Hope all you who go on and on about the British Empire and how all us Brits benefited from it, i hope you are watching this. There were thousands of slum areas like this in the UK.
All owned by British elite landowners who didn’t pay for up keep. So blaming the poor was the thing. The poor get the blame for everything even now. The middle class housing inspectors moral imperatives lorded over the poor. So after 2 world wars. The government had to reward the people who lost all their men folk. But the Peabody housing association gives housing to ‘ the deserving poor’
I grew up in a dump like that till I was five years old. . Two up, two down. No hot water and toilet in the back yard. We had a tin bath hanging on the back outside wall and all us kids had the same water on bath night, one after the other. I sometimes wonder how my mum managed to dress us so well. We were SO HAPPY to get off the housing list and get a council house!
Today, everyone can dress with respect ,but choose not to. The man with the Family, all living in one room, was clear;y brought up to show self respect an respect to his family, by appearing to present himself in a Shirt and Tie. How we have all lost ourselves . He has it shockingly difficult, but presented himself as best he could. We can all buy the best clothing from even City Mission and Charity Shops, but still choose not to look as best we can. We dress as though we are heading out to the Tip mostly. Wow, the dignity that man shows in himself.
After this new council houses were built, and the NHS came along. But now we experience severe housing shortages, extortionate rents, damp, families split up scattered all over the place, and the NHS is in crisis. The young generation don't necessarily have a great life.
@Simon Robson Wait, you actually believe that the Tory government are encouraging maximal house building in order to house immigrants? Not to, say, win votes with the middle classes while lining the pockets of their house developer mates?!
The Thatcher sell-off was total lunacy (... or deliberate intent) of what should have been a stable and reliable housing resource. I've always noticed Council brickies did a better job. The present housing shortage is shameful upon the United Kingdom. Seems we have assholes in charge.
The houses shown look like late Georgian speculation rows, built with cheap materials and billysweet used as mortar. Most date from around 1820 or so in the early industrial revolution, and were designed to house workers close to the factory where they worked in 18 hour days before 1836. It is amazing they are still there in 1935, as many of the 1880s reformers were compalining about them. These are not the usual 1880s style ones you see now. These are older.
Didn't know what Billysweet was... found this... Many of the buildings in the Old Nichol contravened the Building Acts. Builders leasing land from owners who did not care what use was made of the acreage, so long as it was profitable, created an instant slum. The use of cheaper lime-based substances derived from the by-products of soap-making at local factories was the most important factor in the swift deterioration of the building fabric in the Old Nichol. Speculative builders used this cement, which was known as "Billysweet", instead of traditional lime mortar; it quickly became infamous for never thoroughly drying out, leading to sagging and unstable walls. Other architectural features that contributed to urban decay in the Old Nichol included the lack of foundation of most early 19th-century houses, which were built with floorboards laid on bare earth, cheap timber and half-baked bricks of ash-adulterated clay. The roofs were badly pitched, leading to rotting rafters and blooming plasterwork. The houses were permanently soggy, as damp from the roof and the earth seeped through the buildings. By 1836, the whole 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land which would form the Old Nichol had been built or rebuilt upon.[7] "A back garden in Nichol Street, Bethnal Green" from The Builder(1863)[8] Over the following fifteen years, backyards and other open spaces were built upon with shanty-style developments, creating illegal courts, small houses, workshops, stables, cowsheds and donkey stalls. As surveyors and cartographers struggled to maintain accurate maps of the Old Nichol, the already high population density increased further.[9] Families with more than one child often lied to be able to obtain a room, and were thrown out if the rent collector or landlord found out that more than one child lived with family in one room. Monday was rent day, known as "Black Monday", and in the Old Nichol women would form queues outside the pawnshops with their belongings. The rent was collected by house agents who would evict te
@@l0ndon429 In the video the lady stated that they were too rotten to repair and had to be demolished. What is so sad is that the huge concrete prefabs the councils were so excited about, turned out to be expensive slums in the making themselves...what a waste of money they were!
Ruby Grierson was the women whose idea it was to interview people. She was the sister of John Grierson, who founded the documentary film movement in the early 1930's and ran the GPO film unit at the time.
the main thing i,ve noticf over the year,s is when people had to live with no inside toilets or bathrooms.they were a lot cleaner than a lot of people now, that have bathrooms,a lot of people these days haven,t a clue how to keep anything clean,& tidy,let alone themselve,s
None of these houses had indoor plumbing. If they were lucky there was a privy in the back yard, otherwise it was at the end of the street. This whole area was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in the early 1940s.
