You're Dead to Me - The Victorian Christmas (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Why do we celebrate Christmas with cards, crackers and a tree? Join us as we travel back and explore the weird and wonderful history of the Victorian Christmas.Just who the Dickens had the idea to bring trees indoors? Can a soft-drinks firm really take credit for Father Christmas’s red suit? And why did the Victorians send each other such bizarre Christmas cards?Greg Jenner is joined in the studio by historian Dr Fern Riddell and comedian Russell Kane.Produced by Cornelius Mendez Scripted and researched by Greg JennerA Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

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Hello. Merry Christmas and welcome to a very special episode of You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. And you might have heard my other Radio 4 show, Homeschool History, although that one's for the kids. And for the purposes of today, I am the ghost of Christmas past. Yes, as you can probably tell from the extra jingling on our intro music, and of course, today's date, it is the contractually obligated festive special. And today we are pulling our crackers,

dangling shiny things on the tree, and basting the turkey in time-honoured tradition as we get to grips with how the Victorians celebrated Christmas. Tis the season for boughs of jolly, so I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's an author, broadcaster and expert on Victorian popular culture, and she's my author, broadcaster and expert on Victorian popular culture. And she's my fellow honorary research associate at Royal Holloway, University of London.

It's the lovely Dr Fern Riddell. Hi, Fern. Thanks for coming. Hi, Greg. And in Comedy Corner, boasting one of the most impressive CVs in comedy, he is a multi-award winning stand-up presenter, writer and performer. You'll have seen him countless times on the telly. And now he's the host of the fantastic BBC Sounds podcast, Evil Genius, a comedy podcast about history. How would that even work? It is the brilliant Russell Kane. Hi Russell, how are you? Hello.

Well today we are going to be tackling Christmas in the 19th century. There's a slightly different thing about today's episode because as well as having an expert in History Corner, Dr Fern, who's a brilliant scholar of the 19th century of social stuff and of pop culture, that's your kind of bag, but as well as Dr Fern, I have to admit that today is also my specialist subject. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the history of Victorian Christmas cards. So you are being double teamed by nerds today. I'm basically sprinting against two Usain Bolts today. Hopefully by the end of it, three Usain Bolts.

We'll all be on an equal footing. So, what do you know? Well, you start the show as ever with the,, what do you know? Well, you start the show as ever with the So What Do You Know? Where I summarise all the things I think people at home might know about the subject. And, well, let's start with the obvious. In 2018, Dan Stevens, the nice chap from Downton Abbey, played Charles Dickens in a movie called The Man Who Invented Christmas. And if you haven't read Dickens' classic novella, A Christmas Carol,

then you've probably seen the Muppets version, the greatest role Michael Caine has ever done, no arguments, I am right. So you're probably thinking Charles Dickens is Mr Christmas. It all started with him, and maybe you've been told that Victorian Christmas was uncorrupted by modern commercialism. It was the good old days of festive cheer and family values before we got obsessed with manipulative schmaltz and John Lewis adverts about cute kids.

But is this true? Were the Victorians as pure as their reputation? Was Dickens the primary Yuletide architect? Have we commercialised it? Or actually, was it all about money anyway? Let's find out. Dr Fern, let's have an argument. Where do you stand on Dickens as the man who invented Christmas? Is it legit or a load of old baubles? Well, I would say in many ways it is legitimate. Well, it is because we have this moment where you have Dickens and the Christmas Carol in 1843. You have this incredible new style of Christmas as mass commercialisation. And I think that we see that growing throughout the Victorian period.

And now it's something we really hold on to. You know, Christmas for a lot of people is Dickensian. It's snow, it's mulled wine, it's oranges, it's Tiny Tim, it's everything. So for me, in many ways, I think the Victorians are responsible for our modern day Christmas. I would quibble with that. I would say the Victorians are supercharged Christmas. I think it's a much older festive tradition. And then they come along and they pump it full of hormones. Yeah, I would agree with that. We know that Christmas has existed for a very, very long time after all.

