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Documentary, The Victorians Part: 1
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00:00It was the best of times.
00:10It was the worst of times.
00:15The Victorian age was one of soaring ambition.
00:22Technological wonder.
00:25And awesome grandeur.
00:32As well as ugliness.
00:37Squalor.
00:40And misery on an unprecedented scale.
00:46The Victorians knew life was changing faster than ever before.
00:52And they recorded that change in paintings that were the cinema of their day.
01:05These paintings aren't fashionable and they don't generally change hands for millions of pounds in auction rooms.
01:12But to me they're a gold mine.
01:15They show us like nothing else what it was like to live in those incredible times.
01:21And they tell amazing stories.
01:25The most dramatic story of the age was the explosion of giant cities.
01:31To our Victorian forefathers they were a terrific shock.
01:36When Queen Victoria came to the throne people were at best uneasy at and at worst utterly terrified by these vast gatherings of humanity.
01:46Nothing like them had existed before.
01:49But by the time she died the men and women of the age had pioneered an entirely new way of living.
01:56They had invented the modern city.
01:59You know what I know mostly when I clearly did that glass.
02:00You didn't even have intelligent.
02:35At the dawn of the 19th century, Britain was on the move.
03:28He, his wife and four of their children, travelled to the industrial north by barge.
03:35They didn't really know what they'd find here, but they did know what they were leaving behind.
03:39And whatever they were to find here, it was better than begging for handouts or going hungry.
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03:55Their first stop was an upstart city called Manchester.
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04:01Early Victorian artists observed it from a safe distance, fascinated but wary, and, well, they might be.
04:10The safe distance, though, soon disappeared.
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04:15Like an invading army, the mills and factories marched across the plain.
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04:23The nation was in the grip of the world's first industrial revolution.
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04:39It sucked the rural poor into new cities right across the land.
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04:46But more than any other, it was Manchester that fired the Victorians' imagination.
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04:54It was where you came if you wanted to see the future.
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05:18In its dozens of steam-powered cotton mills, the rural immigrants got their first taste of a new world.
05:26The change must have been astonishing. The noise, the energy.
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05:32This was a real revolution in the pace of life.
05:34A rupture in history.
05:36Places like this would change Britain beyond recognition.
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06:06Today, Queen Street Mill is the last of its kind to survive intact.
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06:57goes wrong on one of them could be right behind you could be anything it could and the main danger
07:01being if the belt broke you couldn't leather it is yes you couldn't stop all the machinery so it
07:06had to be repaired in situ now if there was a protrusion shall we say there could catch your
07:13sleeve it should take you around the shafting are you serious i'm serious you mean that they'll be
07:19pulled it pulled around and there's quite a few yes quite a few was killed by going around the
07:23shafting so that's um and it isn't off you came down in one piece to be honest
07:28but the paintings of the time told a quite different story pictures of workers were rare
07:43and frankly rose tinted these factory girls are having a jolly time buying dresses you can hardly
07:51see the factory itself and here are some workers at a spinning mill on their lunch break unlike some
07:59of their real-life counterparts they all seem to have a full set of fingers one does have bare feet but
08:08look how spotless they are there's not a speck of dirt on the women their clothes or indeed the entire
08:14yard even the chimneys are puttering out genteel little wisps of smoke this was art designed to
08:24reassure anxious clients wealthy Victorians the kind who bought paintings found the new cities deeply
08:32unsettling never before had they seen so many people massing together Manchester natives must have
08:46felt they were being swallowed up by some alien beast if you'd been born say in the 1770s you began
08:57life in a town of about 20 000 people by the time you were in your late 20s the population had trebled
09:05and if you were lucky enough to make it into your 70s the city was 15 times larger
09:11newcomers from the countryside found themselves in the middle of a horror story
