Lost Stories From Victorian England's Brutal Workhouses | Secrets From The Workhouse | Timeline
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- What was it really like in an old Victorian Workhouse? In the first of a two-part documentary, presenter Fern Britton, actor Brian Cox, and more famous faces go on an emotional journey uncovering how their ancestors were driven to the Victorian workhouse by poverty.
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This is really interesting.... My Grandfather was born in Lurgan Workhouse in 1901....he joined the Royal Navy when he was 15 and was active and survived both WW1 & WW2 and lived till he was 80
Thank you for your grandfathers service.he must of been a brave chap to go through two wars.they don’t make them like that these days.🙏🙏🙏
@@jamesbutler8187 they do but we are a rare and discouraged breed and personality type (Sigma Lone Wolf types). Who value God, Nation and Family above our own Earthly lives.
@@diongibbs312 Lord I hope you’re not really this brainwashed
@@adammay6663 with cultural norms eroded, with free speech in public suppressed, with innocent not malignant wolf whistling, calling strangers beautiful or upholding English tradition of hugging and kissing people on the cheek like Europe still does.
How can we still be full prominence as we once was in the English speaking World excluding Australia.
@@diongibbs312 Take your meds my friend
Never let future generations forget what happened in these places.
This is what the US conservatives are doing. They want to sugar coat history. As if the injustice to those unable to help themselves is fair and reasonable. Those who have nothing, the haves want to keep their feet on the have-nots heads; keep them in their place. No wonder that the philosophers, the bastion of right from wrong, took up the baton to try to ameliorating the conditions of the down trodden.
It only takes a few generations. Now people just expect to get on the dole and generation poverty is still a huge problem.
@@a.azazagoth5413 Generational bone idleness is as well
@@a.azazagoth5413 Poverty is still a systemic problem! People don't expect to "get on the dole." They want out of poverty.
@@clivebaxter6354 Yes the masters always call the slaves lazy.
George Orwell’s stories of the impoverished in England and France are a great account of this period.
Down & Out in Paris and London 👌
ii
His books are a bit later than victorian but fantastic source of information and stories around poverty in both countries.
@@duellingscarguevara good observations, certainly in the older times, rural areas had plenty of work, it was the cities where people struggled at adapt and adjust. Families broke down and people ended up in squalor.
Charles Dickens novel especially Oliver Twist. Based in a Workhouse. Writing in England in the Victorian Era.
People simply don't understand the affects poverty has on people. My own Grandfather grew up in extreme poverty - one of the most important life lessons that he taught me, without knowing it, was that childhood poverty always remains a lifelong affliction - no matter how well off someone might become later on in life. I always remember him doing things which I used to think were rather strange at the time - it's only when I got older that I began to fully understand the real causes and the tragedy behind his behaviour.
*effects, not affects. Your syntax is abysmal. Simply poor. Learn sentence structure and proper English before you comment.
The way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if the workhouses are brought back.
You’re definitely correct there once you’ve been really poor you always act poor
@@clvrswine Why does someone's spelling trigger you so much? Who do you think you are, telling someone not to comment unless they have 100% perfect English?
@@clvrswine What are you doing?
This is narrated by Mr Carson, Lord Granthams Butler, from Downton Abbey! 🥰
Omgoodness!!!! I thought I recognized his voice!!! What a wonderful speaker ❤️
Omg! That's why it sounded so familiar I just finished abbey downtown recently
“Designed to be worse than if you were earning a pittance on the outside…”
THIS.
This is the universal rule for welfare. The only way the poor are ever treated better is by raising the standard for the lowest rung on the working ladder first.
