How to be a Victorian

by Ruth Goodman

I want to explore a more intimate, personal and physical sort of history, a history from the inside out: one that celebrates the ordinary and charts the lives of the common man, woman and child as they interact with the practicalities of their world. I want to look into the minds of our ancestors and witness their hopes, fears and assumptions, no matter how apparently minor. In short, I am in search of a history of those things that make up the day-to-day reality of life. What was it really like to be alive in a different time and place?

My research has given me tremendous sympathy and admiration for those who somehow, despite dire circumstances, battled through. People such as Tony Widger, who quietly worked away in his kitchen in his underwear at dawn, carefully preparing a cup of tea and a biscuit for him and his wife to have in bed before they embarked upon their exhausting day’s industry of fishing and housework respectively. Or Hannah Cullwick, who was required to complete two hours of work before preparing her employer’s breakfast, and then her own. And not to forget six-year-old William Arnold, who stood alone in a field in January from dawn until dusk scaring crows, without even a bite to eat until he walked home after dark. All these people, ordinary in so many ways, seem to me heroic in their endurance, fortitude, love and commitment to their families.