Here’s your topper sir, now what about a bit of how’s your father?
How many of us dream of having High Streets packed full of independent, artisan traders and not the chain shop, estate-agent-filled identikit affairs they’ve become?
In last night’s Shop Girls: The True Story of Life Behind The Counter (BBC2) we learned that was exactly what the lucky Victorian housewife had on offer. Her shopping list was as likely to feature lace, feathers and buttons as it was bread and meat.
However, up until the late 1800s, shop work was a male dominated affair with the business considered ‘unladylike’ for women, and mental arithmetic and measuring thought beyond their scope.
It wasn’t until the census of 1851 that it was revealed that out of a population of 20 million there were 2.5 million unmarried, self-supporting women. Mostly middle class, these women were raised to become wives, believed themselves above being servants, but were not qualified to do anything else.
The Society For Promoting the Employment of women — impressively ahead of its day, considering women were yet to get the vote — was set up to tackle the task of putting these young women to work.
with the industrial revolution moving male shop workers into factories, it was decided that shop work was the best option available to them.
Adverts started to appear in newspapers, with shop owners seeking women of ‘good character’ and from ‘respectable families’ to staff their counters. The average Victorian shop girl could expect to earn around £20 a month after her board and lodgings were deducted — most ‘lived in’ due to their 15-hour days.
After meeting Victorian shop girls for the first time, barrister and diarist Arthur Munby observed: ‘Their views, habits and speech come midway between the delicacy of a lady and the course vulgarity of a servant.’
Dr Pamela Cox, who previously presented a series looking at the history of servants, succeeded in making the programme riveting thanks to a cocktail of the informative mixed with fun and surprise.
The highly knowledgeable Dr Cox has a cheeky and engaging style, particularly when researching some of the juicier aspects of Victorian shop work. The bonnet- shop ladies in London’s Burlington Arcade, for example, offered more than service with a smile. The wealthy gents of the area (known as ‘mashers’) were to be seen disappearing into the bonnet shops and being led upstairs by the shop girls (‘Judys’) who doubled as prostitutes.
what became clear was that, despite appalling pay and conditions, the Victorian shop girl revolutionised the retail industry — 250,000 of them were employed by the turn of the century.
Not even coming close to being riveting was Love Your Garden (ITV) For the most part shows that feature antiques, attics and gardens are generally confined to daytime TV — which would have made a far more suitable home for this new series.
Alan Titchmarsh is an amiable enough fellow, but watching a garden get a makeover, no matter how deserving the recipients, just isn’t that interesting. In the opening episode we saw Lesley and Darren Chan have their outdoor space revamped for family living. Youngest daughter Amelie is disabled and a special ‘sensory’ part to the garden was a nice touch.
However, I’d question how much use an outdoor dining area in a garden in worsley, Lancashire would get. More irritating still was listening to the 75 square metre garden constantly being described as ‘tiny.’ That’s like the pitch at wembley Stadium to a lot of us city dwellers.
There was some desperate padding with Alan visiting other nearby residential gardens to see what they’d done — gardens that all looked suspiciously shiny and new to me. Do people in Bolton really have al fresco cocktail areas at the back of their semis?
The endless footage of mud being shovelled or planks of decking being nailed wasn’t exactly enthralling either. The final ‘reveal’ for Lesley and her family was sweet to watch, but what a shame the journey there was so tedious and could easily have been condensed into half the time.
Christopher Stevens is away.