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All British Literature Videos 53 videos
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ELA12: 6.3 No Room to Live 10 Views
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Description:
The London slums were not where you wanted to live during the Victorian era. Trust us, there were no fancy hats for you.
Transcript
- 00:00
London's famous for a lot of stuff- Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, and about 365
- 00:09
days of rain every year. but in the 19th century it was famous for something even [man grimaces under an umbrella]
- 00:14
more unpleasant than rain. slums .yep the history of the slum starts way back in
- 00:19
18th century .as the Industrial Revolution got into full swing factories
- 00:24
started springing up in cities including London. and since the new jobs were in
Full Transcript
- 00:28
the factories the factories were in the cities, [city shown]
- 00:30
people started flooding into the cities. alright so far so good .well
- 00:35
unfortunately despite this booming jobs there wasn't nearly enough housing to
- 00:39
accommodate this massive influx of people. which led to overcrowding to the
- 00:44
point that multiple families were living in the same room. it's one thing to say
- 00:48
how do you doodle to your neighbors every now and then but to see them every [faces crowd doorway]
- 00:53
waking second, that's a bit much. and it's not as if people were crowded
- 00:57
into nice places either. because housing was so scarce rent was way way
- 01:02
overpriced. and because housing was in such high demand landlords didn't put
- 01:07
much effort into keeping the places in good condition. which resulted in [man smirks in run down apartment]
- 01:11
apartments that were chock full of dirt and disease. yummy.
- 01:15
there were some other factors that conspired to make things even worse.
- 01:18
everyone with money moved out of the crowded cities and into the suburbs
- 01:22
though when city planners suggested tearing down entire neighbourhoods to [suburban house shown]
- 01:27
make room for stuff like railways, it wasn't as if the poor factory workers
- 01:31
could do anything about it ,because well who cares about people's lives when you
- 01:34
can have fast shiny trains, right? with even less housing all of the existing
- 01:39
problems were compounded. to make matters worse for slum dwellers the Victorians [crowded, poorly built houses shown]
- 01:44
with power or influence weren't exactly sympathetic to their plight .Victorians
- 01:48
tended to think the slums were inhabited by uncivilized folks. people like thieves
- 01:53
or prostitutes but were such moral failures that they deserve to live in
- 01:58
overcrowded hovels like a bunch of working-class sardines, which is where
- 02:03
writers like George haw came in. he didn't just describe the awful [faces frown in a sardine can]
- 02:06
conditions that existed in the London slums, he also emphasized that the vast
- 02:11
majority of the people living in them were poor workers. pas explained that
- 02:15
overpricing and corruption made these folks unable to improve their situations
- 02:20
and live decent lives. in other words things were a bit more complicated than [group of workers pictured]
- 02:25
the dominant theory, the poor are bad and deserved to be poor. with the problems of
- 02:30
the day acknowledged and better understood, it was easier for social
- 02:33
reformers to push for solutions, eventually leading to a brighter future
- 02:37
in London. a brighter future that continued to have the you know a lot of
- 02:40
rain. [woman shelters under umbrella]
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