New ITV Series Secrets from the Workhouse

[Olde Crone]

I'm still trying to work out what the secrets were.......

OC

[Merry]

Originally Posted by Olde Crone

I'm still trying to work out what the secrets were.......

OC

That well off people didn't know their ancestors had been in the workhouse?

I can't believe BTB didn't know her mother was illegitimate.

[Olde Crone]

Ah, right, I misunderstood the title!

No secrets for anyone who has done their family history, which none of these celebs seem to have done.

I agree, BTB didn't seem to have a grasp really. Her GM went into the workhouse to give birth (twice!) and came back out again. Unremarkable for the time.

OC

[JBee]

They are trying to compare life in the workhouse to now and not to what life was outside the workhouse then. In many cases the workhouse was a temporary arrangement and residents got out as soon as they could especially as it was deemed a shameful situation to be in.

That man who was ill, came in for treatment many times, but it said he left not that he'd been thrown out.

It didn't really say much about what was deemed the deserving poor and the undeserving poor or that the workhouse was effectively the only place sick old people could go to be treated. I have quite a number that died in the poorhouse but also had a different home address and their deaths were often registered by their relatives.

After her father died I have one 12 year old girl in he workhouse- she was then sent to work for someone but returned and was sent out to someone else from where she absconded and I haven't found out what happened to her after that. Her mother re-married and her half brother named one of his children after his half sister.

[kiterunner]

Originally Posted by JBee

They are trying to compare life in the workhouse to now and not to what life was outside the workhouse then.

Yes, I noticed when they said what the timetable was like for the residents of the workhouse, sleep, eat and work, and no time for anything else, surely that was what life was like for many people outside the workhouse too.

[Olde Crone]

Yes, the 60 hour working week was common outside the workhouse and in the cotton mills of Lancashire was often even longer than that - a 14 hour day was unremarkable.

OC

[kiterunner]

Here is Fern Britton's ancestor on the 1871 census:
1871 census ancestry

It's the one they showed on the programme, age 64, agr labourer, living with his daughter and son-in-law in Wrotham, Kent.

[Lynn the Forest Fan]

I found BTB's reaction to the lack of a father's name on the birth certs, very comical, as though it was a total shock.
The moving between stories was annoying, but they do it in so many programmes now

[Merry]

Originally Posted by Lynn the Forest Fan

The moving between stories was annoying, but they do it in so many programmes now

Along with my other pet hate of re-explaining everything we've already seen after each commercial break, as if two minutes away from the programme will cause us to forget everything!

[ElizabethHerts]

I gave up watching because I thought it was very slow and repetitive and I was also trying to sort myself out in the kitchen. I found the format of the programme very annoying and the celebrities rather irritating.