+Rhoda Miller I Dont remember any houses in the 50s without a toilet in the back yard. I never ever felt cold even when the snow was on the ground,And u had to feel your way in the dark.
"The idea that the person being interviewed should just talk straight to the camera was the idea of a woman. I will try to find out who she was" It might have been Jill Craigie - Michael Foot's wife
In its modest way this was a revolution in documentary. Arthur Elton dragged his unwieldy 35mm camera down to the East End. Instead of reenacting scenes with 'real people' stiltedly speaking lines written by some Oxbridge cineaste, these cockneys were shot in situ, often in natural light, and allowed to voice their complaints forthrightly with little mediation. The little boy who shouts in the middle of his mother's speech would not have been left in if Grierson had supervised the production. 'Housing Problems' was a sponsored film, a very soft sell by a power and light utility. Its solution to the slum's evils has not aged well: deporting the locals to underresourced exurban estates and high-rise blocks where aerial living undermined the spirit of community. The ground-level neighbourliness we glimpse here was lost. The old East End was held together by mothers, and they do more of the talking here- another novelty in the 1930s.
Interesting to watch this in conjunction with "The Proud City", a 1946 film outlining the County of London plan to rebuild neighbourhoods with their own amenities to replace the slums.
@@pedrogarbanzo Yes, but unfortunately the neighborhoods too often went up without the amenities. Planners seemed to follow the principle of 'if you build it, the infrastructure will come.' Community facilities such as shops, meeting rooms and police posts were lacking. The growth of private motoring led to neglect of public transit. And the new high-rise blocks were too often shoddily built, so they had to be detonated a couple of decades after being occupied. Dispersal of slums and their kinship networks, television, package holidays abroad and the segregation of workplaces on industrial estates or office districts all played their part in weakening community ties; but architectural theories did not counteract the trend. Instead of becoming 'streets in the sky' for pedestrians, the elevated walkways and shared spaces such as lift entrances soon became vandalized, littered, scary after dark. People flitted quickly into their private domains, and when they reached ground level they fled in a dozen different directions.
you are referring to the Commercial Gas & Coke Company. The gas holder behind the old showroom was the original holder and the other three were added later. The Campaign wanted that holder retained as a memorial to the gas workers who protected the holders against hitlers bombs. It lost and we ended up with stubs instead.
.... 'Comments' like That Woman's (4:15) - were greeted with an Embarrassing Silence ...... 'Please don't 'rock the boat' syndrome 🖕🖕🖕 PS. & THEN the F****n War came!!!
hello, i am doing an assignment based on housing in London, is iit ok if i could use this video to reference. and also know the origin of it, i would like to know where i could also get a copy.
People moaning today don't have a clue. So much is taken for granted - and so many people think that life "owes" them. The Facebook generation ought to have experienced this sort of thing - might have given them a better perspective on life than watching TOWIE!
your joking the private rented I moved from recently had wet walls and no central heating everyone isn't out of touch with reality and not everyone is well off I had an unheated bathroom for 20 years also that was so cold there was ice in there
Norma Thomas. We're in a 1960s flat with no heating in the bathroom, night storage heaters we can't afford to actually use as their so expensive to use, we have a silverfish infestation and damp bugs in the main bedroom. But we keep it as nice as we can and it is decorated and fitted out to a modern standard. Nothing anywhere near as bad as what these people had to go through though. I feel like I'm very very lucky
British-mechanic unfortunately unless people have money to buy property this is what we have to put up with the house I lived had not been up dated to modern standards the kitchen was a 1950 era disgusting mess that I myself did my best to improve the sink leaked like a sieve old rotten work tops drawers falling to bits they should have hung there heads in shame I spent more on that house than they ever did who owned it new flat roofs the lot that house was well below modern standards not even rewired
Norma Thomas. We went to view a flat before this one and it was half of an old mans house split into two. I'm not even joking it didn't look like it had been decorated since the 1940s. Was really creepy inside and the furniture was so old. Still had single glazed sash widows too
It’s got too expensive through increased demand. If you increase the population by 10% in 20 years, largely through immigration and don’t increase the supply why do you expect.