It's a huge festive part of our calendar from the medieval period onwards, if not before, in some form. Let's talk Christmas trees. Russell, what's the Christmas tree looking like in your house? We're talking massive Norwegian fur, fake tree? Well, I'm from Essex, have a guess. Convincing looking, but plastic. It's older than you think it is because it's had the bits done to it.

Its baubles are slightly larger than they need to be. It's been oppressed by other trees around it in the media. Lots of tinsel? What are we talking in terms of decorations? To be honest with you, I'm not allowed near it. Lindsay, who isn't from Essex, my wife, she's from Manchester. She's more the one with the designery. She's a makeup artist and design and dye lashing, so she's got the eye for making it look nice. So actually your tree is actually quite classy and beautiful. Yeah, it's all like steels and gold. I mean, the

amount she's done. We have an actual grotto under the stairs. Six foot Santa, reindeer. It's bearable now that we've got a child. Before it was something slightly sick and Freudian about a grown woman going, look at me giant snowman. What's on top of the tree? We've got a tiny wooden puppet of Richard Dawkins, which we put on top. No. I think it'll probably be an angel.

Okay. Classic. Fern? A star. God of a star. Both of those are Victorian traditions, aren't they?

Those are both standard Victorian. Mine's scrap for my stage. Not a standard Victorian. Not a standard. Can I just interrogate the terms of your initial question?

Yeah. Because I noticed a very quick slip from did Dickens to invent Christmas to did Victorians invent Christmas. As far as I know,

Charles Dickens is one man and the Victorians is a whole era. It's very true. We can be pedantic. Go on then, let's start with pedantry. Are we saying that Dickens the man invented it and the Victorians around him were infected by his manifesto of Christmasness?

Or are we saying that he was just like, you know, one of the main people or was Victoria and Albert with their Christmas tree? Was it sort of a Nehru and Gandhi type situation? I think it's a combination and it's more a decade. The better question would be, did this decade invent Christmas? Ah, okay, so which is 1840s. It is, because that's when we get A Christmas Carol, which obviously is Charles Dickens

and it's the whole story. Its themes are of love and desire and loss and what you need to be a good person. What's the message of Christmas is if you're not good, you will go to hell. So be good at Christmas. And not only in the 1840s do you have this incredibly powerful message. We also have Prince Albert illustrated in kind of newspapers across the country what his version of Christmas is like. So you get the Christmas tree, which is where people are like,

oh, Prince Albert's got a Christmas tree. Albert's Christmas tree is 1848, but the Christmas tree is not a Victorian import. Do you know when it comes earlier? Russell, have you got any clue? William, was it before? Well, so, William IV's pretty good. It's George III era,

isn't it? It's a very strong tradition in Germany, going back to probably the time of Martin Luther. Well, there is this idea, actually, there's a war about Christmas trees between the Catholics and the Protestants. And people like to say... Oh my God, is there anything they won't argue about? But they like to say that it is, that there was this rumour that Martin Luther did it. And the Protestants were the first to invent Christmas trees. And there's no truth in that at all.

We don't know, really. Christmas trees are very old. And it becomes popular, as you say, in the 1840s and grows throughout the century. And people also decorate their houses with holly and ivy and they're taking stuff from the natural world and putting it into their houses. And I would argue that's a response to the Industrial Revolution. Do you agree on that one?

I think because the 1840s are instrumental in when we see this shift from our old culture, which had gone before, which is pastoral and folkloric to what has started in really the late 1700s, which is the Industrial Revolution. And by the 1840s, we've got these huge, amazing cities full of people who are still trying to connect to their pastoral family roots, which are by that point only a generation or two old.

