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Documentary, Edwardian Britain in Colour Part: 1
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00:01This is Edwardian Britain.
00:04The remarkable years at the turn of the 20th century.
00:09It's an incredible period. It's the shaping of our modern era.
00:13We wouldn't be where we are without the Edwardians.
00:16And now, for the first time, in colour.
00:20History tends to be about the rich, the famous, the powerful.
00:25Whereas these people, they're ordinary people.
00:28This footage is about them.
00:31Britain was the richest country in the world,
00:34on the back of the hard work of men, women and children.
00:40We often think of the working classes as very drab in old clothes,
00:44in black and white, and it shows what they did have.
00:46That they led these lives of colour and of richness.
00:51It's an age when workers were allowed to enjoy life
00:55after the long austerity of the Victorians.
00:57Look at those colours, gorgeous.
01:00People out to enjoy themselves, families out together.
01:05But it's also a time of conflict, as workers and women demand new rights.
01:10The use of three colours, purple, white and green, and everybody knew what that stood for.
01:17Three words, votes for women.
01:19Change did come, but on a scale nobody could foresee.
01:24And this is incredibly poignant because it's filmed just two weeks before the start of the war.
01:31And that war is going to change everything.
01:33The war is going to change everything.
01:34The war is going to change everything.
01:35The war is going to change everything.
01:39Life in Edwardian Britain began with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.
02:07Millions lined London streets to witness the funeral.
02:13Behind Victoria's coffin wrote her son and successor Edward VII, the last king to give
02:19his name to an era.
02:21With a new century and a new king, the nation now looked forward to change.
02:37The summer of 1902, on the day of Edward VII's coronation, the nation takes to the streets
02:44to celebrate, like this one here in Accrington, shown in colour for the first time.
02:50See, this one just fascinates me to see it, because the pageantry of it from Accrington,
03:04it's, you know, just another kind of northern, kind of old industrial town.
03:07And when we look at the efforts that have been put into the costume, the sort of expense
03:12that would have gone into this parade.
03:15It's bright to the point of being blindingly bright, but that's part of spectacle.
03:21In the absence of TV, in the absence of the internet and a computer screen on every phone,
03:28this is the spectacle that brings people together.
03:35When you look at the whole history of the Edwardian and Victorian period,
03:38people were on the streets all the time.
03:40They would parade for temperance, they would parade for the Wit Walks,
03:43they would parade for Catholic processions, Protestant processions.
03:46So they paraded massive big banners, huge pageantry, dressed up, and it was a spectacle.
03:52And this coronation procession would have lasted about two hours.
03:55I think what we're seeing here is a film of how conscious people are
04:01of what's happening in the rest of the British Empire.
04:06How people have absorbed descriptions of empire from newspapers,
04:14from popular culture and so on.
04:16Remember, this is only three months after the end of the Boer War.
04:20There will have been a lot of talk about Africans.
04:22And I think this film reflects how globalised thinking was at this moment in time.
04:31These are people in the absence of having sufficient people of colour
04:37black themselves up to include those people of colour as part of the British story.
04:43So they want the British story to be authentic, and for it to be authentic,
04:47it has to include people of the Empire.
04:55The British Empire was made up of 400 million people,
04:59and its capital, London, was the richest city on the planet,
05:03with the biggest port in the world, importing food, steel, wool and timber.
05:09This film from 1904 shows 11 miles of wharfs, handling 60,000 ships a year.
05:16Tens of thousands worked in the docks and in the markets.
05:19My great-grandfather was a driver used to pick up chemicals from the docks onto a horse-driven cart,
05:31and drive them back to a chemical factory in South London.
05:35It started his life in this very sphere.
05:38I think that's a pretty dangerous job, driving chemicals on the back of a cart through central London, yeah.
05:48Amazing I'm here.
05:56It's at the London docks. It's a real hub.
05:59It's built on physical labour, the physical transport of goods.
06:04And a lot of these men in the pictures, they would be casual workers, hired by the day.
06:09They'd have to turn up to the doctor to see if there's work for them that day.
06:13The Edwardian period's a pretty tough time to be alive.