Luxury.....We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
These folks had it easy. We had to sleep on a bed of rusty nails, rats would chew your nose off by the time you were 5, and we had to pick through our neighbour's sewage for our dinner! If you were lucky they'd eaten some corn the night before...
No matter how oppressed and down trodden the british working class were, they were always well dressed, and there houses were immaculately clean.
Hope all you who go on and on about the British Empire and how all us Brits benefited from it, i hope you are watching this. There were thousands of slum areas like this in the UK.
All owned by British elite landowners who didn’t pay for up keep. So blaming the poor was the thing. The poor get the blame for everything even now. The middle class housing inspectors moral imperatives lorded over the poor. So after 2 world wars. The government had to reward the people who lost all their men folk. But the Peabody housing association gives housing to ‘ the deserving poor’
I grew up in a dump like that till I was five years old. . Two up, two down. No hot water and toilet in the back yard. We had a tin bath hanging on the back outside wall and all us kids had the same water on bath night, one after the other. I sometimes wonder how my mum managed to dress us so well. We were SO HAPPY to get off the housing list and get a council house!
when did those people start having tge bathtub? my husband was born in 1959. He had a tin bath in front of the fireplace w hen he was small.
Did you get moved out of London?
the funny thing is ,thehouses they didnt pull down are now worth an arm n a leg , all said n done change was needed and is always a comeing
I've lived in poverty nearly as bad as that mostly as a child, but I have a lovely modern clean home now as an adult.
Same here!
for that i am gratefull
Today, everyone can dress with respect ,but choose not to. The man with the Family, all living in one room, was clear;y brought up to show self respect an respect to his family, by appearing to present himself in a Shirt and Tie. How we have all lost ourselves . He has it shockingly difficult, but presented himself as best he could. We can all buy the best clothing from even City Mission and Charity Shops, but still choose not to look as best we can. We dress as though we are heading out to the Tip mostly. Wow, the dignity that man shows in himself.
After this new council houses were built, and the NHS came along. But now we experience severe housing shortages, extortionate rents, damp, families split up scattered all over the place, and the NHS is in crisis. The young generation don't necessarily have a great life.
@Simon Robson Wait, you actually believe that the Tory government are encouraging maximal house building in order to house immigrants? Not to, say, win votes with the middle classes while lining the pockets of their house developer mates?!
The Thatcher sell-off was total lunacy (... or deliberate intent) of what should have been a stable and reliable housing resource. I've always noticed Council brickies did a better job. The present housing shortage is shameful upon the United Kingdom. Seems we have assholes in charge.
Who would have thought the Dickens era was still going strong in those days?
The houses shown look like late Georgian speculation rows, built with cheap materials and billysweet used as mortar. Most date from around 1820 or so in the early industrial revolution, and were designed to house workers close to the factory where they worked in 18 hour days before 1836. It is amazing they are still there in 1935, as many of the 1880s reformers were compalining about them. These are not the usual 1880s style ones you see now. These are older.
Didn't know what Billysweet was... found this... Many of the buildings in the Old Nichol contravened the Building Acts. Builders leasing land from owners who did not care what use was made of the acreage, so long as it was profitable, created an instant slum. The use of cheaper lime-based substances derived from the by-products of soap-making at local factories was the most important factor in the swift deterioration of the building fabric in the Old Nichol. Speculative builders used this cement, which was known as "Billysweet", instead of traditional lime mortar; it quickly became infamous for never thoroughly drying out, leading to sagging and unstable walls. Other architectural features that contributed to urban decay in the Old Nichol included the lack of foundation of most early 19th-century houses, which were built with floorboards laid on bare earth, cheap timber and half-baked bricks of ash-adulterated clay. The roofs were badly pitched, leading to rotting rafters and blooming plasterwork. The houses were permanently soggy, as damp from the roof and the earth seeped through the buildings. By 1836, the whole 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land which would form the Old Nichol had been built or rebuilt upon.[7]
"A back garden in Nichol Street, Bethnal Green" from The Builder(1863)[8]
Over the following fifteen years, backyards and other open spaces were built upon with shanty-style developments, creating illegal courts, small houses, workshops, stables, cowsheds and donkey stalls. As surveyors and cartographers struggled to maintain accurate maps of the Old Nichol, the already high population density increased further.[9] Families with more than one child often lied to be able to obtain a room, and were thrown out if the rent collector or landlord found out that more than one child lived with family in one room. Monday was rent day, known as "Black Monday", and in the Old Nichol women would form queues outside the pawnshops with their belongings. The rent was collected by house agents who would evict te
@@007JHS Super interesting. Do you think many of the slums could have been refurbished rather than demolished? Or were they just too badly built?