Charles Dickens hints at the horrors of life in the Workhouses in the well known story "Oliver Twist." From what I've read, a lot of the storyline background was true, and Charles himself did indeed find himself in one such place for a while at a similar age to poor Oliver. The whole Workhouse concept, especially leading upto the early 20th Century, was just sick! A person was almost better off as a transported convict or general prisoner than what they were in Britain as a pauper or in the Workhouse. To think that "being poor" was seen as a disease in the same way as a cold is spread, and to isolate people as a result, is truly sick. Imagine if we treated Autistic or Asperger's _"sufferers"_ this way today? Just like the concept of Transportation to a distant land, the Workhouse concept had to change, and die out, and in its place, a basic form of welfare provided by the Government.
How many of us would have suffered on the streets had it not been for the modern welfare system, however badly we see it???
The lady’s mother who kept that horrible experience to herself while wearing a smile for her children to enjoy life is the strongest thing I heard in a while. The mother remained strong, married and reserved. They also dressed lovely back then when you didn’t know these people were indeed in poverty. Not expensive name brand but well groom and good mannerisms. High class values indeed. 👍🏻
It's not strong at all.
@@CryptoKernelsNor is it weak
Not a lot has changed for the poor nowadays... Homelessness, skipping meals, poor health care...The elderly stuck in privately owned establishments where they are abused and the emphasis is on profits...
They have just privatised it nowadays.
Very moving documentary. It is so touching to follow the family’s as they discover the truth of the workhouse for their kin.
Heartbreaking. So much misery and suffering. And so much resilience and fortitude sometimes.
A thought provoking documentary that strongly relates to our own time.
And now today we are stripping people of their dignity again as even in 2022 they cannot afford to pay their bills and put food on the table!! I hope you publish part two of this documentary...thank you....x
Shame and blame for disabilities and human variance?! How terrifying!
I've got PTSD for abuse I got in childhood. How horrible how badly some people were treated by society for failing to comply to capitalism or dominant peoples :(
It’s natural, from the perspective of 150+ years later, to describe the poor house as a, ‘Relentless assault on human dignity’ but at least there was this provision. As the programme illustrated at the beginning, there was an alternative; living on a staircase, living on the street.
Exactly!
Yet they still died. Many have no marked graves
And the social programs enacted in the US by Roosevelt were nonexistent back in the day and the rich are trying to strip those away now. They have no idea what it was like back then. My parents remembered and were grateful for him.
Logan Roy is justifiably upset by the thought of his ancestors been poor, I'm upset too.
"By 1900 economic expansion had made Britain the richest nation on the planet, and yet almost 1/3rd of the countys urban population lived in povety"....some things never change.
The poor you will always have with you ...
@@johannaholmgren8088 ..in a system based on rank inequality.
The US was the richest nation by 1900
22:31 Don't worry, that attitude and belief is still deeply ingrained into British public and the view of the government and DWP. If they had their way, we'd be bringing back workhouses...for adults and children alike
Would that worse than living on the street in tent cities then? ruclips.net/video/yRWmKh13b50/видео.html
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there! He wasn't there again today, Oh how I wish he'd go away!
imagine what the future holds with the way things are going now.....
Yes, there may be a need for poor houses again. The government gives welfare, but doesn't actually produce anything , and with inflation on the rise; sooner or later they are going to run out of other people's money! Furthermore I think it's cruel to let the mentally ill live on the streets.
I read one time in a book that some people paid just to sit down all night because that was all they could afford. They paid to spend the cold nights inside sitting on a bench next to others, it was better than freezing to death in the streets.
Many paid to stand up, leaning on a rope, in a line with others...
@@stevemundy4511 the saying on the ropes is not just a boxing term like you say people paid a penny to sleep on a rope out of the cold, now that's hardship.
@@kevinadamson5768 Sadly, some people still struggle to find a warm place to sleep...
@@stevemundy4511 it's sad that it's still going on today.
What always horrified me about the literature from around the Victorian era was the theme of total hopelessness of the lower classes to achieve socioeconomic mobility. It’s obvious in Oliver Twist and even kinda in Great Expectations. You also see it in the beginning les Miserables with Fantine and with Jean Valjean after he escapes prison, although this is in France and so isn’t technically Victorian. In America we had something similar at the beginning of the 20th century with The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. The deck was entirely stacked in favor of the people who had power, while this preexisting social power could be magnified by industrial production, further separating the wealthy as a class from the impoverished.
