richardmurray
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King Arthur's Lost Kingdom from Secrets of the Dead
MY THOUGHTS
So the angles+ saxons were scandanavian farmers who intermated with the peoples of the british isles focusing on trade to denmark to germany, focused to the east[modern day southern/eastern central england], then in the west[modern day wales, western england] the people of the british isles traded with the mediterranean, the sea lanes from the eastern meditteranean through the Jabal Tariq.north around the coast to tintagel. Which i realize now is like AL hambra in Spain, the last viestiges of a militaristically+financially powerful region that exist foreignly to its neighbors/
VIDEO
Uniform Resource Locator
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/king-arthurs-lost-kingdom-king-arthurs-lost-kingdom-about-the-film/4069/TRANSCRIPT
-In the rich recorded history of Great Britain, one period is shrouded in mystery and clouded by myth.
After an occupation lasting nearly 400 years, in 410 AD, the Roman army abandoned the island.
History holds that Britain then plunged into two centuries of turmoil and violence... known as the Dark Ages.
Legends tell of a great leader who unites the lawless land to fight off an invading horde -- King Arthur.
But how much truth is there to the story?
♪♪ Now, new archaeological discoveries are rewriting this chapter in Britain's history.
-It's really clear!
-With exclusive access to unprecedented new finds... -When you look at their bones, you find a very, very low incidence of weapon injury, sword cuts.
-...and using groundbreaking science... -It was one of those total wow moments.
-...Professor Alice Roberts pieces together the real story... -It's just absolutely phenomenal.
We've got continuous occupation all along this strip which is immense.
-...to reveal how 5th and 6th century Britain was anything but dark.
-We're not looking at an abandoned landscape of desperate poverty.
-It's not necessarily the truth.
-It's about as far removed from history as you can get.
-Modern archaeology could finally uncover the true story of King Arthur's Lost Kingdom.
♪♪ ♪♪ -In 410 AD, Britain suffered a political catastrophe.
The Roman Empire that covered most of Western Europe had become over-stretched, weakened by infighting and external attacks.
After 400 years of prosperity, the Roman aristocracy, troops and bureaucrats left the island.
♪♪ -Dies tenebrosa sicut nox.
It's a brilliant, evocative way of saying "Welcome to the Dark Ages."
-The common belief is that the Roman departure had a devastating impact across Britain.
Without Roman authority, society collapses.
The roads and towns fall into ruin.
Civilization crumbles.
The era after Roman rule became known as the Dark Ages.
But the truth is, almost nothing is known about what life was really like.
-For the period 400 to 600 -- that's 200 years, that's 8, 10 generations -- we know the names of... you can kind of count them on two hands.
For the whole of the period 400 to 600, in the British Isles we have 2 or 3 people whose writing we have fragments of.
-In the absence of recorded history, stories about one powerful leader became popular -- The great King Arthur.
But what truth, if any, lies behind the legend?
What was 5th-century Britain really like?
Professor Alice Roberts, an expert in archaeology and human remains, wants to separate fact from fiction using scientific discoveries- and find out what really happened at this pivotal moment in history.
♪♪ Her journey to uncover the truth about King Arthur's Britain begins at the British Library in London.
She's meeting Julian Harrison, the Curator of Medieval Manuscripts.
-So this is Geoffrey.
-Here we have one of the earliest copies of Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain."
-It's a copy of a 12th-century bestseller.
The writing on the animal-skin parchment is still crystal clear.
-The script is so beautiful.
It's so regular.
That's fantastic.
-900 years ago, a Welsh monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote his own account of the history of Britain.
His chronicle told of a King Arthur who ruled 600 years before Geoffrey's time.
-Here we are.
Here's the page I want to show you.
-Geoffrey's manuscript is in Latin, the written language of medieval Britain.
-I can recognize the odd word here.
I can see concept and then "eadem nocte."
-" Eadem nocte."
So, this tells you that on this night, "eadem nocte," was conceived, celebrated, King Arthur, "Arturus," "Arturum."
-According to Geoffrey, the mythical king has a rather bizarre conception.
Arthur's father asked the wizard Merlin to cast a spell to disguise him as the Duke of Cornwall, so he could seduce the Duke's wife.
-He's in the appearance of her husband and he satisfies himself, and as a result on that particular night, on that particular occasion Arthur was conceived.
-That moment as those words appear on the page, that's the beginning of King Arthur as we know him.
♪♪ -A remote rocky outcrop called Tintagel in the far west of Britain is where Arthur's story begins.
-It's in the top line there.
-That looks like "dece" to me.
-It says "dei" and then there's a new word.
-Tin-ta-gol.
-"Tintagol."
Exactly.
-Is this the first association of Tintagel as a place with Arthur?
-It is indeed.
-Packed with sex and violence, Geoffrey's account unfolds like a modern-day action movie.
-It's full of excitement, it's full of horror, it's full of lots of things that an audience would love.
-And eager to please his Christian audience, Geoffrey came up with the perfect bad guys.
With the Romans gone, the ancient Britons are vulnerable to attack.
In Geoffrey's retelling, pagan tribes known as the Angles and the Saxons swarm in from modern-day Holland, Germany and Denmark.
Their armies invade the east coast of Great Britain, destroying everything in their path.-I suppose he gives us this idea today that the Romans abandoned Britain to its fate and when the Romans go it is just chaos.There's plagues, there's civil war, there's the Saxons just slaughtering everybody.So it's real blood and thunder stuff.-But according to Geoffrey, Arthur comes out of the West, unites the Britons, and leads the counter attack.The result is a split country.Embattled Britons in the west and in the east, new Angle and Saxon hordes, that later historians combine into a single entity -- the Anglo-Saxons.This is King Arthur's Britain.-In his account to simplify it, yes, you get, you get this sense of the Britons are the ones who are defending everything that is right and good.You get this sort of frontier line between these two constantly warring factions.It is "us against them."It is Britons against the Anglo-Saxons.The Anglo-Saxons are the forces of evil that need to be destroyed.Britons and Saxons are killing one another, and that's Arthur's world, that is where he existed.-Here it talks about his sword, "g ladio optimo."-The best sword.-And that was called Caliburno.-Caliburn-- Is that Excalibur?-This is Excalibur.-Yes!-But in the original it was called Caliburn.-Arthur's sword is a weapon of mass destruction.-It tells you that with Caliburn alone, Arthur killed some 470 men single-handedly.He went berserk, essentially.-470 victims in a single rush.I mean that is -- it's too extraordinary to believe, obviously.I mean, he's being portrayed here as... -He's a superhero essentially.-Yeah, yeah.-Geoffrey's book is the first reference to a King Arthur that we have.Earlier accounts written closer to the Dark Ages don't mention a king named Arthur, but they do describe a violent invasion.The earliest description was written by a monk named Gildas.A few fragments of his text are still legible.-He's writing in the 6th century.And he isn't writing so much a work of history.It's more a polemical text, criticizing the Britons and blaming their evil ways, their bad ways of living with that's why they were conquered by the Saxons.This is one of the few passages we can still read now but he talks about the -- like ravishing wolves.The Saxons are loopy.-Loopy yeah.-They are obviously destroying.In Gildas' terminology, they are destroying everything in their wake.-So, again this is a, this is an invading force.This is the arrival of the enemy essentially.-Precisely.-And the difficulty with these kind of accounts I think is that, is that you're almost getting a single view of how this happened.-Both Geoffrey and Gildas's histories are highly subjective, making it difficult to take them at face value.They can't be trusted as fact, but they have given Professor Roberts something specific to investigate.They both describe a massive invasion from the east and the native Britons resisting in the west.And the archaeological evidence supports this idea -- Anglo-Saxon artifacts have primarily been found in eastern Britain.If great wars were fought, evidence of mass slaughter and conflict should lie along this frontier line of their supposed occupation.Archaeologist Dominic Powlesland has been flying, digging and mapping a vast area on the eastern side of this imagined border, near the village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire.-Clear prop.Okay, ready Dominic?-Yeah, I'm ready.-Right, hold on tight here we go.Golf-Romeo-Romeo rolling.-Will Dominic's research confirm the written accounts of a full-scale foreign invasion?-These fields underneath us are entirely filled with archaeology.There's archaeology in every single one.-Dominic uses modern technology to map every single artifact relating to the Anglo-Saxons found over 25 square miles of what is today farmland.It's taken an army of volunteers 40 years to complete their survey.-We've surveyed all these fields.-Roberts is here to find out what the hard work reveals about life on the alleged frontier of King Arthur's Britain.Key to the process is geophysical surveying -- a technique that uses ground-penetrating radar to map traces of ancient structures.-So, every single spot here is a feature?-Yeah.So, all those dots are individual features.You can zoom in to this area here.-Click on that we get all the finds information.-Oh, wow!-That's the plan, this is the distribution of finds within it.-It just goes on and on!You've got thousands of finds coming out of every single one of these features, and hundreds of these features.I mean, that's a phenomenal amount of data.-Yeah.About a million finds altogether.-What Dominic has found is extraordinary.But even more amazing is what he hasn't found.There are no mass graves of defeated warriors.No signs of battle or conquest... anywhere.There is no evidence here for mass slaughter of local Britons by violent Angle and Saxon tribes.-I have never seen any evidence of an invasion.♪♪ -And the Anglo-Saxon skeletons show few signs of violence.-Once you start killing people in large numbers they leave themselves lying around, you can't avoid them.So, we don't see lots of Anglo-Saxons with massive injuries.-When you look at their bones you find a very, very low incidence of weapon injuries, sword cuts.This is a society that is playing with the idea of a military world, but doesn't actually seem to be engaging with physical conflict to a huge degree.-And the findings here are backed up elsewhere.-Here's a very, very good piece of science -- of all the dead bodies dug up that may belong to the period 400 to 600 -- and we have thousands of them -- men and women, children, old people, young people.But of all those thousands of bodies, if you ask the number of those bodies that have sharp-edge weapon injuries, it's less than two percent.Where do battles fit into that?-The archaeology makes it very clear -- there was no large-scale conflict.It's a stark departure from Geoffrey and Gildas's written accounts -- the idea of native Britons fighting the invading Angles and Saxons doesn't reflect what's being found on the ground.Instead, the archaeology reveals exactly what the Angles and Saxons who came to Britain were doing.Dominic has pulled together all the data in what he calls The Wallpaper.-It's just phenomenal because all of that work comes together to give you a picture of a landscape which is so densely settled.-Yeah.-The Anglo-Saxons weren't blood-thirsty warriors.They were farmers.-We've got settlements here.There's one here.There's one here.There, of course there's this large one at West Heslerton.We've identified 14, probably now 15 settlements.-Anglo-Saxon buildings dominated the landscape.The settlers imported their traditional, northern European building style.Structures were built in wood with thatch roofs -- a style known as Grubenhauser.-So, these blobs here are the Grubenhauser.-All of these little blobs?-You see big houses there, big houses here, and lots of these Grubenhauser.You will also see this hamlet here, a hamlet there, a load of buildings there, a load here.You see -- it's all joined up.There's stuff everywhere.-In the Anglo-Saxon period, this area was densely settled -- hundreds of buildings in more than a dozen separate communities.♪♪ -Roger Lima.Standby to land.-I think that might be Alice down there.-Dominic's meticulous research tells a very different story from the common understanding of a violent invasion.♪♪ -Bit of a bumpy landing there.-That's okay.-Are you all right?-Yeah, I'm fine.-The picture that's emerging in the east is of a peaceful society, not a violent one.But what about in the west?Will archaeologists find any evidence of either violent conflict or a legendary king on this side of Britons' Dark Age Divide?Professor Roberts has access to a new excavation on the far west coast of Britain.♪♪ -And it's at Tintagel, the very site where, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthur is supposed to have been conceived.♪♪ ♪♪ A major archaeological dig is underway here, on a part of the island that has never been excavated before.♪♪ Archaeologist Win Scutt is the site's curator.-So, Win, introduce me to Tintagel from the air then.What are we looking at?-Well, it's fantastic, you can already see one of the rectangular buildings that dates to the 5th, 6th Century.-So, this is the period you're specifically interested in here.-Absolutely, yes.-In contrast to the wood and thatch buildings in the east, there were more than 100 stone buildings here.-Is that more?-Some more over there, absolutely.It's a settlement of hundreds of people.-These simple dwellings were first excavated more than 80 years ago.But in the summer of 2017, a much grander complex was discovered.-We're excavating behind these cliffs on -- these are the Southern cliffs and there we are, it's coming into view.-Oh, there are the trenches.-There are the trenches.Fantastic, yes.-And they're at work.We can spy on them.That's brilliant.-Really exciting.-With only five weeks to dig, the archaeologists rush to gather all the evidence needed to create a detailed portrait of life in the 5th century.Alice joins site director Jacky Novakowski to understand the significance of the new excavation.-Once we started taking off the turf, the stone walls started to appear quite quickly.So, it's been buried over 1,400 years ago and now we are uncovering it for the first time.-They look very different to me, to the remains of the buildings that I have seen on the eastern side, which again are fifth, sixth century but much smaller stones and much thinner walls.-They're completely different in terms of build character and the amount of sheer investment that has gone into their build.I mean, they are substantial.-Well-built walls, aren't they?-Yeah, they're extraordinary.They are over a meter wide, and you can see that they are made of large blocks of slate.Very blocky material and you've got them laid horizontally forming a really nice coursed wall.-These buildings were built to impress, I think.And they're part of this larger complex of other buildings that go off in that direction, and in that direction, so you can see we've got our work cut out.-The team's findings will be used to create a 3D model of this apparent 5th-century citadel... bringing Tintagel out of the Dark Ages and back to life.The buildings occupy a natural terrace with a stunning vista.Their prominent position, substantial size and thick walls indicate a great deal of time and effort was taken in their construction.There are strong hints that whoever lived here was someone important.These people weren't farmers like in the east of Britain.-They do look like they're high status.This isn't people eking out an existence up here on top of Tintagel.This is people living well.-This is people living very well, I think.A lot more care has gone into the construction of these buildings.We're working on the idea that these buildings are probably residences, high-status residences.It's all got the feel of an extraordinary large settlement.Which is maybe the place where the most powerful person who is living in this area was resident at the time.-A powerful Dark Ages leader perhaps, but it's still a huge leap to say that it could be King Arthur.In fact, no one has ever found any proof of the legendary leader's existence, let alone whether he lived at Tintagel.Just like in the east, the team is unearthing evidence of a peaceful lifestyle.But it's a much, much more extravagant one.-That's a good piece.-Ah, nice.That is a nice high-quality piece of tableware I'd guess.There's a rim on the bottom.That's sat on the table.Beautiful.-We've been finding a lot of the fine tablewares.And even some of the dinner plates, and the storage vessels containing the wine and olive oil are being broken and just discarded around here.-Whoever lived here was rich.This is the biggest hoard of this type of high-value pottery dating from the Dark Ages that's ever been found in Britain.-That is really beautiful.-And there are even pieces of fine glassware for drinking wine.♪♪ The artifacts being unearthed at Tintagel are completely different from the Anglo-Saxon ones found all over the eastern side of the country.In this sense at least, the archaeological evidence and historical accounts are matching up.5th-century Britain does seem to be a very divided country.But divided by culture, not violence.But what happened to the Britons in the eastern half of the country if the Saxons and Angles did not invade or conquer?In the last decade, more than 100 skeletons have been unearthed in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in the eastern half of Britain.And with them, some important new clues.♪♪ The remains of one of the female skeletons give Professor Roberts a better understanding of everyday 5th-century life.-My first impressions looking at this skeleton is that this is somebody who was quite gracile, quite slightly built.I'm looking at these teeth really carefully.If I look at the molars, she's quite clearly a young woman.The third molar, the wisdom tooth, comes through 18 to 21 years, and there's just a little bit of wear on that, But then if you look at the front teeth it's completely different.The enamel has been completely worn away and they're flat on the surface.So that suggests she's doing something with her front teeth, which isn't just about food processing.So perhaps using her teeth as a tool, maybe leather working.Definite use of the teeth just there.-A fascinating glimpse of life and work in the Dark Ages.But it's the objects found with her and other skeletons that provide fresh insight.Alice meets lead investigator Duncan Sayer.-So, we've got an adult in the middle with two brooches on her shoulder and a load of amber beads.And next to her is an adolescent.And we have a child.-Yes, a small child.-Small child, yeah.-It makes you wonder happened, how they ended up in the same grave.-Well, it does doesn't it?We've got round brooches and we've got long brooches, we've got cruciform brooches.We've got all the works really.-All what you'd expect from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.No surprises there.-No surprises.Absolutely typical in every way.-The grave goods suggest these people were part of the newly arrived Anglo-Saxon group.But archaeological evidence, just like written history, is open to misinterpretation.So Duncan is using high-energy physics to examine one of the brooches in greater detail.♪♪ Here at the UK's national facility for synchrotron radiation, a beam of electrons is accelerated almost to the speed of light as it travels around a 600-yard loop.