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The Victorian Slum

Michael Mosley

Anne Kershen

Louise Raw

Carl Chinn

Cate Hall

Mark Ball

Emma Frank

Leah Caffrey

Wall to Wall Media

The Victorian Slum: Episode 3: The 1880s

Documentaries

The 1880s

Episode 3

Episode 3: The 1880s

BBC Two - The Victorian Slum, The 1880s

The slum dwellers have moved into the turbulent 1880s.

A group of people move into a recreated Victorian slum. The slum dwellers have moved into the turbulent 1880s: unemployment was sky high, living conditions intolerable.

In the heart of the modern East End of London, a Victorian slum has been recreated and a group of 21st-century people are moving in. Michael Mosley joins them to tell the extraordinary story of how the Victorian East End changed our attitude to poverty forever.

The slum dwellers have moved into the 1880s - a turbulent decade for London's East End.  Unemployment was sky high, living conditions intolerable - but still people came, desperate for work.

The pressures are immediately felt by the Howarth family, who find themselves employing new workers in their Victorian sweat shop. Their workforce would have been made up of newly arrived immigrants, and the Howarths' workers all have their own story to tell. But Mandy Howarth is moved to tears when she finds out that the sweated trades are part of her own family history.    

The Potter family become street sellers, selling sheep's trotters and jellied eels in London's East End. But their newfound living is quickly curtailed, as it was in 1880s Bethnal Green. Fellow slum residents Andy Gardiner and John Barker come face to face with the harsh realities of working life in London's docks during the era when only one of them could have hoped to earn.

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Factual: History

A group of 21st-century people move into a Victorian tenement.

A group of 21st-century people move into a Victorian tenement that has been painstakingly brought back to life in the heart of London's East End.

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The Victorian Slum

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