Marvellous documentary thanks to who have spend their time to prepare it.
My grandmother,and at least 2 of her siblings ended up in a workhouse as children. Their father died when my Grandmother was 6, her mother remarried, and the stepfather didn't want the children so she just put them in a workhouse. Something I never knew until I started researching my family tree....
These dear people must have been so strong to endure this horrific living !!
i was luck i was born into money ,thank you mum and dad .i feel so sorry for these people . Bless them All
Just found out my fathers grandmother was born in a workhouse in Ireland. Her mother Julie Brennan died in the workhouse at 32. Trying to find out who raised her daughter (same name). At any rate, she survived &got married & had a family.. my father never asked as a child & she never spoke of it. My 82 year old father really liked his grandmother
When Britain was the richest and most powerful country in the world, hundreds of thousands starved in the streets.
As some guy said 2000 years ago, the poor will ALWAYS be among us. And rumour has it he was quoting a 1000 years before his time. So there's that.
And millions were enslaved in foreign countries...
I was looking for a documentary on this some time back and didn't find anything that in depth. So thank you for posting !!! 👍🏻
In Germany we had also workhouses ;They called it "Arbeitshaus", mostly it was a punishment for unmarried mothers or prisoners who were dismissed and found no employment or people who got in conflict with the law. My Granny told me when children or juveniles didn't obey their parents they were threatened with the workhouse!
They already had their concentration camps before the nazis perfected them.
There are still remains and pictures here in the states that schools and hospitals still have access to that are in dispute over custody of. Some Native American some African slaves, but all similarly disenfranchised of the sovereignty over their bodies. This systematic practice of a developing medical field has yet to account for all of it’s war crimes it continues to reap the benefits of to this day.
If you listen to Dickens: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" Later, a character adds that he would rather die than enter a workhouse.
This should provide just a small insight to the horrors lurking there.
Thank you very much for your contribution to our general culture.
It was a great episode.
P.S: I'm sorry for my English.😔
There is nothing wrong with youre English. Peace be unto u
Your English is great!!
This has opened my eyes even more as to whom is really in charge.
Satan ! i'm convinced now
@@markc1234golf He also has another name: Enki. But his half brother Enlil is even worse: Yahweh. Sumerian clay tablets speak of their domination of Earth.
@@karenishness1 Set 🥴 if you're interested in the etymology of the name check channel called James True he's just done an awesome video on the name of god great channel
@@karenishness1 🤗🤗
@@markc1234golf That is fascinating for you I am sure. It was to me when I was studying Sumerian clay tablets. All these extra terrestrials have literally 100 names each and masquerade as our God(s). Michael Tellinger exposed this when he ran for president of South Africa, where they call these aliens the chitahuri (reptilians). His best question is: Genesis 2:12 Go to Havila where you will find gold- if God created the universe why does he need gold- he already created it.
I would LOVE to find out where my family originated from!😩 the curiosity is killing me!
There is a Chaplin in Natal , South Africa . He’s a very good attorney
A chaplain who is good at the law? Wouldn't that make him a pharisees?
looking forward to Part 2!
Beautiful cursive pen and ink handwriting ❤
In the United States and Canada native American children in rural communities were taken from parents and the parents had no say. Many things about uk's work houses were similar to these Indian boarding schools. I met a councilor in 07 and he told us that they were forbidden from speaking their native language and were wipped if caught. Also he was punished by holding his head above ammonia and the kids were regularly raped. The schools were hundreds of miles from their home. His case was from the early 1950s.
People watching this should also watch “I Daniel Blake” to see the modern version
Work house, I have never met this word in my life until I have watched this video.
