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In the 19th century, Britain
underwent a moral revolution.

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Thanks to some extraordinary
reformers and philanthropists,

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a new set of standards
for public life emerged.

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Now, due to these "do-gooders",

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the wellbeing
of the poor and vulnerable
was improving immeasurably.

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But one area of life was to prove
their toughest challenge yet -

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the private behaviour
of their fellow Britons.

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Now sex and alcohol were
in the campaigners' sights.

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Yes! What went on in
pubs, clubs and behind closed doors

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was to many do-gooders

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as dangerous and therefore as valid
a target for their reforming zeal

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as illiteracy, factory hours,
or filthy water.

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Britons liked to drink...

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A lot.
And not unconnected with this,

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they were pretty keen
on indiscriminate sex.

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Some saw that this behaviour was
not just lax, it was becoming fatal.

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They determined that they
would save their compatriots.

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Not from greedy landlords or corrupt
officials or exploitative bosses,

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but this time, from themselves.

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This was a bold ambition,
but was it a foolish one?

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Would Britain heed the warning?

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Would its citizens learn
the value of self-restraint?

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What do you think?

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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In the 1830s, the town
of Preston in Lancashire

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became the source
of a national crusade.

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It was led by Joseph Livesey, a man
determined to convince all Britons

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they'd be better off without booze.

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Livesey was a self-made man

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who'd made his fortune
as a wholesaler of cheese.

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His industry, however,
was at odds with most of
his working-class fellows.

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He complained they got
so drunk at the weekend

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they habitually took
what was known as "St Monday"

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to sleep off their hangovers.

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Preston had long had
a heavy drinking culture.

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But now it was getting worse.

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These are pages
from the trade directory

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for Preston in the year
1828 to 1829.

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And under
"Taverns and Public Houses",

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there are a stonking
86 separate establishments.

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But only five years later, 1834,

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the list has jumped up
to 104 separate pubs

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and there's a new category -
"Retailers of Beer".

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And under this new heading, there
are an incredible 123 more names.

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So if you add together
those people selling beer,

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the people selling beer in pubs,

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there's more people selling beer in
Preston than any other single item.

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The problem was by no means
limited to Preston.

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In 1830, the government
had passed the Beer Act.

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This deregulated its sale
nationwide.

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Suddenly vendors
selling ale were everywhere.

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And they were not short of buyers.

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For Livesey, this was a catastrophe.

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Livesey declared,
"To argue in favour of free trade

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"in the article
of intoxicating liquor

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"is as absurd as requiring
the druggist to leave the vessel

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"containing poison without a label,

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"or the toy shop to sell loaded
pistols for boys' playthings."

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Strong words.

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Livesey was already
a member of a society

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which urged the people of Preston

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to temper or reduce
their alcohol intake.

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But now he came round
to the audacious view

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that only a message
of total abstinence could turn
the tide of excess.

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In the temperance hall,
which used to be here,

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Livesey got up and argued that
the society should campaign

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for the giving up of all alcohol.

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Just six friends
rallied to his cause.

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So on Saturday night
1st September 1832, when presumably
most other people in Preston

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where down the pub,
they met here and committed
themselves to total abstinence,

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by signing what came
to be known as "the pledge".

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"We agree to abstain from all
liquors of an intoxicating quality,

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"whether ale, porter, wine or ardent
spirits, except as medicines."

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Just over a year later, as legend
has it, a friend of Livesey's,

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Dicky Turner, said,
"Nothing but the teetotal will do."

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It marked the birth of teetotalism
and the temperance revolution.

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So what was it about Livesey
that made the people of
Preston listen to him

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and made him such
an effective campaigner?

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He was a fantastic salesman,
that was his strength.

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Nowadays, he'd be
very good at marketing.

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He had a wonderful manner,
a humorous manner,

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and he was able to
get the crowds in.

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He was so successful that
within one year after the pledge
had been taken in 1832,

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he had 1,000 people signed up.

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And it was that droll
Lancashire humour. Think Les Dawson.

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Think Frank Randle.
That's how he sold his message
and had the crowds all laughing

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and at the same time
signing up for the pledge. Why is
it so impossible now to imagine

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the temperance movement
being successful in, say,
a place like this?

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Yeah, I think it's
the different attitude.

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He was emphasising
personal responsibility,
and when things go wrong now,

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sometimes we say, "Ah, well,
it's the fault of so and so,
it's social services that do it,"

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or the police, or so and so.
And he said, "No, it's not.

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"You do it, you sort yourself out,"
which is quite a hard message.

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This is tough love.
Tough love. Yeah, tough love.

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Livesey was taking on a huge
challenge, but he had a plan.

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He applied his wit to
writing temperance propaganda,

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and maximised
the power of the pamphlet.

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This is one of his best.
It's a spoof advert for a pub,

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not with a jolly name
like the Lamb and Flag,

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but the Spider and the Fly.

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The brewery's called Death and Co,

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and it's come up with
a new drink called Maddlebrain.

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If you haven't got the joke by now,

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Livesey makes it even clearer
by telling you that Death and Co

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assure their customers that no
establishment sells better poison,

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breaks more hearts,
or beggars more family than theirs.

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'Challenging people
about their drinking habits
has never been easy.'

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Good morning, I'm just handing
out a few temperance leaflets here.

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Take this,
it's about the evils of drinking.

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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ...
God bless you, my friend.

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Have a leaflet.
Jesus loves you very much.

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Preston was known as
a town that didn't booze.

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Is it now a town full of boozers?
Yes.

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Any teetotallers left here? None.

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IAN LAUGHS
Not one?

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Anyone here still drinking?

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Yeah!

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We've got the highest rate
of alcoholism, drug addiction,

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abortion, sexual disease
in Europe and we're headed
for big, big trouble.

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Do you think there
is a problem with booze? Yeah.

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Yeah, I have a problem!

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Livesey didn't stop
with pamphleting.

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He also devised a riveting
lecture on the evils of malt liquor

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that he toured from Preston
around the North West,

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and the lecture
had an explosive message.

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Livesey produced
four ounces of proof spirit.

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Which he said he'd distilled
from two pints of beer.

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He then took the proof spirit,
and poured it into the bowl.