09:31in cities all over the nation there were too many workers and not enough houses
09:35people were living like animals or worse
09:48a doctor in Manchester reported finding a single privy little more than a hole in the ground at the
09:53end of an alley that was shared by no less than 380 people
09:59one inspector described a communal yard six inches deep in excrement into which bricks had been tossed
10:09for residents to walk across
10:14not surprisingly disease was rampant
10:22a child born into a poor family in Manchester had a less than 50 chance of living to their fifth birthday
10:29one artist was prepared to confront the horror this is the work of luke files
10:46it's really a piece of campaigning visual journalism more eloquent than any newspaper expose
10:54files was reporting what he'd seen one wintry night on the streets of london
10:59he recreated the moment using real down and outs as models
11:09the fat man in the middle was a drunkard whom files paid in jugs of beer from a nearby pub
11:15others represent different routes to the gutter
11:19the young widow
11:21and the tradesman out of work with a family to feed
11:25it's a painting that forces the viewer to look at the poor
11:33but the victorians were more interested in shutting them away and the painting shows that too
11:41it's not a chance gathering of lost souls
11:44these people are waiting to enter that most feared of victorian institutions
11:54the workhouse
11:57the first response of victorian authority to this misery
12:01wasn't charity it was blame if you were poor it was your fault
12:05so they built places like this to try to scare people out of their poverty
12:17there was to be no more sitting at home scrounging off the parish
12:23from now on if you wanted help you'd have to check yourself in here
12:27and you'd have to be truly desperate to do that
12:36a clergyman wrote to those framing the legislation
12:40the workhouse should be a place of hardship of course fair of degradation of humility it should be
12:48administered strictly with severity it should be as repulsive as is consistent with humanity
12:57and they took him up on his suggestion
13:16you might have arrived here with your family but you weren't going to be with them for long
13:21all these doors were locked
13:23men were in one wing women were in another children were separated from their parents
13:32in one workhouse it was even said that a five-month-old infant was kept away from its parents being
13:40only occasionally brought to its mother for the breast
13:43in the dormitories as elsewhere strict segregation applied
13:57this room was for elderly or infirm men they were known as the blameless
14:04but over here were the lowest of the low the undeserving poor
14:09able-bodied men who could possibly work were officially designated as idle and profligate
14:30finally came the work itself under constant supervision
14:33how long do i have to do this for well you've done at least a quarter of a tonne a day
14:42a quarter of a tonne a day minimum
14:50you'd know about it wouldn't you
14:51at the end of a day's hard labor a bowl of gruel
15:06what is gruel essentially it's skim milk boiled up with oatmeal and a very small amount of oatmeal too
15:12only about 16 drachms which is per pint which is only 11 it's less than an ounce an ounce
15:22it's like porridge without the porridge in it without the flavor in fact without anything in it
15:27i keep digging down to the bottom hoping there's something more interesting at the bottom but there
15:31isn't there well you'd be grateful of it if you're in the workhouse that's about the only
15:35circumstances you would be grateful of it
15:45occasionally another artist might take up the inmates cause but there were limits to their courage
15:54this newspaper engraving showed inmates suffering realistically enough
16:00but when the artist turned it into a painting for sale to a wealthy client the old women were
16:05cheered up with a smile a vase of flowers and a nice cup of tea
16:16if you wanted to sell your work it didn't do to unsettle the rich
16:20they desperately wanted to believe that the urban poor were this easily pleased
16:25and they had good reason to be frightened
16:45just across the channel revolution was sweeping through europe the french king had been deposed
16:52there were violent uprisings from naples to prague when a huge political rally was announced for the
17:0110th of april 1848 the victorian upper classes shuddered at the thought that london would be the next city
17:08to fall to the mob
17:10as the fateful day dawned the capital was already in lockdown
17:22the authorities were taking no chances
17:24surprisingly the british museum was identified as a key target
17:41the director of the museum was sufficiently worried that he declared that if the building
17:45were to fall into the hands of what he called disaffected people it could turn into a fortress big
17:50enough to hold 10 000 men so up on the roof they piled up bricks and rocks ready to hurl down on the rioters
17:59they expected to be swarming down below
18:04waterloo station was cleared
