My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a c...
My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a cat. And a growing African Grey. Who orders the cat around!
Member since:06.12.2003
Reviews:334
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The Blists Hill Victorian town near Ironbridge, Shropshire, has a problem.
It says it wants to teach children about life in a Victorian town, but odes it reall want ot do this?
There are buildings and there are workshops, a pub and so forth. But does Blists Hill Victorian Town tell the real story of what it would have been like to live in a small Victorian town?
I do not think it does. It fails because it totally ignores the very real danger of having to go to the Victorian workhouse due to disease, infirmity, poverty, old age or the like. Far form being an age in which the older were cherished, the old were often treated in shocking way, dumped into institutions that were often no better than prisons.
Old couples, perhaps who had been married for 50 years or more were callously and brutally split up in workhouses, made to live in single sex accommodation. If you were poor in Victorian Britain it was somehow seen to be your fault. No matter if you were poor due to factors that were totally outside your control. You were poor because God had ordained that you were poor. To attempt to alleviate your poverty would be a sin against His holy word. Nonsense, of course. But it was the cornerstone of how the poor and disadvantaged were treated in Victorian times. In town much like Blists hill would have been.
There are some minor problems with some of the exhibits. An optician told me that the equipment in the opticians was not of the right date for a Victorian town. Not all that far off, he conceded, but still off.
Blists Hill features smiling volunteers dressed in smart Victorian-style clothing. A little old man was wandering around, looking bemused, several years ago. “It ain’t right,” he said. Shaking his head. “It just weren’t like this. Oh, yes, the buildings look right. But there was poverty. You wouldn’t have had people dressed as well as this. It was all make do and mend in my day.
“And the people all look far too well-fed. I’d bet none of them have ever had to live off bread-and-scrape because there was nothing else in the house, when your father was tramping the streets looking for work.”
I had to agree with him. Obviously it would not be possible for people to be asked to eat nothing but bread-and-scrape (a thin slice of bread with literally nothing more than a scrape of margarine smeared over it) but it would be more honest if places like the Blists Hill Victorian Town reflected some of the more unpleasant aspects of Victorian life.
The poverty, the unremitting hard work to just remain poor and avoid the shame and horrors of the workhouse, the poor health (for example, you’ll see no rickets, no cholera, no crippled war heroes begging on street corners at Blists Hill) and the misery of what many towns had, open sewers and privies at the end of the yard, shared with several families.
It would be foolish to try to include these less savoury aspects of Victorian life in places like Blists Hill. But there should be some way of showing these less savoury aspects. Why? Because it is how many of our immediate ancestors, our grand parents and great grandparents lived. And we forget that at our peril. Visit Blists Hill, by all means. It is an interesting day out and a fascinating insight into some aspects of life in Victorian Britain. But only some aspects.
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Some very interesting points raised here, points I hadn't actually considered when I visited. Not sure this is the right place to bring them up though, but they DID made me re-evaluate a few things.
petitesquirt 18.08.2004 03:01
I guess its too much to ask volunteers to look poor, hungry and depressed.
Martinscholes 17.08.2004 22:41
I am a former member of the archaeology unit attached to the museum. It was an interesting job. And I am not Robert! Is he a nice chap? ;o))
There are ways -audio-visual presentations, etc., that they could tell people about the less savoury bits of Victorian Britain. Even in the early 1900s the nearest soup kitche to Ironbridge (in a market town called Wellington) was only open to feed the poor of the town every Thursday. (Nice!)
And the last reported cholera epidemic in Englad and Wales happened a lot later than might have bee thought. In 1893.
Thanks for your comment.
Martin
NH Hotels, the hotel chain leader in Europe, with more than 300 hotels in 20 countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa. Enter into our web site and find the best available tariff at all times
Advantages: There's always a man who although only visiting, his clothes make him fit in really well. Disadvantages: The smell, oh dear lord the Smell!
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