The 1890s The Victorian Slum

150 years ago,

Victorian Britain became the world's first industrial superpower

and, as the country thrived, London, the beating heart of Empire,

became the world's richest city.

But this was a city divided.

For the first time,

geographical lines were drawn between those

enjoying the nation's wealth in the west

and those who weren't, in the east.

This is the story of one poor community

living in London's East End.

In the heart of modern Stratford...

..a Victorian slum has been recreated...

..and a group of 21st-century people are moving in.

-Oh!

-Absolutely awful.

I'm just a bit dumbstruck.

To survive, they'll have to work to keep a roof over their heads...

It's absolutely shattering.

..and put food on the table.

I'm starving. It's making me a bit emotional, to be honest.

And they'll learn first-hand what life was like...

You will call me ma'am.

..for those at the bottom of the economic pile.

If they were disabled, they couldn't do it, they didn't eat.

They didn't eat - they died.

They'll live through five decades of turbulent history...

Look at the newspaper.

..and seismic social change.

I am proud to be an East End suffragette.

Power to the people.

This is the story of how a quarter of a million slum-dwellers

in the East End changed our attitude to poverty forever.

This is The Slum.

Last time, the slum-dwellers endured the hardship of the 1880s...

As soon as you start getting behind here, you're never going to get back.

..when soaring unemployment...

There seems to be no end to the cycle.

You go out, look for work, there is no work.

..and a growing population...

God, this is so weird.

Not what I necessarily expected.

..heaps pressure on the East End.

The slightest little thing can push you over the edge

and you've lost everything.

-Welcome to the slum.

-Slum tourism brought unwelcome visitors.

-Like entertainment.

-Zoo animals.

Yeah.

People do suggest that the poor are thick and stupid

and, actually, we're not.

I'm going to throw you out, I'm afraid.

And there was revolution in the air.

Lower classes, the poor, the have-nots will not be trodden on.

The slum-dwellers fought back.

Strikes,

publicity and protest...

They have no right to take our living away from us.

..all helped to highlight their plight.

Victory! Yay!

The slum-dwellers are waking up to a new decade - the 1890s.

How was your sleep, Becca?

-Awful.

-Dad's snoring, Mum's shouting at Dad cos he's snoring,

you were kicking me in the face.

Surprisingly, I managed to get a couple of hours' sleep.

I got no-one in the doss-house at the minute

and each empty bed means I don't earn money.

I mean, I'm nervous about what is in store.

I really don't know what's coming.

During the 1890s, Britain finally emerged from the Long Depression

and with new prosperity there came signs of modernity.

There were electric lights in the streets, motorised buses,

and the first cinema opened on London's Regent Street.

New technology meant cheaper,

mass-produced goods filling the shops.

Even in the poorest areas,

there were small signs that things were getting better.

Oh, my goodness, look at this.

-Tinned pineapple.

-People would never have had pineapple before

-in their lives, would they?

-No, no.

For slum shopkeepers Adrian and Wiebke Bird...

Ah-ha!

..the new decade has brought a delivery of new stock.

Cadbury's Cocoa Essence?

It's real. It's real.

Wow.

And extras as well - look at the flowers.

And then little bits and pieces for decorating your clothes

and fixing things. And a clock.

That's something to display proudly on the mantelpiece.

International trade and domestic manufacturing rallied,

providing cheaper goods and foods to Britons with more disposable income,

but this new wealth did not touch everyone.

Divisions are beginning to appear between those who have enough

and those without.

The Howarths have been the lucky ones

and now they have a new family business.

Look at that - Howarth & Son Ltd.

-That's quite nice, isn't it?

-It is, isn't it?

-Oh, my God.

-Wow!

-Fantastic.

-Isn't it? Really good.

This is more my environment.

This is more what I'm used to.

I love how it's just all classy, like we actually look kind of well-off.

It looks like a professional tailor's, it looks like you're meant...

It's meant to be worked in, not like a sweaters' den.

It looks like it's a nice environment to make clothes in.

I'm actually just blown away.

I don't really know what to say, I actually don't.

I'm actually quite emotional.

This is just nearer to what we would have hoped for.

I know for Russell, since he's been here, he's worked really hard.

And also, for my ancestors, it's what they would've worked for,

and they worked so hard.

The Howarths' journey from sweat shop workers to owning

their own business mirrors that of many Jewish migrants,

including Mandy's own ancestors, who settled in Britain after fleeing

religious persecution in Russia.

By 1890, Spitalfields and Whitechapel were home

to a thriving Jewish tailoring industry, making suits

in the East End for those who could not afford to shop at Savile Row.

-Wow, you have come up in the world.

-Morning, how are you?

-Morning.

So, you've got the skill, you've moved beyond sweated labour.

Are you actually feeling more affluent now?

We are feeling more affluent.

It's a light at the end of the tunnel that we can actually get out

-of the slum...

-Yeah.

-..and work our way up,

-which is what we've been working towards.

-Yeah.

And have the other people been finding it tough -

-people without skills?

-Some have found it very tough,

and my heart really goes out to them because they work so hard,

they're not lazy people at all,

and there's been massive struggles for them.

One such family are the Potters.

Hello, how are you?

-Oh, look at this.

-Ooh. It all looks very nice and colourful.

-Welcome to the new shop - with stock!

-Stock, yes.

-With stock!

-Excellent.

What other bits and bobs have you got on the back shelves, Adrian?

Alison and her family are finding out what the 1890s has to offer.