18:09the royal family dispatched to the safety of the isle of white
18:12and at the bank of england guns were mounted on the roof
18:23london waited
18:32in the event 20 000 demonstrators gathered on kennington common
18:36but they were met by almost 90 000 police their ranks had been swollen by ordinary londoners who
18:45signed on as special constables to keep the peace
18:51outnumbered the demonstrators abandoned their plan to march on westminster
18:55today on the same spot the memory of that great gathering has vanished
19:14but at the time its failure taught well-to-do victorians a crucial lesson about the people they so feared
19:20it turned out that what the victorian working classes wanted wasn't socialism so much as the
19:29possibility of becoming middle class which i suppose explains why so many more of them volunteer to
19:35become policemen than protesters victorian society was competitive restless aspirational the revolution
19:44the cause that really lit the imagination of victorian workers was self-improvement
20:07if you wanted to get on you did it on your own pulling yourself up by your bootstraps
20:13with discipline and hard work you could do anything
20:18one lancashire blacksmith took this idea to heroic lengths
20:25in the process he would shine new light on a hidden world
20:29james sharples was one of 13 children the son and grandson of iron workers
20:47he started work in a foundry at the age of 10
20:50but he nursed a passion for painting and while still a boy he pursued it with typical victorian earnestness
21:04he'd walk 18 miles into manchester to buy paint and canvases he'd get up at
21:09four in the morning to study painting manuals and sometimes he got his brother peter out of bed at
21:15three in the morning to act as his model quite how peter felt about that it isn't recorded
21:30the result of his dedication was this hugely original painting
21:34it was one of the very first actually to show the victorians the labor that was firing the urban revolution
21:42while he worked on it sharples carried on putting in 12 or 14 hour days at the foundry
21:53snatching time to paint when he could it took him nearly three years to finish
22:03but he brought an insider's eye to his subject
22:06his picture shines with respect and admiration for his fellow workers
22:18many victorian iron works survived well into the 20th century ken hall worked at one
22:28what do you think of this picture then ken
22:29yes nice picture it's atmospheric if nothing else don't you think they all look a bit clean
22:40a bit of a i said that he's got a blooming hole in his apron so
22:44no i mean their face yeah yes they would allow there again if i mean my face was always blooming
22:52clean because of the wiping it the sweating oh you sweat so much you just want it all i mean you'd
22:57wipe it off your arms was usually dirtier than that though but your face was usually the cleanest part
23:03on you what would be the temperature up there you know what to say well above 100 degrees really is
23:10a standard when i finished it took about oh near two years for the fire for the fire marks to get off
23:19your blooming face in your arms what do you mean fire marks they like red and red patches of the skin
23:23the forge was the only major painting james sharples completed but as an enterprising victorian he made the most of it
23:42this engraved version took him another five years but once the prince went on sale he was made
23:48the bank of england and the foreign office both bought copies
23:57after years of toil he'd become a living advertisement for self-improvement
24:06the machine age had brought chaos and squalor but now at last it was beginning to make british workers
24:14richer and with money came a chance to get out of the city altogether
24:30every year in early summer all victorian london headed for epsom downs
24:35then as now derby day threw all classes together
24:43it was the nation at its most jumbled up raucous and not necessarily sober
24:54among the crowd of the 1856 race was the artist william howell frith
25:05it was his first visit to the derby and he was quite blown away by it admittedly the day didn't
25:20start particularly well when he nearly lost all his money to a group of tricksters
25:24but after that he was seduced by the exuberant variety of the crowd
25:30modern life with a vengeance was what he called it and he set out to paint the definitive depiction of
25:36this great festival
25:46what i love about it is that frith wasn't really interested in horses or horse racing at all
26:05what he was interested in was people and what you get at the end is not a group portrait it's a celebration
26:16this isn't a threatening anonymous mob it's a collection of endlessly engaging individuals
26:24each with their own story he even included the con artists whom he almost fell foul of with their
26:31three thimble betting scam beside them a recent victim and opposite him a fresh-faced new one
26:40his wife knows what's up and so does his dog but he looks suckered in already