06:18OK, society's changing and reforms are being introduced,
06:23but people are working very long hours, average working week of 60 hours-plus.
06:28Low wages on the whole for most people.
06:32So everybody you see here would have a story to tell, I'm sure, about their working lives.
06:39Bobby Cooley works at the new Covent Garden flower market in Vauxhall.
06:45He was the third generation of porters to work in the old Covent Garden,
06:49then a fruit and veg market, not just flowers.
06:53My dad's granddad works as a porter in Covent Garden, and my dad's dad,
06:58me, lots of uncles at one time. I think I had seven relatives working.
07:02I was 16 when I started.
07:05I was one of the last kiddies to be working hard in Covent Garden.
07:09Little had changed in the way the market was run since Edwardian times.
07:14Lots and lots of vegetables for sale, all sorts of stuff.
07:18Looks like spring, a lot of vegetables.
07:21Guys portering with the cotchules on their head and all sorts of things on their head.
07:26Bushels, which I know have 28 pounds in them.
07:29Apples, looks like cabbages.
07:32You could sell a market porter, you normally had a scarf and a cap,
07:36because you're carrying a lot of stuff on your nut
07:38and you don't want to, like, completely put your brains in.
07:41Ladies, now this is an important part.
07:44Ladies here, working hard in the market, the flower market as porters,
07:47and in the veg market, shucking peas and processing stuff.
07:51I can really relate to these people in this picture here a bit,
07:54exactly because they're working as I used to work,
07:57i.e. they're working with wicker and boxes,
07:59where we used to work with cardboard and plastic.
08:02But, yeah, we shoved as much stuff around as they did.
08:14Common Garden back in the 1900s, it was the larder of London.
08:18You had the Borough Market and Spitalfills,
08:20but Common Garden was the big hub.
08:22Anything that was going anywhere was going to Common Garden first.
08:26You can imagine it's quite a dangerous place to work.
08:29There's a lot of heavy goods bin shifting around and horses moving.
08:32You know, them ladies up there were quite fearsome ladies.
08:35They used to, as much as the men, as far as the swearing goes, I was told.
08:44Having a hard life is a good life,
08:46because if you're working hard, you're getting paid.
08:48And all the guys in here, they're up early,
08:50whether we have a good trade or bad, they're here to do a day's work.
08:53And mostly, as it's eased off over the years,
08:56it's harder because there's a few less money to go around,
08:59but we're all after that money.
09:01It's lovely to see it in colour.
09:03I'm seeing flowers, you can identify it.
09:05Daffodils, hyacinths, daffodils, looks like irises.
09:09I'm seeing vegetables look edible rather than black and white.
09:12I might have spotted one of me grandad's here, if I'm careful, back in the day,
09:16because we've been here since 1905 and that looks round about when it was.
09:26London might have been the capital of the empire,
09:29but Britain's real wealth lay further north,
09:32where millions worked in the mills and the mines.
09:35Long hours, accidents, deaths.
09:40It's a really dangerous industry.
09:42You had to work so fast, you had to really go like that.
09:50You couldn't stop and war betide you if you missed any of the dirt.
09:56Edwardian Britain was built on grindingly hard work.
10:14More than 10% of the population relied on coal for their livelihood.
10:19Never had more coal being dug.
10:22Britain's status as the most powerful nation in the world depended on coal.
10:28It was our biggest export.
10:30It powered our industry and heated our homes.
10:34Here, for the first time in colour,
10:36we see the life of a coal miner in Wigan in 1910.
10:41Coal kept the nation going.
10:43The country would not have survived without it
10:45because it was so heavily reliant on industry.
10:47And with the new technology coming in, they needed it more than ever.
10:51So when we see these men, you know, the nation is on their shoulders.
10:57We just can't imagine what it would be like to be a miner at that time.
11:00I mean, extremely tough conditions.
11:04Extremes of temperature, both hot and cold.
11:08Long hours, accidents, deaths.
11:12It's a really dangerous industry that was absolutely integral to everybody's everyday life
11:19and the industrial life of the country.