We were selling products that we know today,

like Oxo Cubes.

You know, we would sell them by the box,

but we would probably sell them by the single unit as well.

Have you noticed the porcelain dogs up on the shelf?

-I did.

-How much are you selling those for?

-Hold on to your bonnet...

-Mmmm.

-£17 each.

-No!

That's more than the Potters' entire week's rent.

I mean, that would feed us for three weeks, wouldn't it?

Surprising that even within the slum, at this point, people got to

a certain point when they had all of their basic needs covered

and then they had extra spending money.

I don't think I could spend anything on any...

..frivolous items.

-Well, we haven't got that sort of money, have we?

-No.

-And we haven't

got that sort of income where we would have that money,

cos currently none of us are working anyway.

The new luxuries available at the shop

would have been well beyond their means.

We have these advertising posters back here

and those are left over from putting up.

Do you think you might want to try one of those in your room,

or a couple of them? You like some as well?

So, you've got Bovril, Pears soap...

Oh, Pears soap, I like that.

-Just take one of each, yeah.

-Thank you.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.

-Thanks.

-Bye.

-See you.

Beecham's pills.

-Yeah, that's fine.

-About there?

The Potters have scraped through the decades.

Since injuring his back shortly after arriving,

grandad Graham has struggled to find work.

At a time when men were the main breadwinners,

old age or injury could seal a whole family's fate.

My fears would be to lose the house, the room.

And this is it, you know,

we put posters up to make it brighter.

It's not the most fantastic place,

but it's home and I don't want to lose that.

It adds a bit of...

..brightness to the room.

-What do you think?

-Yeah.

Makes it look a bit brighter.

Yeah, I think it turns in quite well with the mildew.

But for siblings John and Maria, who do have an income,

things are on the up.

We have enough for the rent and we have extra money,

but we won't be silly with it.

We'll get our breakfast every morning, two slices of bread,

and then in the evening two bowls of soup.

Plus, if we just get out there and work and work and work and make more

and more and more. We have come such a long way from the doss-house.

We're in our own room now, which is comfortable.

We are comfortable, but comfortable is not good enough, we want more.

Or at least I want more.

You have to keep working, get out there,

do what we can and go as far and as high as possible,

because this is the time to do that.

Like many slum women would have,

Maria has been taking in her neighbours' washing

and she now has a burgeoning small business.

Of London's 51,000 laundry workers,

95% were women.

Many were able to grow their enterprise from washing

for neighbours to washing uniforms,

bedding and tableware for small-scale eateries

and lodging houses.

By expanding her business,

Maria has just enough work coming in to hire some extra help.

They're bedsheets - I don't know how they're this disgusting.

Fellow slum-dwellers Alison and Heather Potter.

The sheets are maggoty, girls.

Ooh.

So the boiling water into here and then we've got a dolly.

Like this. Practise the movement, girls, together.

-Swing your hips.

-That's it, yeah.

We're good at this.

Good, I think I've employed well.

My laundry business is doing quite good and I got two really good girls

to help me today, and I loved giving them the work.

It's like my hard work has paid off, really,

cos I started from the bottom and now I'm the boss.

Hold it in and wheel this around, like this.

Yeah.

Colour is absolutely wonderful.

You know, we haven't had colour.

With a few managing to scratch out a living in the slum...

-Hello.

-Mrs Howarth, how are you today?

Oh, wow, look at all this stuff.

..there are some takers for the new products in the shop...

I just want to treat us to something nice.

Yeah, I'll definitely have a tin of corned beef, definitely.

Corned beef, that's £2.38.

That's fine.

..including newly available homewares,

now being manufactured cheaply for the mass market.

I'm so excited to have flowers in my house, that's the one thing.

-How's that for you?

-Lovely.

-Good.

-Can't go wrong.

-How much is the clock?

The clock is £17.

That's over half of Mandy's weekly rent.

I think we have to wait till our first suit's done before

I can stretch to that, but I've got my eye on that.

To walk in the shop and actually know that I've got some money

in my purse for the first time, to not just necessarily buy the basic

bread and butter...

As soon as I saw them, I knew exactly where

I was going to put them, and they're going to go on my table in a vase,

and the vase is going to go on a doily,

so as you open the door, the first thing you will see,

your eye will go straight to the flowers.

That's where they're going, as soon as I get home.

I've got to make a suit and embellish a hat.

The challenge is embellishing the hat.

The Howarth men are starting work on their first order -

one embellished bonnet and one lounge suit.

An order like this can earn Russell up to £200 in today's money.

I am taking pride in this work.

It's a lot more enjoyable, running a family business.

We're just working for us, rather than it being a sweater,

working for other factories.

Been really good, sort of showing Jamie bits and pieces today.

I'm going to cut a hole so you can actually see out of it,

but it's going to go all the way... It's just going to drape down

and there's going to be a bow at the back cos the Victorian people did love their bows,

so hopefully it's going to turn out all right.

That father and son thing, like,

"My son goes fishing with me every weekend" -

me and my dad don't have that... cos I don't like to go fishing,

I like to go shopping. So I think it meant a lot to him to actually see

that sign on the wall.

Dad?

It's like something from the desert.

Lawrence of Arabia. That looks embellished, doesn't it?

It looks reasonably embellished.

While Russell runs the business,

the family's relative prosperity

means they can afford for Mandy not to work.

The Victorian ideal was that married women should remain at home

to look after any children and keep a clean and tidy house.