So they're bringing with them all the ideas of the rural pastoral past. All right, we've moved from trees onto another new invention of the 1840s. We have some Christmas crackers in the studio. Fern, Russell, I'm asking you now to pull a cracker. Let's do a test of strength. No correct result for this. No, there isn't. It's like the politics have become so complex

that whoever wins is problematic. Hey! Oh, this is perfect. I've got a bottle opener in the first one. Oh, hello. And a mirror, a little miracle hat. Oh, that one was meant for me, clearly. opener in the first one. Oh, hello. And a mirror, a little miracle hat. Oh, that one was meant for me, clearly. There's the hat and the joke in there.

Yeah, come on, Russell, let's have a comedy performance, please. What do you get if you cross a prince with a pizza express? No, I'm joking. I'm joking. This is not a joke. It's actually... This will probably appeal to you nerds more. It's more a riddle. What gets wet with drying?

Oh, I don't know. A towel. Oh. I wouldn't call that a joke. No. It's more sort of a riddler. I've got a joke for you. Is it a joke or is it another teaser?

Well, I think you're going to have to be the judge of that. Why is it easy to weigh a fish? Because of scales. Oh, Greg, because it's got its own scales. Okay, sorry. I killed the joke. I sat on the punchline. So I'm going to tell you the classic story of how Christmas crackers were invented,

and then I think Fern is probably going to tell me I'm wrong. So here's the famous story, Russell. In 1841, there's a man called Tom Smith. He's a confectioner. He makes sweets. And he sees the French wrap sweets in little paper, little bonbons. And he's trying to think of a way of marketing it. And it takes years and years and years.

And finally, the story goes, he sees a log on his fireplace crackle. And he goes, oh, brilliant. I'll put a little bit of saltpeter in there. And when you pull the crackerer it will make a bang noise russell what do you think he called his crackers what year is this sort of late 1840s it would have been distasteful to call it a peterloo just i'm trying to think of puns on salt peter but that's still quite in living memory at that point explosives josephs that's nice i mean i that's in the right ballpark yeah he went with bangs of expectation that's not bad no yeah that is the classic story that tom smith invented it tell me it's true fern you're now

going to come in with your facts and ruin it well it's not that it's not true it's like all victorians like to invent a story a mythology for themselves themselves. We've got Queen Victoria, we've got everything. And the cracker story is no different. So Tom Smith is a real person. He was a confectioner, but he did not invent the cracker and he did not invent it by hearing a log crackle in the fire. It was actually his brother, who's H.J. Smith, who worked in the music halls. And there's quite a high likelihood

that he would have had an understanding of both stage magic and the silver filaments that were used in the early crackers that make that bang noise to be able to put them together because his brother Tom as a confectioner was really struggling to sell these sweets and so to come up with something that was new and really exciting and could be based at Christmas was what H.J. Smith really did. And we don't know his story because no one's recorded it because the family themselves were so good at creating this brand because, of course, Victorians commercialise Christmas.

I mean, I should say the Tom Smith Cracker Company still exists. No way. It does. And still makes the official crackers for the royal family. The Tom Smiths, they really do go for it and they become the most popular brand of the Victorian period. They'll be the best two uncles to have. What do your two uncles do? One runs a sweet shop,

one runs a magic shop, everyone's my friend from day one. Exactly. Amazing. The Victorian Christmas, we see a huge surge in the way in which toys are marketed to kids. This is a moment in history where suddenly there is a marketplace for kids as a new audience.

It is but we're throughout the Victorian period we see this kind of almost a fetishization of childhood yeah which is children should be kept as pure and innocent and they're not tiny adults which is often what they have been seen as in the past. This marketing of Christmas presents is something that goes for everyone whatever family family you are in. It's not actually specifically Victorian. If you look at the 18th century, there's lots of people advertising for Christmas boxes that you would go and you would find a box for you in the morning and children should be up from five

and you should be able to hear the cries through the house of what they've got in their Christmas box and how exciting it is. But in the 19th century, this targeting toys, because we've got industrialisation, because we've got huge factories now that can make loads of toys, rocking horses, nutcrackers, anything you like, mass produced, suddenly more children can have an exciting Christmas than really could have had before.