♪♪ As the electrons move, they throw off intensely-focused X-ray beams that allow for compositional data gathering.The X-rays let Duncan probe the chemical make-up of a tiny part of the brooch.♪♪ ♪♪ The results are unexpected.-Okay.So, do the blue areas and green areas represent different elements?-Exactly.The green bits highlight iron, and the blue bits highlight lead.The lead tells us that this is glass.-It's a style of glass work that's been seen before... typical of Britons, not the Angles or Saxons.The brooch was made locally, not imported.-What you're doing is you're taking out a glass, grinding it up, and grinding into it the scrapings from the inside of a crucible.And then you bake it into the holes into the object and it makes enamel.-Enamel like this was a specifically British production technique.So although the style of the brooch is typical of continental Angle and Saxon tribes, it's either been made by British hands or by someone who learned from a local.-So, this is fascinating, because it means that this is not an import from the continent.It's an imported idea, it's an imported style, but it's a locally made object.-Exactly.-What appears to be jewelry imported from Europe was more likely made in Britain.The results suggest assumptions that these are all Anglo-Saxon skeletons might be wrong.Something more complicated is going on.The team needs a way to identify the skeletons scientifically, so they turn to another modern technology -- DNA analysis.Skeleton 82's DNA is a close match to the DNA found in today's Dutch citizens... She's genetically Anglo-Saxon.But Skeleton 1 is genetically indigenous -- a match with ancient Britons.Skeleton 96 is an even bigger surprise -- a hybrid of British and Anglo-Saxon ancestry.It's a very small sample, but it suggests the Angles and Saxons who arrived from northern Europe didn't suddenly replace the Britons in the east -- they mixed with them.-People would probably not have thought of themselves as Britons or Anglo-Saxons.They would probably have thought of themselves in a much more local way than that.-This is not a period when people would have known that they were members of a particular nation state.Nation states didn't exist, people didn't have passports, they weren't citizens of one country or another.-The story of Arthur defending the ancient Britons against an invading army is likely a myth.Despite Geoffrey and Gildas's accounts, the archaeology shows the Anglo Saxons didn't arrive overnight en masse.Instead, it was a slow and gradual process, probably over a very long period of time, not murdering the locals, but merging with them.-There are people coming across the North Sea.But they're not entirely replacing the group that are here.They're bringing new styles, new ideas, new ways of talking, new religions which are adding to the mix that's already here.-It's not a full-scale, you know, replacement of one culture by another.-Over time, people are trading, intermarrying, even swapping fashions.-We're seeing Britons adopting Saxon-style brooches.We're seeing Saxons adopting Roman-style brooches.-These things wouldn't have been in these very clear-cut identities that we ascribe to today.It would have been much, much more complex than that.-Eastern Britain is trading with the Germanic world, with the Saxon world, with Scandinavia.That's where their fashions, that's where their trade is being connected to.-Given their geographical proximity, it makes sense that Northern Europeans would have formed connections with Britons in the east rather than the west.This is a radical new understanding of life after the Romans left Britain.Far from being conquered, the native Britons in the eastern half of the country seem to have absorbed the incoming Northern Europeans.It was a time of trade and integration.But in terms of daily life, little changed.-I suppose if you think of a sense like if you take America as an example you've got African-Americans, Italian-Americans.People are adding things to the various pot that is America.That's what happening in, in Britain in the 5th and 6th century.-And proof of the true story of the Dark Ages can be found today in modern Britain's DNA.Researchers at the University of Oxford have collected thousands of DNA samples from people across Britain whose families have lived in the same area for generations.-We tried to focus on individuals, all of whose grandparents were born in the same area.So in that sense their DNA had been there at least for two generations and probably quite a long time before that.-Peter Donnelly's work maps regional variations in British people's genetics in greater detail than ever before.Alice wants to understand what modern genetics can reveal about Britain's past.-So, what do we see on this map then?What do the different colors and different shapes represent?-So each circle or square or or triangle represents one of the 2,000 individuals we sampled.And then the combination of color and shape represents a genetic group.There's a group represented here in pink squares that's one of the genetic groups we saw.There's another group in blue circles.There's a large group across much of central and southern England, groups in, in South Wales and North Wales and so on as, as we look through the country.-And what I find utterly extraordinary about it is you've got all of these different colored clusters, which do seem to be quite localized, and I would just have expected the whole thing to be much more homogeneous.-It was one of those total wow moments that we don't have too often in our career, but it was really exciting.-At first, it looks like the genetic map supports the historical accounts of Anglo-Saxons decimating the local population.-Do you think this pattern of red squares is explained by a massive Anglo-Saxon invasion, replacing everything that was there before?-That's absolutely not the case.What's interesting is if you take a typical person in Central and Southern England, that accounts for about 10% of their DNA.So, we do see evidence of the Anglo-Saxon migration, I think clear evidence of that.But it certainly wasn't the case that they replaced existing populations.They contributed to the DNA of modern English people but in the minority of the DNA that's there now.-The surprise is that Anglo-Saxon DNA has contributed only around 10 percent of the genetic variation.-What's very clear is that most of the DNA that's carried by someone in Central and Southern England now is DNA that was there before the Saxons arrived.Not only did they not replace the existing populations, they mixed with them, but they're a relatively small proportion of the ancestry of the people now have.-Even though the archaeological record now suggests differently, the Anglo-Saxon invasion story still fills the history books, and Anglo-Saxon ideas shaped British culture, not least by inspiring the English language that's spoken all over the world today.But despite popular belief, the genetics indicate Anglo-Saxon immigrants probably never outnumbered the native Britons.-Historians and archaeologists have argued for decades if not centuries over whether the appearance of a new culture really means that a whole load of new people came in.And we've actually never been able to resolve that question and now we're starting to be able to do that.-What's interesting about genetics is it, by definition it's reflecting what happened to the masses.Whereas often some of those other sources are colored by the successful elites who impose languages or impose political systems.-In the east, the native British and Anglo-Saxon people merged on a large scale.♪♪ But what about the west?Why does Tintagel seem so wealthy in comparison?And why is King Arthur so strongly connected to the site?This is Fort Cumberland, the home of Historic England's Archaeology labs.Many of the finds from Tintagel are analyzed here.♪♪ The fort is a scientific production line, turning excavation into information.♪♪ From the new site at Tintagel, 130 gallons of soil filter through the flotation tanks.The experts can finally separate the Arthur legend from archaeological fact.Alice has come to meet pottery specialist Maria Duggan.She is one of the experts examining the unprecedented haul of pottery shards unearthed at Tintagel... and looking for clues about the lives and identity of the people who lived there.-So, this is our really characteristic fine-ware form for that late 5th Century, early 6th Century.And we've got about 14 vessels of the same form.All slightly different.-So, that's a bowl is it?-Yeah, it's a big dish.So it's actually quite big, it's probably about 30 centimeters.-The distinctive shape indicates the bowl was not made locally.-So that's coming from Turkey?-Sort of Western Turkey.-Yes, yeah.-It's come a long way.-This fragment of pottery connects Tintagel to what would then have been Byzantium in the Eastern Roman Empire.There are hundreds of pieces to examine.-The vast majority of the finds are amphorae, so they're storage vessels for transport of wine or olive oil, things like that.Also other fine wares.So we've got some North African material.And also, from southwest France so from the Bordeaux region.-Right.So, it's coming in from all over the place.-Yeah.-When you find a blooming great sherd of Roman amphorae, and not just one sherd of amphorae, but buckets of the stuff, that tells you that there's trade and diplomacy and interaction and people are moving across the European landscape and seascape.-These artifacts demonstrate that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts were incredibly well connected to Tintagel.-Tintagel is producing evidence that's showing us how active those trade routes were in the -- the 5th and 6th centuries, that you do have this material that's coming up from the Mediterranean up the Atlantic Coast and is clearly being valued and perhaps traded up that Atlantic seaboard.-While eastern Britain interacted with northern Europe, western Britain traded with Byzantium in the Mediterranean.Tintagel was clearly an important international port of call.So, what would it have looked like in its heyday?-Yeah.-Co-director of the site, James Gossip, has made a detailed architectural survey of the dig.-Okay.Can we have a spot height on the hearth, Martin?-Combining measurements with thousands of photographs creates a perfect virtual record of the new site.-So, this is towards the sea, isn't it?-Yup.You can really see how the buildings are part of a planned design, with shared spaces.-The complex is laid out over upper and lower terraces.The upper building has a 32-foot room with a 16-foot side-room.There's a smaller building next door and a large open courtyard -- all connected by a central path.-What you can see is a series of steps leading up into this opening in our upper building, connecting the building with the trackway that runs between the two terraces.-An area of carefully-laid stone floor strongly suggests some rooms may have had a special function.-It's a really nicely laid surface of fairly thin slates.What's noticeable about that is how fragile and delicate it was.When we walked on it, we noticed that, you know, some of the slates might break pretty easily.-You do wear big boots though, to be fair.-True, but I tried it out in bare feet as well.-Unlike the well-worn floors in the rest of the settlement, this section is much more delicate and in pristine condition.-That suggests that perhaps it's, it's a really quite special floor.Perhaps it was a space that wasn't really designed to be walked on very often.What that means about the function of the building we don't really know.-But I suppose it suggests that it's not an ordinary domestic dwelling.♪♪ -This new data helps generate the first 3D model of the entire Tintagel site.The complex may not look opulent to modern eyes, but to Dark Age visitors, it would have felt palatial.It's among the most substantial post-Roman buildings found in southwest Britain... ...and a complete departure from how we thought people were living at the time.♪♪ But people weren't just sailing to Tintagel to sell exotic goods.Tintagel must have had something worth buying.-For the people who are coming up the Atlantic seaboard they would see Tintagel in the distance, that is the place that they are aiming for, that is their destination.It's an important harbor that will give them the resources that they want.-Whoever ruled Tintagel, had access to a rare commodity in high demand across Europe.The secret to Tintagel's Dark Age wealth and power lies at the end of a quiet country track.This is a vast tin mine -- just 15 miles away.Exploited by the Romans, it was still in business at the beginning of the 20th century.What looks like a natural gorge was once a massive mine -- 120 feet deep, 130 feet wide, and 900 feet long.♪♪ Tintagel lies on the larger peninsula of Cornwall.The rocks in this area are one of only three sources of tin in Western Europe.The metal was one of the reasons the Romans came to Britain in the first place.-Whoever's been mining that stuff for hundreds of years is going to get rich because the Mediterranean needs those resources.They will come to you to get them.-Tin, when mixed with copper, makes bronze -- vital metal for Roman weapons.Even after the Romans left Britain, Europe continued to buy Cornish tin.-Whoever controls Tintagel is at the head of a large financial empire.We mustn't think of them as being on the margins of anything.They are at the center of a very sort of dominant, successful political world.-In dramatic contrast to the traditional view of the Dark Ages, trade in the west does not collapse after the Romans leave.The connections to the continent remain, and they continue to influence every aspect of life.Evidence for this influence is found on the very last day of the Tintagel dig.Jacky Novakowski's team makes the most exciting discovery of all.It's a stone, used to make a windowsill in Building 94.And someone's been writing on it.-There's at least three lines.It's either an "A," with a hat on.♪♪ -I think it's okay actually.♪♪ I'll wrap it up first.It's very heavy, yeah.-The stone is transported to the labs at Fort Cumberland for closer study.James Gossip gives Alice access to this rare find.-So, this is it?-This is it.-It's really clear.That's amazing.-The letters were scratched with a sharp tool, roughly, as if for practice.-It's not in its original position.Probably only ever a trial piece anyway.Just somebody practicing their inscription.So presumably, once this was created as a trial piece it wasn't that important anymore and it was incorporated into this wall where we found it.-It's one of only a handful of inscriptions from this period ever found.The Dark Age etching gives precious insight into the lives of the people living at Tintagel.First, there's a distinct flavor of Roman Latin.-So, the top line is here, possibly "Tito," which could refer to Titus.-So that's a Roman name.-That's a Roman name, yep, popular in the Roman and post-Roman world.Here we've got a word which could be "Viridius."Another name, another Latin name.Or "Viri duo."-I think I can make out the letters here.I mean that looks like "Fili."-Yup.That's right.-But there's also local dialect.-What does this say here?-We think this is perhaps "Budic" -- B-U-D-I-C.There's a word that's common in Welsh, Breton and Cornish contexts.-Ah, so this, so this isn't Latin?-That is not Latin, no.That's Bretonic or... -Yeah.-It's the Cornish word form basically.-The people here seem to be fluent in more than just one language.-And then a "T" here?-Yeah.Perhaps, um, T-U-D."Tud."-A possible translation is... "From Titus, to Viridius, the son of Budic Tuda."The text's layout and few legible words indicate the inscription was for a monument.It was discarded at the time, but centuries later, it's exciting proof of a sophisticated culture.-This is a lovely "A."That's a really nice style.-This is the style of lettering that they're using in manuscript at the time.It might even have been designed to be a deliberate Biblical connotation.-It takes time and skill to inscribe stone, and money to pay for it.The writer was part of a complex and wealthy society that valued both faith and craftsmanship.-And this coming out of the Dark Ages when we used to think people were living in hovels, scratching around, illiterate.-Yeah.But actually created by a literate Christian elite at Tintagel.-I wonder who did it?I want to know.-Perhaps Titus.-So we're seeing these sort of debased forms of Latin inscription surviving in Cornwall.But it does tell us that what we've got there is a literate society.They're not at the margins of anything.-Civilization didn't collapse when the Romans left Britain.Tintagel in the west stayed connected, thriving and interacting with Europe as it had probably done for centuries.The archaeology has revealed so much about Tintagel in the Dark Ages.The prominence and stature of the buildings being unearthed here, along with the high-value pottery indicating the apparent wealth of their residents, may help explain another mystery -- the connection to Geoffrey of Monmouth's King Arthur.-The dig at Tintagel is showing us that this rocky promontory sticking out into the Atlantic was not only a trading hub, but also a remarkably high-status site.So perhaps there was someone, someone powerful, who much later would inspire that myth of King Arthur.-King Arthur was a construct, created from fragments of the written historical past.But Geoffrey chose Tintagel for his birthplace because it really was a seat of power in the Dark Ages.-And that in a way is what we're talking about when we're discussing Arthur.He is the literary creation based on that kind of primary evidence.Whether or not he was real I think is irrelevant.It's the period itself that -- that is essential.That's what draws archaeologists and historians to it.It's so important for understanding what made Britain today.-The biggest revolution in Dark Age archaeology has been this recognition that Britain is fully connected to the continent all the way through.♪♪ -The maritime connections are absolutely crucial here.Tintagel is connected down to France and Spain and up to Wales, Scotland and Ireland.It's right at the center of this Atlantic trading network.-But in the east of the country, the connections were to Northern Europe -- the Angles and Saxons, with their very different beliefs and culture.♪♪ All the archaeological evidence points to two societies not facing each other across a battlefield, but living very different lives.-It's an economic divide between two halves of Britain, two distinct trade outlooks.It's not a picture of conflict.-The two halves of Britain are looking in different directions, going outwards rather than clashing in the middle.-I think if you look at the sea instead of the land, and the rivers instead of the land, I think you have a much better chance of understanding where people are coming from.♪♪ -At Tintagel, the excavations are complete.The new discoveries have revealed that rather than being filled with violent conflict and turmoil, the Dark Ages were a time of trade and continuity.Somewhere between the archaeology, written history and myth, a new truth has emerged.-There are elements in there that all feed into one another and all help -- help us to understand the past, and you've got to try and master all these things to really get a clear understanding of what's going on, especially something like the 5th or 6th century.-But the myth of King Arthur endures.♪♪ -It's a myth.But it's such a wonderful myth.-He's a literary invention -- a romantic hero who embodies the ideal of kingship, and not a real historical figure.-It's still something that resonates today because we all sort of need an heroic character to defend what we think is right and good, and it's Arthur who sort of fills that void. -
Black Romantic Compulsory Figures
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https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1153875415 -
Synthographers Conversations 2024
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Miss Evers Boys from Movies That Move We with Nike Ma + Zenobia Marshall
my thoughts
1932 to 1972 the Tuskegee experiment went on.
I learned of Tuskegee in the home and community centers at elementary age and in high school in the educational system.
...
