Missed lines December 13

Kate	“all bloody and it’s bad….yer ankles.”
Harry	Mr. Dedham to you – you added lines.
Maggie	…Just jab the broom…..
Annie	They say I got to stay….loose living.
Ellen	He threw his shoes at me.
Kate	Stood outside the gate on payday….enough
Helena	My good man, I am the best judge of my….. added a line Other  - I suppose in time.. added line Pleased to meet you – mixed up I have asked you here to enlist your support – to Priscilla – added lines Being pushed into those working conditions – mixed up.
Maggie	We ain’t gels….., got it.
Annie	My leg, I think it’s broken… work on this.

What the Poor Ate

The consequences of poverty are most apparent in the diets of the poor. It takes a considerable leap of the imagination to recapture the Victorian working-class diet, for we have preconceived notions of the 'good old days' before the onslaught of pre-packaged, processed, artificially coloured, 'convenience' foods, and we have, perhaps, an image of John Bull, contentedly overweight from all the benefits of free trade and the beef and ale diet which distinguished the English from unfortunate foreigners. But to enter the world of the Victorian working man's diet is to enter the world of the savage — it was uncertain in supply, primitive in content, and unhealthy in effect. Few of the poor had ovens and had to rely either on open-fire pan cooking, buy their hot food out, or make do with cold meals. Even at the turn of the century social workers entering the homes of the poor to teach wives how to cook were aghast to discover that the family possessed only one pot, and that before their lesson in economy stews and soups could begin the pot would have to be cleaned of the baby's bath water, or worse. As late as 1904 an official committee of inquiry was distressed to learn how few of the poor had sufficient utensils and appliances to cook at home. Primitive or non-existent cooking facilities, lack of cheap fuel, poverty, ignorance, and adulterated foods combined to produce a nation, not of John Bulls but, by today's standards, of pygmies, who were undernourished, anaemic, feeble and literally rickety.

. . . Esther Copley's Cottage Cookery (1849) suggests the poverty of the rural diet, for her recipes were for potato pie, stirabout, stewed ox-cheek, and mutton chitterlings. In Wiltshire, admittedly one of the poorer counties, the Poor Law Commission found that the standard fare consisted of bread, butter, potatoes, beer, and tea, with some bacon for those earning higher wages. . . .If the rural poor ate birds then the urban poor ate pairings of tripe, slink (prematurely born calves), or broxy (diseased sheep). Edgar Wallace recollects working-class families along the Old Kent Road shopping for 'tainted' pieces of meat and 'those odds and ends of meat, the by-products of the butchering business.' Sheep's heads at 3d each and American bacon at between 4d and 6d a pound (half the price of the native product) were too expensive for the irregularly-employed casual labourer to have frequently. In Macclesfield 23 per cent of the silk workers and in Coventry 17 per cent of the labourers had never tasted meat. Stocking weavers, shoe makers, needle women and silk weavers ate less than one pound of meat a week and less than eight ounces of fats. . . .

It was not until the last quarter of the century that the working man's diet improved significantly. Between 1877 and 1889 the cost of the average national weekly food basket of butter, bread, tea, milk and meat fell by some 30 per cent, and it was in this period that the first really appreciable nutritional improvement (aided by a greater variety of foods and new methods of retailing), occurred. The cheaper food products which came in with the refrigerator- and then freezer-ships, the development of inexpensive margarine, the fall in price of most consumer items, all served to increase both the variety and quantity of the workmen's diet in this period.

 

Risks of Union Organizers

What risks did unskilled women face at work in 1888 and what did they do about it? On 23rd June 1888, Annie Besant, a campaigner for women’s welfare and rights, published an article called ‘White Slavery in London’. She revealed the terrible conditions and poor wages suffered by the match girls employed at the Bryant and May factory in the east end of London. The match girls worked long hours for very low wages, and could lose part of their wages in fines for such offences as arriving late or talking. Still worse, their working conditions were dangerous. The fumes from the white phosphorous used to make matches were poisonous. Workers could get necrosis or 'phossy jaw'. It began with pain and swelling in the teeth and jaw, then foul-smelling pus formed. The jaw turned green and black as the bone rotted away and, without surgery, death could be the result. Besant’s article gained a great deal of publicity because the Victorians believed that only 'inferior races' kept slaves. The British had banned slavery in 1833. To find out that women worked in such poor conditions in the match factories shocked respectable Victorians.