Put some elbow grease in it.

Not only is she OTT, she's actually OCD, so it's like...

Everything has to be right.

Being a respectable woman in the Victorian era -

it's a really tough job.

But being able to stay at home was a luxury that most slum women

could not afford.

I think this one's all right.

-Yeah?

-To fold, yeah.

-So's this one.

Ready? Three, two, one!

Working for Maria is earning Heather and Alison Potter a badly needed income,

but, without Graham working,

they won't have enough to keep the family afloat.

-26.

-27.

-28.

-29.

-29.

-29.

29.

-Yes!

-Yes, well done.

So it's been a good day, considering.

-It has been a good day.

-Power of the Potters.

-Yes.

-Potters' Power.

There is a hierarchy to the slum

and we're at the bottom of the pile, again.

The Victorian elite were puzzled by the fact that,

although society as a whole was getting richer,

there was this growing population of poor.

London, the greatest city on earth,

was creating an underclass of savages.

They called them the residuum, literally the dregs of society,

and the worry was that they would somehow

drag the whole population down with them.

Determined to find out the scale of the problem,

one man set out to investigate.

Businessman and statistician Charles Booth

started in the East End and hired researchers to collect

extensive data on every household,

from how much they earned to how they lived.

In 1891, his findings for wider London were published.

Historian Jerry White has come to the slum to tell the residents

what he discovered.

Booth set out to be the first person to define what poverty was

and how many were living in poverty.

It was a massive inquiry - it ran to 17 volumes -

but the great iconic product of his investigations

was the London poverty map, where he set out to colour-code

the streets of London according to the class of the people

who lived in London, street by street.

On his map, streets coloured yellow, red and pink represented

the wealthy, middle class and the comfortable working class households.

Light blue were families living on the poverty line,

which Booth defined as those earning between 18 to 21 shillings a week.

Dark blue, accounting for around 100,000 people in East London,

was the very poor, in chronic want.

The black streets were inhabited by the much-feared residuum,

who Booth described as "vicious" and "semi-criminal".

But Booth concluded that this was just 1% of the population,

not the majority of the poor as people had assumed.

Booth thinks northing can be done with the blackest streets

except demolish the streets and disperse the people.

But if you demolish the black and disperse them,

where are they going to go? They'll just move to a blue or...

They will, but they won't, as it were,

create this difficult problem which the Victorians saw as the

semi-criminal and degraded classes clustering in particularly difficult

streets which posed, as it were, a threat to people around.

Demolition wasn't the only solution proposed.

Booth suggested setting up labour camps,

where the unskilled would get training.

Others favoured deportation.

The Evangelical School Of Industry shipped 12,000 poor children

from London's East End to countries like Canada and Australia.

There was even a Eugenics Society, who recommended mass sterilisation.

They were going to contemplate sterilising them? For God's sake.

-You know, I mean...

-What on earth is that all about?

-You know?

-Dreadful, really.

Sending them... Sending them abroad, you know, just don't make any sense.

The slum-dwellers would've been horrified to have known that

the forces that had oppressed them in so many ways so far,

that they were the people talking about classing them

as a different race and exterminating them, basically.

It's horrifying.

I wonder where you would have put your streets.

Where was the black ones again?

I don't think we're black, are we? I think we're dark blue.

-Dark blue.

-Cos I don't think we're vicious semi-criminals, are we?

No, there's no crims in here, is there?

Vicious, semi-criminal and degraded, he called them.

"The lives of savages," Booth said.

I'd say we're dark blue, certainly dark blue.

You're absolutely right. I would've said this is a dark blue street.

I just wondered because it's only the two of us, you know,

and we're making...

..good money, although it's casual labour that it's based on

at the moment, so that may have brought us into the light blue.

-Yellow.

-With the new laundry business and so on then, yeah,

I mean that's... It wouldn't be long before you got there.

But, yeah, I'm certainly dark blue.

The news that the poorest made up just 1% of the population went some

way to allay Victorian concerns about a vast and vicious underclass.

But Booth's research went further.

Well, what Booth found, and it was an astonishing finding of the time,

was that one in three of the East London population

was living in poverty,

and, for the first time I think, he gave a human face to the poor.

The myths that these were people who were feckless, drunken, lazy,

didn't want to work.

What he showed was that one of the fundamental problems of London

was low wages. That even if people were working 70 hours a week,

they were working for a pittance

and that meant that London was never seen in the same way again,

and the London poor were never seen in the same way again.

Booth's work encouraged other social reformers to start

their own investigations.

Confectioner Seebohm Rowntree discovered that the poor in York

faced almost identical problems to those in London.

A survey in Manchester came to the same conclusion.

The genie was out of the bottle -

this wasn't a local issue but a national epidemic.

Poverty was in the spotlight as never before,

but the question for the authorities was what to do about it.

There seems to be a bit more hope in the community, a bit more spirit,

a bit more...

A bit more of a feeling that we can actually go out

and make something of ourselves.

It really makes the '90s feel like there is new hope.

It's a new day in the slum and, in the 1890s,

Booth's findings were beginning to have an effect.

Britain's attitudes towards the poor were slowly shifting.

It was no longer seen as simply part of the natural state but the product

of social, environmental and economic factors.

One way to help people out of poverty was education.

Girls, you're going to school.

Wash your hands and faces and get you sent off to school.

Come on, love, you first.

-Why me?

-Good girl.

Oh, it's cold.