I remember a scene in the film Giant 1956 when the character played by rock Hudson says to the character played by Elizabeth taylor that the white doctor of the family is not for public use or use for other people, other people in this case were Mexican immigrants in Texas. That scene encapsulates the overall problem. The healthcare industry in the usa has always been a business that is used by whites to display biases toward the non white. The movie Alice 2022 shows this in multiple ways. And the problem with healthcare as an industry is it is historically expensive. Healthcare is not cheap. Consider that car company workers/steel company workers/government workers, the cost of their healthcare overtime is the biggest bill.
in amendment or commented
Healthcare has always been historically for the have's not all, and you see that throughout humanity even today, even in countries in western europe deemed universal in care. I can't wait for your first show in black history month:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJrcIlzfQhcTRANSCRIPT
0:13
[Music]
0:25
[Music]
0:30
hey everyone welcome back to another
0:32
edition of movies that move we today we
0:37
will be talking about Miss ever's boys
0:41
um now I hope you not not like me if you
0:43
hadn't heard about this film before and
0:45
thought it was about medar Evers and his
0:48
mom and them it's not it's not this is
0:52
um it's a fictionalized telling of the
0:58
Tuskegee uh project
1:00
and if you don't know what that is let
1:03
me tell you a little bit about it um
1:05
Tuskegee Alabama there was
1:08
a pretty decent population of black men
1:12
who had
1:14
syphilis and um you know the government
1:17
saw it and said hey perfect opportunity
1:20
for us to explore how this the progress
1:25
of this
1:27
disease and so they
1:30
setup shop in
1:32
Tuskegee told these men hey we're going
1:35
to treat you for the condition they
1:38
didn't tell them that they were research
1:40
subjects they didn't tell them they
1:42
weren't getting
1:43
treatment and these men did not give
1:47
consent to basically be used as guinea
1:51
pigs this project ran from was it
1:57
1932 to
2:00
19 no 1932 to
2:05
1972 okay so they were allowing men with
2:08
syphilis black men with syphilis to just
2:13
ride the disease out um and it's not a
2:16
comfortable disease you you can get it
2:19
it can go
2:21
dormant it can come back up there's like
2:24
five stages to the condition you'll end
2:27
up with skin lesions there are some
2:29
people who who survived it the biggest
2:32
problem here beyond the fact that they
2:35
were experimenting on black bodies was
2:38
that when it was found out that
2:41
penicillin was The Cure none of these
2:44
men were given the option never told
2:47
that some of them would die if they like
2:49
took it well no in reality no yeah but
2:53
I'm just saying in the movie like that's
2:55
what they were they were telling them
2:56
that if if you take it you you could die
3:00
which wasn't true but talking about the
3:04
movie this is it's not based on a
3:07
specific story but it is inspired by a
3:12
nurse who did work with some some
3:15
patients during that time so we have in
3:19
the role of nurse Evers um Alfrey
3:25
Woodard Caleb humph is her love interest
3:29
who is is played by Lawrence Fishburn
3:31
and I believe he's one of the producers
3:33
of the film um Dr Douglas is played by
3:37
Craig Sheffer and he is the white Doctor
3:40
Who is leading the um experiment um we
3:46
have Dr Sam brus who's played by uh Joe
3:50
Morton AKA Papa Pope those of you who
3:53
know no um he is the black doctor that
3:58
is leading it because of you have
4:00
something like this going on you got to
4:01
get black people to talk to black people
4:04
um Willie Johnson is played by Oba Baba
4:09
tund hodman Bryan is played by Van
4:13
couter Ben Washington is played by Tom
4:16
gosam Jr so
4:20
Caleb uh Willie hodman and Ben they're
4:25
referred to as Miss ever's boys and all
4:29
of them them were
4:31
participants in the study in this film
4:36
um and then the late great aie Davis
4:39
played um Alfrey woodard's father Mr
4:43
Evans so this is going back like I said
4:48
1930s
4:50
Tuskegee black people were still working
4:52
in the fields there were still
4:54
sharecroppers um and it was a big deal
4:57
that
4:58
she uh Unice Evers was a nurse you know
5:03
she's working in the hospital she's
5:05
working with doctors she wasn't a
5:07
servant or anything like that she
5:10
recognized it her father recognized it
5:12
it was the type of career that could
5:14
have taken her
5:15
anywhere um when this came up she was
5:19
the head nurse
5:22
under Dr broadis so Joe Morton she was
5:27
working with him and he said hey
5:30
I'm taking you with me we're going to to
5:33
Tuskegee there's something happening
5:35
down there that they want us to be a
5:37
part of that happened to be the area
5:40
where she grew up so Caleb she was
5:43
already familiar with because he used to
5:46
pull her Pigtails in
5:48
class so there was some relationship
5:52
there and her relation built with the
5:55
other three men to the point that you
5:57
know they were performers in the
5:59
community Comm they name their band
6:01
after her um the whole thing gets
6:05
sticky because at a certain point she
6:09
realizes that wait a
6:11
minute we're we're not treating them
6:14
we're just doing research and she was
6:17
excited at first because the
6:20
government's paying for it they're
6:21
giving these guys they're they're going
6:23
to help the black people and there were
6:25
a handful of people who were wey but
6:27
when they heard what I get a free meal I
6:31
can get free rides and all this other
6:34
you know the government is catering to
6:35
me they were like all right sign me up
6:38
so I'll let you take it from here what
6:40
what were your thoughts about well first
6:43
of all I'm going to ask the question I
6:45
usually ask is this something you
6:47
learned about in school no not at all
6:50
and what was crazy was when I when
6:53
I because I was actually the one that
6:55
chose the
6:57
movie when I saw it
7:00
I never even really heard about it but
7:04
when I saw it I was like oh you know
7:05
what based off the description I was
7:07
like this might be a good watch it seems
7:09
like
7:10
something that um might be educational
7:13
because this is something again we
7:15
weren't taught about in school so to
7:18
watch it and then like even down to the
7:22
way things were kind of broken down to
7:25
these men when they're coming into their
7:27
community and telling them what they're
7:29
going to do and how the government is
7:31
funding this and everything like that it
7:34
was
7:35
so it was kind of surreal for me to
7:38
watch cuz it's just like they really
7:40
kind of felt like they had to not only
7:43
bring Miss Evers and the doctor in the
7:46
black doctor in
7:48
to kind of facilitate or help facilitate
7:52
these conversations with these men but
7:55
it was almost
7:56
like oh we have to kind of dumb it down
7:59
for them too because whereas the white
8:02
doctor that came in was kind of like hey
8:05
you know I want to get technical with
8:07
these guys and let them know the exact
8:09
diagnosis Miss Evers and the other
8:11
doctor involved were like no we should
8:15
probably kind of tell them something
8:18
different I don't think they were
8:21
dumbing it down I
8:24
think okay let me not say that yes they
8:26
were but by saying blood like oh well
8:29
it's something in your blood like I'm
8:32
and she explained that what she said to
8:34
to the doctor
8:36
was you have to talk to them in their in
8:41
their language if you tell them that
8:45
they have a virus they're going to panic
8:48
and we won't have anyone to complete the
8:50
study with so they understand illness is
8:54
something in the blood so that's what
8:57
we're going to tell them that there's
9:00
something in the blood we're gonna give
9:02
them some treatments to to help heal
9:06
them and they'll be more willing to go
9:09
along with it if we phrase it in terms
9:11
that they comprehend okay okay that's
9:15
like a lawyer trying to speak to you in
9:18
legal vernacular and you're going my
9:19
rights or what and there was a scene in
9:21
the part or there was a scene in the
9:22
movie
9:23
where the the white doctor is like
9:26
telling them what he's about to do and
9:28
what testing they're about to kind of go
9:31
through and everything and why they're
9:32
being tested for this and they're just
9:34
all sitting there looking at him like
9:37
you going to do what and Miss Evers kind
9:40
of had to step in but I just felt like
9:42
throughout the whole
9:43
film there were so many things that and
9:47
what was crazy was there was kind of
9:48
like that little bit of a contrast
9:49
because here it is you know they're kind
9:51
of talking like that to the rest of them
9:53
they're not giving them full information
9:56
as to what's going on and Lawrence fish
9:59
Burn's character um Caleb Caleb
10:04
he he actually was kind of already
10:07
educating himself you know he let Miss
10:09
Evers know look like you don't think I
10:12
can read I'm going to the library and
10:14
I'm looking this stuff up myself yeah
10:17
and he asked for a book cuz he was like
10:19
I want to know more about this exactly
10:22
so he kind of even though he was also
10:24
not giv a lot of
10:26
information Miss Evers did kind of offer
10:28
up a little little bit of information to
10:30
him in the beginning
10:31
but he kind of already knew in the back
10:34
of his mind certain things and something
10:36
wasn't right yeah so he was kind of
10:38
already hip to what was going on but
10:42
unfortunately these other guys that were
10:44
involved in this process they just
10:46
didn't know and they kind of like leaned
10:49
on Miss Evers a little bit to kind of
10:51
take them through this process yeah um
10:55
and it's unfortunate because if they
10:58
were a little bit more
11:00
honest and even a little bit more
11:03
instead of using them as guinea pigs
11:05
actually got them the help that they
11:08
needed they would have been fine you
11:11
know they would have lived normal lives
11:12
you know um oh my gosh I keep drawing a
11:16
blank with his name Caleb when he went
11:18
to the military he said look I got that
11:21
penicillin shot because one this was my
11:24
only way to get into the military
11:27
properly but two like I'm not messing
11:29
around my health like I'm doing whatever
11:31
I have to do and he was kind of trying
11:34
to encourage the other men to do the
11:36
same
11:37
but the the the role of the medical team
11:42
in this
11:44
situation was to just monitor the
11:47
progress of the disease and keep them
11:51
from getting treatment elsewhere yeah
11:54
and there's a scene in the film where
11:56
one of the guys um he's like I can't
11:59
take it anymore Caleb takes him to a
12:03
hospital to get the penicillin and the
12:05
nurse turns around looks at the
12:07
clipboard and says no you can't have it
12:10
and they were like why can't he get it
12:14
and she said because you're on the list
12:16
I can't give it to you cuz he was a part
12:18
of this experiment so all of the
12:20
hospitals in the area had the names of
12:23
all of the the the men who were being
12:27
researched and they refused them care
12:31
when they came to it and in this
12:33
situation it
12:35
was uh Willie Willie was the dancer in
12:39
the group you know he was hopping up and
12:41
down you know dancing like they do at
12:43
the Cotton Club and he had dreams of
12:44
getting there and it started to affect
12:47
his Mobility so he was like I can't I
12:49
can't live like this I need to to have
12:53
it fixed Caleb didn't tell him exactly
12:57
what was going on even though though he
13:00
had an
13:01
ankling and he did try to talk to Unice
13:05
about it and say okay what aren't you
13:07
telling me and she was like I can't I
13:10
can't and I think part of the reason why
13:13
she said she can't a um she was told
13:17
that she can't she shouldn't and then
13:19
the other part was she was ashamed
13:21
because once she
13:24
realized what this really was MH she was
13:30
like I I can't tell anybody that I'm
13:33
knowingly a part of this and she was
13:38
offered an opportunity she was about to
13:41
take the opportunity to go back up north
13:45
for for
13:47
work and she changed her mind because
13:50
she was like these guys need me I can't
13:54
leave them in other words I help put
13:56
them in this predicament I can't aband
13:59
she went through a tremendous like
14:01
internal struggle to the point where it
14:04
even affected the relationship she had
14:05
with Caleb because it was like here it
14:08
is they were in love they kind of wanted
14:10
to go away together and all that but she
14:13
had the guilt of kind of how this whole
14:16
process started and then the guilt of
14:18
like kind of what happened after that
14:21
how these men were affected and then
14:24
here it is you know Caleb comes back
14:25
from the war and everything and he's
14:27
like look like you know it the deed has
14:30
been done this is already happening like
14:32
we need to just go start our lives and
14:34
she's like I can't leave these guys
14:37
behind like I just can't do it and it it
14:40
it unfortunately affected their personal
14:44
lives because it's kind of
14:46
like had this experiment not even
14:49
happened none of them would be in this
14:51
predicament at all so right and so um
14:57
back to reality
14:59
um a lot of things came out of this time
15:05
period rules were put in place um once
15:09
this was re was revealed and you know
15:13
the public expressed outrage over it new
15:16
policies were put into place to make
15:19
sure that you know people were aware of
15:24
when they were a part of medical
15:26
research so now you are in invited to
15:30
clinical studies you don't just become a
15:33
guinea pig because someone says you know
15:35
what I want to see how long this person
15:37
survives if they have XYZ disease you
15:42
have to be offered you have to be
15:44
compensated you have to be treated like
15:47
a human being and not a lab rat that's
15:50
required by law um there are
15:55
institutional review boards so one set
15:58
of do s can't come up with this
16:00
experiment run it privately and then do
16:04
what they want with the information if
16:05
you're going to have a clinical trial
16:08
then there's a review board to make sure
16:10
that you are following all processes and
16:13
protocols that are laid out to make sure
16:15
that the patient is cared for um and you
16:20
know this this movie kind of speaks to
16:23
and you being a Med medical professional
16:25
you're aware of some of this um it kind
16:29
of speaks to what impacts uh mortality
16:33
rate amongst
16:35
African-Americans and while it has
16:39
improved there's still room for
16:43
improvement plenty of room for
16:45
improvement because the mortality rate
16:48
birth rate between black women and white
16:51
women there's still a gap there same
16:54
thing for breast
16:57
cancer there's still a gap there and
17:00
even and I can speak from my own
17:02
experience when trying to get um
17:06
assistance with health
17:08
issues you probably going to have to go
17:10
through as a a black woman you're
17:12
probably going to have to go through a
17:14
few doctors before you can get yeah what
17:18
you need I had a talk with my doctor the
17:20
other day and she was like oh I
17:22
recommend this doctor and I was like
17:25
uhuh went to them and I didn't even get
17:28
into it with her about why how racist
17:32
this doctor was towards me I just said
17:36
no and I think that's where I related to
17:40
Caleb because he was like I'm advocating
17:44
for myself for myself I'm here but I
17:47
have a lot of questions that I need and
17:49
I love you know I love that about his
17:50
character because I feel like and I try
17:52
to kind of impress this upon the
17:54
patients I work with in general because
17:57
as a human being like you have to be you
18:01
have to be researching you have to be
18:04
thoughtful and thorough with your own
18:06
health care like you have to be
18:08
questioning these doctors you know and
18:10
asking them about this stuff because
18:13
they don't know it all they don't know
18:15
at all there are some doctors that go by
18:17
the book or they are just trying to sell
18:20
the these you know medications to to get
18:25
perks and things like that it's kind of
18:27
like you have to be your own Advocate
18:30
you have to research yourself because
18:32
here it is in this scenario it's like if
18:35
he didn't do that research on his own
18:37
and like kind of take that extra step
18:40
and try to figure things out on his own
18:42
he would have been just like some of
18:43
those men that that ended up dead
18:46
because it's like you know you got to
18:48
kind of ask more questions and care more
18:50
about your health and not just listen to
18:53
what a health care provider or whatever
18:55
is telling you all the time yeah there
18:58
was one guy and I I didn't write his
19:00
name down in the notes did all the
19:02
research looked him up his name was
19:06
Charlie I can't remember his last name
19:09
now I'll try and put up a picture of him
19:12
but he was one of the um last survivors
19:16
of the Tuskegee
19:19
experiment and the reason why I
19:22
remembered him is because they they did
19:24
a a report about him and he
19:29
wore a hat at all times because again
19:32
when you get syphus you if it's not
19:34
treated or treated quickly you start to
19:37
get lesions and they they kind of
19:38
represented that in the um in the movie
19:42
where these guys had like marks on their
19:45
face he had marks on his
19:50
scalp and so he used to wear a hat to
19:53
hide
19:54
it but he was and which president was it
19:58
I don't remember if it was no no no no
20:01
no no cuz this was in like the '90s
20:03
shortly before he passed but he was
20:07
given some kind of medal okay by the
20:10
president
20:11
for um his his involvement and survival
20:16
because black people are rewarded for
20:18
surviving um he was given a reward for
20:22
that but that man suffered through all
20:26
of that and you know I think he died in
20:30
I want to say he passed away in
20:33
2009 darn I wish I had notes on it but
20:35
I'll try and put that up at the
20:37
end all in all as far as historical
20:42
content I feel like this was pretty
20:45
accurate even though it's a
20:46
fictionalized movie I think it was
20:49
pretty accurate if you're not aware of
20:52
the Tuskegee experiment I definitely say
20:56
watch it go down the rabbit hole get
20:59
online do the research um and once again
21:04
sit your kids down to watch it you know
21:08
I think the news just broke today that
21:10
apparently at the federal level Black
21:12
History Month is being cancelled
21:15
so look don't let it be canceled in your
21:18
house celebrate educate make sure you
21:22
know about stuff like this because as we
21:24
can see history is starting to repeat
21:26
itself in a very backwards way so that
21:30
being said hope you enjoyed this review
21:33
don't forget to like share follow
21:35
subscribe to our YouTube page also our
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Facebook page even though I'm trying to
21:41
move us off of meta completely because
21:45
reasons um our group on Facebook is
21:48
called movies that move we you can also
21:51
find me on the spill app download it
21:56
it's aiv it's nice and quiet over there
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under my page which is Nay wres n i ke
22:03
wri I Tes and also on fan base same name
22:08
nay
22:10
writes and YouTube where movies that
22:13
movie is the name of the playlist we
22:15
have more than two years of uh movie
22:19
discussions that you can check out and
22:21
hey we like comments on the old stuff so
22:23
feel free but definitely let us know
22:26
what you thought of this movie and and
22:29
um what are we doing I don't think we've
22:30
decided on the next movie we haven't
22:32
decided on the next movie but there are
22:35
some Runner UPS I know the next two that
22:39
we're looking at is um the piano lesson
22:43
and fences those are like the top two
22:46
options for the next Go Round right and
22:49
so we'll keep you posted on that there
22:52
will be no show next week but the first
22:55
week of
22:56
February we're going all in we're
22:58
celebrating black history mon over here
23:00
we are we don't care who don't like
23:03
we're celebrating
23:05
ourselves anyway thank you so much for
23:07
joining us and until next week we'll see
23:10
you later bye bye -
Story pitch contest entry
Story Pitch Contest January 2025 entry by HDdeviant on DeviantArt
-
The USA is based on slavery and all that entails.
