The Outrageously Lethal Life Of A Victorian Matchmaker | History of Britain | Absolute History 

You always hear about the old days "when women didn't work." When was that, exactly? It seems like women have always worked...

I thought it was going to be about a person who made romantic matches hahaha

I remember. An Incendiary Bomb went through the roof and into our bed. My Sister and I survived because my Mother woke us up one minute before to go downstairs to the air raid shelter in the garden. My Mum used to wait til the bombing was really bad to wake us up. God Bless our Mum.💕🕊

Turns out 90% of this is not about Victorian match makers

I’m watching this from Nashville, Tennessee. As a young married - about 20 years ago - I worked in a local assisted living home. One of our residents was an English woman who was a young woman in London during the Blitz. I encouraged her to share all of the memories about that time as she liked. Her recollections were fascinating, am I’m so lucky to have heard them.

22:20 wild that it actually went "can you make labor laws so women aren't exploited in the coal mines?" "no" "did I mention they're topless?" "say no more"

The thing about living in the countryside during the war...before I switched majors from photography to jewelry the jewelry professor was an older English gentleman. We had artists come talk about their work when it was displayed in the gallery and he had a display. He told us all about getting out of bed, the view from the bomb shelter doorway laying next to his little sister, and the Christmas that Santa brought him a real airplane. He heard a loud boom and crash and out in the snowy field was a real plane! His mother went out, and told him to put on a kettle and get some of the Christmas biscuits they had just made. So she retrieved the German pilot, sat him at the kitchen table, with the children, she called the police, and they all sat there as the sun came up sharing tea and biscuits until the police arrived. I thought...Dang his mom was bad ass! She ran out there in her housecoat to make sure that the pilot wasn't injured, brought him in from the cold, fed him, but also called the cops because he was the enemy.

The match girls developed "phossy jaw", but MANY MANY years later the girls who worked in dial-painting factories developed radium jaw, in which the teeth fell out and the lower jaw eventually came off. People don't learn.

They seem to be forgetting the fact that men running the mines did more than just beat these women. They also committed SA on women on a daily basis along with beating them. This happened to working women for every generation where women working outside the home. This is history that nobody talks about….ever. ~Historian

"Wow, dating sounds really hard during Victorian times. What's up with that? OOHHHHHHHH, matches-matches."

Funny. It was in the 60s that I remember my mother referring to a girl she didn't 'approve' of as a 'shop girl'

"Nothing the Victorians liked more than setting fire to things." That was cute 😄

23:31 JUST LIKE QUEEN VICTORIAS WAISTLINE- STOP I JUST CHOKED ON MY CEREAL

For the story about the man who went on a trip to blackpool I was waiting for them to explain why his wife didn't wake up.....did anyone else think she died and he went to the beach anyway 😆🤣 like dam b*tch I had a whole day planned and you ain't gonna spoil it again! 🤣🤣🤣😅

Actually the full quote is " The customer is always right in matters of taste" soneven if the hat ghastly you couldn't tell them that just let them buy it.

No wonder lifespans were so short.

21:08 That's not knitting, that's crocheting. The afghan on the back of the rocking chair was crocheted as well.

Kinda frustrating to hear bout how hard these ppl worked just to live in impoverished conditions while their employers could have cared less bout them all n forced the women to work 6 grueling days with no breaks except a lunch hour that was controlled too (forced to eat inside the factory on in the floor in a phosphorus filled environment.) crazy, man.

56:29 "I'm meeting Alex Jones, a war veteran and army historian to find out more." They had us in the first half, not gonna lie. XD

My grandfathers brother fought in the war sadly almost a year he was killed while guarding a bridge I think a few days before D-Day I am told he was a very smart young man I would have loved to have met him

Took me way too long to realize it's not about setting people up. "Can't sleep" me is a moron.

"GET STUFFED!" Wonderful retort to a higher rank.

33:50 "Four candles" "No... fork-handles! Handles for forks!"

Tony's such a great storyteller.