In the past, schooling was either provided by charities or had to be

paid for by the pupil's family.

Then the nation's first Education Act provided subsidised schooling

for most pupils and made it free for the very poorest.

During the 1890s,

schooling became free for all and compulsory for all children

between the ages of five and 12.

It also put an obligation on families to make sure their kids

actually went to school.

This was a shift, the state was intervening in family life,

and this had a big impact on the lives of the working poor.

Right, behave yourself today, do you understand me?

-I'll try.

-I'm not joking.

-I'll try.

-Right? Do as you're told.

I'll try and behave myself.

Don't show me up.

Could you just let me do it?

No...!

James, James!

No!

You've got to have a clean face.

-Just one sec.

-No, please...

Stop!

-You're unhygienic.

-Don't show me up.

-I won't.

-Love you.

-Go.

-Bye, James.

-Bye, Jamesie, have a good day at school.

Come on. Hurry up.

Good morning, children.

-ALL:

-Good morning, Ma'am.

Very quietly, sit down.

If you do not work well in class then you may be given the cane,

and it's very painful.

So we're going to start with some arithmetic.

Two times seven equals...

Hands up.

Pupils were rigorously drilled in the three Rs.

By the end of the century,

an astonishing 97% of the population could read -

an increase of more than 30% since the 1850s.

Very good.

While James is at school,

Mandy and Rebecca are getting to grips with more housework.

-What are you doing?

-You've got to turn it down and then put your...

-What do you mean, turn it down?

-Like that. See?

Oh, it's a bit posh, isn't it?

Even at the best of times,

keeping a slum dwelling clean was an uphill struggle,

but in the 1890s this was to become more difficult than ever.

Does this water normally take this long to pump?

It doesn't normally, does it? I don't think it's working properly.

How are we going to get that fixed?

Shall we call Andy?

Yeah, we could do that.

Cos he's the one that collects the rent from us.

I suppose, if nothing's working here, he's the one that's got to come and try and sort it.

-You seen the sign out the front?

-No.

-No.

In the mid-1890s, London suffered a drought.

"Notice is hereby given that it is found necessary to restrict the

"supply of water to use for strictly domestic purposes."

The East London Waterworks Company supplied water from the River Lea.

It had spent little on maintaining infrastructure and had already been

fined for supplying contaminated water in the 1860s.

Now it restricted supply in the East End to just six hours a day.

I bet the ban wasn't done equally, so I bet the rich

were given some leeway and the poor got the brunt of it.

It would be easier to regulate their usage, wouldn't it?

-Yeah.

-Cos they've only got the standpipes.

To add insult to injury,

the East London Waterworks even published propaganda

blaming the poor for contributing to the problem by wasting water.

For the struggling Potters, reliant on work from Maria,

it's a particular blow.

This is going to affect us, isn't it, greatly?

We can't clean clothes without water, can we, at all?

We need boiling water, we need clean water,

we need water for soap, everything.

I'm angry because we wanted to get this washing done,

we wanted to earn some money, and now we're thwarted,

and back in 1896 there was nothing you could do.

Who could you go to?

The lack of water posed a threat

to more than just the poor's livelihoods.

Sanitation in the East End slums was already rudimentary.

One outside privy could be shared by scores of people.

Cesspits were rarely emptied and, when it rained,

sewage overflowed into houses,

leaving families three-foot deep in human waste.

The water shortage made the situation even more deadly.

While wealthier households had baths in which to store supplies

and money to buy bottled water,

in the slums sewage stagnated and diarrhoea deaths tripled.

Most slum housing was owned by absentee landlords,

who made little or no effort to maintain their properties

and put profits before the welfare of their tenants.

Protected by their anonymity,

there was little recourse for the suffering slum-dwellers

until a campaigning journalist decided to bring the poor's plight

to the public's attention.

Bennett Burleigh, a war reporter for the Daily Telegraph,

decided to investigate one of London's most notorious slums -

the Old Nichol.

He wrote of finding 108 people in 39 rat-infested rooms.

Burleigh exposed dozens of slum landlords in his articles.

As well as aristocrats like the Duke of Buckingham,

he discovered that some local councillors were also implicated.

But most shocking to the God-fearing Victorians was that some of

the worst properties were on land owned by the Church of England.

One of the biggest difficulties in dealing with the appalling living

conditions in the East End slums

had always been the lack of a single regulatory body.

Until the 1890s, London was governed by 43 separate vestries,

underfunded and often corrupt.

And then, finally, 50 years after Glasgow and Liverpool,

London got its own administration - the London County Council.

Funded and elected by London's rate payers,

it was responsible for overseeing all city planning.

Its first priority was the housing crisis.

The LCC made funds available to employ extra sanitation inspectors.

The precursor to our modern environmental health officers,

their job was to investigate conditions in the slums.

So we'll have a look at the privies.

Women had often been at the forefront of charitable crusades

to improve the health of the poor,

but, during the 1890s, middle class women were employed

for the first time as sanitary inspectors.

Mandy's new-found Victorian respectability has landed her

a new profession.

It's so unhealthy in there.

There's not even a gap for the air to come out.

-It's just rotten, the whole thing's rotten.

-Yeah.

Some slums were home to over 20,000 people

and rubbish disposal was a big problem.

You've got all the food from I don't know how many days ago...

-Yeah.

-Flies and rats.

It just needs all to be cleared.

Let's get it collected, yeah.