MY THOUGHTS
What is most unfortunate about the united states of america u.s.a. is people like me and others who live in modern times, circa 1970 to today, were raised with a u.s.a. that culturally engineered itself to blockade the past. Yes, as a child of two book reading black parents who love true history i was raised knowing about the way the usa federal government operated not too long ago. But, this needs to be in schools. Instead you have parents , preach merit or earned living to children when the usa was founded and lived through its entire life to modernity on nepotism in one form or another. Yes the usa is fiscal capitalistic, but from its beginning fiscal capitalism was merely a cover story for imperialism, where whites absent the regal lineages could claim warrant of position, as opposed to Europe where at he time the usa was born, wealth was still connected to regal bloodlines more than fiscal capitalistic value. Sequentially, the whites of the usa always find ways legal or illegal as per their tradition to maintain their fiscal capitalistic wealth , regardless of their lack of merit or earnings. This has not changed. In parallel, blacks through the black church created this tradition of merited value in the usa which only allows for power or growth for black individuals while the black populace suffers under the machinations of white spoils.
THE ARTICLE
Sunday Morning
How a president's death helped kill Washington's "spoils system"
sunday-morning
By Mo Rocca
January 26, 2025 / 9:52 AM EST / CBS News"To the victor belong the spoils." For decades in the 1800s, that phrase was more than a slogan; it was the official hiring policy of the U.S. government. "You win the election, you're entitled to put all your own people in there," said journalist and historian Scott Greenberger.
He says that under that "spoils system," the main job requirement for most federal employees was … loyalty.
It was a system inaugurated by Democratic President Andrew Jackson. "When he came in, he was – and this will sound familiar – he was afraid that sort of entrenched bureaucrats would resist his policies. And so, he cleaned everybody out."
Were people aghast at this? "I don't think they were aghast when it began," Greenberger said. "But by the time we get to this 1870s and the 1880s, it was the one of the top issues on the national agenda."
This was a period of abundant wealth and corruption in American politics. "It's a fascinating period with so many parallels to our own time," said Greenberger. But a fight was underway to replace the spoils system with the hiring of qualified government workers, regardless of their political views, whose job security did not depend on whoever was president. "Civil service reform," as it was known, may not sound sexy, but it was one the hottest political issues of the Gilded Age, even attracting the attention of America's foremost author.
In 1876, the same year he published "Tom Sawyer," Mark Twain participated in his first political rally in Hartford, Connecticut, said local historian Jason Scappaticci. It was a big deal: "He had voted, but he had never campaigned for anybody," he said.
After marching through downtown in support of Republican presidential nominee Rutherford B. Hayes, the legendary humorist called for an end to the spoils system. "We will not hire a blacksmith who never lifted a sledge," he said on September 30, 1876. "We will not hire a schoolteacher who does not know the alphabet … but when you come to our civil service, we serenely fill great numbers of our minor public offices with ignoramuses."
The speech landed on the front page of The New York Times. "That just goes to show how vital he is, how big his name is," said Mallory Howard, assistant curator at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford.
She's not surprised that Twain would have been so horrified by the spoils system: "I think he felt it was embarrassing putting people in office who are not prepared. I think it doesn't make sense to him."
Hayes made it to the White House, but little progress was made on civil service reform during his single term. Hayes was succeeded by President James Garfield, who ran on reform.
But only months after being sworn in, the spoils system exacted its most horrifying toll. Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled and delusional office-seeker named Charles Guiteau.
In 1881 Charles Guiteau sought a position in the administration of newly-elected President James Garfield. When his entreaties for a post were rebuffed, Guiteau shot the president.
Three Lions/Getty Images
Guiteau had campaigned for Garfield, and believed that the president "owed" him. Worse still for reformers, Garfield's vice president, Chester Alan Arthur, suddenly elevated to the top job, had climbed the ranks of dirty machine politics, enjoying the fruits of the spoils system along the way."This was a nightmare scenario for the reformers," said Greenberger. "And then all of a sudden, here he is, he's President of the United States, and he expresses support for civil service reform, which shocked everybody."
Yes, in a surprising about-face, in 1883, President Chester A. Arthur – contrite, by some accounts, over the murder of Garfield – signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the first of its kind in U.S. history. The law was strengthened over time, laying the groundwork for a professional bureaucracy responsible for everything from food safety to financial regulation.
Greenberger said, "It really paved the way for a more active federal government."
Of course, the federal government of the late 1800s, with about 50,000 employees, looked like a lot different than today's workforce of more than two million. And critics, including President Trump, believe the numbers – and the protections afforded those civil service workers – have gone too far. Hence, President Trump's executive order this past week aiming to make it easier to fire some federal workers. "We're getting rid of all of the cancer," he said.
Scott Greenberger says maybe the time has come for another debate about the role of the civil service: "Yes, you should be able to fire people who aren't doing their jobs. And the protections shouldn't be such that someone who's incompetent is allowed to stay in a job. At the same time, if you eliminate those protections entirely, then you go back to the sort of system that we had in the 19th century, where only political loyalists are serving these positions."
A system undone by an unlikely hero who most people don't even remember was president … one that even Mark Twain put on a pedestal. "It's funny that we hardly remember the guy today," Greenberger said. "But when he died, people, including Mark Twain said, 'Wow, that guy was the greatest president we'd ever had!'"
Uniform Resource Locator
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-garfields-assassination-and-the-birth-of-the-civil-service/
-
World War Speed
MY THOUGHTS
Great information on the use of drugs in world war two. And how The german government used it heavy and excelled in the war, the british government, general montgomery commissioned heavy drug use. 20 milligrams per day is given to the tank brigades in the break through the german line. Funny how the drug is restricted by germans when the usa enters world war two and eisenhauer looks for millions. Amazing, the story on fake german leather is excellent.and the militaristic culture of germany which always relied on quick attacks and technology.
VIDEO
UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/preview-world-war-speed/4337/
TRANSCRIPT
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -It's long been known that German soldiers used a form of methamphetamine called Pervitin in the Second World War.
-[Speaking German] -But have tales of Nazis on speed... [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ...obscured the other side of the story?
[ Radio chatter ] [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
-The massive use of stimulants by British and American troops.
[ Rapid gunfire ] Did total war unleash the world's first pharmacological arms race?
♪♪ And, in the face of industrial slaughter, what role did drugs play in combat?
♪♪ Now, one historian... -My goodness, look.
There's the swastika.
-...is on a quest to dig deeper... -You got the machine guns there.
You got the tools.
So you just do this, you just go...?
-Precisely.
-A cannon shell is just gonna rip through.
-This soldier here that can hardly walk.
-Yes.
-...and learn the truth behind World War speed.
-Stand by.
-Eight, seven, six... -The amount of dust was incredible!
[ Explosion ] -...five, four... -Oh, my goodness, me.
Look at that!
-...three, two, -Set, shoot.
Fire One.
-one.
[ Explosions ] -Oh, my god!
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ [ Engine humming ] [ Static crackling ] -[ Speaking German ] -[ Speaking German ] -[ Speaking German ] -[ Speaking German ] -December 1942.
A German bomber crew struggles to keep their damaged plane aloft.
-[ Conversing in German ] [ Engine buzzing ] [ Ominous chord strikes ] [ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ -Seven decades after it went down, this German Heinkel He 115 bomber is pulled from a Norwegian fjord.
[ Oxygen whooshing ] It's an amazing discovery.
The only aircraft of its kind ever recovered, from a time when England stood alone against fascism in Europe.
[ Poignant tune plays ] The fjord's oxygen-poor water has left the plane remarkably intact and the recovery team will soon discover artifacts inside [ Camera shutter clicking ] in near-pristine condition, including brandy, caffeine-infused chocolate, and speed.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -[Speaking local language] -We're going to see the remains of a Heinkel 115, which is a float plane, a sea plane, that was used by the German Navy.
And, not only did they pull up this Heinkel 115, they also found lots of things on it, [ Turn signal clicking ] including, it turns out, a packet a Pervitin.
♪♪ For me, there's a massive difference between just being an armchair historian and actually getting out on the ground, rolling up your sleeves, and doing some proper primary research.
♪♪ You can't really understand a subject unless you actually seen what you're looking at for real, you know, you've touched those pieces of paper, looked at the sites, talked to other people who really know what they're talking about.
And it is amazing how it actually then prompts you to ask all sorts of other questions that you might not have thought about in the first place.
-James Holland has written nearly 30 books about the Second World War.
He's an expert on the blitzkrieg of 1940 and the Battle of Britain, which will prove pivotal chapters in his quest to understand how amphetamine use evolved during the conflict.
-[Speaking local language] -Could German amphetamine packets have survived the crash and decades underwater?
If so, they may provide unique insight into the role speed played during German bombing missions over England.
-You know, I've seen a few aircraft wrecks that have been pulled out of the water, but this Heinkel 115 that's been pulled up out of the fjord was in incredible condition, so good that you could still see the paintbrush marks on the tailplane.
So I'm looking at the bomb bay, here, aren't I?
-Yeah.
Yeah.
-Okay, but this was carrying bombs when it was found?
-Yeah.
Yeah.
-So where would they be?
-They was in the center section.
-And this is a camouflage for going over the dark North Sea.
-You know, you wouldn't want it light, would you?
You look at that sea from above, you can see how dark it is all the time.
♪♪ -For German bomber crews, night missions from Norway involved a 12-hour round-trip flight over the North Sea.
[ Rapid gunfire ] Raving spitfires and flak over England, then, surviving the long trip home.
♪♪ German victories make the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht seem invincible.
[ Explosion ] Rumors circulate of German soldiers and airmen fueled by a super-drug that makes them fearless, energized, and able to press on without need for rest or recuperation.
[ Tranquil tune plays ] Even Nazi dive-bombers stir theories about so-called Stuka-Tablets, pills that enable fliers to withstand G-force plunges to target no human being could possibly survive.
♪♪ -This is the Heinkel 115 elevator.
It was cut in two when the plane crashed, so.
-Right.
-In the wing, there was a dinghy.
-Yes.
-And, within the dinghy, there was a rescue package.
-It's possible to look at it?
-Yes.
-Fantastic.
So, when I walked in and saw the table full of objects from this escape kit, plus a few other little bits and pieces they found, I, you know, I was absolutely staggered.
And, obviously, we've got a brace of machine guns here.
These are 17s?
-MG 17s, yeah.
-You got the machine guns there; you got the tools.
You got all this, but this is the bit that's really catching my eye.
-Matches.
-Yeah.
-Cigarettes?
-Yeah, it is.
-This is obviously chocolate.
This has a high caffeine content, doesn't it?
-Yes.
-And this is the brandy.
-Yes, that's the brandy.
-I can't believe you haven't tried it.
Okay, but there's one item here that, to me, is missing.
-Yes, I guess we are missing the Pervitin.
-Yes, where's that?
-Well, when it came up and we tried to clean it, it started to dissolve and, when we looked back into the box, it was -- There's nothing left, so, it just vanished.
Well, I'm sorry, we have only a photograph of it.
-The whole reason for coming here is because Pervitin has been found on this plane when it was brought up from the fjord.
It was a little disappointing.
-Despite Jim's disappointment, the Pervitin's location on the plane may be more important than seeing the package itself.
-So this was in the -- this was in the wing?
What was really interesting is it wasn't sort of in the cockpit equivalent of the glove compartment, you know.
It wasn't found right by the pilot's seat or something, you know.
It was actually found in a pre-prepared [ Camera shutter clicking ] emergency escape pack.
That made me kind of think that it wasn't used in a kind of sort of casual way, but in a quite pragmatic way.
-If the Pervitin pack was kept out of reach, it suggests the drug wasn't meant to keep men awake during flight, but to keep them alive, should their plane go down.
-So you've got the brandy, to keep the cold away.
You've got some cigarettes to keep you going; chocolate with caffeine in it; and, of course, you've got the Pervitin.
We all know what that does.
That keeps you going for another 12 hours or so, while you're bobbing around on the North Sea.
They were flying in winter, so it's going to be bitterly, bitterly cold.
The most important thing is that they don't fall asleep and die of hypothermia.
So what's gonna keep you awake?
Well, Pervitin's gonna do that.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -Jim's Norway stop has been illuminating and frustrating, all at the same time.
[ Bell tolls ] He decides to head south, to a museum in Germany, where you can still see and hold Pervitin samples from World War II.
-And I met with Dr. Peter Steinkamp, who's an expert in this.
You know, I just really wanted to pick his brains about what this stuff was, how it came to be, and to look at Pervitin packets for the first time.
Wow.
That's amazing, isn't it?
[ Suspenseful music intensifies ] -This was methamphetamine created in the 1930s by a German pharmacologist.
He called it Pervitin.
This is a version for injection and this is the version for piercing.
-And what's this say, here?
-"Inject slowly, not too fast."
-[Laughing] Oh, goodness, me.
Imagine buying, over the counter, vials of stuff to inject yourself, you know, with a Class A drug.
I mean, it's just absolutely extraordinary and just so casual.
If I took one of those, how long would I be completely wired for?
-Well, about two nights.
-So this came out in Germany, what, in the late 1930s?
-Yes.
In 1938, it was first available in drugstores.
-So I could just walk in and I could go, "I'll have a packet of 12 Pervitin, please"?
-Yeah, really.
-Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
♪♪ -By 1938, Pervitin manufacturer Temmler Pharmaceutical of Berlin had launched a PR campaign modeled on Coca-Cola's global marketing strategy.
♪♪ And, despite Hitler's vehement anti-drug rhetoric, many Nazis, including the Fuehrer himself, were heavy drug users.
[ Cheering ] Methamphetamines seemed geared to the modern, tech-embracing Reich that was envisioned.
-The Nazi state is all about, "If you work hard, if you strive for a better Germany, then you'll get a better Germany.
Come on, get your backbone into it and let's get working.
Let's make Nazi Germany, the Third Reich, let's make it a thousand-year Reich.
Let's make it brilliant!"
You know, and they embraced science and technology, and pharmacology is all tied in with that.
That's why it appeals.
So it's not much of a step, is it, from day-to-day domestic use to being used in the armed services?
-Yes, yes, you're right.
The officers said to the medical officer, "Please, now, give Pervitin to our soldiers."
♪♪ -By May 1940, German troops under the influence of Pervitin have already conquered Poland.
Now, Hitler's Army masses for another attack, against France.
♪♪ The British and French armies facing them outnumber the Germans in men, artillery, and even tanks, but the German plan is audacious: built on the use of combined arms; using air power as moving artillery; and what some will call a new method of warfare, which really wasn't new at all.
-The German way of war, what has become known as blitzkrieg, has always been traditionally depicted as something kind of new.
It isn't.
It's an extension of the way of war that Germans have always been practicing and, before Germany became Germany in 1871, the Prussians before them.
And it's because they're stuck in the middle of Europe.
They don't have those resources of bauxite and copper and iron ore and, more latterly, oil, and food, actually, that you need to protract a long, attritional war.
So what do you do?
Well, you get round that by fighting your wars with overwhelming force at the point of impact, where you first attack, knocking your enemy off-balance, surrounding them and annihilating them, and you do that incredibly quickly.
-At this point in the war, the German army is outgunned and outnumbered.
To win, they'll have to move swiftly, with no time for rest.
And, like the Luftwaffe, the army also has a secret weapon to help defeat the military commanders' oldest enemy: sleep.
♪♪ -I mean, how much Pervitin was used in 1940?
-During the war against France in 1940, there was a delivering of 35 million pills -Ha!
-of Pervitin to the Wehrmacht.
-Wow.
So, literally, just in sort of 10, 12 weeks, they're issuing 35 million tablets of Pervitin?
-Yeah, yes.
-You know, all-in, there's only about 3 million troops involved in the whole thing.
[ Rapid gunfire ] -In the end, the German army pulls off what seemed impossible, even to Hitler.
[ Rapid gunfire ] Wehrmacht tanks and foot soldiers managed to fight and march for 10 days straight... ♪♪ ...trapping the entire British army on the beaches of Dunkirk.
♪♪ [ Gunfire ] German troops move an average of 22 miles a day, [ Flames crackling ] under fire.
It's considered one of the greatest feats [ Flames crackling ] in military history.
-So, obviously, Pervitin keeps you awake, but what else does it do to you?
[ Rapid gunfire ] -When you're taking it and you have to do a duty... ♪♪ ...you are focused on it.
There was no fear and you don't think about anything else in that moment.
-What other side effects are there?
-I talked to some veterans who used Pervitin and they said, after doing the duty, they sometimes got frightened -Oh.
-because "We were in fear that we could never, ever, sleep again and, when we could not sleep anymore, we must die."
♪♪ -However the drug affects individual soldiers, the larger outcome is clear: German troops, fueled by methamphetamine, crushed the combined arms of Western Europe in little over a week.
