public schools, as you can imagine, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster, etc. And then the ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge, Trinity College, Dublin,

St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow. And we can get a kind of flavour of their outlook and how they were trained, because they were trained for empire. But we can work out how they thought from the magazines they produced and also in the kind of this house debates that they would have. So you still see footage of the debate at Oxford. I remember Dizzy Rascal did one. And if you look at the topics they're debating they're quite forthright for the time stuff like this house would view with favour

the abolition of the assembly known as the House of Lords that's from Queen's College, that's in 1883 Wow Yeah, it's interesting isn't it In the opinion of this house the principle of nationality is pernicious that's Trinity College in 1891 Yeah This house would view with satisfaction

a scheme for bringing the railways under state control. That's from Pembroke College in March 1887. But obviously, because they're undergraduates and young people, some of them are just stupid. They're dreamers. Some of them are just stupid. We'll get some grown-ups in here. This house believes the existence of ghosts

and other supernatural phenomena. Worcester College, March 1887. In the opinion of this house, beer is the foundation of England's greatness. Lincoln College, November 1896. That's also got real last day of term vibes about it, that one, isn't it? Yeah.

Before your finals, you're pissing about. Now, the order of precedence also determined that an English pier was of a higher rank than the Scottish pier, or a British peer. Or an Irish peer. There was no concept of Welsh peer since there was no Welsh crown.

A bit harder to be posh if you're Welsh, but that's fine. That's something I've come to accept. I can live with that. Time's a great healer. So there we have it. I mean, you'd want to be an aristocrat. They've definitely got the best deal of the Victorian working middle and upper classes. You definitely want to be an aristocrat if you have the choice.

It's amazing the huge division as today. I mean, what really has changed, to be honest? But if you look at jelly deals in a cup that has to be handed back to the man who's given you those jelly deals, and then the impossible wealth at the other end of it. But then how much has changed, to be honest? God, eating jelly deal out of a clean cup. Life doesn't get any better. Well, that's it there's only one thing left for me to do

and that's the naked, very transparent request for a five star review yet again I'm going to give you the same old spiel that it helps algorithms in reality it helps me sleep at night

I look at your 5 star reviews and I think to myself finally I've achieved something I can go to my grave and I've talked about this a lot with John Robbins the idea of a digital gravestone which is just my 5 star review scrolling on a gravestone

for the rest of time people are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, what a time was a good podcast. Look at that. You know there's this trend in Japan for tombstones that have QR codes that link to YouTube videos

of the individual's life. Maybe your QR code just linked to all the lovely reviews. Oh, yeah. Is that true? Oh, yeah. And people walk past My digital gravestone And go That was a life well lived

Wasn't it? Average of 4.9 stars Look at all of his Podcast reviews I'd have a QR code That just links to That scene where Dale Boy falls through the bar

I think that's just Quite nice and enjoyable And if you're In a place of grief Maybe that's what you need Yeah yeah Everyone finds that funny just a link to my favourite memes

exactly alright that's it for this week we'll see you next week bye bye goodbye Thank you.