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And then...

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Livesey told the audience,

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"That's what's happening
to the coating of your stomach
and to your liver."

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Now we may find the science of
that a bit dodgy, but at the time,

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the audience were deeply affected.

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A man from Burnley told him,

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"I've had as much of
that stuff as would light
all the lamps in Manchester."

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By 1835, it was estimated
that 48,000 people had
signed the pledge in England,

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and that 2,000 hardened drunks
had been reformed.

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This was not nearly
enough for Livesey.

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He had set his sights on converting
the entire country to abstinence

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and anything less was failure.

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To make matters worse,
some who'd originally taken
the pledge had already lapsed.

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In 1837, Livesey wrote,
"Of late it has been a matter
of deep lamentation

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"that so many temperance
members have returned
like the dog to its vomit,

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"or the sow who has washed
to wallowing in the mire."

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Not exactly flattering comparisons.

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But Livesey did
believe that abstinence
was a mark of social progress,

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and the fact that the British
were much more attached to alcohol
than he'd believed

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must have been very disappointing.

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But he shouldn't have
been so hard on himself.

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He did start a national movement
whose effects would be felt
throughout the next century,

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and he did it with humour,
verve and conviction.

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And what Livesey started,
others took up enthusiastically.

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By the 1840s, the teetotal
campaign was developing
an independent London base

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with a new set of supporters.

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One was the illustrator and
comic artist George Cruikshank.

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Livesey had applied wit
and showmanship to promoting
the temperance cause.

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Now Cruikshank resolved to
turn his artistic talents
to pursuing its goal.

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Cruikshank came late to temperance.

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In his youth,
he'd been a keen drinker.

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Though he'd seen his own father
die from too much alcohol,

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George rarely said
no to a glass...or two.

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Berated by his family for his
drinking, and often short of cash,

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Cruikshank knew all too well
the havoc

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gin and beer
could wreak on human lives.

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It became a subject he returned
to repeatedly in his work.

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In 1847 he created The Bottle,

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a cautionary tale told in pictures.

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An overnight success,
it even became a magic lantern show,
the movies of its day.

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The story tells the highly moral,
if somewhat cliched tale,

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of a prosperous married man
who seems to have it all.

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But as a love of drink takes
hold, it corrodes his health,

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his happiness and his family life.

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Everything is subordinated
to his desire for alcohol.

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GASPING

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Eventually his youngest child
dies...

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He kills his wife in a fight...

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GASPING

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And ends up a wreck,

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shut up in an asylum.

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So, murder, madness,
and infant mortality.

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Not exactly a feel-good film!

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When the chairman of the National
Temperance League saw The Bottle,
he asked Cruikshank why,

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given he was clearly aware
of the evils of alcohol,
he continued to drink himself.

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Cruikshank realised
he could no longer avoid
the logic of his own images.

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He signed the pledge.

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Despite its success, not everyone
thought that the message
of The Bottle was a sound one.

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One of the doubters was Cruikshank's
own friend, Charles Dickens.

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Dickens believed that
it was circumstances

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which drove the moderate drinker
to become an excessive one.

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And with The Bottle,
a rift opened up

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between the pragmatic Dickens

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and the increasingly
fundamentalist Cruikshank.

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When it came to drinking,
Dickens was a libertarian,

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who despised the idea
that anyone should tell him
how to live his life.

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He hated the temperance movement's
increasingly absolutist stance.

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Matters came to a head in 1853,
when Cruikshank published
a series of fairy stories

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reinvented as morality tales
to promote the temperance cause.

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In his versions, the crimes of
ogres, giants and bad parents

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were all fed by a love of alcohol.

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Dickens was incensed,
and he retaliated in print

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in an article
he called Frauds On The Fairies.

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Dickens raged against
Cruikshank's didacticism,

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arguing that charming, timeless
fairy tales shouldn't be sullied

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with references to contemporary
moral or political issues.

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Dickens goes on to compose
a satirical fairy story.

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Cinderella, who joins
the Band of Hope, the young
person's temperance movement,

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gets visited by the Fairy Godmother,
who insists that the pumpkin,

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which is going to be turned
into a coach,

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comes from one of
the American states where
they've got prohibition.

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And then when she gets to the ball,
the handsome Prince turns out
to be a temperance speaker.

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Cruikshank wasn't amused.

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And worse than that, he was hurt.

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He thought he and Dickens
were on the same side.

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Weren't they both for the poor,
against social injustice?

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Now he was being
made a figure of fun.

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Dickens said it was treating
the public like babies.

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Why was that so effective
as a counter argument?

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00:16:43,520 --> 00:16:45,360
Well, it's true, of course.

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That's why it's effective. I mean,
it is nannyish, it is intrusive.

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It's intolerable.
It's priggish on one level,

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but on the other hand,
alcohol is a very strong lure,

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and by the 19th century there were
so many poor drinking so much gin...

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..that it was a pathetic sight,

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and you can understand
why people wanted to stop it.

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The cliche of the man
coming out of work

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and spending
the week's wages in the pub

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before he got home to his wife
and many children was true

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and it was wrecking human lives.

229
00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:34,040
Cruikshank was still convinced

230
00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:38,880
that his art could sway the great
mass of drinking Britons.

231
00:17:43,680 --> 00:17:48,400
In 1859,
he embarked on his magnum opus.

232
00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:57,320
Nearly three years in the making,
today it's held by the Tate gallery.

233
00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:13,240
This is the most extraordinary,
vast depiction of British society,

234
00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:16,920
from top to bottom,
corrupted by alcohol.

235
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:20,400
And the technique is to go
from the bottom of the picture,

236
00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:23,880
which is a scene
of agreeable middle-class events,

237
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:26,160
a christening,
a birthday, a wedding,

238
00:18:26,160 --> 00:18:29,440
in which everyone's having
a few but it's not out of hand,

239
00:18:29,440 --> 00:18:32,680
and the excess rises up
through the picture

240
00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:37,240
until you end up with the nightmare
vision of where this ends.

241
00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:42,160
In the top right is
a lunatic asylum. There's a man
being hanged above the jail.

242
00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:43,680
There's the workhouse,

243
00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:47,000
the Magdalene homes,
which were for unmarried mothers,

244
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:50,680
and the police station here,
the Ragged School.