11:21In Lancashire, its coal heritage is well-remembered by the Chorley Empire film community.
11:27My grandfather worked in the pit in Goulburn at this time.
11:36And in fact, he was injured in a disaster.
11:41There was a fall of coal.
11:43Several people were killed, but he lost his leg.
11:46It never worked again.
11:48And when you look at the conditions they were working under, it looks absolutely terrifying.
11:53So I look at them and I think, one of them could be my grandfather, yes.
11:57Which is extraordinary.
11:59It's very moving, it really is.
12:06There were 350 collieries in Lancashire alone.
12:11Eric Lancaster worked as a miner on the Wigan coal face,
12:15where they mined using the same process as the Edwardians.
12:20I started a new colliery at 14 and a half.
12:24I worked in the stores till I could go down the mine.
12:28And then I went down the mine and was on what they call the awlage,
12:32where the rope used to pull the tubs along.
12:35And then I eventually got on the coal face.
12:41They're getting in the cage now to descend the mine.
12:46You went down at seven, because the pit whistle would go then.
12:51You could have two miles to get to the coal face.
12:54They had a man rider low coal.
12:57And that took you a mile.
12:59Then you walked a mile.
13:01Then you got to the coal face.
13:03And then you started work.
13:05You'd keep on working till you cleared your coal.
13:11It was called the breadth.
13:13It was about the length of a terrace sitting room.
13:17About 12 feet.
13:19And about four foot thick.
13:21And four foot advance.
13:24When you cleared it, you'd advance the face four foot.
13:29It was tough.
13:30And it was hot.
13:31And it was sweaty.
13:32To watching this film, it is realistic.
13:35Because it was quite dirty.
13:37You got black.
13:39And when you'd finished your shift, you were covered in coal dust.
13:45So you wanted to get into the pit head baths for a real hot shower.
13:51It wasn't just the men who worked in the coal industry.
13:57Women did too.
14:00Banned from working underground, thousands of girls and women worked on the surface.
14:06Sorting coal and loading wagons.
14:08They were known as the Pit Brow Lasses.
14:12Rita Culshaw is the fourth generation from her family who worked in the mines.
14:19I left school when I was 15.
14:21And I started work on the Monday on the Pit Brow.
14:26And I went with my sister.
14:29Your hands got really cold.
14:31And black.
14:32And dirty.
14:33And used to put Vaseline on your iron lids.
14:37So that it was easy to wash the coal dust out.
14:41But after you'd had a bath, you were still picking bits of coal out of the corner of your eyes.
14:52Those Pit Brow girls.
14:55Happy and smiling.
14:57Like we all did.
14:59Pushing the tubs.
15:05I remember they still dress like that.
15:07And they still folded their arms like that as well.
15:11Aggressive.
15:12Aggressive.
15:13Defensive.
15:14Because they won't let the men pick on them.
15:15They're picking the dirt out of the coal.
15:19And you had to work so fast.
15:22You had to really go like that.
15:26You couldn't stop.
15:28And war beside you if you missed any of the dirt.
15:32You weren't allowed to speak to each other.
15:35But one girl there named Edna Woodcock.
15:37She was a comic.
15:39She used to pick a spade up.
15:41And she used to get a spade.
15:43I'm leaning on a lamppost at the corner.
15:46And she used to sing.
15:48They all used to sing.
15:49But they weren't allowed to speak.
15:55I think it was the atmosphere of being with such friendly girls.
16:00There was no arguing or backbiting or anything.
16:05It was just...
16:06But it was the job.
16:10I loved it.
16:11I loved it.
16:12And I loved the camaraderie of the girls.
16:14Oh, memories.
16:16Besides coal, cotton was one of the biggest employers in Edwardian Britain.
16:26Britain's cotton industry reached its peak in 1912,
16:30when 8 billion yards of cloth were being produced,
16:33using raw materials from around the empire.
16:36With thousands of mills and weaving sheds across the county,
16:40Lancashire was the cotton capital of the world.
16:43And it wouldn't have been possible without the women
16:46who made up more than 60% of the workforce.
16:50Chief employer of women at this time was the cotton industry.