Nazi tactics and technology seem unstoppable.
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] But did the Wehrmacht truly need a stimulant to achieve victory in 1940?
Was marching 22 miles in a single day an amazing pace or has the blitzkrieg tale, like the word itself, been warped into legend over time?
♪♪ Today, Jim's gathered a group of fellow history fanatics to put this question to the test.
-The idea is that, rather -- -They start by comparing British and German infantry gear, to see if one was better than the other.
-Much more.
Just asking.
-Taff Gillingham has served as a military consultant for feature films and TV series.
-You then don't need to take your eye off the target until you've knocked him over.
-He's an expert on Second World War paraphernalia.
-Well, Taff, you know, we've got this all laid out.
We've got British here, German here.
Presumably, this is an ammunition pouch?
-That's right.
That's the ammunition pouch.
You've got three clips in each of those pouches.
-I mean, they do love leather, don't they, the Germans?
I mean, every bit of it is.
It's just leather, leather, leather.
-The British had a simpler idea, which was to carry a cotton bandolier, and then you just pull the clips out, ready to push into the rifle.
-Hm.
♪♪ -The British kitty is actually pretty quiet because it's all cotton, it's canvas.
It doesn't make much noise as you move around.
Whereas, the veterans always had this story that you could hear the German Army coming because they sounded like a loose cutlery drawer with all this stuff clinking and clanking away [ Laughter ] as the German -- Exactly.
The gas mask tin bouncing around.
♪♪ -I'll take this back.
-Next, they'll set out to see just how hard it would've been to cover 22 miles while carrying a 60-pound combat load, with only coffee or tea to keep you going.
-That's quite heavy.
[laughs] ♪♪ -I can't believe that they'd have walked a long way with a kit like that.
-I mean, this is the reason for doing this.
It's only when you actually start using this practically that you can understand how people would operate with it back in the day.
So the real point of this entire experiment is, after walking 20 miles around here with all this kit, if you've got a drug that can keep you going, can we understand why they're using this in 1940?
-Okay.
Let's do it.
-Let's do it.
♪♪ -My feet are -- Oof.
♪♪ -How's that?
-That looks good.
-Feels better.
Oh, post.
♪♪ Ooh!
That's my feet.
Now they hurt.
♪♪ [ Grunts ] ♪♪ -Ah!
[ Metal clinking ] [ Laughter ] We'll maybe leave that bit out.
[ Laughter ] -Two hours and seven miles in, the group breaks for tea.
-It's heating up pretty quick, isn't it?
-For many Allied soldiers, caffeine was the stimulant of choice.
Coffee was so critical to American GI Joes that, today, cup of Joe is synonymous with the drink.
-All right, cheers.
-I've got my foot out.
-Peel your heel off.
Where is it?
-Just there.
-Wiggle your foot.
How much am I getting paid for this is all I wanna know.
-So, because we're able to take caffeine, we're on these lovely, delicious-looking chocolate, caffeine-enhanced chocolate.
So, James, this should send us around the next bit of the march a bit quicker then, eh?
-Should do.
-Come on, let's go.
-Yeah.
♪♪ -They may not be in combat... -Hello, Woofit.
-[Barking] -...but they are carrying the same 60-pound load that German and British soldiers would've humped, back in 1940, and it's proving no easy task.
-Where's the shortcut, then?
♪♪ -If it's not 100 yards, I'm gonna collapse in a pile, there.
[coughing] Oh!
Oh.
Oh, [bleep] Ow.
My feet are broken.
♪♪ My ankles are broke.
So, I reckon that 20 miles is achievable, but, day after day, that's a very hard thing to ask for a platoon of soldiers.
-Despite bruised ankles, they've logged 14 miles in just under 4 hours.
At this pace, they'd have easily hit the 22-mile mark of the Wehrmacht.
-You know, they're all trained up for doing this kinda stuff, so you have to think that walking 22 miles a day, over consecutive days, for those guys, really shouldn't have been a massive problem without drugs.
[ Band plays march ] I am not convinced that the Germans needed it, at all.
♪♪ -Whether the Wehrmacht needed Pervitin or not, the Nazi victory in France is a stunning one.
♪♪ By June 1940, France has been brought to its knees.
♪♪ The British army lies in tatters and, soon, London itself is ablaze.
[ Explosion ] ♪♪ [ Explosion ] [ Flames crackling ] The English are desperate to learn the source of Germany's success... ♪♪ and, when a German plane goes down in the south of England, they find the answer.
[ Flames crackling ] Inside, they discover a packet of an unknown substance that holds the key to the Nazis' boundless energy.
Lab analysis will soon reveal the substance is methamphetamine, Germany's super-drug.
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] To find out more about the British side of the story, Jim's meeting pharmacology historian Dr. James Pugh.
-So, what have you got here?
-So I brought some files along which I thought you might be interested in seeing.
-Mm-hmm.
-The first is a letter to Winston Churchill, in fact.
-Oh, really?
-And it's actually from his physician, Sir Charles Wilson, letting Churchill know that the British have discovered that Germany is making use of amphetamines in a military context.
-Mm!
-And suggesting to him that, perhaps, this is something the British need to consider.
-I mean, this is a really interesting line: "In short, it was concluded that the drug would be useful to the majority of men if it is desired to keep them strenuously and dangerously active for 24 hours at a stretch."
-Germany has occupied France, by this stage, -Mm.
-so anything that the British feel they can do to gain an advantage or to level the playing field again is something that they need to consider and I guess you could characterize this as maybe the beginning of a chemical arms race, I suppose.
One of the other ways that the drug was used is in its inhaler form.
-Gosh, look at that.
God, it's like a Vicks inhaler.
So you just do this, you just go...?
-Yeah, I probably wouldn't do that, at this point, but.
-[laughs] No, but I mean, that's the process?
-Yeah.
-The Allied version of Pervitin was called Benzedrine and, like German speed, it was already used by civilians before the war began.
Both drugs make users intensely alert, flooding them with a sense of euphoria.
With its added methyl group molecule, Pervitin races across the blood-brain barrier a bit faster than Benzedrine.
Otherwise, the two drugs have virtually the same impact.
♪♪ During the battle of Britain, exhausted Spitfire pilots were getting Benzedrine, unofficially, from local pharmacies, but Churchill seems to push things to another level.
-So one of the very interesting things is that this is being sent to Churchill and what's important about that is he's a man of science.
He's very interested in novel developments and new technologies and stuff and so drugs kind of fit that bill for him.
-Soon, the Royal Air Force begins testing Benzedrine under combat conditions.
They turn to a 30-year-old flight surgeon, named Roland Winfield, to administer the drug to British air crew and record the reactions.
♪♪ By late 1941, Allied bombers are hitting back.
[ Bombs whistling ] [ Explosions ] ♪♪ Long night missions over Nazi Germany, with a fatality rate of more than 45%, are a terrifying ordeal.
♪♪ -You know, that's one of those things where, obviously, so if that can keep you awake and keep you alive, then, you know, clearly, that's a good thing.
-I suppose, on the other side of it, too -- -Later, Jim and James head out to explore a British Lancaster bomber, the same type of aircraft in which Roland Winfield conducted the only known combat tests of amphetamines during the war.
♪♪ -These bomb bays are pretty impressive, aren't they?
-My goodness.
[laughing] That's gigantic.
-They can take 6.5 tons.
-6.5 tons?!
-Yeah.
And they can be adapted to take a Grand Slam, which is 10 tons.
-10 tons.
-I mean, it is incredible, the lift of this.
-Just absolutely overwhelmed by the size of it.
This is gonna be tight, I reckon, for you, James.
-I mean, look at it.
[ Knocking, hollow ] It's a tin can, isn't it?
-So there's no armor here or anything like this.
-No.
No.
-This is just thin.
-And, you know, a cannon shell or a bullet's just gonna rip through.
-Rip straight through.
-On that Lancaster, you're just thinking, "This is a piece of tin.
I'm gonna be shot at.
I'm gonna be scared.
If I need to escape quickly," [laughs] you know, it's just next to impossible.
There are very few concessions to human comfort.
-Yeah, yeah.
-For me, this is designed for one thing, and one thing only, and that's dropping large amounts of bombs.
-Goodness, me, yeah.
[ Bomb whistling ] [ Explosions ] -Physically exhausting and terrifying.
In the air war over Europe, aviation technology pushes men beyond the limits of human endurance.
♪♪ -You know, I can understand why you would take a Benzedrine pill, you know?
-I think I can as well.
Just going past the navigator's desk, here.
-Again, I mean, look how cramped it is.
-It is.
And, as you emerge into the cockpit, there's a little bit more space here, I suppose, [laughs] until you try and get in the seat.
Case -- Oh, my goodness!
This is snug.
-Yeah, it really is, isn't it?
-[laughing] Yeah, this is snug.
-So tell me about Winfield's tests that he was doing.
-Yeah, he actually flies with the crews.
He administers the drugs in flight, you know; he also administers placebos.
And then, yeah, he reports back on the experiences the crews have.
♪♪ -In all, Winfield observed troops who were given amphetamines on 20 RAF missions.
♪♪ -[Indistinct] -I mean, just imagine this, James.
You know, you're sitting here, you're piloting this plane.
-We're over the lake now.
-You know, this is unpressurized, this cabin.
-Yeah.
-You know, -45°, freezing cold.
♪♪ You've gotta watch out for night fighters and you've got lots of flak coming up.
-Yeah, yeah.
-The whole thing is terrifying.
[ Rapid gunfire ] [ Explosion ] [ Explosion ] -So, after crews have dropped their bombs, they will experience what's known as the post-adrenal crash.
So their bodies have been flooded with adrenaline for an extended period of time.
That adrenaline starts to leave the body at that point and they become extremely fatigued.
This is one of the things that Winfield concludes and he recommends in his reports, is, if you take the drug about an hour and a half before you're going to drop your bombs, the drug will start to sort of act upon your consciousness at that point.
♪♪ -Of all Winfield's findings, perhaps the most influential are his reports describing how air crews high on speed show increased aggression under fire.
-One of the things that he notes in his report is an example of an attack, which the air crews actually dive down to a very, very low height and attack a flak [indistinct] -Really, they start shooting it up?
-Yeah, yeah.
Of course, Winfield is also simultaneously concerned by some of this, too.
Ultimately, when the RAF come to think about this drug, they're actually concerned about those effects... -Are you all right?
You get any of the baddies?
-...where the crews will start to lean on the drugs, as opposed to using them as a tool to help manage their wakefulness.
♪♪ -But if the RAF sees these side effects as a potential problem, the British army sees them as a benefit.
♪♪ Even more than keeping troops awake, British ground commanders want a pill that can make the men fearless.
[ Explosions ] ♪♪ By 1942, the Allies are losing massive numbers of soldiers to a byproduct of industrial warfare: shell shock, known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Over the course of the conflict, as many as one in three frontline soldiers will be incapacitated by it.
-Oh, God, listen!
-Benzedrine, it is hoped, might offer a solution.
[ Suspenseful music fades ] [ Piano plays melancholy tune ] For this hidden side of the story, Jim's traveling to a small museum connected to a hospital that first treated thousands of shell shock victims during the previous World War.
♪♪ -Well, I suppose, when we think of, well, the concept of war neurosis, shell shock, it really goes back to the first World War, doesn't it?
And is that the first time that it starts to become recognized?
-I think the stress of combat has always been recognized, certainly from the Crimean War onwards, but what happens in the first World War, is that industry has intensified killing power, so large numbers of soldiers, 60%, are killed by shrapnel, by artillery, by mortars.
♪♪ After the Battle of the Somme, when there's been something like 420,000 casualties, a significant number of those, maybe 50,000 to 60,000, would be shell shock.
So it's not only a medical problem, it's also a military problem because this is a war of attrition and, if you're losing large numbers of men to battle exhaustion, to psychiatric breakdown, and you're not able to treat them, then it's eroding your fighting strength.
-So, in the treatment of combat fatigue, when do they start looking at drugs?
When do they start looking at pharmacology and Benzedrine?
-Well, Benzedrine has been introduced to the UK in 1935, but as the war gets closer and closer, senior doctors and commanders recognize that this could have a major beneficial, you know, use, in all three services, in keeping soldiers awake, alert, and boosting their morale in times of stress, so I think the British army used Benzedrine to keep people awake, but also to lift spirits.
-So Dr. Jones was very interesting about the use of Benzedrine, not just as a wakey-wakey pill, which is what is was sometimes referred to, but also one that would improve morale, that would give those who took it a sense of kind of well-being and greater physical courage.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -Jim's Glenside visit has given him critical insight.
By using the drug as a tool to heighten aggression and lift morale, Britain is raising the stakes in the pharmacological fight against the Nazis, who still primarily see amphetamine as a way to offset fatigue.
By 1942, British troops in North Africa are in desperate need of a morale boost.
They've retreated across 600 miles of desert, chased by Germany's renowned Africa Corps, and are dug in around a tiny trading post: El Alamein.
But in October, a feisty new commander, who is likely familiar with the RAF amphetamine tests, arrives: Bernard Montgomery.
He is ready to go on the offensive.
-When Montgomery took over, morale in British 8th Army was at rock-bottom and it was one of the things he realized that he had to turn around, by the way he was talking.
-I want to impress on everyone that the bad times are over.
-And, you know, "There'll be no more retreats," you know, "You're really well-equipped.
We're gonna smash the Germans and the Italian forces," and trying to give them a greater sense of self-belief.
-We can't stay here alive.
They'll never stay here dead.
-But if there's a pill that could do part of that job for you, then it's gotta be worth taking.
♪♪ -It's always been a bit of a mystery whether Monty, himself, brought Benzedrine to the desert and whether he truly saw it as a morale builder, but Jim's recently discovered a document from Montgomery's medical officer, QV Wallace, which proves orders for Benzedrine came straight from the top.
[ Suspenseful music climbs ] -I've never before seen any direct, written reference in any official capacity, to the mass use of Benzedrine, but Brigadier Wallace's memo absolutely knocks that into touch because there it is, absolutely spelled out.
The troops that were involved in the opening stages of the Battle of Alamein were given Benzedrine, not just to keep them going, not just to keep them awake, but also to give them resolve, to give them confidence, to bolster their morale.
♪♪ -By late 1942, the Americans still have not put any boots on the ground in the West, but they do provide a new tank, which will give the British a technological edge in battles to come.
♪♪ -The Sherman is incredibly important when it comes in.
They get 300 of them straight into Egypt and they're kinda tested up and made battle-ready.
At the time, it is the best tank on the battlefield.
You know, it's got this incredibly accurate gun.
It's pretty well-armored.
It's very easy to maintain.
This is a very good tank, which is now entering battle on the British side.
-Just like long-range bombers, modern tanks, like the Sherman, were now pushing men to the limits of human endurance, so how welcome would a pill that could offset these conditions be, to those who served?
Jim visits an old friend who might be able to help him find out.
♪♪ -Okay, so Jim Clark is a restorer of wartime military vehicles and he's got a whole host of stuff.
He's got Jeeps; he's got trucks.
But he's also got a Sherman tank.
♪♪ So Jim, one of the things I'm trying to find out a bit is, I mean, obviously you know, when you're in a tank, you're gonna get shot at and that's quite traumatic, but the other thing I'm quite interested in is just what it's like, sort of existing and operating in these tanks 'cause -Yeah.
-it's a confined space.
You know, man's not really designed for this.
Ah!
-All right?
-We're in!
-Right.
[ Engine wheezing ] [ Engine starts ] [ Engine revs ] [ Whimsical tune plays ] ♪♪ -It's not an environment that is comfortable, in any shape or form.
♪♪ The smell of the fumes was immense.
Very quickly, you start to kind of catch your throat.
Oh, dear, I gotta say, the amount of dust is incredible!
-The fan that cools the engine -Yeah.
draws the air in through the crew compartment.
-it gets drawn over you, -[Laughs] -so you get covered in it.
♪♪ -If I'm feeling this amount of grit going into my eyes and up my nose, just from going down a short stretch of track in the middle of winter in England, what's it gonna be like in the desert?
It must've just been absolutely impossible.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -"Tank men," wrote one veteran, "fought their war in an enclosed, suffocating, noisy metal box, fearful of being struck and burned alive by an enemy they could not see."
[ Explosion ] [ Explosions ] ♪♪ -You really do get a feel of how physically draining it must be to just operate one of these things.
♪♪ So, you can see, can't you, the stress and strain -Yeah.
-of doing that?
You know, quite apart from the fact that you're, almost on a daily basis, been in battle.
-Yeah.
The toll of fightin' all day long and then no proper sleep, no rest.
Um -- Even if you're sleeping at night, there's probably shelling goin' on, so you probably didn't have much decent rest.
[ Gunfire ] -[laughing] And this is just stuffed full of highly explosive material.
-Yeah.
In the turret basket, I think there's about 15 or rounds.
There's probably 20 or 30 on each side.
-Yeah, it's a good number.
-Yeah, a good number, yeah.
Then, there was .50-cal rounds in the base.
Then, you got your 160 gallons of fuel.
Like a mobile bomb, basically.