@@l0ndon429
In the video the lady stated that they were too rotten to repair and had to be demolished. What is so sad is that the huge concrete prefabs the councils were so excited about, turned out to be expensive slums in the making themselves...what a waste of money they were!
@@l0ndon429 much too badly built to withstand remodeling.
@@alexac3098 too bad, would be great if some were still standing (modernised of course)
Ruby Grierson was the women whose idea it was to interview people. She was the sister of John Grierson, who founded the documentary film movement in the early 1930's and ran the GPO film unit at the time.
I know exactly who you are talking abt. I shall google further re Ruby, tks.
the main thing i,ve noticf over the year,s is when people had to live with no inside toilets or bathrooms.they were a lot cleaner than a lot of people now, that have bathrooms,a lot of people these days haven,t a clue how to keep anything clean,& tidy,let alone themselve,s
Love the accents and the people. "Bilious" , now that's a word I have not heard before.
Peter B my grandma used to use that word. She was born in 1906.
In Harry Potter, Harry’s friend was called Ronald bilious Weasley!
My Mother used the word billious often born 1924
The blitz was good for slum clearance!
and unfortunatley killing innocents , but as you mean it kick started a clean up, yin n yang
It also destroyed numerous historical buildings and also killed thousands of people! Nothing good about the blitz!
None of these houses had indoor plumbing. If they were lucky there was a privy in the back yard, otherwise it was at the end of the street. This whole area was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in the early 1940s.
+Rhoda Miller I Dont remember any houses in the 50s without a toilet in the back yard. I never ever felt cold even when the snow was on the ground,And u had to feel your way in the dark.
goinghomesomeday1
If only they had money to do up the houses. Now they are shoved into ugly tower blocks etc no wonder the world is screwed
The solution to the problems of housing in this video was Tower blocks and estates, look how that turned out
God..... the good old days?
You can bownload this copy if you wish. There is a better copy out there but it is not possible to make a copy of it.
great find littlebigbrian
"The idea that the person being interviewed should just talk straight to the camera was the idea of a woman. I will try to find out who she was" It might have been Jill Craigie - Michael Foot's wife
not much changed in over 80 yrs some of the landlords around are just as bad as back then
If not worse...
And lot of people who rent are NOT SAINTS either !!!! THEY THINK that, because they paid the rent it gives Them the right to destroy the property!!!!
I wonder how the housing was like in London in 935.
In its modest way this was a revolution in documentary. Arthur Elton dragged his unwieldy 35mm camera down to the East End. Instead of reenacting scenes with 'real people' stiltedly speaking lines written by some Oxbridge cineaste, these cockneys were shot in situ, often in natural light, and allowed to voice their complaints forthrightly with little mediation. The little boy who shouts in the middle of his mother's speech would not have been left in if Grierson had supervised the production.
'Housing Problems' was a sponsored film, a very soft sell by a power and light utility. Its solution to the slum's evils has not aged well: deporting the locals to underresourced exurban estates and high-rise blocks where aerial living undermined the spirit of community. The ground-level neighbourliness we glimpse here was lost.
The old East End was held together by mothers, and they do more of the talking here- another novelty in the 1930s.
Interesting to watch this in conjunction with "The Proud City", a 1946 film outlining the County of London plan to rebuild neighbourhoods with their own amenities to replace the slums.
@@pedrogarbanzo Yes, but unfortunately the neighborhoods too often went up without the amenities.
Planners seemed to follow the principle of 'if you build it, the infrastructure will come.' Community facilities such as shops, meeting rooms and police posts were lacking. The growth of private motoring led to neglect of public transit. And the new high-rise blocks were too often shoddily built, so they had to be detonated a couple of decades after being occupied.