245
00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:54,400
And what Cruikshank
does in the picture is show
you all the professions

246
00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:57,120
setting a bad example.

247
00:18:57,120 --> 00:19:00,960
So you've got a judge here, being
shocked when a barrister's saying,

248
00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:04,920
"This man has led a life of drink,
and it's led to his downfall."

249
00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:06,960
But just above,
there's a happy scene

250
00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:11,760
with the judge entertaining all
the barristers and other lawyers.
And what are they doing?

251
00:19:11,760 --> 00:19:14,320
They're all getting sozzled.

252
00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:16,120
Same is true just above.

253
00:19:16,120 --> 00:19:19,080
There's a soldier
being flogged for drunkenness.

254
00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:21,400
What's happening
in the officer's mess?

255
00:19:21,400 --> 00:19:23,720
The officers,
they're all getting pissed.

256
00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:28,400
He does it again with clergymen.
You've got the nonconformist
ministers with a Hindu.

257
00:19:28,400 --> 00:19:31,080
"The Mission to the Hindu."
And the Hindu's going,

258
00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:35,000
"I'm not quite sure about this, look
at that drink you're putting away."

259
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:38,640
So you have all these scenes,
and then the picture collapses

260
00:19:38,640 --> 00:19:43,560
into the middle, which is a
nightmare vision of drunkenness,

261
00:19:43,560 --> 00:19:46,920
violence, debauchery
and destitution.

262
00:19:46,920 --> 00:19:49,240
The most violent image
right in the middle

263
00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:54,360
is a man thumping a naked woman,
who's carrying a child,
right in the throat.

264
00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:56,360
And the violence is all around him.

265
00:19:56,360 --> 00:20:01,680
There's a man shooting another man
with a rifle. Just like that, bang.

266
00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:06,640
And it's not just the men fighting,
there's women here, more or
less scratching their eyes out.

267
00:20:06,640 --> 00:20:10,640
And the police, who are meant to
be helping presumably restore

268
00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:13,280
some sort of order,
they're all drunk themselves.

269
00:20:13,280 --> 00:20:17,200
And there in the centre of
the picture is Bacchus himself.

270
00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:19,880
The god of drink being worshipped.

271
00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:24,960
And underneath there, there's
a sort of bar, and the rabble

272
00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:29,120
are handing over
anything to get hold of the booze.

273
00:20:29,120 --> 00:20:32,360
There's a man there offering,
look, here's my child.

274
00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:38,160
And the central worshipper,
who embodies the madness of
the whole society, is a madman.

275
00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:43,640
And he's dancing, in a frenzy,
dancing on a tomb.
That's where you're going.

276
00:20:43,640 --> 00:20:47,240
You lose everything to drink,
all your friends, all your family,

277
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:52,000
everything you ever owned,
and the end result of it is this!

278
00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:59,440
The mob, violent, angry, dissolute,
impoverished and eventually dead.

279
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:24,640
Despite Cruikshank's extraordinary
efforts, "The Worship of Bacchus"

280
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:27,160
was not a hit with the public.

281
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:34,280
A friend of Cruikshank's
did attend the exhibition

282
00:21:34,280 --> 00:21:36,840
and described a really pathetic
scene.

283
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:41,320
"There was a wild, anxious look
in his face, when he greeted me.

284
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:47,520
"While we talked, he glanced once or
twice at the door, when we heard any
sound from that direction.

285
00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:54,840
"Were they coming at last,
the tardy, laggard public for whom
he bravely toiled for so long?

286
00:21:54,840 --> 00:22:01,920
"Yet it was near noon,
and only a solitary visitor
had wandered into the room."

287
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:06,640
Cruikshank had
damaged his reputation.

288
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:10,160
The public did not want to be
attacked in such a head-on,

289
00:22:10,160 --> 00:22:15,360
strident way, and he now became
to many a figure of fun.

290
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:24,480
He died here at his
home in Camden in 1878.

291
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:26,080
He was 85.

292
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:31,840
But when his will was read,
it revealed an extraordinary secret,

293
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:37,720
one that Cruikshank had concealed
for over 20 years.

294
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:41,520
Despite his ostensibly happy
marriage, it emerged that Cruikshank

295
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:47,760
kept a mistress and a family,
less than two minutes walk
from this, his official home.

296
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:52,440
Adelaide Archibald worked for the
Cruikshanks as a housemaid, and

297
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:56,280
when she left their employ she gave
birth to her former boss's child.

298
00:22:56,280 --> 00:23:00,200
And then went on
to bear him another ten!

299
00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:04,400
On his death, Cruikshank
left a trust for Adelaide but most

300
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:08,520
extraordinarily, left instructions
that all his wines,

301
00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:12,440
kept at her home,
should be passed on to her.

302
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:17,200
Does this make
Cruikshank a hypocrite?

303
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:21,880
Well, he never campaigned for
sexual continence in the way he did
for temperance.

304
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:24,120
But what about the wine?

305
00:23:24,120 --> 00:23:26,480
Was it just a sound
financial investment?

306
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:30,000
Or was he nipping up the road
and drinking it on the quiet?

307
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:31,920
We just don't know.

308
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:38,680
Either way the revelations suggest
that when the Punch obituary stated,
"Never has there lived a simpler,

309
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:45,840
"purer, more straightforward or
altogether more blameless man,"
they were pretty wide of the mark!

310
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:09,040
Temperance was not the only
attempt by do-gooders to
police personal behaviour.

311
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:16,560
Some also battled against
an associated problem just

312
00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:22,480
as intractable and destructive as
heavy drinking - the vice trade.

313
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:29,760
The Victorians called
it The Great Social Evil.

314
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:34,520
To them it corroded all society,
tarnishing not just the physical

315
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:38,240
and moral health of
prostitute and client,

316
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:43,240
but also wives infected with disease
by errant husbands, and children

317
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:46,760
born out of wedlock
into squalor and misery.

318
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:52,120
In London alone,
according to contemporary estimates,

319
00:24:52,120 --> 00:24:57,840
anywhere from 10 to 80,000 women
were involved in prostitution.