The factory owners were not pleased. They sacked the women who they suspected of talking to Besant. In response, Besant helped the rest of the women in the factory to form a trade union, which came out on strike. With the support of some of the press and the generosity of the public, money was collected to aid the striking women. Many people stopped buying Bryant and May matches. At first, the owners of the factory stated that they would not take the strikers back into their employ. But on 21 July they gave in to the demands of the match girls, ended the fines system and re-employed those who had been sacked, ending the strike. However, it was to be many more years before they stopped using the dangerous phosphorous. This was the first time a union of unskilled workers had succeeded in striking for better pay and working conditions. It inspired unions across the country. Within a year, the London dockworkers were on strike, confident that if the match girls could succeed, then so could they.

 

Workhouses and Poor

The working classes and the poor

• Article by: Liza Picard

Liza Picard examines the social and economic lives of the Victorian working classes and the poor.

The Victorians liked to have their social classes clearly defined. The working class was divided into three layers, the lowest being 'working men' or labourers, then the ‘intelligent artisan’, and above him the ‘educated working man’. In reality, things were not so tidily demarcated.

Earnings

A skilled London coach-maker could earn up to five guineas (£5, five shillings) a week - considerably more than most middle class clerks. This was the top of the working class pyramid. The railways generated employment for porters and cab-drivers. The London omnibuses needed 16,000 drivers and conductors, by 1861. Conductors were allowed to keep four shillings a day out of the fares they collected, and drivers could count on 34 shillings a week, for a working day beginning at 7.45 and ending often past midnight. A labourer’s average wage was between 20 and 30 shillings a week in London, probably less in the provinces. This would just cover his rent, and a very sparse diet for him and his family.

Costermongers

During the late 1800s there were probably about 30,000 street sellers (known as costermongers) in London, each selling his or her particular wares from a barrow or donkey-cart. The journalist Henry Mayhew recorded the array of goods for sale: oysters, hot-eels, pea soup, fried fish, pies and puddings, sheep’s trotters, pickled whelks, gingerbread, baked potatoes, crumpets, cough-drops, street-ices, ginger beer, cocoa and peppermint water as well as clothes, second-hand musical instruments, books, live birds and even birds nests. Some specialised in buying waste products such as broken metal, bottles, bones and ‘kitchen stuff’ such as dripping, broken candles and silver spoons. Most middle class and working class households depended on these street sellers, who had regular predictable beats, and made a fair living.

On the streets

Men could earn pennies as porters, as long as they stayed clear of the associations which had a monopoly of porterage in London. Boys could hold horses’ heads while the driver took a break, or sell newspapers or fast food in the streets. The ‘mudlarks’ of both sexes and all ages waded thigh‐deep in the filthy toxic Thames mud to retrieve anything they could sell. Dogs’ turds could be collected and sold to the tanneries. Discarded cigar butts could be recycled and marketed as new.

Sweeping a path across the filthy streets for a well‐dressed pedestrian could earn a few pennies, legally. Begging might make more illegally, especially if the beggar woman could use – even hire – a small child. Sometimes the children were blinded or maimed, to loosen the purse‐strings of passers‐by.

After work

If a man had enough initiative and energy after a long working day, he could attend evening courses on scientific subjects or Latin or shorthand at a Mechanics’ Institution, or at one of the Working Men’s Colleges founded in 1854. Newspapers such as The Penny Newsman were affordable, often shared between friends. Trade Unions needed intelligent self-educated men as Union officials. Massive civil engineering works such as railways and docks needed foremen, while factories needed overseers to keep the belts and wheels turning profitably. A working woman could learn French at a Working Women’s College. It might come in useful if she progressed up the ladder of domestic service to become a ladies’ maid.

Workhouses

When you have no prospect of a living wage, or sickness or disability or market forces prevent you from working, what are you to do?

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 established ‘workhouses’ in place of the old poor houses. IThe Act was framed to deter undeserving applicants, and the criterion was sometimes inhumanly hard. The workhouse might deny the starving applicants even the bare shelter it provided. A 70-year-old seamstress with failing sight was told to go away and find herself some work because ‘she was young enough to work’. If a family was admitted, all its members would be separated, and might never see each other again. 

The workhouse itself would provide the work. The sentence of hard labour imposed on convicts was applied equally to male paupers in the ‘casual ward’, who were physically weak, and often unaccustomed to manual work. An experienced convict might earn 9 pence a day at stone-breaking. A clerk, reduced to the workhouse perhaps because of a gap between jobs, had to try to break granite rocks with a heavy hammer, in an open shed with no protection from frost or heat, when he had never held anything heavier than a pen. Another suitable occupation, in the eyes of the authorities, was oakum-picking: unravelling lengths of tarred rope, for use in calking the seams of battleships. A convict’s strong, thick-skinned hands could manage that; the clerk’s soft fingers failed to produce the required quantities. For all this, the pauper received only an allowance of coarse bread: £4 a week if he was married, plus £2 for each child.