Because before that, it would have been very specialised and very much based on how much money you had, whether or not you got a gift at Christmas. And the toys are put in stockings? Well, they're put in stockings. They're left under trees. They're by the fireplace. And what's in them is always something that you should get excited by. So it could be a skipping rope for girls, toy soldiers for boys. And one of the things I really love is that especially in the early 19th century

for young boys you would leave some beer. Legends. How young are we talking young boys? Really young. There is an idea you know drinking beer or drinking porter was like drinking water. Russell what did you get for Christmas as a kid? That carried on in my house. When I was seven my dad went this is a Stella.

We were big on Christmas. Yeah did you do this my dad was not the most generous man he's quite a tightwad really i could never sleep on the 24th either it's the insomnia children get and you remember the feeling of it it was like a physical pain of wanting it to be the morning it was so amazing it is terribly commercialized but i do love giving the gifts the older i get get the more of a buzz I get out of being the one that gives the gift so I'd have made an awful Scrooge.

Do you want to guess what the most common gifts were between adults? Fruit? Yeah, fruit would be number one No way, what a guess! And the second one would be books. Ah, books, of course. It's a huge marketplace. Fern? Well, books are a massive marketplace. I wouldn't have thought literacy was... Is literacy quite high at this point? Yeah, books, of course. It's a huge marketplace. Fern? Well, books are a massive marketplace. I wouldn't have thought literacy was...

Is literacy quite high at this point? Yeah, huge, especially from the 1870s onwards. But it's also the authors themselves realised that at Christmas they're going to get a lot of people buying their books. It's the birth of the Christmas special. It is the birth of the Christmas special. Sherlock Holmes is introduced to us as a Christmas character. That's published at Christmastime.

Obviously, Christmas Carol with Dickens. And one author who is absolutely desperate to make sure his books gets published at Christmas is nicknamed by his publisher, A Christmas Carol. Because Lewis Carroll is desperate for everyone to make sure that they are reading his books at Christmas. And he writes to his publisher sort of saying, look, come on, the children are going to be asleep

and they're going to be full of plum pudding. They should be lying in bed reading my books. And no one will sort of listen to him. I think of them as summer, when I think, close my eyes and think of Lewis Carroll's work, you see sunshine and fields and you think of it like a lazy summer read. Dickens was a huge Christmas, I mean not just Christmas

Carol, he used to do lots of short stories as well so he was a really important writer and journalist when it comes to Christmas. But if you want someone to read who is a Victorian author that you should be reading instead of Dickens, you should try Mary Elizabeth Braddon, because Braddon writes the best Victorian stories. And she's got a good Crimbo one.

She's got a lot of revenge tales. Lovely. I would say. Sorry, Tarantino. Yeah, a lot of revenge. No, she is. Her first novel was called Kill William, wasn't it? We need to move on to Father Christmas, or is it santa claus or is it st nicholas of myra or chris kringle russell what do you say in your house

do you go father christmas do you say santa who's coming down the chimney we say santa but we use both we're bilingual yeah so father you have to be well father christmas not coming oh there goes santa now yeah we say both yeah which i think is very common across the country probably fern where does does Father Christmas come from compared to St. Nicholas? And let's focus on more recent history, let's not do medieval stuff. Well, let's go backwards actually, because to say Santa Claus and Father Christmas we might think

is a really modern thing, but the Victorians were doing it from the middle of the 19th century onwards because of the American papers. The idea of Santa Claus obviously comes we think from Twas the Night Before Christmas, which is a poem that's written in the US. Yeah, by Clement Moore. Well, we don't know if he might have stolen it.