320
00:24:57,840 --> 00:25:04,320
The Victorian public imagination was
very much captured by prostitutes.

321
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:07,520
On the one hand, they saw the
prostitute as an agent of real

322
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:10,600
social contagion and
chaos within the city.

323
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:14,120
She symbolised the evils of
the industrialised world,

324
00:25:14,120 --> 00:25:19,880
she represented the lustful sins of
the flesh out there in the public
domain.

325
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,160
But on the other hand she was also
seen as a very innocent

326
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:28,160
suffering victim as well,
of male sexual vice.

327
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:37,640
In the late 1840s, one man in
particular became a familiar face
amongst the local street walkers.

328
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:43,080
Night after night, he would scour
the streets looking for a girl
who caught his eye.

329
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:45,120
But he was not your typical punter.

330
00:25:45,120 --> 00:25:48,600
He didn't want to sleep with the
girls, he wanted to save them.

331
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:53,600
He called this "rescue work", and he
pursued this mission for 40 years.

332
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:55,920
And it wasn't his only achievement.

333
00:25:55,920 --> 00:26:01,360
He just happened to be the greatest
reformer and statesman
of the Victorian age.

334
00:26:01,360 --> 00:26:04,400
He had a ministerial career
that spanned 60 years,

335
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:08,400
four times Chancellor and
four times Liberal Prime Minister.

336
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,120
He was William Gladstone.

337
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:18,320
Gladstone was a remarkable
politician, but an even more
remarkable man.

338
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:24,200
All his life, he made a
concerted effort to live virtuously.

339
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:28,800
He once listed 39 reasons why it
would not be incompatible

340
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,960
for a devout Christian
to attend a ball.

341
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:41,240
Gladstone's religious motivation
led him to believe that he should

342
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:48,160
regularly perform acts of private
charity towards the neediest
in society.

343
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:54,360
In 1848, he found a way of
combining this with his late
night sittings at Westminster.

344
00:26:54,360 --> 00:26:58,840
As Gladstone walked home,
he approached West End prostitutes.

345
00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:06,760
Thanks to his scrupulous diary
entries, we have some of the
details of these encounters.

346
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:11,680
"2nd May 1850, conversation at
a night with an unhappy woman."

347
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:23,360
"29th April 1852, saw a person at
night who opened a new chapter
in human calamity to me."

348
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:33,760
"28th May 1852, saw one late
and advised - a broken creature."

349
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:43,320
"12th Feb 1853, gave one five
shillings at night, to go home."

350
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,520
And don't forget that the morning
after all those nights before,

351
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:55,240
Gladstone would get up
and go and run the country.

352
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:08,120
When Gladstone arrived back late to
this house, he sometimes had in tow

353
00:28:08,120 --> 00:28:11,640
a prostitute who he'd offered a meal
and a bed for the night.

354
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,520
And he was often greeted
by his wife Catherine.

355
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,360
She's believed to have
supported his efforts,

356
00:28:17,360 --> 00:28:21,480
but exactly what she thought about
this arrangement is not recorded.

357
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:24,800
However, she was a
serious do-gooder herself.

358
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:30,400
And their shared opinion about
active charity made
theirs a strong marriage.

359
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:34,520
They were together for almost
59 years and had eight children.

360
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:38,240
But in the early days of their
marriage, she preferred to live

361
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:43,040
at their Welsh home with the
children. This created problems.

362
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:50,880
In Catherine's absence, Gladstone's
rescue work "intensified".

363
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:56,240
And sometimes concern
can grow into obsession...

364
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:05,480
In 1859, aged 49, Gladstone
befriended Marian Summerhayes.

365
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,840
No street walker, she was a
higher class of prostitute

366
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:12,240
and had at one time
worked as an artist's model.

367
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:14,600
Gladstone now took
the "unconventional"

368
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:18,600
step of commissioning her portrait.

369
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:24,040
He was immediately struck by
her beauty and her loveliness.

370
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,600
He noted this in his diary in
Italian, which was always when

371
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:31,240
he wanted to wax lyrical or indeed
keep things a little more private.

372
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:36,880
And he became more and more
obsessed, and there are numerous

373
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,840
comments in his diary which were,
to us, highly suspect.

374
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,240
On 1st September 1859 he wrote,

375
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:52,200
"My thoughts of Summerhayes
require to be limited and purged.

376
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:57,280
Whatever that meant,
it obviously wasn't very successful,
because a fortnight later

377
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:03,080
he spent four and a half hours
with her reading Tennyson's epic
poem The Princess together,

378
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:08,040
after which he wrote he was,
"much and variously moved."

379
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:15,360
Gladstone himself was far
from blind to the erotic
potential of his encounters,

380
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:21,120
and he knew that sometimes he
strayed into morally compromising
territory.

381
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:29,480
In his diary he used to put this
little mark with a whip sign next to
days in which he'd had an encounter.

382
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:34,800
I think probably what he did, was
he was given a whip by Dr Pusey,

383
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:36,360
the famous high church divine,

384
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:39,080
and I think what would happen, is,
if poor old Gladstone got

385
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:43,440
a bit too excited talking to one of
these girls he'd give himself
six of the best.

386
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,800
There was certainly a darker side
to Gladstone's rescue work,

387
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:54,600
but one of the problems was because
he was so tempted

388
00:30:54,600 --> 00:31:01,240
by some of these women,
he felt that he should put himself
more in their company to actually

389
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:07,840
fight off this temptation and
show himself, and indeed God,
that he was capable of resisting.

390
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,520
Today, despite the involvement of
the state, it still seems we need

391
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:23,840
individuals committed to going out
and offering a helping hand
directly.

392
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:30,800
Diane Martin is now the Director
of Trust, a Christian-inspired

393
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,120
project assisting
prostitutes in South London.

394
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,440
Tell me why, when you started,
you felt you had to do it.

395
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:42,000
Was it a religious impulse?

396
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:43,560
Religious impulse!

397
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:46,120
I didn't feel like I had to do it.

398
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,880
I think, for me, because I
had been exploited through

399
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:52,920
prostitution as a young person,
in the back of my mind

400
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:55,960
I felt that I wanted to respond
in some way.

401
00:31:55,960 --> 00:32:00,280
And when you started it, it
was just you going out at night.