I have thought Industrial revolution had helped offer the opportunty to work for many people in Victorian England but Industrial revolution had produced the craftmen or not like IT in our age.
In the result , one third of people in England had lived under poverty line in Victorea aera and that situation had established the existence of work house.
Most of English people are the decendant of people from the work houses.
In a word, England was the poor country in the past.
Thanks a lot for your video, it made broaden my horizon.
Oh, ‘Self help’ written by Samuel Smile had been very popular book and it was best seller book at Alexander Victoria period.
I was born in Jamaica, a previous British colony. As a child I recall people talking about work house. In my ignorance, I thought it was a reference to prison, where I heard the conditions were atrocious.
They had work houses in Canada too
I feel for all the people who their Grandparents died in that time 💔😞😞😞😞
2022 and nothing has changed. I’m a rich whitish American and I’ve been sick for 50yrs and homeless for 30yrs.
Life is not fair.
People are quite surprised and astonished seeing this. If you visit poor countries even today the living standard is well below the workhouse.
So if these people are so stunned may be they can do something about it.
Jacob Rees-Mogg puts this on to sleep at night
Where can I find part 2 of this? I've searched for it every way I can think of but only get results for part 1.
We still have those houses in the USA but we call them shelters.
Some US shelters have laundry washing machines and dryers, hot meals, clean beds & staff.
Shelters do NOT require you to work to earn your keep, so no comparison at all.
In those days young house maids who got pregnant by their employers or other workers were sent to the poor house.
I’d like to see the stories about how workhouse descendants give to the poor or create opportunities for the less fortunate now.
The workhouse was a way to deal with the appalling poverty at the time. Before the workhouse there was nothing to stop the homeless, old, poor and sick starving to death. Unofortunately it was an example of good intentions, like indentured labobor and shippng unwanted children to foster homes in the colonies, gone awry and it was not until wages and welfare benefits such as unemployment pay, old age pensions, and national health service were introduced that it became redundant. Opportunists took advantage of the inmantes just as the folk who run private prison - make a profit by cutting services. Before we point our fingers at the abuses and cruelty, we are not much different today in denying befits to those we consider the undeserving poor who would not be in need if they worked harder. We only have to look at the abuse of the pandemic relief measures.
No one must bleat on about white privilege
What does your comment mean exactly?
@@warrenlewis3977 It's a white thing you wouldn't understand.
@@TheRadioAteMyTV I understand you need to get back to ur meth pipe. I understand completely.
@@warrenlewis3977 Well with logic like that I can see you are a man of distinction. But the stink can be washed off, so there's that.
Despair on a stair; life can be so unfair.
The extent to which appalling emotional awareness is still passed on generation to generation is outrageous and astounding , Cheryl Andertons mother tells her to ignore her crying infants and fake victimhood with my husband is good at keeping me from going in and responding appropriately with affection and that child Hannah was like a wooden doll limbs stiff with physical abnormality after psychological neglect by 3 months when I saw and held her . All the education and superior economic level living standard plays no part in the children being cared for like it actually really is a different era with better understanding and approach .
It was just fine for the folks at the top. It’s amazing how some people at the top are okay with this…Greedy is an Ugly look…
The 2nd part please
The narrator has the same voice as Mr Carson from Downton Abbey
Well done !
🏆🏆🏆👍🇺🇲🙏.
Thank you for sharing
10 hours a day, 6 days a week doing mind numbing tedious labor.... sounds like my life
I don't care how poor I am, I will always try to help others. Fortunately, I am a bit above poverty level and we manage. I can't imagine what poverty was like back then.
It happens in the best of families: poverty.
Well presented
Why will people shame the poor
We need to bring back the workhouses
They are here, work a shift at amaazon
@@jthomas4361 ya...we should send all the homeless to work at amazon
Start with those who recommend it for others, finish with those who live in palaces, with every expense, whim and fancy paid for by the taxpayer
You can go first
Many of the children's homes were not much different.