I love Tony Robinson so much, he has such a passion for history which is so contagious

It must be so awesome to know your history like this, I'm literally jealous of Sarah's great great grand daughter 😩

What a very interesting documentary. My parents were children here in the states during the war. I remember them telling us about their experiences, but then they'd talk about the British and what they knew about their experiences and the difference was striking. My great uncles were in the war and 2 were in d-day and they were very talkative about their time in Britain but not about their actual combat experiences.

Im not british but I love this channel! Its so informative and entertaining.

Love this documentary, being able to look into the world of ur average victorian.😊and Tony Robinson is an amazing storyteller.

i was think this was about the job of husband finder lol still a good show

We don't know how good we have it

thank you for a daily life historical view of the common people

I absolutely love these videos, they make my day a lot brighter. Thank you ❤

It's interesting to know how women were banned from mining: that it happened after some hysteria about alleged indecency (partial nudity), and that this was neither the natural state of things nor done out of any practical concern for women's health/safety.

Too much drink seems to nearly always caused mean and violent behaviors.

I recall Deparment Stores in the US having the floor clerks put the money and sales ticket in a vacuum tube and it was sent upstairs to the Accounting Office. Change if there was sent back the same way with the receipt. . This was the 1950s through 70s. I used to watch those tubes fly over the ceiling. Sales for many years happened like that since Victorian Times.

Tony Robinson at his best. And the rest of the team and actors in no way behind a step!! Excellent film. Special for a - non Brit - like me, to make me understand what it indeed it was in the - good old times -. Though i wonder if anyone still remembers, not me, I only have heard about it, packets of OMO washing powder in certain windows. OMO meaning -Old Man Out- and the lady of the house was ready to have some fun on the side...

My grandfather (rest his soul) went to boarding school that was in eyesight of the largest RAF training ground in the UK. It got attacked at one point when he was about 9 or 10 and remembers it as this hugely exciting thing all the boys thought was just the coolest ever (though they used different words lol). I looked back as an adult and found records of it; 57 englishmen died and over a hundred germans did, with heaps of planes being shot down or crashing into the hills/coast. Utterly horrific, but I guess my grandfather was innoculated against that? Funny thing was, his dad was a congregationalist minister (which was a 180° turn from his earlier days as a prod in northern ireland.. yeahhh), and was an PoW pretty early on in the war, where he stayed for the duration, and actually was given the opportunity to return home as part of a POW exchange, but for some reason unknown to us he never did (plot twist, we _had_ never known but have a strong suspicion we know why now....). He was allowed to tour the camps as he was the highest ranking CoE minister (or vicar? not sure what they call the clergy in CoE) but because of that under religious grounds they cycled him thru various PoW camps, including Colditz, which he was at during the escape (but had no part in it). We were always curious, so tried to get more info about his time in the war in about 2015 or 2016... but MI6 said it was all still classified?? We had to apply do declassify it, but we got a lot of info, despite heavy redactions... turns out that he was literally a spy. He was instructed, as part of his task, to pretty much let himself be captured on purpose and was then used as a vehicle to smuggle maps and attack plans and such things in his hymnbook in invisible ink, and he got away with it due to the agreed neutrality of churchmen he wasn't as vigorously searched/attacked and thus got away with it and none of us knew a thing, as he never said a word before he died. Totally wild thing to discover. We think it was classified still because it's kind of breaking the rules of war, using a churchman to participate; like how the modern CIA won't ever pretend to be journalists or clergymen... it's playing dirty and is pretty dangerous to risk such agreements that are supposed to keep both sides honest in war... But perhaps that was the sort of man he was, an angry, redheaded irishman with an accent so thick you could barely understand him, as my mother tells it. He was, unfortunately, also a very cruel man, and tormented my mother, and neglected his wife and children emotionally, and he was like that before the war but had a mental breakdown after, where he was catatonic for about 4 months and spent 8 months in a sanatorium recovering. He must've seen some horrible stuff. Funnily enough my great grandfather on my dad's side of the family was a veteran of WW1, battle of the Somme. He lay in the mud for 3 days, a bullet wedged in and almost through his sternum, mere mm from his heart (which stayed there his whole life like fekn tony stark) before someone kicked him and he groaned; he used to recount the "Oi, this one's still alive!" to my grandfather when he was a kid, but that was really all he said about the war. He was a swedish sailor, but had an english mother and was educated in britain so felt a nationalistic pride and enlisted, despite being like 42 (he said he was 37, and did look like 10 years younger than he was, I saw the pictures). He was a 6'7" giant of a man, and was a man of few words. He was also born in _1887_ and _his_ grandfather was born in _1770._ When he married my great grandmother (who I did know) when he was 47, and she was 29, and his father and grandfather all married when they were in their 40's or 50's so there are shockingly few generations (only five!!) compared to most people that link me back to the 18th century on that one line. There are a more normal amounts on my other lines (a much more normal 7 to 10 generations) across the same stretch of time. It's bananas.