But that's in the kind of the 1820s, 1830s, around that point that this comes out and it gets published. So the idea of Santa Claus comes over from the US media into ours. So you see it, you see both. But Father Christmas is a really British tradition. And there's, yeah, that's a beautiful image from there in the red, beautiful kind of red cape and a big white beard, which is a very Victorian kind of idea of him. But he's been part of our culture for centuries. He used to be dressed in purple and gold. And there's a wonderful article in the Newcastle Current in 1742 that says he is as fat as punch and as merry as full staff. He was a delight to

the rich and a comfort to the poor. And it's this idea that that 12 nights from Christmas Day to Epiphany is a time of joy and feasting by this beautiful, huge spirit, this character that if you've seen The Muppet Christmas Carol, is the ghost of Christmas present. And that is the idea. Russell, can you have a quick guess as to what was the first moment that something big happened with Santa Claus

on Christmas Day 1841 in Philadelphia in America? This is sort of speaking about the history of commercialism. I don't know when radio or the... No, it's earlier than radio. Yeah, it feels earlier than Marconi and all that. I mean, we're one way into darts in a dartboard now. But what could possibly be commercial in 1840s? It has to be something to do with post, surely.

Good guess. So what you'd say may be sort of stamps or something like that? Some sort of stamps. The only thing that could get around a country quickly at that point would be something postal, I would have thought. Well, it's a good guess, actually. It's a very good guess. So 1841 is when we get Father Christmas,

or rather the American Saint Nick, turning up in department stores and entertaining kids. So actually the commercialism is already happening, you know, a long time ago. Would that be Macy's? Would that be as far back as then? This is in Philadelphia. It's a toy shop and delicatessen owned by J.W. Parkinson. So Macy's do get one later on in the century,

but this is really early. And behind me on the wall, there is an image of Father Christmas, which is a Victorian image, and he's wearing red. There is this myth that Coca-Cola invented him wearing red, and it's just not true. But he wears a variety of colours, doesn't he, Fern? I mean, you've mentioned purple and gold, but we see him also in brown and green and yellow is very common.

But again, these are rural pastoral vegetation outside where you can see these sort of colours. It's linking him to a pureness of spirit. He'd pass the BBC impartiality test during an election debate with the way he just described him. As long as he's wearing all the colours at once. See if you can guess who turns up to join Santa in 1849 in a short story by James Rees. He doesn't have any sidekicks. Well.

It can either be Mrs. Santa. Hey, nailed it. Is't have any sidekicks. Well. He'd have to be, it can either be Mrs. Santa. Hey! Nailed it. Yeah. Mrs. Claus. 1849 is the first mention. That far back.

Yeah, the first time that he gets married. That feels like something like Germaine Greer invented in 1973 or something. We need a female Santa to stop the hegemony. Let's talk Christmas dinner.

What do people eat, Fern? Is it turkey? Is it duck? What's on the menu? I'm assuming it's all the standard stuff, but is there anything that might surprise us? Would you like to know what the Queen was eating in 1897? Yes, please.

In 1897, the Norwood News delivered this incredible list of what the Queen was having, all served on gold plates, of course. Nice. She had woodcock pie, a baron of beef, boar's head, and turkey, goose, plum pudding, mince pies, everything. This is also a time of charity. The 19th century has delivered an enormous amount of poverty. There are millions of people coming to the cities who are, a lot of them are really struggling.

So we also get soup kitchens, but bigger than that, Christmas kitchens almost. Absolutely. And I think we have this idea that the Victorians are very much them and us. You've got the aristocracy and then you've got everyone who's poor and who had nothing because we didn't have a welfare state. It's also this huge period of reform and social care. And from the 1840s onwards, there is this idea that if you are a good Christian person, you are supposed to care for the people around you who have less than you.

It's kind of written into how to be a good Victorian is to do these things. And in 1851, the Leicester Square Soup Kitchen, it feeds on Christmas Day 22,000 people. It really pushes this idea that Christmas should be for everyone, that to have what you want and you need in life to be comfortable should be for everyone. And that's throughout the Victorian period. It's not just at Christmas.

And we don't know quite why Boxing Day is called Boxing Day. No. It's weird. It's one of these things you're like, surely we can identify that. Boxing Day? I have no idea. No, we don't know. And there's nothing on the internet anywhere. Well, there's plenty on the internet, but the most...