They had to feed the children, but they had to thank
Their lucky stars for the privilege.
The psychological and physical pain being...24/7
"The ice-cream is off, is it? The likes of you should
Think yourself luck to get it! Just you wait!"
The kicks, the punches and being dragged up a
Flight of stairs by the hair for complaining...
About rotten ice-cream was a relief compared
To all the other abuses...A day off for what
One was made to feel about one's self..."SCUM"
AND IT STILL GOES ON...DON'T BELIEVE IT DOESN'T!
THE ABUSERS KNOW HOW TO HIDE IT BETTER.
THE OFFICIALS...WELL, THEY'RE EXPERTS AT
HIDING THE ABUSE,AND ALWAYS WILL BE!!!
does anyone know where part 2 can be viewed?
The British Empire was the greatest thing to have happened to mankind. God Bless the British Empire.
History is 20/20
Hey, I make 18$ an hour full-time (All Physical Labor) with overtime and still live a motel and am homeless on the weekend...go f'n figure!!
Afraid of being poor!!??????🤣🤣🤣🤣😅😅🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😢🤣🤣🤣That there is America!!
Exactly what a joke!!!
five million died??!!! that’s insane!!!
The Humanity! Order out of chaos.
Oliver Twist. 1837 Novel by Charles Dickens.
It's a awful when the workhouses were around was when families stuck together and now families are killing each other
Pure non-sense comment.
It's true though
I believe that there is still brutal workhouses in industrial neighborhoods and in home offices too everywhere.
My Great Grandparents immigrated from England in the late 1800's, 1st Manitoba the Ladysmith, Vancouver Island. He enlisted in WW1 at 17 years ol age. Apparently they were Imperial Loyalist, I was left a history the two siblings had a current plans, and have the info, if wanting to claim. My Grams Grandfather was a Master Marnier, Captain James Douglas Warren came from P.E.I. in 1858. He opened up the Trade Routes around Vancouver Island to the Haida Gwaii. He was the last owner of the famous SSBeaver, it was 1st Steamship to cross the ocean from England in 1837. It sunk at Prospect Point in 1888 in Vancouver, B.C. 🇨🇦
I'd like to know how Charlie Chaplin had sufficient money to go to Hollywood.
British Society looked down on on families who were in the workhouses because of the perverse application of the Protestant work ethic. Regarding the Irish who fled Ireland due to famine, the British government imposed the famine on Ireland, by putting Army regiments in every County to deny the Irish people food to survive. As a result 5.2 million Irish people died at the hands of the British army. This was one of Britain's horrific social experiments. The object was to kill off the Irish and repopulate Ireland with the poor and criminals of Britain. It was much easier and much cheaper to ship these people to Ireland than to send them around the world to Australia. The truth has come out about the horrific genocide committed against the Irish people by the British government. Perhaps someday the Irish government will win compensation on behalf of those who died, and those who somehow suffered through it.
My ancestors suffered at the hands of the British (Irish)
My ancestors suffered at the hands of the British (Nigerian , Congolese, Ghanaian, Senegambian, Native American Indian, Afro Caribbean (Jamaican) and even as there defendant I sm still suffering racist abuse in the streets from the British
What happened to the people still there in 1948 when they shut it down?
Modern welfare state? Or something like what's going on in America, but I think the English are too proper to allow something so messy. ruclips.net/video/yRWmKh13b50/видео.html
This brings tears of sadness...
Thank heaven for the NHS and our Social Services...
As bad as the workhouses and poor houses were at least there was something in place for the destitute and they didn't have to just take their chances on the street. Just the first step on the road to universal support for people.
Correct! People should be thankful instead of complaining about it.
Very few survived them
It was just a place to conceal the bodies
Heartening to hear Charlie Chaplin getting his mother out of the workhouse for the last few years of her miserable life. Workhouse wasn't much better than prison and a lot committed suicide rather than go there.