26:52it might not all be beautiful for it seems to be saying but this is the stuff of life
27:05the
27:09hands they're off
27:10bashkiroff ridden has made to the mixture gives way as they now begin the descent
27:14kakaha run dr freman close out was up from washington
27:17how many times do they go around
27:21just once
27:21i don't know
27:23the approach is still quite well back at this stage
27:26kirk's called to be much better now
27:31now
27:38the
27:40the
27:42the
27:46the
27:50the
27:52the
27:54William Frith had fallen in love with the Victorian public and they returned the
28:19favor when Derby Day went on show they crowded in so closely that it had to be
28:25protected by a stout iron rail and an even stouter policemen
28:37Frith was also there when city workers first discovered the British seaside
28:47a potential buyer dismissed this painting as a tissue of vulgarity one
28:54fellow artists thought it a piece of cockney business unworthy even of an
29:00illustrated newspaper but the public knew better it was voted picture of the
29:07year at the Royal Academy and in the end it did find a buyer Queen Victoria herself
29:17meanwhile back in the capital all was not well the same summer that Derby day
29:31was exhibited Londoners were confronting a rather urgent and rather unsavory
29:35problem a heat wave hit the city
29:44the Thames began to give off a mysterious and appalling smell the problem came to a
29:54head at the brand new houses of Parliament and there's a clue to its cause in one of
30:01the great buildings most private rooms ever since medieval times sewage had
30:08gone from people's homes into holes in the ground it was then collected from
30:12there by the night soil man nice job he then sold the sewage to farmers for use as
30:19fertilizer on the land but in Victorian times the growing popularity of water
30:24closets like this created a real problem because now in addition to the human waste you
30:31also had vast quantities of water because every time you use the loo you flushed it
30:37as a result the holes in the ground the cesspits overflowed so they connected the cesspits
30:45to the drains but the drains emptied directly into London's river and the result of that was
30:50that the Thames became an open sewer
30:52the newspapers dubbed the crisis the great stink
31:02as temperatures soared and the lumpy river simmered gently MPs realized they'd ignored the city's problems
31:15for a little too long now at last work began to tackle them Parliament looked afresh at plans by the engineer Joseph
31:35Basiljet for a massive new network of sewers he'd been pushing them for years but he'd been blocked with petty bureaucratic excuses
31:42now with the stink at its height all objections suddenly vanished the system he built is still in use today
31:57ok
32:04ok
32:05ok
32:06ok
32:07ok
32:08ok
32:10ok
32:24ok
32:25top
32:25alright
32:26if you want to just follow me
32:27great
32:28let's go
32:28watch it you put in there that's it
32:31watch your foot in there that's it
32:36The scale of the project was astonishing.
32:48Bazaljet built 1,100 miles of new sewers,
32:52an enormous, hidden masterpiece.
32:59It conquered both stink and disease.
33:06What do you think when you look at all this engineering work?
33:13I'm amazed.
33:15Seriously, even after all this time?
33:16I'm amazed.
33:17You could almost find it beautiful, couldn't you, in a way?
33:20It is. It is.
33:22My wife would object, but it is beautiful.
33:25I mean, it's not on parallel with the pyramids or something like that,
33:28but as a complete structure, it's, yeah, it is...
33:33And a functioning structure, that's the thing, isn't it?
33:35Yeah, I mean, the pyramids just looked good and hit a body, didn't they?
33:38Or two, maybe.
33:39But, I mean, this has actually served London as a working, you know,
33:44wonder of the world, if you like, because it is up there.
33:47It must be up there in that sort of field for 150 years.
33:52And could well serve the same purpose for another 150 years or more.
33:57Such epic feats of engineering were inspirational.
34:04One artist captured the Victorians' excitement.
34:12This extraordinary painting by Ford Maddox-Brown is a hymn to the building of a new world.
34:19A new world.
34:25In the artist's eyes, the simple laying of pipes becomes heroic labour.
34:38The workmen are bathed in a pool of light.
34:41One clamps a rose between his teeth.
34:44And their proud bearing proclaims the moral dignity of work.
34:53Other figures ram home the message.
34:57The ragged wretch, as Brown called him, who's never been taught to work.
35:02The delicate ladies who represent the idle rich.
35:11The Victorians had embarked upon a great task.
35:14And these were the men who would carry it out.
35:18The word on everyone's lips was improvement.
35:32By the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, this fearsome beast, the city, was beginning to be tamed.
35:51People even started to see it as something they could take pride in.
35:54Engineering achievements like Bazalgette's sewers showed how the city might be transformed, above ground as well as below.