Boxing things up, surely, rather than beating each other up. Yes, it's not violence day. It's not punching day. I always thought it was to do with boxing. Punching day is Christmas day where I grew up. We think it's probably that people would maybe collect things door to door with boxes. They might go around. It might be a collection for the sailors.

Oh my God, the Christmas boxes. So the Christmas boxes is a 19th century and 18th century tradition, isn't it? 18th century tradition. You'd have the Christmas boxes. Maybe it's just when everyone went around, the Christmas boxes were empty and they gave your Christmas box is a 19th century and 18th century tradition 18th century tradition You'd have the Christmas boxes Maybe it's just when everyone went around The Christmas boxes were empty And they gave your Christmas box back Possibly

But we think it must be collections Again for the poor or the needy We're not quite sure Let's move on to my favourite thing about the history of Christmas Which is how geniusly bonkers Victorian Christmas cards were This is what I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on This is my favourite thing Russell, we have 16 cards

They're on a slideshow behind us I'm going to show you them one at a time and I just want you to react to what you are seeing so at the moment we've got one up which is just Father Christmas

looking sort of quite nice we've got sad Santa sad Santa looks like he just got back from Ibiza two days ago he's bags under the eyes yeah it's like I'm not going to hang over

wait a minute it's Tuesday I'm crying in the toilet and next it's children riding bats with feathers that look like an analogous for polo sticks.

Yeah. So it's like, it's polo bat. It's basically baby jockeys on bats. Right, yeah. It's baby jockeys on bats, yeah. Very Christmassy. Indeed. Next one.

It's sort of a mescaline Christmas card, that one. This is an owl riding, is that a penny farthing? Yep. That's an owl riding a penny farthing. Delivering a message. Delivering a message. Yep. Next one.

Wouldn't need a rear view mirror if they're an owl, of course, because they just look straight behind. Russell, say what you see. There's some people playing music under a window and then a man's emptying his chamber pot onto the drummer's face. And the next one. Okay, well, this is the card everyone wants to receive. It's a dead robin with its withering feet up in the air.

It's the most heartbreaking card. And withering feet up in the air. It's the most heartbreaking car. And with a caption, may yours be a joyful Christmas. The implication being, this robin sodding well didn't have a joyful Christmas as he's dead. This is as bad as it gets. What do you see here, Russell?

It looks like it could be a mangled wurzel or a turnip or a parsnip walking along. And on the top of it is Jacob Rees-Mogg with a monocle and a top hat. And he's holding a strawberry heart wheat thing that says Merry Christmas to you. Yeah, it's literally the body of a parsnip at the face of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Which is Jacob Rees-Mogg's body, actually. I heard he's made of parsnip. And then my absolute, absolute favourite one is two children being harassed by a giant wasp.

Exactly. So those are Victorian Christmas cards. They seem to like horrific image, nice text. Yeah, yeah. And they love animal scenes. They love animals doing human things. They really love natural things because Christmas cards originated actually as Valentine's cards. So they're often very romantic and spring imagery.

But the really important thing about Christmas cards is that they massively blossomed in the 19th century because of the invention of the stamp, as you've mentioned, the postal system, the railway system. And it brings people together who were separated by the empire and by distance and so on. So the Christmas card starts off a very small thing. It's invented in 1843 by Henry Cole.

1840s again. 1840s again. And then by the end of the century, there are millions and millions and millions of them. And they are beautiful aesthetic objects. Some of them are very surreal. Some of the finest artists in the land are making them. And they get reviewed critically.

