Englishmen and Englishwomen across society just did not get emotional in public. Ian Hislop’s Stiff Upper Lip – An Emotional History of Britain II: Heyday
The ideal of the stiff upper lip reached its zenith. ibid.
Self-control was now becoming a hallmark of the British middle class. ibid.
No-one would repeat [Matthew] Webb’s achievement for thirty-six years. ibid.
Something in the ideal of the British character had to change. ibid.
He [William Wilberforce] became the conscience of the nation and inspired a generation of eccentric, obsessive yet remarkable individuals. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders 1/3, BBC 2010
Wilberforce could be seen as the godfather of the do-gooders. ibid.
In 1813 an essay was published in a series called A New View of Society. It was dedicated to Wilberforce as the nation's leading reformer, and it offered up a radical vision ... The key to creating human happiness was to change human character ... Robert Owen. ibid.
Owen’s first step was the improvement of workers’ homes. ibid.
What happens when people don’t want to be done good to? ibid.
The do-gooders were busy social engineering. ibid.
George Dawson’s radical message came to be called the Civic Gospel. ibid.
The public ethos was a Victorian invention, and perhaps the greatest one of all. ibid.
Hill went from strength to strength. By the early 1880s 378 families were living in homes run by her. ibid.
In 1848 a popular new hymn for children, All Things Bright and Beautiful, portrayed a life that was almost feudal ... This was a divinely ordained universe in which everyone knew their place. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders II: Suffer The Little Children
God was the great driving force in Shaftesbury’s life. He believed we are all children of God. ibid.
Shaftesbury was a man looking for a mission. And when in 1832 he read a series of articles in The Times about child labour he floundered. The industrial revolution was changing Britain as never before, and it seemed the inevitable price of progress that children worked oppressive, long hours for meagre wages in unregulated workplaces. And few people cared. ibid.
The MP for Bolton, who was a mine owner, argued that it would unjustly deprive children of their honest livelihood, and would drive them and their families into the workhouse. Others suggested that working from a young age was good and developed useful industrious habits ... Others said that the entire mining industry would collapse if it wasn’t allowed to use child labour. ibid.
Ragged schools: run by volunteers they took children off the streets, taught them the Bible and if they were lucky to read and write. ibid.
In 1862 [Charles] Kingsley wrote the book he’s most famous for – The Water Babies ... He campaigned for improved sanitation and against the pollution of rivers. ibid.
Kingsley’s vision for a perfect childhood included a decent education ... Compulsory education for all children was finally introduced. ibid.
Barnardo is perhaps the most famous of all the Victorian do-gooders. ibid.
Philanthropic abduction was hugely controversial. It repeatedly landed Barnardo in hot water. ibid.
Juvenile prostitution was rampant in London. Girls as young as nine worked the streets ... The age of consent was raised to sixteen. ibid.
During Queen Victoria’s reign over a hundred acts of parliament for the benefit of children were passed into law. ibid.
The achievements of our do-gooders remain extraordinary. ibid.
But one area of life was to prove their toughest challenge yet: the private behaviour of their fellow Britons. Now sex and alcohol were in the campaigner’s sites. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders III: Sinful Sex and Demon Drink
Britons liked to drink. A lot. ibid.
There’s more people selling beer in Preston than any other item. ibid.
In the Temperance Hall which used to be here [Joseph] Livesey got up and argued that the Society should campaign for the giving up of all alcohol. Just six friends rallied to his cause ... It marked the birth of teetotalism and the temperance revolution. ibid.
He [Livesey] applied his wit to writing temperance propaganda ... What Livesey started others took up enthusiastically. By the 1840s the teetotal campaign was developing an independent London base with a new set of supporters. One was the illustrator and comic artist George Cruikshank ... He signed the pledge. ibid.
A rift opened up between the pragmatic Dickens and the increasingly fundamentalist Cruikshank. ibid.
The vice trade: the Victorians called it the Great Social Evil ... In London alone according to contemporary estimates anywhere from 10 to 80,000 women were involved in prostitution. ibid.
He [Gladstone] didn’t want to sleep with the girls, he wanted to save them. He called this rescue work. ibid.
In 1864 the government passed the Contagious Diseases Act, a law that ruthlessly targeted women as the problem rather than men. ibid.
Charrington waged war on what he considered the greatest moral danger facing the people of the East End: the music halls which he called music hells. ibid.
It’s clear that many of us in Britain are in love with the past. Whether its Swordcraft or Spitfires. Ian Hislop’s Olden Days I: Heroes for All Times, BBC 2014
The olden days ... The vast realm of everything that’s supposedly gone before. ibid.
King Arthur – probably never existed. The second, Alfred the Great, was certainly real but was reinvented. ibid.
The Olden Days always have a future. ibid.
When it comes to the past we Britons are an emotional lot. We venerate our olden days. And have a distinct tendency to get misty-eyed when thinking about how things used to be. Ian Hislop’s Olden Days II, BBC 2014
Modern Britain’s story has been one of progress. ibid.
We were also invaded in 1688 by William of Orange ... This coup d’etat was dubbed the Glorious Revolution ... William and Mary – England’s only ever joint monarchs. ibid.
Our revolution was about turning the clock back. ibid.
The Luddites were a curious mix of the very radical and the very conservative. ibid.
A deeply felt but essentially nostalgic rural vision took hold. Ian Hislop’s Olden Days III
The latest expression of a very ancient idea in art and literature – the pastoral. ibid.
Folk music was the soundtrack to more egalitarian times. ibid.
A huge folk music revival ... ‘The heart and soul of the whole nation’. ibid.
Morris dancing caught on. ibid.
The art critic John Ruskin – for Ruskin the railway epitomised a brutalising age. ibid.
‘Sir Joseph Banks, gentleman amateur naturalist ... He arranged to join Captain Cook.’ Genius of Britain II: A Roomful of Brilliant Minds, David Attenborough, Channel 4 2012
The Endeavour set sail from Plymouth on 25th August 1768 bound for the South Pacific and immortality. It would be three years before Banks would see England again. ibid.
‘The man who discovered how to power the world ... was James Watt, and his steam engine was to drive the industrial revolution.’ ibid. James Dyson
The answer was to cool and condense the steam in a separate chamber outside the main cylinder. ibid.
Watt’s monsters throbbed day and night. ibid.
James Watt’s invention changed the world ... This was the start of the Industrial Revolution. ibid.
In the entrails of the dead one man was seeking the truth: his name was John Hunter. ibid.
‘What the surgeon did was to cut and hope for the best.’ ibid. Robert Winston
Hunter did hundreds of dissections. ibid.
John Hunter wrote three great treatises ... And became the highest paid surgeon in the land. ibid.
He helped take surgery from butchery to science. ibid.
‘Edward Jenner was a country doctor ... Jenner was interested in everything.’ ibid. Richard Dawkins
Edward Jenner took on the number one killer in the eighteenth century: Smallpox. ibid.
Jenner had demonstrated the possibility of vaccination. ibid.
Jenner is rightly regarded as the father of immunology. ibid.
‘Henry Cavendish: one of the most brilliant, if strange men of the eighteenth century.’ ibid. Jim Al-Khalili