Rubbish should've been collected by dustmen,

but because their wages were topped up with tips,

which no-one in the slums could afford, it often festered for weeks.

-The dustman wouldn't have come to pick this up because it wouldn't have been worth their while.

-No.

And nobody was there to enforce it.

-And nobody cared.

-Cos the poor like to be dirty(!)

-Yeah.

The London County Council was also put in charge of the city's

common lodging houses,

with the power to prosecute owners and shut down properties that didn't

meet the required standards.

-Oh, dear.

-Next on Mandy's round - Andy's doss-house.

-Oh, this is awful.

-How many beds are in here?

Five, six, seven, eight.

That's a foul one from that side and,

look, these have not been cleaned.

It's just a breeding ground for disease.

It wouldn't surprise me if they have mice and rats coming in here.

The floor hasn't been mopped, I think, ever.

And then we've got this here. Oh, and it just stinks, doesn't it?

-Look, and look at the floor.

-Just with that damp itself,

people will get ill, they'll get infections.

-Yeah.

-It has to be shut down.

I've got the authority now -

having gone through my checklist and looked at all of this,

I'm shutting this place down.

I don't think you have any alternative.

No, I've got no alternative, none at all, unfortunately.

OK.

So much mould in here.

Hundreds of doss-houses were given formal warnings

and the worst closed down.

Despite the council's best intentions,

this only made the housing problem worse

because 31,000 of London's poor relied on them each night.

The LCC did open its own boarding house on Drury Lane.

It had room for 240 lodgers and boasted individual cubicles

with beds, sinks and lockable doors.

But at 6p per night, it was 50% more than a common lodging house -

too expensive for the very poorest, who had to make do with

the remaining doss-houses or resort to sleeping on the streets.

They've shut me down.

Fabulous(!)

So that's less money now.

-You seen this?

-What?

They've shut me down.

It was a hole, wasn't it?

But it's still money I can't earn from it now.

That's right, they've stopped your income.

You'll find another job, don't worry.

We've had to.

Diversification is going to be the key.

In a time before the welfare state,

disabled people who found themselves without an income would've had

very few options.

If I'd have been a real Victorian,

there's no way I'd have been like I am now,

11 years post-injury and still alive and relatively healthy.

Do you know what I mean? There's no way.

Many had to resort to work considered either dishonest or demeaning.

So I think the first thing we'll make is some kind of ointment...

-Yeah?

-..and sell it as a joint reliever.

Some became quacks -

street doctors selling home-made medicines,

which were often little more than sugar pills.

Well, it's survival of the fittest and you've got to diversify.

If you don't diversify, you don't earn.

We will now do what we need to do to get by.

I would've been so brow-beaten,

so told by society that, cos I'm disabled, I was nothing anyway,

so I'd have been very happy that I'm able to go out and make some potions

and earn some money that way.

Thank you very much indeed.

All right.

In 1890, if you need to make money and you've got slightly low morals,

it's probably a very acceptable way to do it.

Graham, you're my board man, so you go out advertising.

Bring people in.

Without state pensions to live on, the elderly, too,

had to take what work they could find.

Gardiner's wonder potions.

Victorian potions.

Do you want to try some of my potions?

-What about you, young man?

-No, I'm OK.

-Are you sure?

Described by Dickens as pieces of human flesh between

two slices of board, these were the sandwich board men.

In an era obsessed with respectability and reputation,

these were humiliating and desperate ways to make money.

Victorians knew that men and women in these jobs were just

one small step away from the workhouse.

A lot of people just ignored us.

Some people pull faces.

Yeah, that's when you find it hard.

Yeah.

Walking around with an A-board on,

although to some people would be the worst thing you could possibly do,

to me, I knew I was earning money.

And, as the head of the household, that's what I feel I should do.

Gardiner's wonder potions.

My legs are hurting now.

Back at the slum, with the drought dragging on for years,

a successful laundress like Maria would have had little choice

but to move on if she wanted to continue running her business.

We came with goals and we've done what we set out to do,

and now we've made...

Five times our weekly rent and now it's time to go.

Thank you. So long.

Goodbye, slum.

Women with the means could leave the water shortages of the east behind

and move west,

where industrial laundries had tanks in which to store water.

In the 1890s, the laundry industry expanded rapidly.

New, larger laundries sprang up in clusters,

in places like Kensal New Town, known as Soapsud Island.

Here they received orders from places as far afield as Scotland

and even Paris.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-We're getting out of here.

-You're leaving?

-We're going. We're getting out of the slum.

We're going to go off into the sunset.

Oh, well done. Well done.

Well done as well. Thanks.

-Take care.

-See you later.

-See you later, darling.

I've got full respect for John and Maria.

I think they did the Irish immigrants absolutely proud.

I think their ancestors would look on what they've done and be

very proud that they've got two people like that in their family.

-Bye, guys.

-Are you off?

We're going.

Aw, safe journey.

I think the Irish would have felt extremely proud of themselves

because they really did start from the bottom,

and then to work their way up with all their strength, all their fight,

no matter how starving, no matter how tired or cold they were,

to be able to then work their way up would've been the most proud feeling

I think they would've felt in for ever.

-Right.

-Love you. Bye.

-Take care.

I really see everyone diverging.

Now you have some who are possibly skyrocketing in their success

and others still struggling.

For the Potters, Maria and John's departure

throws yet more uncertainty over their future.

We have relied on Maria, who was running her laundry business,

to give us some work.