Dispersal of slums and their kinship networks, television, package holidays abroad and the segregation of workplaces on industrial estates or office districts all played their part in weakening community ties; but architectural theories did not counteract the trend. Instead of becoming 'streets in the sky' for pedestrians, the elevated walkways and shared spaces such as lift entrances soon became vandalized, littered, scary after dark. People flitted quickly into their private domains, and when they reached ground level they fled in a dozen different directions.
It's 2022 and Thier still HOUSEING people and family's in sqauler and expecting rent
you are referring to the Commercial Gas & Coke Company. The gas holder behind the old showroom was the original holder and the other three were added later. The Campaign wanted that holder retained as a memorial to the gas workers who protected the holders against hitlers bombs. It lost and we ended up with stubs instead.
london52uk ,
Why didn't the Queen do something?
.... 'Comments' like That Woman's
(4:15) - were greeted with an Embarrassing Silence ......
'Please don't 'rock the boat' syndrome 🖕🖕🖕
PS. & THEN the F****n War came!!!
The Queen was only 9
@@philipwilliams9060 random
Queen Victoria did do something
hello, i am doing an assignment based on housing in London, is iit ok if i could use this video to reference. and also know the origin of it, i would like to know where i could also get a copy.
Saw the rat screamed ran out and left the baby😂😂😂
is anyone hear becuz of school history work :0
People moaning today don't have a clue. So much is taken for granted - and so many people think that life "owes" them. The Facebook generation ought to have experienced this sort of thing - might have given them a better perspective on life than watching TOWIE!
your joking the private rented I moved from recently had wet walls and no central heating everyone isn't out of touch with reality and not everyone is well off I had an unheated bathroom for 20 years also that was so cold there was ice in there
Norma Thomas. We're in a 1960s flat with no heating in the bathroom, night storage heaters we can't afford to actually use as their so expensive to use, we have a silverfish infestation and damp bugs in the main bedroom. But we keep it as nice as we can and it is decorated and fitted out to a modern standard. Nothing anywhere near as bad as what these people had to go through though. I feel like I'm very very lucky
British-mechanic unfortunately unless people have money to buy property this is what we have to put up with the house I lived had not been up dated to modern standards the kitchen was a 1950 era disgusting mess that I myself did my best to improve the sink leaked like a sieve old rotten work tops drawers falling to bits they should have hung there heads in shame I spent more on that house than they ever did who owned it new flat roofs the lot that house was well below modern standards not even rewired
Norma Thomas. We went to view a flat before this one and it was half of an old mans house split into two. I'm not even joking it didn't look like it had been decorated since the 1940s. Was really creepy inside and the furniture was so old. Still had single glazed sash widows too
It’s got too expensive through increased demand. If you increase the population by 10% in 20 years, largely through immigration and don’t increase the supply why do you expect.
2023: History repeats itself - first as farce, then as tragedy.
Luxury.....We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
Nice person you are laughing at the misery of other people and a man's two little children dying.
What year was this don't look like the 30s
As a student of history in Contemporary Britain (1900-2000), I can indeed confirm that this was filmed in 1935.
@@davidanderson7986 we don't care
Documentary journalism
In 1935
Well that brought a tear to this brexiteers eye. We take so much for granted.
_muh white privilege!_
Indeed. And this was only 80 years ago
These folks had it easy. We had to sleep on a bed of rusty nails, rats would chew your nose off by the time you were 5, and we had to pick through our neighbour's sewage for our dinner! If you were lucky they'd eaten some corn the night before...
Good, hope it's still like that for you.
Your nose? Luxury!
born in china ?
You lucky b!@#tard!
They never stopped bleeding moaning , we used to live in an old oil drum 8 of us and a dog , we never moaned !!!
Bet the dog did though, putting up with yous lot
@@wodenravens true!!
10 of usused to live on three Bob a week & a horse shit sandwich….. times was hard Guvnor
@@1964douglas1 that’s luxury. We only had horse shit sandwiches at Christmas if we were lucky!!
I wonder if the royal family had it as bad?
our slavemasters , nwver
Worse I would imagine
Ahh the good old days
Yep, rats, lice, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, ricketts, polio, bombs and outdoor privvy's and a zinc bath 😄
hellhole
Kray twins dad at the 6 minute mark.
mumof3 they say his name is mr burner
Interested to hear more - Mr Berner was my grandad.
Wtf
Horrible
Wtf