Workhouse food was just enough to keep the inmates from starvation. They were clothed, and even, occasionally, washed. The children were entitled to some elementary education, but this was often ignored by the workhouse keeper. There was some rudimentary medical care – interesting mainly as the first example of medical care provided by a state-funded organisation, in which one may perhaps see the germs of the National Health Service a century later.

 

A servant's schedule

Different servants had different levels of responsibility and different levels of privileges.

The cook, is one of the most important members of the domestic staff of a Victorian household. She would typically have her own bedroom, and earn a salary about double that of a housemaid or chambermaid. Her realm is the kitchen and dining room. She would be involved in menu planning with the lady of the house, and from that would be responsible for shopping, running the kitchen, preparing the meal, cleaning the china and polishing the silverware. She would cook for the family and for the service staff.

The housemaid, would assist the lady of the house with her changes of clothes (typically three changes a day). She would clean the front door and steps, then work in the parlour removing the soot left by the coal fires, candles and oil lamps. Next she would make the beds, sweep the carpets, dust the furniture and ornaments. Depending on the number of other staff, she may also have to do the laundry. It would be a long hard day. She would have started in the job young – about 18, and would share sleeping quarters in the attic with other female members of the domestic staff. She would receive a small salary and be provided with room and board.

The uncertain social status of governesses made the role a difficult one. She was typically a single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of culture and means. The psychological situation of the governess made her position unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the same social level as the family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants.

Time off for the staff is at the discretion of the employer, typically one day a month, plus one week a year would be acceptable, as well as a couple of hours off on Sunday to attend church.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of early Victorian domestic workers is the uncomplaining acceptance of conditions of life and work. There is a sense resignation to the facts of life, the feeling that human existence is a struggle and that survival is an end in itself.

This resignation resulted from a long history of deprivation and suffering by which generations of working people had been accustomed to poverty, personal tragedy and limited expectations. These attitudes are true of the great majority, though not of all. Their intellectual and cultural horizons are strictly limited: very few concern themselves with national events or politics, they are uninterested in material acquisition or achievement; they are not socially mobile and barely conscious of class beyond a recognition that the ‘masters’ constitute a different order of society into which they will never penetrate. Their aspirations are modest to be respected by their fellows, to see their families growing up and making their way in the world, to die without debt and without sin. Any happiness which life has to offer was to be found in social contacts within the family, the work-group, or the church.

Toward the end of the Victorian age, there became a shortage of domestic workers as young women preferred the more social atmosphere and shorter working hours in factory work to the longer hours worked in domestic service. A housemaid’s day would typically extend from 6 A.M. until 10 P.M., during which she had two-and-a-half hours for meals and an hour-and-a-half in the afternoon for needlework, a total of four hours “rest.” This meant twelve hours of actual work, longer by two hours than a factory woman’s day.

On Saturday, when the factory hand worked two hours less than usual, the servant worked longer, and on Sunday, when the factory worker could rest completely, the servant was still required to work almost a normal day. Eighty hours of actual work a week, against fifty-six for the factory worker, may well be a fair estimate for the late nineteenth century, and must have been exceeded in many single-handed households. It is no wonder many women moved into factory work in this period.

 

ASSIGNMENT 2

Assignment

1.       Have play memorized by Sunday.  Be prompt Sunday. We have a lot to do.

2.       If you have not presented your master gesture, etc, see me this week – before school, during activity, or after school. Master gestures MUST BE unique to your character. One of our judges HARPS on this.

3.       Score your script. Do this by Monday night. If you have questions, see me. Instructions are on the Blog.

4.       Thursday night, we will work in groups on scenes. Gut girls, Lady H, Edwin, Jim, Arthur, Priscilla, and Len need to come.  Everyone else is excused.  Understudies of these characters can come because we may need you to work scenes with us. Everyone else is welcome. Band will be on stage until 8:30.  We will start at 6:30 and be in my room. We will work until 8:30.

5.       These are MUSTS – Look at the Theatrefolk LABAN video. Watch your parts on You Tube video – Gut Girls. You can rewind these and perfect your accents. Everyone needs to watch these – crew as well.

Assignment