But they're going to move on to better things

and they're not going to take us with them,

so we're going to find ourselves not having any work again.

And a family in our position would never have been able to work

their way out of the slum.

In the 1890s, new social reforms

were starting to make irrevocable changes to slum life.

But compulsory schooling put pressure on families like the Potters.

We're not going to earn as much money if the children aren't with you.

Yeah, but that doesn't matter.

Today's not about earning money, it's about learning.

You don't want to be making matchboxes for the rest of the days,

-do you?

-No.

With James going to school,

Russell is also under more pressure to finish his order on time.

Rebecca is definitely going to have to work harder

cos she'll have to pull the weight of both the family members.

The school-age children were working hard, too.

Some sewing for the girls.

As well as academic lessons,

they were taught gender-specific practical skills.

And for you, James, we have some woodwork.

I want you to do some sanding for me.

'I find it pointless.'

I'd rather be working because I'm bringing home something.

This incensed some poor parents, whose children were being taught

things they already knew and got paid to do at home.

My girls enjoy earning the money so they know that they're contributing

to the family pot,

so they feel that they're somehow letting us down by going to school

because they're then not able to earn money for us,

but I don't see it like that.

However, for the Victorian poor people, they had two, three,

maybe four children out there earning money for them,

so they would be losing half of their family income.

Well done, I'm pleased with that.

So now I want you to do some hammering for me. We've got...

Many refused to send their children to school,

but the law came down hard on truancy with fines of five shillings,

the equivalent of a child's average weekly wage.

I'd rather be back in the slum than here because I'd rather be working

with my family and getting money and surviving than learning things.

Compulsory schooling also exposed to the state the terrible conditions

in which many slum children were living.

One in three was malnourished,

only one in 81 children owned a toothbrush and many suffered

from poor eyesight and rickets.

End of school for today, so class rise.

But even for children in poor health,

the end of lessons marked the start of their working day.

Some managed 40 hours of labour a week outside school.

Even with Rebecca's help,

Russell is struggling to get his order done on time.

It's a sad life to have, being cooped up all the time and having

to work day in, day out.

It's the first order we've done in the shop.

It was meant to be finished the end of today,

and I was rushing to do something, picked the iron up,

didn't check it properly, and put the iron on it and it burned.

It's just... I'm devastated.

I've never used anything like this before.

I'm adapting myself to use these techniques

and just the fact you can burn something just like that, it just...

I'm absolutely... I want to cry.

I've got to undo it and then start again.

It's really grating on my dad, like, you can really tell,

and he's going stir crazy, like, he's not even talking to any of us,

like, "Dad, are you all right?"

He's just cutting away, it's like he's gone mental.

I'm genuinely quite worried for him.

-We haven't got no buttons to go on.

-Look, buttons are here, Russ.

I can get you some buttons, I can find.

Show me.

They're trouser buttons.

All week, I've not stopped.

Everything I do... I'm in a bad mood.

Have a couple of pints, maybe calm myself down.

For many, one way to escape from the drudgery of slum life was to drink.

It was estimated the poor spent a fifth of their income on alcohol...

..and working class drunkenness was another target for

Victorian social reformers.

-Drop more?

-Yes.

-To another long day of alcoholism.

Within a quarter of a mile of the Old Nichol, there were 112 pubs.

With East End pubs shutting for just five hours each night,

drunkenness was rife.

Many middle and upper class Victorians thought poverty

was caused by excessive drinking.

Easy, tiger.

A movement was formed to encourage the poor to turn teetotal.

It produced propaganda to highlight the destructive effects of alcohol

on the drinker and their family.

The Temperance movement urged people to sign a pledge to give up drink.

In return, they promised that a life of sobriety would bring

self-respect, self-improvement and a happy home.

Would it help our plight if we signed this?

It would certainly help our plight in the long-run, yes.

How? In what way?

So they can't blame us then that drink's causing everything.

-No, I'm not going to sign it. Hell, no.

-OK.

-No, I'm not, no.

Not today.

I think as an 1890s man living in the slum,

beer was probably a fundamental part of their life -

they drank it constantly, day in, day out.

And when the Temperance movement came about, they were probably...

..not too keen on it, to put it mildly.

Throughout the second half of the 1890s, London's drought continued.

The worst thing is the cleanliness, it's disgusting.

I can't...

tell you how bad it makes me feel.

It's unsanitary, it's revolting.

Just to get up and smell yourself in the morning makes you feel awful.

My body hasn't seen decent water for weeks

and the water it has seen has been stone-cold.

The feeling of not being clean

and being able just to jump in the shower,

it's just soul-destroying.

Despite the intermittent water supply, the Victorian middle

and upper classes at least had indoor bathrooms.

If the poor wanted to get clean, they had to look further afield.

This is bath time.

Public bathing had been popular in British cities since the 1840s,

when the urban population began to explode,

but Bethnal Green would have to wait until 1898 before it got its first

locally funded public baths.

Feel good?

Bathhouses provided facilities to wash and, at some sites, to swim.

Two pence paid for a hot bath and a clean towel.

A cold bath was just a penny.

I just feel elated.

I felt my skin squeak for the first time in two and a half weeks.

It's beyond brilliant, it really is.

As the decade drew to a close,

the work of social reformers began to have a direct impact

on the East End.

-You all right?

-Oh, we have a letter.

-Oh.

What's that all about, then?