16:53They were employed as weavers.
16:55A really good weaver could operate up to eight looms.
16:58So they would work in a section of the factory
17:01and they would just watch the looms.
17:03And if there was any snags or the shuttle needed to be refilled,
17:08they would get that ready.
17:10Very, very highly skilled work.
17:12Weaving at this point, deafening as well.
17:18Actually, my mum worked in a mill.
17:21It was a fountain mill.
17:23And as soon as the doors opened, it was deafening,
17:27was the sound of it.
17:31And my mum was partly deaf.
17:33Well, a lot of the ladies were.
17:35And they had to lit read each other.
17:38Or they made and singles to communicate with each other
17:42because of the amount of noise and dust.
17:48Edwardian filmmakers couldn't easily film inside the mills.
17:52But this film shows the women workers leaving the Alfred Butterworth Cotton Factory,
17:58near Manchester in 1901.
18:01What's fascinating is that girls' hair is all covered.
18:04So women do not show long hair.
18:06So you see the girls, the shawls are completely covering them.
18:09And you don't see their hair at all.
18:11You just see their faces.
18:12There's all this debate now about the hijab and about women covering their hair.
18:15And we forget that.
18:16We've lost that as part of our culture.
18:18That hundreds of years ago, you wouldn't walk out in the streets of Lancashire
18:22with your hair down.
18:28In Edwardian Britain, men's roles have been publicly documented.
18:32But women's work could be every bit as skilled,
18:35as captured in this rare footage from 1910
18:38of the Siemens Brothers factory in Dalston, East London,
18:42where women are busy making electric lamps.
18:50Watching the work that she's doing, it's skilled work.
18:53You know, it is really intricate, detailed work, difficult work as well,
18:57which would have taken a lot of concentration, a lot of effort.
19:00And we think about the working hours as well,
19:02how long you would sit and do that for.
19:04And the colours of it, again, you know,
19:06we often think of the working classes very drab in old clothes,
19:09in black and white.
19:11And you see the different patterns, the different textures,
19:14and it makes them real.
19:16It shows what they did have, that these aren't people to pity,
19:19that they led these lives of colour and of richness as well in one way.
19:23And I love that she's wearing her locket and her jewellery as well.
19:26You know, it challenges a lot of people's perceptions
19:28of what the working class would have looked like in Edwardian Britain.
19:32This is a working woman.
19:34She isn't something out of a Dickens novel.
19:37She's real.
19:38She's got her jewellery.
19:40She's neat.
19:41She's tidy.
19:42The quality of the film, the exactitude of the images,
19:48it's really extraordinary.
19:50We're used to everybody being a bit distant,
19:52but these images of ordinary people working,
19:56they're very touching, really.
19:59They're very moving because you feel a kind of human connection
20:02with somebody who's just, you know, there doing something.
20:05There's nothing more human than working with your hands, really.
20:08And to have these very beautiful and very clear images
20:11of people doing intricate work for you to watch.
20:14You can't help but look at her hair,
20:21and her hair's been done very nicely for the film,
20:24but it seems to be moved by a gust of wind.
20:29It's a small thing which goes beyond what's in the image
20:32and reminds you that you're looking at a real person,
20:35a real incident.
20:36Those are the things that connect us to the past.
20:38It's just lovely to see life as it was being lived,
20:45you know, to see people at work.
20:49It's the mundaneness, the humanity of it, somehow.
20:54Concentration.
20:59They used to talk about women and the low-paid work,
21:02you know, the invisible work, the five Cs,
21:05so women as cleaning, cooking, cashiering, clerking and caring.
21:12There were also women in factories, as we've seen here,
21:14but it's the lowest paid work,
21:16often the slightly dangerous work.
21:19But having said that, the options for men as well
21:21were much more defined and confined
21:25for particular classes of people than they are now.
21:28In Edwardian Britain, all classes of people had to wear hats.
21:39You weren't fully dressed if you didn't wear one.
21:41And the hat defined your position in society,
21:44from top hats and boaters to bowlers and flat caps.
21:50Stockport was the world centre for hat-making in 1910.