On today's episode of Undercover Boss: Logan Roy.
Hey that's my birthday too, 06-03-1963.
Nerrator is exelent
Might be a good idea to bring an up to date version back
The worst of times😢
I was wondering where the tories were getting thier manifesto from.
Hetty Feather😢
I feel like this is 46min of british people reacting to their awfully oppresive british history!
i don't see the point of condemning the past.....a vastly soaring population in england and the new industrial revolution coupled with a hidebound monarchic tradition was met with new institutions that were evolving.........the workhouse in england is seen all over the modern world today in all developing 3rd world countries and in asia and the muslim world..... .... the workhouse has been with us as long as there has been civilization....expressing fake horror and fake outrage and being 'offended' at the workhouse culture is such cringy virtue signalling so emblematic of the 21st century marxist 'educated' mindset where redistribution and woke government socialist central social/economic planning and the welfare state is now the only permissible 'good' that we are allowed to praise....the public is being led by the nose to condemn all that came before through media indoctrination and marxist academia. .......its so wokely fashionable to condemn essentially everything that white british culture was and accomplished from 1580 to 1954......wokism is sickening, a kind of workhouse of the mind
I agree! The workhouse was better than this - ruclips.net/video/yRWmKh13b50/видео.html
Indeed. We seem to love looking back into he past and shaking our heads while at the same time turning a blind eye to the massive injustices being perpetuated under our very noses.
Captailisim created this
Do you want to send children back to working in Mills?
Why is Logan Roy in this?
Thank you so much for your wonderful film, ı'm truly so sorry for this lady, and ı agree with dear sir's pretty much all assasements, brifly the system sucks so bad. Unfortunately ancient people were so ruthless and cruel mostly and ı had figured this fact out when ı've been watching Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of The Christ' film. many years ago actually. And Unfortunately it's not much different during the Vitorian era or age right before the beginining of the 20th century. There were so many sort of pretty harsh punishment methods and penalties in the UK, in schools,hospitals,poor houses and similar places,there were always some sort of ruthless methods in order to establish more authority on people and to gain power frankly. Becuse those sort of punisment methods had always been used by the fascist and dictatorial regimes and especially in poor third world countries and police states in order to create more stress and horror on people's minds, And also ı really don't want to offend my English friends but ı think we had an increasing situation in tersm of the servants population especially at that specific period of time .This 'Masters & Servants' sitiuation of the so-called allagedly 'modern western civilisation' must come to an and dear sir. For instance when ı go to a restaurant or pub to be honest ı don't need all those waiter or waitress persons in order to serve me, just as sort of slaves,ı can handle or do it myself, ı can get my coffee or something by myself so this is a sort of assault on the mankin's dignity as well dear sir. Perhaps we can evaluate all those people's efforts and wprk capacity for some other more creative and beneficial jobs actually. If really we're talkin' about a so-called 'modern western civilisation' then there should be no homeless and poor people outside in the streets and especially children dear sir. That's full of shame, such a shame, thank you very much.
WHY must you play loud music to drown out narrator????????????????????????????????????
Fern Britton needs to learn to let people finish their sentences before she interjects with her useless statements.
Charlie Chaplin’s mother was beautiful. This was awful. The Royals were living high on the hog. Much like the homeless today, they make this a crime. When it’s actually a product of a rich society. A society of those that have money, not sharing or giving back.
The present Tory government want to return to these days.
As inflation takes hold and people lose their homes would this be better? ruclips.net/video/yRWmKh13b50/видео.html
Oh the good old days. Maybe they’ll come back?
i think they've only glossed over things nothing has changed mate
What? And expect people to WORK for their money from the state? Seems unlikely now.
The music is so noisy, it’s distracting 👎🏻
Slaves got fed for work. Poor people have to beg to be abused. Still I’d choose to be free and starve.
Lot's of ignorant comments here
"Cruel beyond belief"
Please make documentary about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose,He is a Hero.