9:40 doubtless the average person worked hard, but to ignore how colonialism (aka the empire) contributed to the wealth of the UK …. Many peoples and places around the world contributed (willingly or not) to building the wealth. I get that the harmful effects of colonialism isn’t something the average person would have been conscious of, but I guess I expect a little more critical analysis. I like learning what life was like for various people back in the day, but to describe how the UK gained wealth in these terms is really disappointing. Maybe I’m not the audience for a video like this.

It's amazing how much information historians find

What a fascinating show! Thank you for sharing these videos!

22:24 "the girls!!! THEY ARE NAKED >:O" the delivery of that line gets me every time, gotta love Tony

I'm so glad of this program because there are film depictions of the London, we're from Deptford, of my English ancestors. The degrees of separation are now too great for me to feel any emotional belonging yet because we all have to be from somewhere the London Docks area suits me well and I feel the good fortune because of this.

I am addicted to your documentaires , I absolutely LOVE them ! They are all so interesting, entraining and fun , thank you ❤!

I was half expecting the story of Angus the ditch digger, and tunnel miner to end with something to do with a sheep 😂

I looove this show. I’m beginning to feel like I know a lot more about English history than my own (American) lol

Hubert, the man who distributed G.U.N.S. newspapers, as well as the rest of those men have my utmost respect. Glad Hubert was able to make it out of the Nazi’s grasp. Screw Nazis.

Mining still kept using kids for another 100 years or so and even longer here in the USA. Why do we only change the most horrendous behaviors after MANY deaths of the innocent?

Gives "Keep Calm and carry on," a new outlook in my mind. What a fascinating documentary series. It's always been the most interesting era to me. War: It's one thing from history that they still haven't learned from. But, I could watch that b&w footage all day.

I believe you owe every badger an apology!

I love this channel, and you are one of my favorite host. I love finding out all these cool stories. You find out little bits of your history add to paint a bigger brighter picture. On my mom's side we have family that came over on the Mayflower and I'm a descendant of William Bradford governor of the colony, our family name is in the Book of Harold, my sister's got to go see but I have not got to go there. And on my dad side he's half Italian half German and he was born here. When it always came to Family Tree stuff in school I always had to do the bigger presentation cuz I always had more of the paperwork and everything but my mom's the one that's got ahold of all that stuff and actually keeps finding out more stuff

Very informative, and of course well done by Tony Robinson. Great editing as well!

Would have been nice to have listed the demands which were met in the match factory.

This is a fantastic episode, thank you so much!

My dumb ass thinking this was gonna be about people who arrange marriages

I find it very annoying that he mentions the wages of these hard working people in history without using any conversion rate as to what it would be today.

I was happy to hear attention given to Bethnal Green. 1878 my mother's relatives lived at 11 Bethnal St, When I found out about their existence in Victorian I learned a lot. They came to Australia to work in the mines of Mt Isa, Emerald, and Mt Morgan. Hard people they were.

@4:55 ...Oddly enough, when I was a packer at an Amazon fulfillment center during the peak rush from Black Friday through Xmas Eve, I worked the overnight shift, 13 hours a day, 6 days a week - virtually all of it on my feet. The more things change...