36:06Abel Hayward was one of a new generation of civic leaders intent upon making the Victorian city the envy of the world.
36:16He was a founder of one of Manchester's great political clubs.
36:20Within these walls he and his fellow councillors drank, debated and plotted their city's rise.
36:35Today it's home to some rather less high-minded occupants.
36:38I know this looks a bit dodgy, but inside here, in one of the best preserved bits of this building, you can get a real clue as to the ambition of Hayward and his allies.
37:00Which way is the changing rooms, please?
37:02It's just through there, sir.
37:12Just to be clear, it's not the knickers that provide the clue to these men.
37:16It's the fittings in this, what was the cloakroom of the old reform club.
37:20Just look at the details.
37:23Solid marble wash basin.
37:26A vaulted gallery above.
37:27And columns beautifully, intricately carved.
37:28I think we can take it that people who would go to that amount of trouble for a cloakroom wouldn't settle for second best for their city.
37:41What they needed was a grand gesture, a permanent statement of the city's greatness.
37:54Their dreams were realised in a spectacular town hall.
38:00It was modelled on the mighty town halls of Medieval Europe.
38:14As if to tell the world that Manchester, too, was a centre of civilisation.
38:20At its heart, a magnificent shrine to the city's new sense of itself.
38:39To decorate the walls, the council turned to the man who had painted that great hymn to work.
39:04Fork, Ford Maddox Brown.
39:18These murals are trying to do something rather bold and rather cheeky.
39:22They're trying to give a 19th century city an ancient and noble pedigree.
39:27But they're history as you might expect to find it when it's been commissioned by a bunch of politicians.
39:32So, an intriguing mix of things which definitely did happen in Manchester and things which definitely didn't.
39:42Here's the opening of the Bridgewater Canal, an important moment in the city's industrial growth.
39:48And here's the philanthropist Humphrey Chetham dreaming of his school of music still going strong in Manchester today.
39:57Both of these are achievements of which Mancunians can be justifiably proud.
40:02But hang on, what's this? The baptism of Edwin. It was a key event in the adoption of Christianity in England, but it happened in York.
40:14And here's John Kaye, the inventor who revolutionised weaving.
40:21He actually came from Bury. Well, at least it's nearby.
40:26But even if they're not entirely convincing, the murals are a reminder of a heroic effort of will.
40:34Manchester had once horrified Victorian Britain.
40:47Now it had been turned into one of its showpieces.
40:50It's streets were soon adorned with a great flowering of grand buildings.
40:59As the rest of the country followed suit, it seemed that the Victorians had at last taken their cities to their hearts.
41:07Around the same time, the Victorian city found its true artistic champion.
41:27John Atkinson Grimshaw was born in Leeds.
41:30He would come to evoke the cities of the age in loving twilight shades, but he had a long apprenticeship first.
41:45His was a classic Victorian life.
41:49He was the son of a policeman. He worked as a clerk on the Great Northern Railway.
41:54He taught himself to become an artist despite his mother chucking his oil paints on the fire in disgust.
42:04But he saw something she didn't.
42:15Grimshaw belonged to a generation which couldn't remember life before the cities.
42:19So, instead of pining for some rural past, he found poetry in smoke and fog and gaslight.
42:32These pictures celebrated Victorian cities.
42:36Among them, the city that would undergo the most radical transformation of the age.
42:41Glasgow had suffered the Victorian curse of population boom and grotesque overcrowding.
43:04But its council launched a spectacular fight back.
43:07The slums were torn down.
43:1339 new streets rose out of the rubble.
43:17And a lavish town hall rivalled Manchester's.
43:27But the transformation reached its climax in this park just outside the city centre.
43:33For seven months it was turned into an outlandish oriental fantasy.
43:41The 1888 International Exhibition.
43:47Six million people poured in to marvel at the energy and sophistication of the new Glasgow.
43:52These may only have been temporary buildings but they looked like palaces.
43:58And they held a bewildering cornucopia of exhibits.
44:03There was a working dairy.
44:07There was an oriental smoking lounge.
44:10A Dutch cocoa house with waitresses in national costume.
44:12The world's largest terracotta fountain.
44:15Live diamond cutting.
44:17A stuffed polar bear.