[ Explosion ] ♪♪ -At El Alamein, the British 24th Armoured Tank Brigade is given the job of punching through German defenses.
As the Wallace memo makes clear, on the eve of the attack, each man is given a huge dose of Benzedrine: 20 milligrams per day, twice he amount recommended to RAF pilots.
-I know that the 24th Armoured Brigade were issued with Benzedrine because he wanted them to keep going.
You know, what he said was the first bit of the battle was gonna be the dogfight.
It was gonna be the grinding, attritional battle, and, for that grinding, attritional battle, he wanted his men to keep going.
[ Explosions ] -Unlike modern pills, Benzedrine tablets in '42 have no slow-release coating.
The full dose will hit all at once.
For some soldiers, alertness and euphoria will give way to a false sense of power.
♪♪ In the coming days, the men of the 24th will prove exceedingly aggressive, fatally so.
Because, for crewmen of either side, the use of amphetamine will do more than make them more alert.
It may suppress a natural reaction in combat: fear.
-Fear is about self-preservation.
You're scared because you don't want to die.
If you take that away and you sort of don't care quite so much, you're not quite so careful.
The problem of being charged up on Benzedrine is that your ability to make rational decisions and that normal preservation instinct which kicks in as a result of fear might be absent if you're absolutely pumped on speed.
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ -Even with their new Shermans, hopped-up British soldiers face an array of lethal German anti-tank guns.
[ Blast ] [ Explosion ] -What the Germans have is the infamous 88-millimeter, which is a dual-purpose antiaircraft gun.
This is something that can hurl a shell 24,000 feet, vertically, into the air and can also be used as an anti-tank gun on a horizontal position, straight at something, and this is firing at 2,900 feet per second.
♪♪ -If their judgment was impaired by high doses of Benzedrine, what kind of fate awaited them?
Jim's visiting a military explosives range for a demonstration.
♪♪ Trevor Lawrence runs the COTEC live-fire range on Salisbury Plain, where they test all new ordinance for the British military.
-Trevor Lawrence had been there, seen that, done it.
I mean, you know, this is a guy who's been clearing mines, clearing IEDs, you know, explosives, in Northern Ireland during the, kind of, height of the Troubles but he also served in, you know, Bosnia during the civil war there; and in Iraq, so, you know, he knew a thing or two about explosives.
So, Trevor, what we're trying to replicate is the first Sherman tanks.
They're arriving.
They're in action at the Battle of Alamein in Egypt in October 1942 and they're under attack from German anti-tank guns, either the 75-millimeter Pak 40, or the 88-millimeter.
And what we want to do is replicate what it would be like being in that tank, if you were hit by one of those shells.
-O-kay.
♪♪ I've arranged a metal framework.
-Yep.
-What we're gonna attach to that is a sheet of armored steel and that's the sort of steel that you would've seen on a Sherman tank.
Now, rather than actually firing a hardened steel projectile into it, what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach an explosive charge to the plate here.
-So, for all purposes, Trevor, that is an 88-millimeter anti-tank round?
-Absolutely.
As the shock wave runs through the explosive, where it hits the plate, it will produce the same sort of force that you'd get from a kinetic energy round striking the plate.
-Wow.
Okay.
And can we put anything behind here, so you can see, actually, the effect of falling shrapnel?
♪♪ -Well, here comes the tank crew.
-Here they are, and little do they know the fate that awaits them.
We can put some dummies close to it.
-These are our tank crew.
-Close in the tank crew, but also to get a better idea of what fragmentation we've got, what we tend to use is a sheet of aluminium and the fragmentation that's falling will go through, punch holes in that, and it'll give us a good idea of just how much has been produced.
-Wow, that sounds amazing.
[ Birds chirping ] -At Alamein, imperceptible desert ridges often concealed German 88s.
If Benzedrine led British tank crews to abandon caution and charge recklessly into hidden enemy guns, the results would've been devastating.
-Go ahead.
-Stand by.
[ Birds chirping ] -Three, two, one.
Firing.
[ Explosions ] -Whoa!
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Oh, my goodness, me.
Look at that!
-It does not look very well for our driver, does it?
-No, it doesn't.
Ouch.
♪♪ So, really interesting, when we got there, we had a look at it.
You could see that it was just this little kind of marble, small, little kind of circle where it had actually punched all the way through, but then, you look on the reverse side.
Oh, my goodness, me.
So a huge bit of metal has just disintegrated and it's just shattered.
-There we go.
-Oh, my god!
-Right in the center of the chest.
-And look at all these.
-But also, look at, see all this other fragmentation.
-On the head.
-'Cause, although it's come off in one big scab, it's also sent all these other, smaller fragments out.
[ Melancholy tune plays ] -Both of them had been absolutely covered with little splinter marks all over, each one of which could've been entirely lethal.
That's just the -- -That's just the blast has just smashed his chest in.
-Shrapnel melted onto the aluminium, and you can just imagine your crew member, behind these two, all into me, into the shells.
-Oh, it would be impossible to survive.
Absolutely impossible.
-I've interviewed so many people that have been in this situation, that have been in tanks, have served in tanks.
♪♪ What I never fully appreciated was the pressure blast from the force of a shell like that hitting another and penetrating and transferring that huge force into the confined space of a tank.
If you're in an environment like a tank, that shrapnel that's falling would've just pinged all around here and you think about all that ordinance we've just been talking about.
-Yeah.
You know, it's only got one of those that's gotta penetrate one of the propellant charges on one of those shells and it's you're in big trouble, -Yeah.
-aren't you?
[ Rumbling ] -Having taken huge doses of Benzedrine, the 24th Armoured Brigade sets out for battle.
♪♪ With new Sherman tanks leading the way, troops exhibit hyperaggressive behavior some historians attribute to the drug.
♪♪ By battle's end, the brigade suffers 80% casualties and ceases to exist.
♪♪ -By the end of it, they're absolutely shattered.
Where's the escape hatch?
Oh, there.
-There, yeah.
-Jesus.
-But you've got seconds to do it.
If you think -Yeah.
-you may be on fire and maybe your crew members are also in agony and you [indistinct] to save them or save yourself.
-Yeah.
♪♪ -Yeah, you know, it's -- [sigh] There's protection here, to a point, but, I don't really wanna be in a tank crew.
-No.
It is sad.
-Yeah.
♪♪ -So, can you see if someone's -- If the medical officer of the regiment said, "Look, here you go.
Here's a Benzedrine pill.
This will keep you going," you'd be quite tempted to take that?
-Yeah.
I think, if it works, I think I'd be well up for it.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ -On November 8, 1942, a month after Alamein, American GIs finally enter ground combat in North Africa.
[ Blasting ] [ Explosion ] [ Gunshot zips ] They carry with them packets of Benzedrine.
[ Blast ] After the British victory at Alamein, US General Dwight Eisenhower orders some half-million tablets for American troops.
♪♪ But, just as the Allies are doubling down on speed, the Nazis are reconsidering its use.
Ironically, Hitler's Reich health leader has concerns about the addictive nature and dangerous side effects of amphetamine and, although German soldiers will continue to use it sporadically, the drug is severely restricted, especially for civilian use.
Still, Hitler's infatuation with science and technology remains strong.
[ Birds chirping ] [ Melancholy tune plays ] By late '44, with his navy in tatters, the Fuehrer looks to a bizarre wonder weapon, that, with the help of amphetamines, might turn the tide.
♪♪ In the end, Jim returns to Germany, to visit the site of one of the first Nazi concentration camps.
♪♪ -In November 1944, some 40,000 men are stuck in this camp.
-What's it designed for?
-10,000?
-Okay, so four times more than there should've been.
-Four times more.
♪♪ Germany had lost the war -Of course.
-already and the sphere of influence of the German navy was reduced to the Baltic Sea.
Everything else was controlled by the British.
So these small submarines were constructed, mainly for espionage.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -In addition to espionage, Hitler's minisubs were also equipped with single torpedoes, designed to sink Allied ships moving supplies and troops across the English Channel.
-They were very small.
Only one or two soldiers could sit in it and they have to sit there for 48 hours, without sleeping, without getting up, without anything, so they needed a drug to keep them awake for that time.
-God!
It's just unimaginable, isn't it?
So you need this drug to keep you going and to keep, but also presumably to keep your spirits up as well.
-Yeah.
They were testing different drugs and comparing it, wanting to find out which drug keeps the people awake for the longest time with the smallest side effects.
This is the secret report on the experiments and this gives the four different substances: A, B, C, D. The first is cocaine, [speaking German] in different doses.
Second is cocaine in chewing gum.
Pervitin in a chewing gum.
-But 100 milligrams, I mean, that's a huge dose!
-Yeah.
It's a huge dose, indeed.
The men must have been completely stoned.
100 milligrams is really a lot.
-I mean, can you imagine it?
You know.
You're a young member of the German navy, you've been singled out to man one of these submarines.
You're chewing on gum that has been laced with cocaine and methamphetamines.
I mean, we're talking crystal meth, here, and you're chewing away on this thing in this tiny, tight little cockpit, and, you know, you're high on speed.
I mean, it's just, it's insane.
I mean, it is absolutely insane.
-To test the stimulants, the German navy decides to force Sachsenhausen prisoners to take the drugs and then carry sacks of rocks around the camp's infamous shoe track.
-So this is the testing track.
It was.
-This one, here?
-This, here.
It was once around the roll call area and it was covered with different materials.
So here you would have sand, the next one is concrete, small gravel.
And the reason for setting it up was the testing of artificial leather.
♪♪ Germany did not have leather; they always imported leather -Right.
-and, when they started the war, [laughing] nobody wanted to sell them leather, so they ordered companies to develop artificial -- -Fake leather.
-Artificial leather, yeah.
-God, it's absolutely fascinating.
I had no idea.
-And it's quite hard to walk on here, isn't it?
-It is, yeah.
-If you have to march, it's not so easy.
[ Melancholy tune plays ] Sachsenhausen was designed by an architect and the architect wanted to give a message with the architecture of the camp.
With the one tower as the highest point, every morning, the prisoners had to stand on the roll call area, being counted, and, up here, there was a huge machine gun.
For the prisoners down there, looking into the eye of this machine gun up here, the message was, "You're completely in our hands.
You're completely helpless and we can do whatever we want."
[ Buzzing ] -I mean, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do.
I mean, you can feel it, even just standing up here.
-Yeah.
♪♪ -What a grim place.
♪♪ -After the minisubs fail and his army falters, Hitler, who may himself have been addicted to drugs by war's end, takes his own life.
Luftwaffe commander and heroin addict Hermann Goering does the same.
[ Rattling ] But Benzedrine and Pervitin live on.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -During the Second World War, one of the things that it certainly does do is it familiarizes hundreds of thousands of individuals with a drug that perhaps they otherwise wouldn't have used.
So it sort of normalizes the use of that drug and it sort of reinforces its position as a useful tool.
♪♪ -By the 1950s, amphetamines are being marketed as a diet pill and mood enhancer.
Bennie inhalers are offered on airplane menus.
Celebrities, ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Jack Kerouac, are avid users.
Soon, millions are abusing speed, in what is now considered America's first prescription-drug epidemic.
[ Applause ] One likely user is a young combat vet from Massachusetts, named John F. Kennedy.
-Picking this country of ours up and sending it into the '60s.
[ Cheering ] -When I first embarked on this investigation, I was a bit scandalized that so much speed was taken during the Second World War and how outrageous that was.
-World War II military leaders saw amphetamines as simply another technological tool, like rockets and radar, tools that changed the world forever.
-For us, in the 21st century, drugs are bad, amphetamines are bad.
Speed is a dodgy word.
You've got to see this in the light of the 1930s and the 1940s.
World War II takes place over six years.
A lot is being expected of the young men [ Gunshots ] of the major combatant nations, and, is it any wonder, in this life-and-death struggle for the future of the world, that people are going to be looking at drugs that can keep people awake, that can keep morale improved?
It's absolutely no wonder at all.
[ Suspenseful music climbs, chords striking ]
-
Lucy Worsley Investigates
The Gunpowder Plot
MY THOUGHTS
Vendetta comes from the latin vindicare meaning "force to proclaim" . I modulate into a precise wordage " a tactile nonverbal action to speak". A vendetta is a tactile nonverbal action to speak. The questions is clear, what leads someone to choose speaking with tactile nonverbal action in opposition to other forms? The episode in defense explains the guides: bloody tactile actions that a person can deem as an assault on a member of their community by another community or the government, legal actions that a financially affluent person in a community can deem restrictive or inequal by another community or the government , a vibe to another community or the government that a person in a community is empowered by, an individual in a community who has the will to harm others through tactile means. Guy Fawkes and his accomplices had it all: examples of individuals murdered by the government for being a member of their community in all their memory, government sanctions or restrictions on the wealthy members of their group for being members of their community, an energy in their community to commit acts of violence toward the government, themselves as willing members of their community to commit vendetta. One of the modern tricks of governments, stemming from the usa, is learning how to maintain and embrace the fiscally wealthy in each community such that the financing or resources to vendetta by abused communities, ala first peoples in the usa or black descended of enslaved in the usa, doesn't have their own wealthy backing it. This is a huge deterrent to vendetta occurring in the usa. the group I call the Black fiscal aristocracy in the usa has never been blockaded completely and always embraced more and more by the white fiscal aristocracy or the usa federal/state/city governments the white fiscal aristocracy control.
The older governments in humanity allowed union of the fiscal groups in oppressed communities in their borders, the usa and the worlds governments influenced by it, still abuse, still create daily examples of inequal abuse, still has those in abused populae who want to vendetta but the fiscally wealthy in most abused populaces is treated disfavorably but not restricted or blockaded.
VIDEO
UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-gunpowder-plot-o8ufgv/
TRANSCRIPT
♪ Lucy Worsley: Midnight on the 4th of November, 1605.
[Wind blowing] ♪ In a cellar deep below Parliament, a man called Guy Fawkes prepares to light the fuse of a deadly attack planned by a small network of men... ♪ determined... [Crackling] to destroy the king and his government.
[Cawing] Unstopped, this one explosion... [Crack] could have changed the history of Britain entirely.
So what were the steps, the causes, and connections that led these men to attempt to blow up Parliament.
♪ [Explosion] [Cawing] ♪ In this series, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.
Oh, yes, here we go.
Man: And now you're face to face with William the Conqueror.
Woman: They know that sex sells and that violence sells.
Worsley: These stories form part of our national mythology.
They harbor mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries.
It turns very dark here.
Woman: Clearly showing us-- Worsley: Refugees.
There are such graphic images of religious violence.
But with the passage of time, we have new ways to unlock their secrets using scientific advances and a modern perspective.
He was what we would now call a foreign fighter.
Worsley: I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.
I'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clues...
The human hand.
to get closer to the truth.
It's like fake news.
Worsley: You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence.
♪ [Explosion] ♪ Worsley: I'm deep beneath the streets of London on the trail of a group of men who many would now call domestic terrorists.
Ah, here it is.
These are the Gunpowder Plotters, the infamous Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, who on the 5th of November, 1605, tried to blow up a packed parliament in the name of their Catholic faith.
I think that this image shows just how sanitized this story has become.
Every year, much of Britain still celebrates Guy Fawkes Night, his night, on the 5th of November.
The Gunpowder Plot has become a nice, family-friendly party night with bonfires and fireworks and an engraving that's safe enough to be shown on the Tube.
But this is not a safe story.
♪ Back in 1605 when Guy Fawkes was caught, the ports were closed, people panicked.
The state focused all its attention on tracking down and executing the group of would-be killers.
♪ [Chains rattling] ♪ I want to investigate how these men reached the extreme, how they connected with others and came to believe that the answer to their problems was wiping out the seat of power.
This was a dangerously radicalized network of men.
They were willing to risk everything to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people for their cause, but what made them unite and plan this really monumental act of violence?
♪ We tend to forget the names or even the existence of most of the plotters, yet even as children, they had connections to each other... so to uncover the roots of their radicalization, I'm starting this investigation by going back much earlier than most people do, to their childhoods.
♪ 3 of the future conspirators, John Wright and his brother Christopher Wright, as well as Guy Fawkes, all went to the same school, growing up in the city of York.
♪ [Bells tolling] ♪ Amazing.
♪ This is Saint Michael Le Belfrey Church, which has been active for nearly 500 years.
It's currently undergoing a major renovation, but I've been allowed to come in to take a look at the church records.
♪ This book contains the first written record of Guy Fawkes.
Here he is, the third one down.
It says, "Guy Fawkes, the son of Edward Fawkes, was christened," here in this church in 1570.
But there's something else I want to look at in this book to get a sense of Guy's early life.
Oh, yes!
Here it is.
A list of burials from 8 years later, 1578, and among the people who've died is...Edward Fawkes.
That's Guy's father, so Guy lost his father when he was still a child, and there's something else here, too.
It's quite tricky to read, but it says he was registrar and advocate of the consistory court of the cathedral, so that means he was a lawyer working in the church court.
That would have been dealing with cases like the annulment of people's marriages, that sort of thing, and it's interesting because it means that Guy's father was working for the church, and at the time, that meant the Protestant church.