402
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:03,520
It started actually on Sunday
afternoons, and there

403
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:09,040
was a group of us and it started
off as a local church project,
going out on Tooting Common looking

404
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:13,360
like stalkers or ramblers,
with a back pack, coffee,

405
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:16,680
Hobnobs, contact cards with my
mobile number on it.

406
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,040
Condoms in the backpack as well.
You had condoms in the back pack?

407
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:21,760
Yes.

408
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:27,120
What sort of response do you get?
They don't think, "Oh, ghastly
do-gooders! We don't need any help!"

409
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,520
We've actually never
had a negative reaction.

410
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:37,120
But quite early on in the early
days, we did have someone see
another woman and introduce us,

411
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,080
and I remember her saying,

412
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:42,800
shouting out across the Common,
"Come and meet the
Christian ladies!"

413
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:47,240
and I just thought I should be
embroidering or wearing a pith
helmet or something like that.

414
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,400
So is it a bit odd for
a man to be going out

415
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:52,360
in the middle of the night,
looking for prostitutes to help?

416
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,280
I'm thinking of Gladstone,
obviously.

417
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:58,400
I like the thought of him being
in Parliament, working till 12,

418
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:02,680
walking home and not turning
a blind eye to what he saw.

419
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,640
And not just turning a blind
eye but opening a wallet.

420
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,160
He opened his front door
and took people home.

421
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:13,480
Now I love the idea of that, and
I've always thought, in terms of

422
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,680
the church, if we all did that,
wouldn't that be great?

423
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:21,240
But then what happens is
you become a charity, you have to
behave yourself a little bit more,

424
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:24,320
Health and Safety... All that
kind of stuff gets in the way!

425
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,480
What's appropriate? You know.
But I think...

426
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:29,640
That's the joy of the Victorians,
isn't it? They just did it.

427
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,160
Yeah, they just went and did it.

428
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:44,120
Regardless of his sometimes complex
motivations, Gladstone's commitment

429
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,760
to assisting London prostitutes
lasted most of his adult life.

430
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:55,280
In that time he gave over £80,000 -
that's the equivalent of roughly

431
00:33:55,280 --> 00:34:01,880
£4 million today, to homes for them
to stay in and to learn a trade.

432
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:16,080
Gladstone made time to become
involved personally as well as

433
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:20,400
politically with people at the
bottom end of the ladder,
and in many ways

434
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:27,480
this great Prime Minister and great
reformer epitomised all that was
best about this age of philanthropy.

435
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:31,760
And how often nowadays do you hear
about a politician trying directly

436
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,840
to help the poor without a camera
crew or a press officer in tow?

437
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:47,040
In private Gladstone may have
been committed to the welfare of
prostitutes, but unfortunately,

438
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:54,320
as Chancellor, he voted for an
extraordinarily draconian act of
legislation affecting British women.

439
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:03,120
Faced with an escalation in sexually
transmitted infections amongst
the armed forces,

440
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:07,680
in 1864 the government passed
the Contagious Diseases Act,

441
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:13,800
a law that ruthlessly targeted women
as the problem rather than men.

442
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,640
In key garrison towns and naval
ports, women suspected of being

443
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:26,400
prostitutes would have to register,
submit themselves to an examination
to prove that they were clean,

444
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:31,920
and if they failed the test,
would be incarcerated in hospitals
until they were pronounced cured.

445
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:35,720
It seemed a bold and pragmatic idea,

446
00:35:35,720 --> 00:35:40,160
but when the act was put
into practice it created
a huge public outcry.

447
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:49,200
One problem was that the Contagious
Diseases Act affected not just
prostitutes but also ordinary women.

448
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:58,360
Under the legislation, women living
within a ten mile radius of any
army camp or naval port

449
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:03,720
which was specified in the Acts
could be picked up simply on
suspicion of being a prostitute,

450
00:36:03,720 --> 00:36:06,480
which might simply mean they were
walking down the street

451
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,640
at eight or nine o'clock at night
when any respectable woman

452
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:12,600
either would have had a chaperone
or been back in her home.

453
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:18,840
All women, whether they're
found to be suffering a venereal
disease or not, are registered,

454
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,240
and once you were registered
as a prostitute,

455
00:36:21,240 --> 00:36:23,760
whether or not there was any
evidence for that, it had a

456
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:29,000
massively detrimental effect on
women's lives in terms of their
social standing and reputation.

457
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:38,040
It had become brutally apparent that
society had one set of rules for men
and another for women,

458
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,360
something some now dared say
publicly.

459
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:44,280
But one pioneering
woman went further,

460
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,480
and decided to try and tackle
this problem at its core

461
00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:51,440
by trying to persuade men
of the error of their ways.

462
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:00,440
Ellice Hopkins was a do-gooder
who lectured others about sex

463
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,800
without, as far as we know,
ever having had any herself.

464
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:10,280
The bookish daughter of a Cambridge
don, she began her good works as
a feisty Christian evangelist.

465
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:17,280
And she once received two stems of
Brussels sprouts from a labourer
as a thank you for converting him.

466
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:23,080
When her father died,
Hopkins settled in Brighton,

467
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:26,560
a town with its fair share of vice.

468
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:32,880
In the 1860s, the local police
estimated that 350 prostitutes

469
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:37,320
worked here
and that there were 97 brothels.

470
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:43,600
Hopkins now began to visit the local
prostitutes to try to help them.

471
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:50,280
But after over a decade of hearing
the poignant stories of the women,

472
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,520
she decided a different
strategy was called for.

473
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,160
Hopkins came to think that
prevention was better than cure.

474
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:05,280
In her own words, "better a
fence at the top of a cliff
than an ambulance at the foot."

475
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:09,640
In 1879 she wrote an essay
throwing down the gauntlet.

476
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:16,280
She boldly criticised the Church of
England for only dealing with the
consequences of sexual immorality,

477
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:20,600
in its homes for fallen women, and
failing to tackle the real problem -

478
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,360
the behaviour of the nation's men.

479
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,680
It was their money that allowed
prostitutes to ply their trade,

480
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:29,600
and, she said, it was their
false promises

481
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:31,600
that tempted good women to stray

482
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:34,120
and become prostitutes
in the first place.

