Victorian

The Tanner
Leather was a vital Victorian commodity and tanners were highly skilled workers, but they were forced to live on the fringes of society because of the noxious stink that went with the job. Raw hides were dipped in a sickly-sweet smelling lime solution for a week before the tanner scraped off the rotting flesh and hair. They were then soaked in ‘bate’ - warm, steaming gravy made from water and dog faeces, which removed the lime, softened the hides and stank the yard out something terrible! Over the next year, the hides would be soaked in various tanning solutions before the meticulous rinsing and drying out process began. The work was dull, strenuous and very, very smelly. Little wonder that tanners usually married other tanners!

The Pure Collector
‘Pure’ is actually the word for dog poo! The pure collector roamed the streets, scooping the poop left by our canine friends, not for health and hygiene reasons, but for profit. Well someone had to provide the tanners with enough doggie-do-do for their ‘bate’!

The Match Maker
We’re not talking about the kind of matchmaker who gets happy couples together, but the kind who actually makes matches. They were mostly women, paid a pittance in a job that could disfigure them for life. Matches were made by dipping small sticks of wood into white phosphorus - a toxic substance that caused ‘phossy jaw’. The match maker would first get a toothache; the jaw would then swell up with weeping abscesses and slowly rot away. The only treatment was surgical removal of the jawbone, an agonizing operation that would disfigure the sufferer for life.

Workhouse Jobs
The worst fear of the poor in Victorian society was to be sent to the workhouse; once you were there it was extremely difficult to get out again and was often worse than being in prison. Most of the inmates were very young or very old, unmarried mothers and the mentally impaired. One workhouse job was oakum picker, unravelling old, tar covered rope, which would rub the fingers raw. If an inmate were young and healthy they would be used as stonebreakers, breaking rocks into smaller stones used to make road foundations. Inmates weren’t paid for the jobs they did, they just got a bed and the most meagre rations.

The Mud Lark
Mud larks were scavengers, often very small children, who had to make a living by poking around in mud on the banks of the River Thames. But it wasn’t just confined to mud. In Victorian London, the sewers emptied into the Thames and mud larks would have no choice but to wade through excrement while scavenging. They couldn’t afford shoes and wore nothing but rags, even in freezing conditions. Nails and glass would stick in their feet and disease and infection was all around them. But if a mud lark didn’t collect enough coal, metal or anything else they could sell before the tide rose, they would starve until they could begin hunting through the excrement again when the tide had subsided.