♪ So Guy, who will ultimately die for a Catholic cause, is born a Protestant.
♪ In the late 16th century, faith had the power to dictate life on Earth and beyond.
Protestants and Catholics disagreed on the route to salvation.
Picking the wrong side meant the difference between heaven and hell.
♪ In the 1580s, Guy's mother remarried into a Catholic family.
Around this time, Guy became a convert.
When Guy converted to Catholicism, he must have felt that this was the only way to obey God and ultimately to go to heaven, but in the eyes of the state, he was utterly wrong.
The Protestant Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, and by the 1580s, when the young Guy was walking these streets, Catholicism was effectively banned.
Not going to Protestant church could mean fines or even prison.
Catholic priests were outlaws, and protecting priests meant real danger.
When Guy was in his teens, a local woman called Margaret Clitherow-- she was the wife of a butcher-- was accused of hiding priests in her house.
As a result of this, she was brought to the middle of York, and she was very publicly killed.
♪ I want to know what effect this event might have had on Guy Fawkes and the other York-based conspirators, the Wrights, who were from a known Catholic family, and there's a tantalizing clue in the city's Bar Convent.
♪ Worsley: Hannah, what is this completely extraordinary object?
So we are looking at the hand of Margaret Clitherow.
-The hand?
-The hand.
-The human hand?
-The human hand.
This is a relic taken at some point by her followers so they had something to remember her by, to keep safe.
Can you tell me a bit of Margaret's story?
She's somebody who converts to Catholicism in her 20s, and then she runs runs a sort of secret Catholic network, safe homes for priests.
She's imprisoned 3 times over a 7-year period, and then in 1585, the law changes, and it makes it a capital offense to harbor a priest, and then under that law, she is prosecuted, so she refuses to plead guilty or not guilty to protect people around her.
So the sentence that's actually passed on her is to be crushed until she enters a plea or until she dies.
To be--to be what?
-To be crushed?
-Crushed?
-Yes.
Yes.
-Ohh!
That is terrible.
Yeah.
It's a particularly brutal death.
There's a sharp stone put under her back, a door is laid on top of her, and then heavy weights are put on top of the door, so they're constantly added, so it gets heavier and heavier, and obviously, naturally, I think she lasts about 15 minutes.
It's a particularly horrific way to die, very public, quite undignified.
So she's stripped.
She's just in her kind of linen shift.
And people are watching this.
People are watching.
There's a huge crowd watching it.
Is it possible that Guy Fawkes was present at this public spectacle of execution?
It's very possible.
A lot of the Catholics in the city were there.
We know that there are accounts of there being a really large crowd.
So even if they weren't there necessarily in person at the execution, then we know they would have heard about the story.
So we've got the manuscript biography of her life, which was circulated amongst the Catholic community, and then we've got a little sort of picture, as well, which does a similar job.
So it's a little engraving of her execution, so the death is happening here at the background.
And they're putting the weights on.
-Putting the weights on.
-Gosh.
And again, you could pass this around the community.
You could share the story.
That's such a powerful image, isn't it?
"This is what those Protestants have done to us."
It must have been a hugely, viscerally distressing experience for everybody.
I think it must have had a massive impact.
The two other gunpowder plotters, John and Christopher Wright, they were possibly there, as well.
So the men that were to later on become the Gunpowder Plotters, you know, they're in their teens at this point, and then this story becomes a sort of what if that was my mother, or what if that was our family?
Changes their whole world to be labeled as a Catholic.
It's not just a case of where do they go to church on a Sunday.
It's a real sort of everyday struggle.
There's constant persecution.
I'm thinking if I were a Catholic this might well make me paranoid, but in a sense that paranoia is completely justified.
There are people out to kill them.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is a stark reminder of the realities of what they're doing.
♪ Worsley: The violent death of Margaret Clitherow must have had a seismic effect on the community here in York, where Guy Fawkes and some of the other future plotters were teenagers.
This was an impressionable age for them, and I can imagine that if you were recently converted to Catholicism or thinking about becoming a Catholic, then this must have had a real impact.
I'm not saying that watching somebody being killed for their religion justifies the killing of other people.
Absolutely not, but I think I can begin to glimpse the sort of effect it might have had on Guy Fawkes.
To him, religion must have started to feel like it was a matter of life and death.
[Bells tolling] We can never know exactly what the young Guy Fawkes thought about his home country and the ruling regime at this time... [Water sloshing] but we do know he decided to leave.
In his early 20s, Guy went to Europe to fight for Catholic Spain in its wars against the Protestant Dutch... ♪ but he was becoming a soldier.
He's not an extremist yet... ♪ and although Guy has today become the face of the Gunpowder Plot, it wasn't his idea.
To understand what drove this plan for radical violence, I'm going to have to follow a different line of inquiry to look at the man credited with coming up with the plot, the ringleader Robert Catesby.
♪ I've come to Ashby Manor in Northamptonshire, which belonged to the Catesby family.
Ashby is mentioned in letters between the conspirators as a base where they could meet, and hidden away here is the perfect room.
This is the gatehouse.
It's supposed to be a good place for plotting because it's at a distance from the main house over there.
That's so Robert Catesby's mum didn't need to know what was going on, and it's here they had some of the meetings to plan the gunpowder attack on Westminster.
♪ [Hushed] It happened here.
♪ The other conspirators later talked about Catesby as a charismatic man who drew them into the Gunpowder Plot... but this wasn't the first uprising Robert Catesby had been involved with.
[Priest speaking Latin] 4 years earlier in 1601, Catesby had joined an attempted coup known as the Essex Rebellion.
This wasn't a Catholic plot, but a power grab within the court of Elizabeth I, which attracted a range of disaffected groups.
♪ To try to understand Catesby's motivations, I'm meeting a historian who studied the evidence for his life.
We're sat here in one of the Catesby family's homes.
Can you tell me a bit about Robert's background?
Well, he's from a prominent gentry family, who are descended from one of the cronies of Richard III, but by the 1580s, Catesby's father is known as one of the kind of leading Catholic gentlemen in the area.
He is somebody who we call a recusant, who pays fines for not attending the Church of England services, and he's seen as potentially troublesome to the regime.
So like father, like son, there's a history of being a Catholic agitator.
Yeah.
Catesby's father William Catesby, as far as we know, did not get involved in any schemes that involved violent action, and he declared that he was a loyal subject of the Crown, just not of the church.
[Indistinct voices] So in that sense, Robert Catesby is of a generation that has decided that violent action is now necessary because they can't see that their situation and the situation of those who are suffering for their religion is going to become any better.
[Indistinct voices] For Catesby, the outlawing of his religion meant you're not really-- you can't participate in the state.
You're not anything we'd call a citizen, and for a member of the gentry, that means really, you can't live the kind of life to which you are born properly.
He seems to have been extremely ambitious but also possessed of this kind of desire for action.
We have records of him in conversation with Catholic priests saying, "I cannot wait.
"I cannot wait for Catholicism "to be restored by Providence.
I have to act now."
-He's an action man.
-He's an action man.
Alexandra, what happens to the people who were involved in the Earl of Essex's rebellion?
Well, Essex himself, with a handful of his really close conspirators are executed.
They're beheaded, but a much larger number of them are imprisoned and fined quite significantly.
This document says, "The names of those that are fined and reserved to Her Majesty's use," and here we see the name of Robert Catesby.
4,000 marks.
That's a pretty big fine.
It's difficult to make these kinds of calculations, but we think that's, at a very low estimate, at least £4 million today.
Gosh.
And what does it mean to be reserved to Her Majesty like that?
That means, theoretically, to be imprisoned or to be placed under some kind of close confinement -such as house arrest?
-Gosh.
He's certainly, from this point, on the radar of the Privy Council and the Crown as somebody who might be a potential threat.
Just before Elizabeth's death, he's one of a number of Catholic gentlemen who are placed under some kind of confinement and watch.
They're described as hunger starved for innovation.
That means that they're seen as seditious.
They want some kind of change, and he's seen as a kind of turbulent spirit, who might be dangerous.
♪ Worsley: It seems to me that Robert Catesby was a desperate man... so keen for change that it was already landing him in trouble.
Elizabethan rule had been hard on these Catholic families.
There was a mood of anger... ♪ but I want to examine why that anger then grew into extremism under a different monarch... ♪ because the Gunpowder Plot took place two years after the death of Elizabeth.
In 1603, King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England.
♪ Catholics like Robert Catesby could find reasons to be optimistic.
♪ King James was Protestant, but his mother had been the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, and James' own wife had converted to Catholicism, suggesting his children could be brought up in the faith.
♪ James was the leader many Catholics had hoped for.
In fact, one of the plotters-- Thomas Percy was his name-- had even met up with James before he'd taken the English throne in order to discuss toleration for Catholics.
♪ So why would the plotters turn from being hopeful about the new king to wanting to kill him?
James' biographer believes that a book written by the king himself reveals a reason why the plotters might have felt betrayed.
So this is James' "Basilikon Doron," or "The Kingly Gift," and it's a sort of how to be a king that James had written to his son Prince Henry, and it was first written in 1599 when he was King of Scotland but then became a mammoth bestseller in England upon his accession to the English throne in 1603.
What kind of insights do we get from the book then?
We get some quite surprising insights into how James might have operated.
One of those is the idea of being economical with the truth.
Is that OK?
Well, for James it is at times.
So in this passage in the 1603 edition, he says that "it may be thought a point "of imbecility of spirit in a king to speak obscurely, much more untruly."
So that means you've got to be a straight talker -to be a good king.
-That's exactly right.
In the 1603 edition.
In the earliest forms of the text, however, in 1599, it's a little bit different.
No way.
What does he say?
So I've got here the older Scottish version from 1599.
"The king must not speak obscurely, "much more untruly, except some unhappy mutiny "or sudden rebellion were blazed up.
"Then indeed it is a lawful policy to bear "with that present fiery confusion by fair general speeches."
What a dirty devil!
So he's saying, if there's a crisis going on, it's OK not to tell the truth.
-Absolutely.
-To say things that are kind of meaningless just to-- just to smooth things over.
Yes.
That's right, and indeed, he goes on to say, "keeping you as far as you can from direct promises."
So give them the brush off.
So if that's his true thought-- and I can imagine him coming to England and saying all of these kind things about the Catholics-- -Mm.
-is that how they got the idea that he was going to tolerate them.
Uh, yes, on one level, I think that is true.
Before he is safely ensconced on the English throne, he is trying to appeal to different audiences who might be useful to him in bringing about a smooth course to succeed to Elizabeth's throne, almost like a politician seeking election, and when James came south in the spring of 1603, things did get lighter for Catholics.
Fines on Catholics for nonattendance at church were greatly alleviated, so James gives off these signals.
He's able to leave people thinking that they have been listened to.
In that sense, he's a slippery character at times, but that does then pose some problems because the hopes that they had in him turn out not to be quite what they had thought.
♪ Worsley: The king's attitude towards Catholics soon hardened.
In March 1604, James made a proclamation to Parliament, making it clear he was never going to tolerate Catholicism.
He ordered the deportation of Jesuit priests, accusing them of being a malevolent foreign influence.
The fines Queen Elizabeth had established for not going to church were soon reintroduced and backdated.
There was a sense of doors closing.
The options for toleration were shutting down.
♪ For an already frustrated man like Robert Catesby, all this must have felt like a real blow, perhaps even a provocation... ♪ but while these events were unfolding in England, Guy Fawkes was hundreds of miles away.
♪ So how far down the road to extremism was he?
♪ When King James came to the throne, Guy Fawkes had been in Europe for about a decade, fighting for Catholic Spain.
♪ His name appears on lists of soldiers, but there's very little detail... ♪ but to get a sense of how Guy was feeling about events in England... ♪ I tracked down some evidence in a Spanish historical archive in Simancas.
This is a document that's supposed to be written rather excitingly by Fawkes himself.
Now it's in Spanish--ahh!
And I can see what he's done.
He's changed his name to the more Spanish-sounding Guido.
He's become Guido Fawkes here.
It's from 1603, and Guido Fawkes is reporting news to the royal court in Spain.
♪ The subject is the new King James, and this English translation exposes the true nature of Guy's position.
It says here that James is a heretic and that he's determined to "tyrannize" the English Catholics.
That's a strong word.
Guy goes on to claim there's infighting in James' court.
It appears he's deliberately undermining the new king.
He's telling the Spanish that England is not a happy place, especially for Catholics.
♪ It's likely that by spreading these stories Guy was hoping Spain would step in and help.
♪ Spain had been at war with England since the mid 1580s.
[Men shouting] [Explosions] In 1588, the fleet of the Spanish Armada had attempted to invade England.
Ever since, English Catholics had lobbied Spain to try again or at least support a rebellion.
♪ And there's another document here that I think suggests just how desperate for change Guy was.
Hmm.
This is--this is amazing.
This is Guy imagining the future.
He's drafted a proclamation that's to be handed out to English people after an imaginary future foreign invasion, so he's literally making plans for there to be a new regime in England, and hidden inside what he's written is this fascinating point.
He says that God is going to be OK if you use violence, provided you've been oppressed and when no other remedy is offered.
So what he's saying is that when there's no other option, violence is justified in the eyes of God.
Guy's ready to fight back.
♪ Guy wasn't the only person hoping Spain would help the English Catholics.
Catesby and other plotters, too, appealed to the Spanish for aid.
It was their last big hope, but Spain was short of cash.
War was expensive, So in 1604, Spain and England signed a peace treaty.
This must have left the English Catholics feeling alone.
The cavalry were not coming, and perhaps this was the final twist in the screw that made Catesby and the other conspirators feel that it was down to them.
Nobody was going to help them.
They must take drastic action.
♪ Within a year of James' coronation, Catesby had begun to gather a small group of men to plot a major uprising.
John Wright had grown up in York and, like Catesby, had been part of the Essex Rebellion.
Thomas Wintour was Robert Catesby's cousin and a relative of one of the priests hidden by Margaret Clitherow.
♪ To get inside the heads of these plotters as they made their early plans, I've come to Hatfield House, built by Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State, who oversaw the Gunpowder Plot investigations.
♪ Among Cecil's papers here are the confessions of core conspirator Thomas Wintour.
These are key, key sources for what happened in the Gunpowder Plot.
A lot of the detail comes out here about what was happening in the room when the conspirators were actually having these dangerous conversations.
It's like being a fly on the wall.
Wintour talks here about the first time Robert Catesby told him he'd thought of a way to bring back the Catholic religion to England.
"In a word," Catesby says, "it was to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder."
There it is.
"In that place have they... done...us all the mischief."
So he means "in that place, the Parliament, they have done the bad things to us Catholics," and--oh--this is-- it turns very dark here, And he says, "Perchance God "has designed that place for their punishment.
"For what they've done "to the members of the Catholic faith, these people in the Parliament have to die."
♪ In a single blast, they would take out the entire structure of power.
Targeting the opening day of Parliament meant the king and most of his family would be at Westminster.
So would members of the House of Lords and MPs, who all had a say in making the law, but there has to be more to the plot than this.
The explosion was supposed to cause huge confusion in London, and the plotters were going to go galloping up to the Midlands to rouse their supporters for a rebellion.
They were also going to kidnap the king's daughter, his little girl, and set her up as a Catholic puppet queen.
So this was supposed to be regime change, new monarch, new government.
Catesby was building his team and knew exactly who he needed.
Down here, we get for the first time the mention of a very significant name in connection with the plot.
Catesby tells Wintour to go abroad, to go to the Spanish Netherlands, and to bring back with him "some confident gentleman."
That means a gentleman he can trust, "such as you shall understand best able for this business and named unto me Mr.
Fawkes."
♪ So why was this Guy Fawkes the best man for the job?
♪ By the time Wintour went to recruit Guy Fawkes, Guy had been a soldier fighting in a holy war for most of his adult life.
♪ That must have given him a key practical skill.
♪ He was likely to have worked with gunpowder.
This wasn't a suicide mission.
The plan was to light the fuse and escape.
Guy Fawkes should have had the know-how to do just that... ♪ but I'm interested in how else Guy's experience abroad might have influenced him.
Now, even though there's a great mass of 17th century documentation about the Gunpowder Plot, it's still quite hard for me to grasp what pushed Guy over the edge, what turned him from being a rebel who wanted change into an absolute radical willing to kill?
♪ I'm intrigued.
if modern knowledge of extremism can help me understand the lengths to which Guy was willing to go, so I've enlisted the help of a journalist and author who's written extensively on terror, and particularly al Qaeda.
Jason, why do you think the plotters go abroad to recruit Guy Fawkes?
Because it's abroad that they'll find exactly the person they need.
The one thing that's really clear about more recent plots, those in the last few decades, is that spending time overseas and then coming back is absolutely crucial.
If they're overseas or, in fact, if they're just a long way from home, they can be kept in an environment where the radicalization process is really very intense.
There are no other influences getting in.
It's just the group, the ideology, the other people in that group.
Someone who's involved in terrorist training said to me once that the only way that he could take a teenager and turn them into the kind of extremist actor that he wanted was by taking them away from their home, and you put them in a kind of camp somewhere in a particular environment where you're surrounded by people who are committed to the same cause.