21:55Here, it's the men who are hard at work,
21:58making the popular fur felt hat.
22:07Steve Cossie is perhaps the last apprentice from Stockport
22:11still working in the hat industry.
22:14The processes that they go through are over 130 processes.
22:18Just from that, to actually get it blocked into a shape.
22:23The blocking aspect is done with the boiling water.
22:27So the hats are put into the boiling water,
22:29which means the hat body then is pliable.
22:31So they're able to stretch the hat body over the wooden blocks.
22:36Sometimes the air gets trapped between the hat body and the block.
22:39So they're used to blowing it to get all the air out.
22:42The men could block around probably two to three hundred hats a day.
22:49You can imagine the problem they have with their hands,
22:53putting it in and out of the boiling water.
22:58But it wasn't just their hands which suffered.
23:01I'm a hatter and many people would know the term from Alice in Wonderland,
23:05the Mad Hatter.
23:07Now the Mad Hatter comes from when they used to use mercury to make the hats.
23:14And it made all the men who made the hats go nutty, basically.
23:19And this wasn't realised until quite late after they'd been using it.
23:24And then once that was found then they abolished it and was never to be used again.
23:30It was very hard, very hard.
23:31You know, it's quite a lot of pressure on the hand and it's the vibration and the fur rubbing on your hands
23:36which can cause the sores.
23:40What we want to do is keep this tradition going.
23:43So the hat industry is still alive, but we want to keep using the traditional methods
23:50and make them in the UK, in Stockport or Denton, just like they did in the early 1900s.
23:55If life over a hundred years ago was very different, the biggest difference was in the lives that children were forced to lead in Edwardian Britain.
24:13It would have been hard work, heavy, dirty hard work, and children were useful because they could get between the looms.
24:22You know, we talk about social mobility these days.
24:27These kids wouldn't have had an opportunity to stay on at school very long and going to university.
24:32It would be like going to a different planet.
24:44Edwardian Britain was the richest, most powerful nation in the world.
24:49Its power and wealth was built on the hard work of men, women and children.
24:53All children had a basic education, but most left school by twelve.
25:00The factories and mills depended on child workers, and families needed the income.
25:05Across the nation, even the smallest of children would try and find work doing something.
25:12Former politician Alan Johnson grew up in poverty in post-war London,
25:16in conditions similar to many of the children featured here in the early 1900s.
25:24I love this.
25:26So I used to drink water out of those fountains, where there was a fountain for the horse,
25:32and then drinking water on the end.
25:34So all around North Kensington, including the corner of my street and Southam Street,
25:42there was a horse trough.
25:44And the toddlers would come and tie their horse up at lunchtime,
25:49usually pop in the Earl of Warwick for a pint.
25:52And they'd put a nose bag over the horse's ears for the food,
25:57and then take them to the trough for the water.
25:59And those kids look as if they're up to no good.
26:06Three ragamuffins.
26:08Difficult to know what they are.
26:10They could be rag pickers, people who make an existence by just harvesting
26:14discarded clothes and recycling them in some way.
26:18It certainly doesn't look like a toy cart.
26:20It looks like they're at work, probably on the embankment.
26:23Some children worked as half-timers. School until noon, then to work.
26:31Like these seen here at the Butterworth Cotton Factory near Manchester.
26:38So this is the reason why Lancashire was such a prosperous county
26:42in the Edwardian and the Victorian age.
26:44Because women worked, the men worked, and the children worked.
26:46So they would have three or four income for the household.
26:50And the factories, they would employ up to six to eight thousand people,
26:54some of these factories.
26:56It would have been hard work, heavy, dirty, hard work.
26:59And children were useful because they could get between the looms.
27:02The way we now see children is very different from the way in which
27:08Edwardian society saw children.
27:10For working families, they saw children as a source of labour, extra labour.
27:17Especially labour that men didn't want to do, that women couldn't perhaps do,
27:21and that they could.
27:23But there was a call for reform, and for children to attend schools.
27:28And certainly, laws came in to try and force all children to attend school.
27:33But many didn't. Many still worked.
27:35And many of the families relied on the labour that children provided.