483
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:42,000
She declared, "My inmost soul
yearns for some agency
that could infuse in young men

484
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:46,760
"a strong and passionate sense
of the pitiful meanness of it all,

485
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:51,000
"the utter unmanliness of crushing
and degrading women,

486
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:56,280
"inflicting them with a curse which
they do not share with so much as
their little finger".

487
00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:02,000
Four years later, she got her wish.

488
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:07,120
In 1883, along with the Bishop of
Durham, she set up an organisation

489
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:11,640
with the ambitious aim
of getting men to be chaste.

490
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:16,720
It was called the White Cross Army.

491
00:39:16,720 --> 00:39:19,360
White stood for purity,

492
00:39:19,360 --> 00:39:21,480
army for disciplined strength

493
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:26,760
and the cross for the overarching
belief that the struggle was in
the name of Christ.

494
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:31,760
And the rousing motto came 
from the words given by the
poet Tennyson to Sir Galahad.

495
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:38,920
"My strength is as the strength
of ten because my heart is pure."

496
00:39:43,240 --> 00:39:47,400
The White Cross Army was inspired
by the late Victorian vogue

497
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,440
for the medieval idea of chivalry.

498
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:57,840
It was typified in tales
where noble knights served
and protected defenceless damsels.

499
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:01,880
The White Cross Army
drew up its own chivalric code,

500
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:06,240
and like with the temperance pledge,
urged its adherents to sign up.

501
00:40:06,240 --> 00:40:10,960
And the promises were - "One,
to treat all women with respect,

502
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:14,600
"and to endeavour to protect them
against wrong and degradation.

503
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:19,760
"Two, to put down all indecent
language and coarse jests.

504
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:25,840
"Three, to maintain the law
of purity as equally binding
upon men and women.

505
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:32,480
"Four, to endeavour to spread these
principles amongst my companions and
to try and help younger brothers.

506
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:39,520
"Five, to use all possible
means to fulfil the command,
'Keep thyself pure.'"

507
00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,480
Not much of an ask.

508
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,120
MUSIC:
Onward, Christian Soldiers

509
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:54,200
To us nowadays, this seems deeply
conservative, and quite funny.

510
00:40:54,200 --> 00:41:00,040
But in the 1880s, what Hopkins was
doing and saying was truly radical.

511
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:05,840
In a society run by men, where men
made all the rules, she was daring

512
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:12,080
to say, "You need to think again
about what being a good man is."

513
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:19,880
For the next four years, Hopkins
tirelessly toured the country,

514
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:23,920
speaking on a subject few polite
women would ever refer to
in public...

515
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:27,800
..male sexual desire.

516
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:36,160
She addressed mass meetings of
mostly working class or university
men, urging them to join her cause.

517
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:48,520
Public speaking, however, was only
one part of a two-pronged attack.

518
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,040
Hopkins wrote a series
of little pamphlets for men.

519
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:01,040
And this one, True Manliness,
was a bestseller.

520
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:06,680
It was published in 1883, and sold
300,000 copies in its first year.

521
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:10,760
It was reprinted again and again
over the next 30.

522
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:15,880
It was even sent out to British
troops in India, in order
to give them pause for thought.

523
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:19,960
Basically, it's a fairly primitive
sort of sex education for men,

524
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:25,000
trying to teach them
about their sexual desires
and how to control them.

525
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:31,840
And Hopkins uses the metaphor
of a rider and a horse - the rider
being man's intelligent life

526
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,440
and the horse
being his baser instincts.

527
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:37,560
This will give you a flavour of it.

528
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,480
"There is nothing low or vile
in the animal body in itself,

529
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:45,000
"just as there is nothing low
or vile in the horse in itself,

530
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:49,600
"as long as the man is uppermost
and the beast is undermost.

531
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:55,640
"It is only when the animal throws
the rider and drags him through the
dirt at his heels, only when the man

532
00:42:55,640 --> 00:43:02,800
"obeys the beast rather
than the beast obeying the man,
that disorder and death ensue.

533
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:06,000
"The man or the maddened beast,

534
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:07,720
"which is it to be?"

535
00:43:09,240 --> 00:43:14,560
Luckily, she gives some practical
help in how to control that beast.

536
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:17,440
"Take plenty of exercise.

537
00:43:17,440 --> 00:43:23,080
"Go in strongly for cricket,
boating, athletics of all kinds,
bicycling, tricycling...

538
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,160
"Break your nose if you like.

539
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:29,680
"Only don't break a woman's heart
and smash your own manliness

540
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:33,600
"by making the weak suffer so that
YOU may have a good time of it."

541
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:43,600
Unfortunately, Hopkins' immense
productivity had a shattering
impact on her health.

542
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:49,800
Eventually, she was forced
to retire from public life.

543
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:57,680
She lived on as in invalid
in Brighton for 16 years, still
writing books on sex education.

544
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:07,120
Unlike those of many 19th-century
do-gooders, Hopkins' former home
is not adorned with a blue plaque.

545
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:10,040
In fact, she is
barely remembered at all.

546
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:13,280
The White Cross Army has
long since been disbanded,

547
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:17,880
and the idea of social purity
doesn't really interest
anyone any more.

548
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:19,680
But she should not be forgotten.

549
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:23,280
In an age where the moral
responsibility for sex was assumed

550
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:25,680
to lie almost entirely
with the woman,

551
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:28,840
she tried to change
the cultural status quo.

552
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:32,720
She spoke out bravely on issues
which were widely considered taboo,

553
00:44:32,720 --> 00:44:39,280
and dedicated herself
and ultimately sacrificed her health
to try and improve women's lives.

554
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,480
She may seem an
odd sort of feminist to us,

555
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:46,400
but in her time she was an original
thinker and a powerful voice

556
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:51,360
in stirring up a complacent
national male conscience.

557
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:05,000
Despite Hopkins' tireless
contribution, erasing the sexual
double standard was a tall order.

558
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:10,520
It took 20 years for Gladstone's
government to repeal the notorious
Contagious Diseases Act.

559
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:12,560
And even 120 years on,

560
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:17,720
that double standard
is still something
that educators find hard to address.