"Messrs Gardiner and Potter,

"we would like to inform you of your immediate employment as general

"labourers. We are desirous of the communal areas of the dwelling house

"being whitewashed as part of the sanitary improvements that have

"been ordered. You will both be remunerated to the value

"of fivepence for each full hour."

Either they want to put rents up

or they're scared about that Telegraph bloke.

I think they've got to make improvements.

-Let's get cracking, I suppose.

-Right, let's go.

With the publicity generated by figures like Burleigh and Booth,

the London County Council forced more and more slum landlords to make

improvements to their properties.

It's looking a lot better.

At least it's put a bit of brightness in here.

It just seems to be a false air of cleanliness, doesn't it?

In many cases, the improvements were superficial and did little

to improve conditions as a whole.

We're paid by the hour, slow down.

For Andy and Graham, it does at least provide some income.

At Howarth and Sons, Russell's finished the suit.

Well done, Russ. It was a tall order, that was.

If you think about the tools that you've had,

I think you've done a great job.

Yeah, it's all done.

A lot of the skills I've used, I've not used for a long time.

It's sort of nice to revisit those.

It's what made me fall in love with tailoring in the first place.

20, 40...

They've been paid enough

to comfortably cover their costs for the week.

It's definitely benefited the family, this skill, over the decades,

and it's come to fruition, and we're now moving up into the middle class.

£83.45.

-Brilliant.

-Fantastic, well done.

-Good. Well done.

-Well done, Daddy.

Well done. Well done, James.

I'm quite proud of the hat.

-You should be.

-It wasn't the best hat...

You earned £10 for that hat, towards the family.

So now we have money to put away, we have money to treat ourselves with,

we've already got the rent money, so life is good.

As the end of the 19th century approached,

Victorian society turned its attention to something

that had become one of the biggest problems of all.

London's population hit 5.5 million.

Queen Victoria asked Prime Minister Gladstone to start an urgent inquiry.

The Housing Of The Working Classes Act swiftly followed.

It gave London County Council the right to demolish the worst slums,

like the Old Nichol, and replace them for the first time

with social housing.

"Dear Mrs Howarth, It is with great pleasure that I wish to inform you

"of the compulsory purchase of the dwelling houses of which you

"are the sanitary inspector.

"The purpose of the purchase is for immediate demolition

"and reconstruction of houses for the respectable,

"artisan and working classes."

So it's so it's all going to be knocked down and rebuilt,

and we've got to be re-housed.

I can't believe it!

This was a watershed moment for the East End urban poor.

The Victorians must have felt overjoyed that, finally,

the wretched accommodation where they'd been living is going to be

demolished and something is going to be done,

but it's still their home and there must've been this nervousness around

what are they going to do, where are they going to go, and also,

can they afford the new place where they potentially would be going to?

So they must've had this mixed emotion of happiness,

but really frightened.

The London County Council used Charles Booth's poverty maps

to identify the areas to demolish and redevelop.

They started with the Old Nichol slum in Shoreditch.

It had become a warren of overcrowded narrow streets,

full of filth and desperation.

An inspection of its housing reported 43%

unfit for human habitation.

Demolition began in the 1890s

and in its place rose London's first ever council housing.

The Boundary Estate was opened in 1900 by the Prince of Wales

to cheering crowds.

-Pleased to meet you.

-Hi.

Historian and leading expert on the Old Nichol, Sarah Wise,

is showing the slum residents

what potentially could have been their new home.

The Boundary Street Estate was 20 blocks of about 1,000 flats

that was going to be home for 4,700 people

and the idea was they wanted something that was going to be

morally uplifting for the poor,

so they really wanted this idea of lights and fresh air,

and that's why you've got these amazingly broad streets

and this central circus.

The mound for the central circus was made using the bricks

and rubble from the demolished slum.

Compared to what we've been living like,

to come to something like this is just mind-blowing, really.

And just to be able to get in the fresh air...

-Yeah.

-..see the sun, something green.

For the Victorians, it just must've been like heaven for them.

One of the reasons it looks as good as it does is that

the County Council wanted it to act as a flagship to charitable

and philanthropic developers, or even to private builders,

just to show them, "This is how good urban living can be."

The LCC made sure the estate housed facilities, which they believed

addressed many of the problems that faced the urban poor.

As well as 1,000 flats,

the model development included a huge central laundry, a school,

and a parade of shops.

They ensured there was no pub onsite, but provided a club room

where residents could socialise.

And the improvements didn't stop there.

Each flat, you had gas and your own running piped water.

-That must've been amazing.

-Yeah. No, absolutely.

And the gas was for the lighting,

and also there was a gas ring on top of a specially designed

kitchen range, so you had your own little oven, and some flats

had their own loos. They wanted to do everything

they could to make sure that cleanliness was given priority.

But life on the Boundary Estate came with a long list of regulations.

As a costermonger, we were selling eels and sheep's trotters.

Would we have been able to prepare them in the accommodation?

-That would've been frowned upon.

-Yeah, yeah.

It's what would've been called a "noxious trade"...

-Yes.

-..back in those days,

and they would not have wanted that going on in the premises

cos, apart from anything, it would be seen as antisocial.

Amongst the rules residents had to abide by were no subletting,

no keeping of livestock, and, most significant for the slum-dwellers,

no running of any kind of business or trade from their homes.

That's why the council built four runs of workshops -

90 workshops in total.

The problem with that was they cost an extra four shillings a week

on top of your weekly rental,

so that's really pretty pricey when you're used to paying only

two and six a week all in.