27:38This was the first age of filmmaking.
27:42So it was still unusual to see a film camera outside your factory gate.
27:47The children are intrigued.
27:49It's almost like he's going, look at me.
27:52And he looks, and he's playing in front, and he hits his friend.
27:55But he's so natural in front of the camera.
27:57He's like the instant film star.
27:59He does look like the artful Dodger.
28:01You've really brought him to life.
28:02In their faces, there's a lot in there.
28:09They look old beyond their years.
28:13And it's partly the clothes. It's partly that they're at work.
28:15It's partly, you know, some of those faces are pinched with poverty.
28:19And they would have seen a lot in their short lives, I'm sure.
28:22All the missed opportunities. I mean, you talk about social mobility these days.
28:27These kids wouldn't have had an opportunity to, certainly not to stay on at school very long.
28:34And going to university would be like going to a different planet.
28:38So they knew where they were going into the factory.
28:45There's a bloke with bow legs coming down there.
28:48That's rickets.
28:52You can hardly walk. It's painful.
28:56Children were at risk of rickets whilst they were still growing.
29:00It's caused by malnutrition, lack of vitamin D and lack of sunlight.
29:04Well, it was beginning to die out, but it was still a fairly common feature.
29:11So living conditions are improving.
29:14Infant health is beginning to improve all these things that contribute to those kinds of changes.
29:20But as you can see, it's still very present in some of these films.
29:28Kind of gets me is that some of these lads probably didn't come back from the war.
29:31You start to project our knowledge of what would happen in the build-up.
29:36You think these lads who are staring at the camera and, you know, look so innocent.
29:42This generation, this decade of time, would change their lives forever.
29:47So that, it feels like quite poignant when you do see them coming out.
29:49That's what I find fascinating about these films.
29:57Picking out an individual and wondering exactly what became of them.
30:04And where their children are today or their grandchildren.
30:07This was a new century with a new king and new thinking.
30:20For the British people, this meant, while they worked hard, they got to play too.
30:25What we're seeing here is children from Altrincham really excited about a border train to Moberly, which is only seven miles away.
30:35And it's their big day out.
30:37For these kids, they get to see acrobats, bizarre puppeteers.
30:46It may seem a little bit underpowered for the kids of today, but at that time, for these children, this is a really special, really liberating experience.
30:57It was a hard time, the Edwardian period, for children, because their parents often were working full time.
31:05They didn't have a lot of opportunity to get outdoors.
31:07This is one of the reasons why outings like this were so important, to try and get children out into the countryside, away from the sort of polluted areas in towns and into the fresh air, so they could run around and play.
31:19I mean, childhood was very short at this point, you know, people had to grow up very quickly and get to work and you really, I mean, we have a concept of childhood, you know, really lasting now until sort of 18, but childhood in many ways was over by the time you were 12 in the Edwardian period.
31:41But men, women and children were united in their pride for their king, country and community.
31:49They came together for huge celebrations like this one in 1902, the once every 20 years Preston Guild, opened by the mayor Frederick Arthur Stanley, the 16th Earl of Derby.
32:02The week long processions date back to medieval times, but now a new world is being celebrated and new inventions.
32:10So it's not unlike a modern carnival, different floats coming through the town and they're all part of the textile trade and of course that's the thing that had made this region, you know, made the area what it was.
32:24And that is the symbol of the trade. I mean, you know, the loom. That would have meant so much to so many people. Generations of people's families would have worked in different elements around those kinds of machines, you know, from the kids sweeping up on the floor to the supervisors running the, you know, whole floor of hundreds of these things.
32:46It would have been a huge occasion for the town to see the pavements thronged, especially if it's only happening every 20 years or so.
32:56What's that pig doing? I'm surprised to see a pig in the middle of a textile parade.
33:01Textile parade.
33:02Wow. The famous my school pig. So my school were a butcher's based in Preston on Shepherd Street and they had a factory, but in the 19th century, they became famous for their sausages, which were called MP sausages.
33:17And the pig became a sort of mascot for them. It went on to appear in two more guilds in 1922 and in 1952. So it became a bit of a star. Sadly, we don't know what happened to it.