561
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,920
Daniel McMillan works for
Brook Sexual Health Services,

562
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:31,560
and runs workshops for groups
of young men and women
on sex and relationships.

563
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:39,960
If Ellice Hopkins were around
today, I think she'd have a mix
of disappointment and hope.

564
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:46,120
Young men are opening up more. They
are having conversations about love
and trust and caring relationships.

565
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:51,240
But disappointment that the level
of responsibility amongst young
people seems to be dropping.

566
00:45:51,240 --> 00:45:57,760
The men still rely on women to take
on the caring role - not only at home
but in their own relationships.

567
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:03,280
Sometimes they'll talk quite
degradingly about girls
in their peer group,

568
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:10,040
but if you say anything bad
about a young man's mother
or sister, he's ready for a fight,

569
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:13,520
but somehow fails to make the link
between his mother or sister

570
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:19,120
and the fact that the girls he's
talking about are somebody's daughter
or sister as well.

571
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:25,880
I think it's a poor indictment
on society, really,
about how far we've moved on.

572
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:33,240
Back in mid-Victorian Britain,
government was getting bigger,

573
00:46:33,240 --> 00:46:36,720
and expanding into the
realm of the do-gooder.

574
00:46:38,240 --> 00:46:41,680
The public's strong reaction
against the Contagious Diseases Act

575
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:48,240
demonstrated that sexual behaviour
was a minefield for legislators
and best avoided.

576
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:53,880
Nonetheless, Prime Minister
William Gladstone was optimistic

577
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:59,720
that he might have more luck calling
time on that other vice - boozing.

578
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:05,920
In 1871, his government
introduced a controversial bill

579
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:09,920
to reduce pub opening hours.

580
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:16,080
The bill went down badly
on all sides.

581
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:20,560
The staunch teetotallers
who favoured abolition
claimed it didn't go far enough.

582
00:47:20,560 --> 00:47:25,640
Other social reformers, including
Joseph Livesey, objected
on the grounds that the bill

583
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:30,040
attacked the MEANS
of providing drink
rather than the causes of drinking.

584
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:35,560
Meanwhile, the brewers,
the publicans
and the drinkers were all furious.

585
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:42,880
800,000 of them signed a petition
against the bill - which eventually
appeared in a watered-down form.

586
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:46,320
But it was still too much
for the spirit of John Bull.

587
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:50,080
When the police tried to enforce
earlier closing hours,

588
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:55,560
there were riots -
many of them accompanied by
raucous choruses of Rule, Britannia!

589
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,440
with stress on the defiant words

590
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:01,040
"Britons never, never, never
shall be slaves."

591
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:05,120
Gladstone lost the subsequent
general election, and he declared,

592
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:09,640
"We have been borne down
in a torrent of gin and beer."

593
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:11,520
MUSIC: "Rule, Britannia!"

594
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:19,440
It seemed Britons
had strong opinions

595
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:23,000
about how far they were going to let
their government intrude

596
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:24,760
into their private lives -

597
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:31,040
even if their behaviour
WAS leading to poverty,
sickness and an early grave.

598
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,520
But in the face of all evidence
to the contrary,

599
00:48:40,520 --> 00:48:44,840
some do-gooders still thought
it was a fight that could be won.

600
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:57,040
One such uncompromising idealist
was Frederick Charrington,

601
00:48:57,040 --> 00:49:03,920
who when he was 20, in the 1870s,
witnessed a scene which would
change the course of his life.

602
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:13,400
Charrington was walking past an East
End pub in a particularly miserable
part of the city,

603
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:19,400
when he witnessed a young woman
with two children in tow begging
her drunken husband for help.

604
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,360
"Oh, Tom," she pleaded,
"do give me some money.

605
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:25,160
"The children
are crying out for bread."

606
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:28,840
He was deaf to her pleas,
and simply thumped her.

607
00:49:28,840 --> 00:49:32,200
She slumped to the ground.
Charrington was appalled.

608
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:37,160
When he looked up,
he saw his own family's name.

609
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:43,480
Charrington's family owned one
of the biggest breweries in London,

610
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:44,800
and they'd always assumed

611
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,960
that he would one day
take over the business.

612
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:52,200
But now he gave up his inheritance,
worth £1.25 million,

613
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:54,520
and swore
he'd devote his life

614
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:58,800
to expunging the
worst vices of the poor.

615
00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:07,480
Charrington waged war on what he
considered the greatest moral danger

616
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:10,280
facing the people
of the East End...

617
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,760
..the music halls,
which he called "music hells".

618
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:21,000
# Will ya, won't ya,
won't ya, will ya

619
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:25,040
# Won't ya buy some beer...? #

620
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:33,520
Their patrons found them a good
place to forget your troubles
after a hard day's work.

621
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:35,400
Not so Charrington.

622
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:41,280
To him they were a sleazy hotbed
of intoxication and fornication.

623
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,480
# ..won't ya buy some beer? #

624
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:52,960
One of his key battlegrounds
was Wilton's, a theatre

625
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:57,880
near the East End docks just off
the notorious Ratcliffe Highway.

626
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:06,400
Charrington decided to go straight
to the heart of the viper's nest.

627
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:12,600
In February 1877, he took over
Wilton's on Sunday nights to put on

628
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:20,280
his own show, a religious service
championing self-restraint and
temperance, and offering redemption.

629
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:25,120
The audience was the usual mix
of local lowlife, a lot of sailors

630
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:29,080
and "girls of loose character"
associated with them.

631
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:33,920
But whilst they may have been drawn
out of curiosity - even disbelief -

632
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:39,840
many of them left inspired by
Charrington's vigorous Christianity.

633
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:48,600
Of course, weekly meetings, however
successful, did little to dilute
the popularity of the music halls.

634
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:52,800
Charrington turned to direct action.

635
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:56,800
He took to demonstrating
outside theatres, night after night,

636
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:02,800
handing out leaflets aimed
to dissuade patrons and prostitutes
from entering the premises.

637
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:07,120
These were entitled
This Way To The Pit Of Hell -

638
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:11,720
which is quite off-putting if you
were hoping for a jolly night out.

639
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:18,240
When this failed, Charrington
tried to co-opt the law.