People go to exhibitions of them. But you keep them and you store them. So we have a debate in our house. Now, I'm not taking away from this period in history where obviously sending a card was one of the only communications. But it's not anymore. Relevance is dead. Now I am by no means have conducted a sociological or demographic study that

could be underwritten by an academic. However, I have played to over 110,000 people already on this tour. So that's a sizable slice of Britain. The number of men who like sending or receiving cards compared to the number of women i'm going to say about two percent they don't just not send them they detest them cards have become

gendered the idea of giving and receiving and writing because the most important bit and and shames the thought and all that i hate what is it about cards that are so repulsive and annoying to almost all men? And we got, one of the biggest arguments me and Lindsay had was I didn't get a Mother's Day card from the baby to her on the first Mother's Day because no one sat me down and told me I was going to have a weird, messed up Freudian day where I'm going to have to pretend my wife is my mum and do fake crayons for the day,

which I think is sick and weird. So if the Victorians started that, they're responsible for so many arguments. Yeah, and it's a man who invents it. So Henry Cole invents it because he's got so many friends and he's tired of writing letters. But they had a purpose then. Yeah, they did. Now we have email and loads of other things. It's not 1840 anymore.

Merry Christmas, 281. The nuance window! and loads of other things. It's not 1840 anymore. Merry Christmas, 281. The Nuance Window! So, we need to move on. We've reached a part of the show that's my favourite part. This is where Russell and I allow Fern to talk uninterrupted for two minutes.

It's called The Nuance Window, and this is where our expert gets to talk about her specialist area. Fern is a historian of pop culture, and specifically, as well as the history of sexuality, music hall is her real thing. So, Fern, you get two minutes. I'm going to get my stopwatch up.

Without much further ado, the nuance window. Off you go. So I'm going to take you back from our history of crackers with H.J. Smith and the London Pavilion to the music halls. Now, the music halls are, again, a Victorian invention. In 1843, the Theatre's Regulation Act allows for us to have music halls. Now, the music halls are, again, a Victorian invention. In 1843, the Theatre's Regulation Act allows for us to have music hall because before that point,

theatre is the only drama that we're allowed. We're not allowed anything else on the stage. And the music halls come out of the song and supper rooms that people are going to, that you pay money, you get a song, and you get your supper. Those are male-only places, things like the Coal Room in London. And people like Thackeray and Dickens love to go to these

because you get a bawdy song, you get your supper and you have fun. And when the Theatre's Act comes along, a whole load of publicans go. Women come in my pub, but they're not allowed into the song and supper rooms. If I make a room that everyone can go in that has bawdy songs and fun and other acts, I could actually make some money here. And from this, the kind of the musicals explode. And it happens really fast. In 1851, we get the Canterbury Music Hall, which is the very first music hall in London. And it's the one that has this carpet of a thousand guineas and your seats are threepence.

thousand guineas and your seats are threepence and you can come in whoever you are you get to see singers comedians anything you like to become this to just really have fun what's central to the entire musical period of course is the pantomime and pantomime becomes what we know today which is this big christmas tradition but in the victorian period it goes for four months so if you don't like Christmas apart from in December as a Victorian comedian you would have made your money in the Christmas period in pantomime and it would have run for four months

you would not have been able to get out of Dick Whittington you would have been in that every single night it's kind of this amazing thing and anyone who is a musical act wants to be in it and from that, from this kind of joy, these pantomimes, which have like a cast of 2000, ballet, opera, anything in it, we get the spectacle of what we have as pantomime today.

Amazing. Thank you. Well, that's all we have time for today. A huge thank you again to our marvellous guests in History Corner, Dr Fern Riddell, and in Comedy Corner, Russell Candy-Kane. I'm off to continue getting into the festive spirit by reading a haunting Victorian tale of revenge. Merry Christmas and farewell. Hello, Louis Theroux here.

And I just wanted to hijack this podcast to tell you that I'm back with another series of my podcast, Grounded with Louis Theroux. In case you hadn't noticed, COVID hasn't gone away, and because of travel restrictions, neither have I. So I've rounded up the likes of Michaela Cole, Frankie Boyle, Oliver Stone, Sia, and FKA Twigs for another set of eclectic and thought-provoking conversations. Yes, I'm still grounded with me, Louis Theroux,

available on BBC Sounds. We'll be right back.