33:32I mean, look at the guys. I mean, they've got butchers with huge knives as well. I've never, you know, that it's crazy. I think because you've got colorized, you, you things stand out that you wouldn't have seen before.
33:43It's a fantastic piece of footage.
33:47Leisure time previously just for the rich was now available to the working class, even if it was just one day a week. Seasonal fun parks were very popular in the early 1900s, like this one near Halifax in Yorkshire.
34:02This is Sunnyvale Hipper Home Pleasure Gardens. It was two shillings to get in. And it was a place where the emerging middle class and also the aspirational working class would go for their leisure time.
34:19So you'd have boating legs, you'd have swings and people dancing. So it was just that you dressed up. It was your Sunday best. And you put your best shoes on. You didn't wear your clogs. You wore everything.
34:31This is actually a early form of a roller coaster. It's called a mountain glider or a switchback. We were taken up the hill by a horse and you can see the horse in the shop. And then you just were let down on this almost like a carriage that you would see in coal mines and you're on this little rickety carriage and then it would break at the bottom.
34:53The man operating the mountain glider is Joseph Bunce, owner of Sunnyvale Gardens, who paid for the filming as an early tourist film.
35:09One of the other activities filmed was donkey riding, a seemingly hazardous pursuit for the ladies.
35:16Oh, ouch. That looks very painful. Humiliation on film has never ceased to be everybody's favourite thing, you know. Also, I thought perhaps maybe she's drunk.
35:31They do look as if they're having a wonderful time. The lady who fell off the donkey laughs and gets straight back on. I mean, you know, good for her, yeah.
35:41They're obviously having a great time.
35:43Well done.
35:46Filmmakers would often introduce comic interludes to their films to keep cinema audiences entertained. If you look closer at the lady, you can see that her hair is cut short.
35:58Perhaps this is an early example of a stuntman caught on film.
36:02With the northern mill workers allowed one full week off a year, that created a whole new sector. The world's first seaside holiday resorts for working and middle classes alike. And one towered above them all.
36:20Blackpool had a unique offer. Nowhere else had three piers. Nowhere else had a Blackpool Tower. It was the place to be.
36:27Britain in the Edwardian era was the richest, most powerful nation in the world.
36:41All this was thanks to the enormous hard work by its people. Finally, leisure too was part of their lives. For the mill workers of the north, they could now enjoy one week's unpaid holiday a year.
36:54And for millions of people in the early 1900s, that meant the seaside. And the ultimate place for Edwardian entertainment, Blackpool.
37:07This is Blackpool Victoria Pier. And this is a really fascinating film because this is the third pier that was built in Blackpool.
37:15So Blackpool has three piers. It has the north pier, the central pier, and this was called the Victoria Pier. And it was opened in 1893. Now it's called the south pier.
37:25The three piers were all connected by the promenade and the trams running along Blackpool's central seafront.
37:30This film was made commemorating the opening of the new promenade in 1904, which allowed, you know, this fantastic promenade walkway right up to the new pier, Victoria Pier.
37:44And what they're doing is promenading, really what piers were built for. You promenaded on the pier.
37:50It's the idea of you being able to walk out to sea and being able to look back at Blackpool. I mean, that was a huge attraction.
37:57I mean, promenading was a big social activity at this point. Wonderful glimpse back at the sands there of the early housing in Blackpool.
38:05Most of that is now gone. You know, it's been replaced by large hotels.
38:10This tram is also incredible because it's also advertising Blackpool's famous winter gardens.
38:16Fantastic indoor entertainment complex with the Opera House and then the Empress Ballroom.
38:21So the real palace of entertainment, one of the big attractions in Blackpool where everybody went to enjoy the greatest stars of the day or dance on the fantastic Empress Ballroom dance floor.
38:35You've got middle class people and working class people all mingling together in ballrooms. Everybody knew how to dance. Everybody could waltz and it was a big part of the culture of this time.
38:45You dressed up to go to the seaside in the way that you dress up to go out on a Saturday night. You only had that week off and you didn't get paid for it and you save your money or you'd have holiday clubs.