44:19A giant Canadian cheese.
44:21Thompson's patent gravity switchback railway.
44:24A balloon manned by Signor Baleni.
44:27He actually came from Warwickshire.
44:29Buster Queen Victoria in soap.
44:30A loom making hygienic woolen underwear.
44:34A bachelor's cafe.
44:36An Indian fakir lying on a bed of nails.
44:39The power drop biscuit machine.
44:41And two Venetian gondoliers whom the Glaswegian public came to know as Signor Hoki and Signor Polki.
44:48Now all of this had been assembled with the express idea of raising money for what was to be the city's crowning glory.
44:54The real evidence of its transformation.
44:57A permanent palace of the arts.
45:24Calvin Grove Museum and Art Gallery embodied a very Victorian idea that art could raise up and ennoble the population.
45:48That it could elevate the soul of the common people.
45:54In the bad old days the rich had hoarded art in their homes.
46:01But here the council's ambition was that painting should be freely available to everybody.
46:06In the words of one writer, for the instruction and gratification of the people at large.
46:14In its first year over a million of them came.
46:17Once Victorian artists had feared the crowd.
46:24Now this magnificent gallery welcomed them in.
46:28You must be Harry, are you?
46:31Yes, very good to see you.
46:33How long have you been here?
46:35I've been here 16 years, Jeremy.
46:3716 years?
46:3816 years, yes.
46:39What do you like about it?
46:40I just love the ambience of it.
46:42I love walking around.
46:45I've been here 16 years and I still find things that are new to me.
46:50It's always been a principle of this place, hasn't it?
46:52That it's free.
46:53Yes.
46:54Anyone can come.
46:55Yes, it's free.
46:56It's a people's museum.
46:57And it's still free to this day.
46:58Do you have a favourite painting in the gallery?
47:01I do actually, Jeremy, yes.
47:02Can we go and see it?
47:03Sure.
47:11This is Guthrie's Highland Funeral here.
47:14This is your favourite painting in the entire gallery?
47:17It's one of them.
47:19Pretty miserable, isn't it?
47:21Well, it's the realism of it.
47:24You look at the two chairs, it's an infant's coffin that's on it.
47:27I just think it's a great depth of feeling.
47:31I know it's very sombre and it's probably quite a depressing subject,
47:35but, I mean, it was something that happened
47:38and it probably happened more frequently then than it ever does now.
47:43I think it's very powerful, would you not agree?
47:48I agree with you, it's quite powerful.
47:50I think it's making a statement.
47:53No, I'll give you...
47:54I grant you it's pretty strong.
47:57I'll give you...
48:02With the rebirth of cities like Glasgow and Manchester,
48:07a triumphal spirit was in the air.
48:10Many Victorians believed they'd conquered a great challenge,
48:14that modern civilisation had reached a peak.
48:16a great peak.
48:29Well, not quite.
48:35There was still one city holding out against the tide of improvement.
48:38squatting at the centre of a vast empire.
48:44London was on a scale of its own.
48:47It had become the largest city on earth.
48:49But as it had swollen, it had broken.
48:55Victorian London was a tale of two cities.
49:02In the West End lived the wealthy.
49:04The East End was another story.
49:11A web of narrow alleys and teeming docks.
49:23Lawless immigrants and destitute families.
49:28It became the focus of all the Victorians' deepest fears.
49:34Writers now began anxious expeditions into this hidden, menacing world.
49:39I propose to record, wrote one,
49:42the results of a journey into a region which lies at our own doors.
49:47A dark continent within easy walking distance of the general post office.
49:58Among the explorers who set out to penetrate its perilous interior
50:02was the celebrated French artist, Gustave Dorri.
50:09Fired by tales of the extraordinary scenes to be found in the capital,
50:14he embarked on what he called a pilgrimage to see for himself.
50:25His images of the East End crackle with dark and fantastic detail.
50:32He made sure he had a police guard on these forays into Aldgate, Stepney, Wapping and Whitechapel.
50:42You adopt rough clothes, said his companion.
50:45You commit yourself to the guidance of one of the most fearless members of the detective force.
50:51He mounts the box of the cab and the horse's head is turned East.