640
00:52:18,240 --> 00:52:23,880
He won a seat on the London County
Council, now responsible for
granting alcohol licences.

641
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,640
When any music hall requested one,
he opposed it.

642
00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:35,000
But his fellow councillors
refused to back him.

643
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:37,840
They knew what their
electorate wanted.

644
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:42,000
The case was summed up
by one journalist who wrote,

645
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:44,480
"We do not want to be made moral

646
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:50,360
"by a paternal council,
any more than we wish to be made
sober by an act of parliament.

647
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:57,320
"And the sooner the council turns
itself to its own business,
the better we shall be pleased."

648
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:04,640
Unable to change society,

649
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:10,080
Charrington took the ultimate
step for the do-gooder -
and set out to build his own.

650
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:19,920
In 1903 he bought an island called
Osea, only 40 miles from London,

651
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:22,120
off an estuary in Essex.

652
00:53:24,320 --> 00:53:28,880
Here, he pursued his vision
to create a temperance colony...

653
00:53:30,440 --> 00:53:34,080
..and a home
for recovering inebriates.

654
00:53:38,720 --> 00:53:41,000
This is Rivermere, a large,

655
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:45,920
luxurious manor house
in a prime south-facing location
on the edge of the shore.

656
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:50,520
It had everything for
a perfect English seaside holiday -

657
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:56,360
except, no beer after a bracing
walk, no claret with supper,

658
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:58,760
and no port in the billiard room.

659
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:02,080
It was going to be fun...
without drink.

660
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:12,040
Charrington had high hopes of
spending time on the island himself.

661
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:18,120
He liked to quote the 18th-century
English poet William Cowper,
on the pleasures of island life.

662
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,680
"I am monarch of all I survey.

663
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:23,800
"My right, there is none
to dispute."

664
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:27,880
But dispute it, they did -

665
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:31,800
and before too long,
there was trouble in paradise.

666
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:38,200
Osea was meant to be entirely dry,
but stories soon began to circulate

667
00:54:38,200 --> 00:54:43,120
of recovering alcoholics bribing
local fishermen to smuggle in booze.

668
00:54:45,280 --> 00:54:50,200
One method was to tie bottles to
trees and posts along the shoreline,

669
00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:53,160
submerged, so that then
when the tide went out,

670
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:56,880
they could scamper down,
pick them up, and no-one would know.

671
00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:04,840
Despite these setbacks, Charrington
was still convinced that his utopia

672
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:07,840
had a glorious, popular future.

673
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:13,080
Osea was going to be a rival to
Brighton or Southend, but without

674
00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:17,280
the drunken excesses of the
day-trippers who flocked
to those resorts.

675
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:22,120
As it happened,
the advent of the First World War

676
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:25,360
put a stop to Charrington's
grander plans for Osea.

677
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:30,560
But it's doubtful that it
would ever have lived up
to his high expectations.

678
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:33,680
The problem was, and is -

679
00:55:33,680 --> 00:55:37,360
that people always WANT
a Brighton or a Southend.

680
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:42,520
There's only a certain amount
of do-gooding that the country
will put up with -

681
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:46,640
even from someone as well-meaning
as Frederick Charrington.

682
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:52,160
"Drink is a terrible social evil,
and I'm going to help you cope
with the consequences."

683
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:54,280
"Yeah. OK."

684
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,360
"I'm going to stop you
drinking anything ever again."

685
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:02,080
"Er...no, thanks. Not for us, no."

686
00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:10,840
We may have rejected the likes of
Charrington - but that doesn't mean,
as with prostitution,

687
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:13,240
that we've yet found a solution

688
00:56:13,240 --> 00:56:18,160
to the nation's desire to
overindulge in booze,
and its consequences.

689
00:56:20,080 --> 00:56:21,920
I think there probably
IS an epidemic

690
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:23,640
of excessive drinking in Britain.

691
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:26,160
The statistics would bear that out.

692
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:29,160
The cost to the health service
would bear that out.

693
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:32,080
The drunks in the streets,
the misbehaviour on Friday

694
00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:35,680
and Saturday nights - I think that's
probably the tip of the iceberg.

695
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:39,360
There are huge numbers of people

696
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:43,920
who would not for one second
consider that they
have an alcohol problem,

697
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:48,640
who are drinking excessively,
and put themselves at risk
of developing serious

698
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:53,280
and even fatal disease related
to their alcohol consumption.

699
00:56:54,240 --> 00:57:01,960
If temperance members visited
the centre of most towns or cities
in the country at the weekend,

700
00:57:01,960 --> 00:57:08,280
I think they would be both amazed
and distressed by what they saw.

701
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:12,240
And I think they would be rushing
very rapidly to the nearest church

702
00:57:12,240 --> 00:57:15,800
to find some divine inspiration
as to what to do next.

703
00:57:26,080 --> 00:57:30,280
Recently, Osea again became
a dry island.

704
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:36,560
For five years, it operated as
a centre which offered help
to alcoholics and other addicts.

705
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:44,440
Society still has problems with
excessive alcohol and devalued sex.

706
00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:48,480
We still have problems
with poverty, neglect and abuse.

707
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:55,000
And we are still suspicious
of people who believe
they can do something about it.

708
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:59,560
Like our Victorian ancestors,
we bristle at the idea

709
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:03,520
of the authorities telling US
how to live our lives.

710
00:58:03,520 --> 00:58:07,360
And yet we demand that those very
authorities step in and sort it out

711
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:09,520
the minute something goes wrong.

712
00:58:09,520 --> 00:58:15,200
We say no to the nanny state,
yet we expect the welfare state
to protect everyone.

713
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:18,600
We look to professionals
to make a difference - to teachers,

714
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:23,120
to policeman, to social workers -
rather than doing it ourselves.

715
00:58:25,240 --> 00:58:28,960
The great do-gooders haven't been
fashionable for a long time now -

716
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:33,200
their achievements underrated,
their absurdities accentuated.

717
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:40,480
But I think as time passes and
we look at them again - less sure
of ourselves in the 21st century -

718
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,800
we may be ready
for the tide of opinion to turn.

719
00:59:02,560 --> 00:59:05,600
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720
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:08,640
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