Then this building wouldn't have been an option...

-I think that's right.

-..for us.

-Yeah.

You see a big split then, don't you?

Because it would be all right for us,

we'd probably love a place like this.

-Yeah, we'd love it.

-But then, for you, it would be impossible.

-It wouldn't work for me at all.

-How are they going to live?

It's almost as if,

whilst the accommodation in the tenement is awful,

at least they had a way of making a living.

At least they... You know, the few pennies that they may have earned,

it kept at least one meal on the table per day.

They've got no chance.

The estate planners never consulted with the slum-dwellers about their

specific needs and it turned out they got it seriously wrong.

Sad fact is that, of the 5,700 people in the Old Nichol,

only 11 took a flat on the estate.

-What? 11?

-Yeah, just 11.

-God, that's awful.

-Yeah.

-Absolutely disgraceful.

Cos what the London County Council hadn't realised was over half

of people in the Old Nichol lived in a one-room home,

so there was 750 one-room homes in the Nichol,

but on the new estate there were only 15 one-room flats.

I think that is a travesty...

-Yeah.

-..because everybody must've had their hopes raised,

they felt they had been promised this accommodation.

They must've felt as though they'd been lied to.

They may well have thought that finally they've been noticed,

that there's going to be change, and then it's whipped from underneath

them in a most devastating way, actually, because, you know,

they lived in the most atrocious conditions,

but at least they had somewhere to live.

And now they had nowhere.

Without enough affordable homes at the Boundary Estate,

most of the former Old Nichol residents were forced into

other slums in nearby Bethnal Green.

Overcrowding became worse than ever, accommodation even more squalid and,

due to the high demand, rent rose by almost a third within ten years.

It's just such a wasted opportunity.

What a beautiful project this was, it would've made a real difference

to the way people lived their everyday lives, but the fact

that only 11 families could actually afford to live there

is such a shame.

We're starting to get used to this pattern of people trying to do good

for people in the slum and it not working out or causing

even more problems than they had to begin with.

Back in the slum, the demolition order hangs over them.

When properties were knocked down, landlords were paid

extra compensation for homes in a habitable condition,

which triggered a rush of superficial patching up,

so Andy and Graham are still whitewashing.

Landlords were actually paid 10% extra compensation

if they had tried to improve living accommodation.

Oh, really? Is that the case? Graham, brush down.

Is that the truth?

Yes, that's the truth.

So, basically, you've been painting all day...

-For nothing.

-..to give the landlord an extra 10% more money.

-Again.

And then they're just going to pull it down anyway.

End of. Finished.

They've conned us yet again.

As the residents in here,

we've been ordered to paint it and it's going to be condemned,

so, you know, we've lost out both ways, haven't we?

-We knew something was up.

-Yeah, we did. We said, didn't we?

I'm not painting with this, struggling up and down them stairs,

and Graham with his back, struggling to do walls for them to earn

more money. Nope, I'm not doing one more lick.

-No, neither am I, mate.

-There was me thinking that the 1890s was actually

showing a little bit of social conscience and a little bit of care

-towards the poor.

-Well, it was, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

-Till this.

That's foul, to do that to people that thought maybe this was the

start of something good for their tenement, and to turn round and,

"No, we're knocking it down anyway, but thanks for doing that.

"We pay you a pittance. We won't ask you if you want to do it.

"We tell you you've got to do it, we will pay you a pittance."

And they get 10% extra on the price?

I think 2016 me and 1890s me would probably have to pay him a visit,

and I don't think he'd like the result of that.

The residents have called a meeting to discuss their fate.

As a community, we're a community, we're all going to be split up,

they would've all been split up,

the friends they would've made.

The children would all have been split up.

People like yourself, you may have somewhere to go

and money to go out and be able to find new lodgings - we wouldn't.

I mean, it must have been terrifying for the Victorians at this time,

you know, especially people that are in my situation

that have got young children.

God, it must've been awful to just...

another cloud of uncertainty over their head about,

"God, what is my future going to be like?"

As the 1890s come to an end,

the slum community faces an uncertain future.

Corned beef pie?

I think it was the first time that poverty had actually raised its head

above the parapet and to actually say that poverty's not a decision

that you take, it's circumstances forced upon you due to lack of work.

The biggest change, for me, is the fact that I've lost my income

and going from doss-house keeper to nothing, really.

But you can start to see little bits of change,

maybe a couple of chinks of light at the end of the tunnel

for the slum-dwellers.

When I heard that the slum was going to be demolished,

my upset came for those that wouldn't be sure where they were going,

if they could afford anywhere.

I know that we could move to somewhere better.

I'd be devastated to leave everybody here,

but ultimately luck has always been in the slum.

It is each family for themselves.

You have to look after your own, first and foremost,

cos nobody's going to do it for you.

Then comes the community.

My worries for the next decade are having somewhere to live,

to have enough money to feed the family,

and my fears are that we will end up without a roof over our heads.

Next time, the residents change decade for the final time.

It's a new century.

-"The monarchy goes on."

-Long live the King!

A time of huge upheaval.

THEY GASP

I feel like it's progress.

It's like a new adventure now.

While some exercise their rights...

The poor were desperate to voice their opinion.

..others still have a fight on their hands.

I've just heard the men - they're talking about politics.

Shame we can't vote.

And a lucky few experience life beyond the slum.

For the actual Victorian kids that got a chance to do this,

it must've been a whole new world for them.

Yes, run! Woo!