51:02In these engravings you can feel the gloom and the gaslight.
51:13You can hear the mass of hungry children.
51:16See the sullen glares of the adults.
51:20Almost smell the filth.
51:21Dore acted like a spy lurking in corners, hardly ever drawing in public.
51:30But he possessed an invaluable asset.
51:33He had a nearly photographic memory.
51:35Here was a London few Londoners had even dared to imagine.
51:46The desperate in the night shelter, unmoved by the pacing missionary who reads from the Bible.
51:54The addicts in the opium dens.
52:01And the pickpockets and muggers gambling their day's takings.
52:10One of his most famous scenes shows rows of huddled terraces where washing is fouled with soot from passing trains.
52:18Gustav Dore makes East London look like a land of endless night.
52:32Growing numbers of people were looking for a way to escape the inner city.
52:38Fortunately for them, Victorian enterprise offered a solution.
52:43One that would change the face of the modern city.
52:45The modern city.
53:15The modern city.
53:18Before the invention of things like this, people really had to live within walking distance of their work.
53:23But once you had omnibuses shuttling in and out of town, people could live one place and work another.
53:29They could even go shopping or go to school somewhere entirely different.
53:33To us, it's just commuting.
53:35But to them, it was liberation.
53:37The omnibus threw all classes together, an irresistible prospect for Victorian artists.
53:48Here, a wealthy young woman looks indulgently at her less well-off neighbours.
53:54Beside them sit a city gent and a nurse.
53:58William Moore Eggly even built a pretend omnibus carriage in his back garden, sitting his models on boxes and planks of wood to capture the crush of a rush hour journey.
54:11By the end of the century, the Victorians were making 300 million bus journeys every year.
54:26The consequences were dramatic.
54:32Along with the train and the tube, omnibuses opened up great swathes of land for development.
54:50They created the modern suburbs.
55:00Six million houses were built during Victoria's reign.
55:09In the last decade of the century, this ridge in Crouch End, North London, was finally taken.
55:15Snooty Victorian critics reacted with distaste.
55:24One of them talked about the lifeblood of London pouring out into long arms of bricks and mortar and cheap stucco.
55:32But actually, the suburb was a brilliant invention.
55:35It gave people gardens and light and space and clean air.
55:39And it was where very large numbers of people chose to live, and indeed still choose to live.
55:52Suburbs bloomed across the country.
55:55They were, in a way, the Victorians' greatest innovation.
55:59They might be less grand and showy than great public buildings, but they still shaped the lives of millions.
56:05The ultimate answer to the challenge of city life.
56:09Victorian artists had charted an extraordinary journey.
56:10It had begun with horror, fear, and shock.
56:18But over time, the Victorians had confronted the great change that was made.
56:23Today, the results of their ambition and energy are all around us.
56:37We walk their streets, visit their museums, and share their passions.
57:02We're still ruled from their lavish town halls.
57:11And, of course, we still rely on some of their less glamorous innovations.
57:19The very shape of our cities, and so of our lives, was moulded by their labour.
57:38It's often said that the British aren't really an urban people, that we think the real Britain is out there in the countryside.
57:44Certainly, lots of eminent Victorians believe that.
57:48But the plain fact is, then as now, most of us lead urban or suburban lives.
57:54The debt that every one of us owes the Victorians is that they didn't just create the modern city.
58:00They taught us how to survive it too.
58:02Next time, the Victorian family home was a refuge from the pressures of the Victorian city.
58:21But in the wings lurked danger, dark forces that threatened to destroy the dream of home sweet home.
58:39The story of a butler who rose to eminence in 18th century society.
58:52Britain's black past on Radio 4, Tuesday at 1.45.
58:58Next tonight, here on BBC 4, we begin an epic ten-part series charting the Great War.
59:03Part one of the First World War, coming up.
59:09Well done.
59:10Non-lisar we go, Joker's a駒 tourist from the subway.
59:17ук How DNA suits the government for constitutionally
59:23About the second life.
59:24The future of life.
59:26The truth of the human health.
59:27The fifth world is that Venice city of Essex.
59:28Well done.
59:30The modern web.
59:31The electricians.
59:32The six months.
59:33Theump.
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