38:55They came here for access to the sea, to beave. They came here for the sweets, the treats, the ice cream. You know, they came for things that they couldn't really get home.
39:07At the same time as the Victoria Pier, the great Blackpool institution of Pleasure Beach was opening and developing it.
39:15They brought these incredible rides from all over the world and the River Caves was this incredible journey.
39:21So you went through and you went through all the caves of the world in Blackpool. So it was an astonishing attraction.
39:30The River Caves attraction is still running here today.
39:33The other ride going strong is the Captive Flying Machines by Sahir and Maxim.
39:42The oldest ride on the Pleasure Beach, thrilling the public since 1904.
39:50Maxim is best known for designing the first automatic machine gun, but he dreamt of inventing powered flight.
39:57By designing this amusement ride, he hoped to raise funds to build a working aircraft.
40:05Sadly, this was the nearest to the flying machine he achieved in his lifetime.
40:10The Wright brothers got there first.
40:14With four million visitors a year, Blackpool became a magnet for a new wave of entrepreneurs.
40:19The illuminations we enjoy today first lit up the town in 1912 and nowhere else had the ultimate money-making attraction.
40:30Blackpool Tower.
40:31It was built on the most prominent position overlooking the Central Beach, which was where Blackpool sprung from.
40:38It was where all the entertainment was first offered to the masses who arrived on their day trips and then holidays.
40:44Blackpool Tower was always about making money and it made a lot of money.
40:48It could have thousands of people could go through its door every day for a mixture of attractions.
40:53So you could go dancing, you could have a cup of tea.
40:56It was almost like a multipurpose venue that we think of nowadays before they were built.
41:02There's nothing wasted in this building.
41:04Every single bit of this building is economically viable.
41:08Even the legs of Blackpool Tower were used to house a circus designed by Frank Macham.
41:16Blackpool Tower Circus is the oldest continuous circus in the world because it's never broke season.
41:223,000 people would come here for free shows a day.
41:26So it was advertised as a variety and aquatic circus.
41:30So basically this ring would drop down and 40,000 gallons of water would come in and then people would swim.
41:38Horses would dive into it.
41:40The Central Stars were the clowns. Blackpool Tower clowns were very famous.
41:45In the early period there was definitely elephants and in the morning during the season they would take them down
41:51and you'd go out onto the promenade and they would actually go swimming in the water in the sea.
41:57And it was a very clever attraction because basically people would come to see the elephants going in the sea,
42:03but it was also a way of advertising the circus.
42:05Blackpool was very much a place of showing and enjoying.
42:17Obviously after the death of Queen Victoria people could actually just feel more relieved and Edward was a fantastic king in that way.
42:24He was a very jolly king, but those nine years of his reign are particularly poignant because so much social change but so much joy as well.
42:34This is a form of time travel. These are lives being lived out in front of your eyes to act as our witness really to the past.
42:45I think they're wonderful.
42:48Seeing these films with their full colour again, you get a sense of the life in a way which is much more direct and much more kind of immediate and affecting.
42:57I think what some of these images show you is the individual behind the wider story.
43:05And in the individual you have those who enjoy their life.
43:09I mean they have limited opportunities and aspirations, but they're still having fun one day and there's an awful story the next.
43:16And I think the images take you to that level of the individual's experiences.
43:22And I think there's something really powerful and beautiful about that actually because too often in history you put people into boxes and then the box has a narrative around how hard life was.
43:34And yes it was hard, but there was so much more going on.
43:37Next time, Edwardian Britain locked in a power struggle.
43:46Workers unite and fight for fairer work and pay.
43:51Women demand a voice, the vote and a place in the world.
43:56Victories are won, but a whole generation would make the ultimate sacrifice.
44:01All this is captured on Edwardian Britain in colour.
44:05Don't miss all that brand new next Saturday at 8.
44:18From London to Istanbul, Tony Robinson kicks off the first leg of his new journey around the world by train Monday at 9.
44:25And tonight it's back to Tudor England here on Channel 5 for Catherine versus Anne, Henry VIII's wives at war next.
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