Here I thought it was the Victorian Era "Perfect Match" TV show equivalent!!

Fantastic video.

LOL I thought this was about Love matchmakers and was so confused why that would give them a funny jaw 😂

It's always funny to me how the *Most Played* section of these videos ALWAYS co-inside with the end of the "In-reel ads" that nobody wants to watch... after all, Isn't that WHY some of us PAY for the RU-vid experience? to avoid the ads? No?

Renting part of a bed sounds like a great way to get no sleep.

Enola Holmes 2 anyone? Sarah Chapman is one of the main characters and it’s all about the mistreatment in the match making factory

Hmm, almost clickbait, because of the double meaning of the word matchmaker. 😏Plus, the actual topic is interesting and so whoever chose the title did a good enough job to keep me watching even after I realized it was match maker as in the maker of matches. Nice, Absolute History, nice.

what I love about tony is he talks about us, the working class

Very interesting!

I improve my english and It's so interresting and funny. It's so english humor.

The Black Beauty soundtrack brought a huge smile to my face😊. Hadn't heard it in years, and it's always been one of those uplifting tunes that draw me right back to those childhood days. I really enjoy this series you're putting out, thank you ❤

Sigh. Why did they find the need to make this show so silly? It’s just too cringeworthy to watch.

3rd world countries, many still are in these conditions, think about it.

Elizabeth such a amazing person

I love this-the real history that flows just benith the surface!

Sinister threat of Wale Meat? Surely meat shortages were not so bad they had eat Welshmen.

Every time I see a documentary that includes coal mines in Britain....I get so pissed...I always think of Aberfan.

My great grandfather owned a match factory in Lincolnshire. When it burned down in the 1870's, he decided to start over again in America. That's why I'm a Yank and not a Brit.

Oh a literal match maker lolol

Imagine if some cataclysmic event took place and knocked out the world's electric, and people today had to work 1/2 this hard until the grids could be repaired.

Great documentary. Loved it!

The video keeps coming and going.

I love Absolute history documentaries but the editing style of this particular one really feels more like for children than for adults, I couldn't watch it to the end, I just can't stand overuse of sound effects and whiplash editing, it completely breaks the immersion the viewer feels when watching something about an older period. Older Docus from this channel were much more easy to listen to and I really like them.

Workers were not permitted to take lunch outdoors? Why?

I learn so much here,lo,thanks v your work

There is a great book called “Radium Girls” by Kate Moore. It is the story of the girls who painted the watch faces with radium so the numbers and hands glowed in the dark. It is well written and very eye-opening.

Matches barely light at all these days. 😂

I think Babs was ok cause everyone was in it together, everyone knew and understood, and people are always ok if they feel safe! Bless them ❤ If my husband, son, brother or nephew etc got called to war and didn’t have a choice, I would of broken their legs! I couldn’t handle having them taken from me! War is so so cruel! And the people who create these wars sit in offices and bark orders! Absolutely heartbreaking ❤️‍🩹

I thought this was about matchmakers as in those who help set up people for marriage 😂😂

Whenever I’ve had to go through ordeals like 9/11 and more recent catastrophic events, I remember the fortitude of the British people through numerous wars and tragedies.

Still a invaluable item in south Africa sadly

This man makes dark subjects so upbeat.

How could a Match Girl earn £16.00 a week? My first job at 18 years as a Secretary in London earned £4.10 shillings a week in 1954?

Great job ❤

It’s Tony!!!!! What a great surprise!

I see Tony Robinson, I like it.

A burning fire Matchmaker, not a burning romance Matchmaker? U buffs fooled the audience ! 🤪

I love the cheeky jokes lol

But like what happened to Marianne?

Maybe this is where the term “matchmaker” comes from…they would strike up a “flame” 😉

Strike on Box Only matches are worthless.

Excuse me for reminding you ww2 was not just decided by the US alone. One should never forget the Russians, Polish, other Europeans, Canadians, the resistance in every country. And that the US would not have joined if not for Hawaii.