That will work.
I mean, he said to me, "If they go back to their mum every night, forget it.
That's not gonna happen."
If a if they're in an environment that's outside their own kind of domestic environment, then you can really see that the radicalization processes will happen quite fast.
Do you think it's significant that Guy Fawkes himself had been working as a soldier?
Oh, yeah, very much so.
In that real kind of hothouse environment, his commitment and his tolerance for violence, also, will be reinforced, get higher and higher and higher, so I think it's really important that he was what we would now call a foreign fighter.
He got skills, got psychologically hardened there, was exposed to some probably quite traumatic experiences, and then came back and is absolutely perfect to fit into this plot that is preexisting.
Jason, do you have any insight into what makes a person willing to go all the way and kill loads of people?
The whole thing about terrorism is it's not a science.
What you can say is that whoever does it... needs to believe that it is the only thing they can do in those circumstances.
They're very often seeing their community or the people they identify with as under threat.
Now, that might be wrong.
Often is, but that's what they see, and then that then justifies what they think they have to do.
-No alternative.
-There's no alternative.
It is now, it is urgent, and they have to be the ones who will do it.
♪ Worsley: In May 1604, the core plotters came together to take an oath of secrecy and make plans.
♪ While Catesby was known to the authorities, Guy Fawkes wasn't.
He was able to move around without suspicion.
♪ Thomas Percy also now joined.
He was the brother-in-law of John and Christopher Wright, but crucially, he was also a member of the King's Bodyguard.
With easy access to Westminster, he rented the cellar beneath the parliamentary complex, where the gunpowder would be hidden.
Preparations would take more than a year.
Meetings of Parliament were postponed, so the date slipped.
Plans were carefully made for the Midlands part of the rebellion.
Funds had to be raised.
♪ That meant the network of conspirators grew.
These were cousins, brothers, friends.
It was a cell of mostly wealthy men hoping for more power under a regime change.
On the 4th of November, 1605, the stage was finally set for attack.
[Bell tolls] The following day, the king was due to open parliament, but underneath the parliament-- in the old building, not this one-- Guy Fawkes was waiting with his 36 barrels of gunpowder... ♪ but now the plotters' network had widened, there was a leak.
An anonymous letter had been sent to a Catholic peer, warning him not to go to the opening of Parliament.
That letter was passed on to the authorities.
[Wind blowing] On the night of November the 4th, with conspirators poised for rebellion around London and in the Midlands, Guy Fawkes waited for his big moment, but the king had ordered two searches of the cellars beneath Parliament, and in the early hours of the fifth... [Strike, fuse sparking] [Cawing] Guy was discovered.
♪ The most radical part of their plot had collapsed, but some in the group believed the rest of the uprising might still succeed.
♪ Guy was brought to the Tower of London to be interrogated.
This was now a race against time.
On the one hand, the authorities wanted to know who is this man, who else might be involved, what else might be planned?
On the other hand, Guy Fawkes wanted to stall for as long as possible.
If this rebellion was going to succeed, then Catesby and the rest of them needed time to rouse up their supporters.
♪ Catesby had built a cell of men willing to go to extremes.
♪ He must have felt like their future now hinged on Guy's interrogation.
♪ I want to know exactly how committed Guy was to this plot.
Records from the time tell us what was said in the interrogation, but a modern perspective might help me delve into Guy's state of mind under pressure... ♪ so I'm meeting a psychologist who works as a registered intermediary in police interviews and has designed an app to evaluate interview technique.
♪ Laura, this is the actual room where Guy Fawkes was questioned.
You spend a lot of your time in investigative interview situations, don't you?
-Yes, I do.
-Bit different to this.
Very different.
This is a very grand room.
I guess the idea was these are really grand surroundings.
This represents the majesty of the king, and you're just a little worm.
Yeah, definitely.
You're meant to feel intimidated when you walk into an interrogation room.
And how does Guy Fawkes stand up to the questioning?
Yeah.
So what the app allows us to do is see when there are significant turning points in an interview or an interrogation, so this here maps out the interrogation on the second day with Guy Fawkes.
In the early stages, he's very happy to answer questions about facts that are probably known.
For example, "Whether did you convey yet in barrels or otherwise?"
How he carried the gunpowder, and then he says in barrels, so he's answering those questions.
He's given them that information, but it's clear to everybody it was in barrels because he was caught there.
He's merely confirming the details -that are already known... -Yeah.
but we do see a switch as the interrogation goes on.
What this app allows us to see is that he then closes down.
His responses drop down to the red.
So the first one is when they start demanding where he was in the nights leading up to the actual plot.
And they don't know that information.
And they don't know that information.
And what does he say?
He says he has forgotten.
He's forgotten?!
And you can see it all the way through the interrogation.
When they are asking him questions about facts they do not know, such as his location or the other conspirators, he does not give them any information.
So as the questions get more important, as it were, he's basically saying, "Up yours.
I'm not telling you anything."
Absolutely, and he seems-- when you read through this interrogation, he seems very much in control.
He's obviously an extremist, and there are two main schools of thought around why they engage with that type of behavior.
The first one is that there are mental health problems, they are delusional, and they are going through with these acts in a chaotic state of mind.
I don't necessarily see that in the interrogations with Guy Fawkes.
He actually appears to be quite the opposite, which leads us nicely on to the second school of thought that actually it's because they are very controlled.
They have this duty, and they won't stop at anything to do it.
and when Guy Fawkes is caught red-handed, when he's interrogated, you can see that he remains that composed state.
He's not given erratic information.
He's actually been very controlled and very careful with what he is providing to the interrogators.
I think he gives us a clue here into his source of strength because he says to the questioners, "You would have me betray my friends."
-Hmm.
-"My friends."
He's got friends.
He's part of something social.
He sees himself as part of a social group.
In his head, you know, he knows that he's been caught, but he's very much hoping that the plot will still go ahead, and so he's not giving away any information that will jeopardize that.
♪ Worsley: It seems to me that Guy's belief in the plot was extremely deep... ♪ but I've come to the National Archives to examine the evidence for what it might have taken to make him crack.
♪ Now, this completely astonishing document is in the king's own handwriting, so it's a little window into his mind, and it explains how the king wants the interrogation done.
He says, "If Guy Fawkes won't confess, then the gentler tortures"-- tortures-- "are to be first used unto him."
And then after that, the king actually goes into Latin because what he's saying is so dark and serious.
He says, "et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur."
That means the tortures are to be increased little by little until you get to the very worst.
♪ Torture was technically illegal, but the king would sanction it to bring down the plotters.
This document is a record of what Guy Fawkes said in his interrogation.
This is the 7th of November, and at the end of the session, they got him to sign his name, supposedly to show that it was an accurate reflection of his words, but when we fast forward two days, you can see he's finally cracked because at the end of this session where they've asked him to sign his name, he can hardly write, which suggests--and this is really brutally awful-- that during those two days he's been tortured so badly, whether using the thumbscrews or the rack or whatever, that he's lost the use of his hands.
♪ Despite all of his confidence and his ability to withstand interrogation that he showed earlier on, he's finally broken.
But the irony is Guy's naming of his accomplices was irrelevant.
[Groaning] ♪ While Guy was being questioned in the tower, the authorities were already hunting for known Catholics who had left London suddenly.
♪ On the 5th of November, hearing Guy Fawkes had been caught, Catesby sped here to the Midlands, still determined he could start a rebellion... ♪ but in reality, support was dwindling.
♪ Within days, the authorities had the plotters surrounded in a Catholic safe house in Staffordshire.
I've got an account here by Thomas Wintour, who was holed up in the house with them, and it's brilliant because he takes us right into the drama of the situation.
It says here that Wintour asked them, the others, "what they resolved to do," and they answered, "'We mean here to die.'"
Wintour's confession gives us the detail of Catesby's last minutes.
He says he and Catesby were standing "before the door they were to enter."
That's the authorities.
They're just about to burst in, and Catesby said, "'Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together.'"
♪ Catesby, Thomas Percy, and the two Wright brothers were shot and killed on the 8th of November.
It's hard not to feel emotional at the thought of these loyal friends dying together.
Catesby was willing to take a bullet, a lethal bullet, for his beliefs, but don't forget, he was very willing to kill other people for his beliefs, as well.
He was willing to take the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
♪ 4 men were dead, but the surviving plotters would face the consequences of their actions.
♪ The trial of Guy Fawkes and the other remaining conspirators was held here in Westminster Hall on January the 27th, 1606.
This is one of the few parliamentary buildings that remain from the time.
This whole vast hall was full of a crowd, who'd paid to get in.
There was a real squeeze on space.
Some members of Parliament complained that they hadn't been able to get decent seats.
Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were up on a little platform, and there was even a rumor that the king himself was present, hidden away, secretly listening in.
♪ This was a show trial lasting just one day.
It was used to target the conspirators' priests, suggesting they'd encouraged the plot.
♪ Just a few days later, Guy Fawkes and some of the other plotters were taken to the yard outside the Palace of Westminster, and they were brutally executed.
♪ In 1605, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were united by a very specific desire for change... ♪ but now Guy's face has been transformed into a broader symbol of protest and rebellion with little connection to the original deadly plan.
♪ The radical violence at the heart of the plot seems forgotten, yet I think it's the journey to extremism that's worth remembering.
The Gunpowder Plot happened at a time of deep divisions and high stakes.
People had strong beliefs that sometimes led to extreme actions.
Time gives us perspective and the space to start to understand the motivations of both sides, but perhaps we should be mindful about what and who we choose to celebrate.
♪
-
Lucy Worsley Investigates
William the Conqueror
MY THOUGHTS
The Bayeux Tapestry [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry ] was lovely to see. The episode focuses on a truth we all know. Conquest is never as simple as the history books put it. It usually far more bloodier and far more complicated.
William is a conqueror not because the simplicity of hastings but because he destroyed the multiculturalism south of scotland or the picts back then , destroyed the allowance of the welsh or northumbrians/scandanavian cultures and pushed the normans in. At the end of the day the saxons wasn't all of england but just the south of england. The saxons on one side of the channel plus the normans on the other side were cousins. But the other regions of england were different, welsh or northumbrian. William defeated the saxons but needed to defeat the other cultures in the land commonly called england, and he did by fire and starvation. And thus made england two cultures, Norman + Saxon , with the saxon being a blend of welsh/saxon/northumbrian merged under a norman identity. The name of the child going from Tostig [ pronounced Tostee] to Williams says it all.
On a side note, it is very interesting hearing how the welsh/saxon/northumbrian women went to convent, tried to evade being married to normans whose entire purpose in being with non norman women was making halfbreeds, ala the spanish conquistadors in central america/caribbean/south america/mexico. It explains a key point, that the women of the various cultures the normans conquered worked hard to remain with the conquered peoples. Willing to marry to any but a norman, thus the multicultural set of women made the saxons, and over time the saxons + normans became the english.VIDEO
UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR
https://www.pbs.org/video/william-the-conqueror-fuqyca/TRANSCRIPT
♪ Lucy Worsley, voice-over: Christmas Day, 1069, Northern England.
♪ A warrior king makes his way through the ruins of York Cathedral.
The king's name is William I of England, but you might know him better by his later name-- William the Conqueror.
[Men shouting] Worsley, voice-over: Most of us think the Norman Conquest of England happened in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings-- one battle won, and the defeated nation bent the knee-- but actually, that was just the beginning, so how do you go about taking over, conquering an entire country?
In this series, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.
Oh, yes.
Here we go, Man: And now you're face to face with William the Conqueror.
Woman, voice-over: They know that sex sells and that violence sells.
Worsley, voice-over: These stories form part of our national mythology.
They harbor mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries... Worsley: It turns very dark here.
Clearly showing us-- Refugees.
There's such graphic images of religious violence.
Worsley, voice-over: but with the passage of time, we have new ways to unlock their secrets using scientific advances and a modern perspective.
He was what we would now call a foreign fighter.
Worsley, voice-over: I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.
I'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clues...
The human hand.
Worsley, voice-over: to get closer to the truth.
It's like fake news.
Worsley: You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: 1066 is one of the best-known years in British history.
We know this date because of the Battle of Hastings, but very few of us know the whole story.
♪ The Norman Conquest was the biggest land grab in Western medieval history.
This prosperous, stable country called England was just taken by William, Duke of Normandy, seemingly overnight, and stone castles like this one sprang up all over the land.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: This is Pevensey Castle, the first Norman castle on English soil, but it's actually a repurposed Roman fort.
Of course, England had been invaded before.
There were the Romans, but they eventually left; then the Vikings, but they never gained complete control.
But when the Normans invaded in 1066, they created a regime that lasted.
They transformed the country, and they left traces that we can still see to this day.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: In fact, we can trace a line from William the Conqueror to our current monarch King Charles III, but this belies the truth of how difficult the conquest really was.
It took two decades for William to cement Norman rule, so how did he do it, and was William a conqueror or a war criminal?
♪ I think I'll begin my investigation in the place where William's master plan for conquest was originally formed-- Normandy in Northwest France.
[Bells tolling] Worsley: Duke William built his castle here at Caen in 1060.
He did it to consolidate his control over all of this part of France here.
He was a Norman, the word coming from "Northman" or even "Norseman" because William's ancestors were warlike Vikings from Scandinavia.
They came down here, and they settled, and once they'd made this their home, they renamed it as Normandy.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: At this point, William wasn't known as William the Conqueror, but William the Bastard.
He'd risen a long way as the illegitimate son of Robert I of Normandy.
Now he wanted to expand his territory and conquer the lands across the English Channel.
If William ever came up here himself, I think he'd have spent his time looking in that direction because a hundred miles over there is the English coast, and on the 5th of January 1066, the English king Edward the Confessor died without leaving an obvious successor, and William believed that he was the rightful heir to the English crown.
Worsley, voice-over: There's one astonishing historical artifact just a few miles away in the town of Bayeux which might explain exactly why William believed this.
It's not a book or a manuscript.
It's nearly 230 feet long, and it's over 900 years old.
It's kept in the dark, quite literally, for its own protection.
Oh, there it is-- the Bayeux Tapestry.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: This tapestry shows the invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066 as a heroic enterprise.
♪ Worsley: It's basically a medieval movie.
It tells the story scene by scene from beginning to end, and did you know it's not actually a tapestry at all?
The pictures are stitched on, which is embroidery.
This is women's work, and I suspect that the men who give names to things like this don't necessarily know what they're looking at, but the first thing that strikes me is the sheer scale of it.
Look how long it is, and it goes off right round the corner.
It's just a stunning piece of work.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: And here's the scene I'm looking for.
It depicts a pact which allegedly took place between two of the main contenders for the English throne: the hero of the tapestry-- that's William-- and Harold, King Edward the Confessor's brother-in-law.
Worsley: This is Harold, and you can tell because of his ginger mustache-- the Anglo-Saxons have mustaches; Normans are all clean-shaven-- and what's happening here, it says in the caption, this is the bit where Harold, he fecit a sacramentum.
He makes an oath to Duke William of Normandy, who's that chap there, and Harold is touching a casket full of holy relics to make the oath even more powerful, and in his oath, he swears he will support William's claim to be king.
Let's see what happens next.
Well--ah, here we go-- Edward the Confessor dies.
There's his dead body.
He's defunctus.
He's defunct, and in this scene, ah, Harold has made himself king-- "Rex: Anglorum," "King of the English," it says.
Huh, so--in this version of the story, at least, the Norman version of the story-- Harold has betrayed William.
This is why William is justified in invading England.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: But, like all historical sources, the tapestry has an agenda.
It was commissioned by William's half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and it was basically propaganda justifying William's invasion of England.
On the 28th of September 1066, William's fleet of hundreds of ships carrying thousands of men landed here at Pevensey on the south coast of England.
♪ This is the very beach where the Normans landed, but the battle took place a few miles away in that direction at Hastings.
It was a brutal fight.
It lasted for more than 9 hours.
[Men shouting] [Swords clanging] Worsley, voice-over: You could be forgiven for thinking that, although William's victory was hard won, it was basically inevitable.
The tapestry suggests that the Normans had enormous military superiority.
[Shouting continues] [Horse neighs] Worsley: Here are the Norman knights, and what's brilliant is the way that you see them moving off.
They're starting to gallop.
They're off.
It's really exciting, and here are the Norman archers.
It's really striking that the Normans have got better weapons.
They've got these horses.
They've got bows and arrows.
The poor Anglo-Saxons have only got things like axes and clubs.
You do get the impression of this indomitable Norman war machine.
The stormtroopers are coming.
♪ [Men shouting] Worsley, voice-over: The Bayeux Tapestry famously ends with the death of Harold.
An arrow from a Norman archer hits him in the eye.
♪ It's a heroic end to the story.
Harold is dead, and William, the rightful king, is triumphant, but is this what really happened?
There's another source that historians now believe to be one of the earliest depictions of the Battle of Hastings.
This Latin poem, probably dating from 1068, has a very different story to tell about Harold's last moments.
It's called the "Carmen," or the "Song of the Battle of Hastings," written two years after the battle, we think, and, according to this version, it took 4 Norman soldiers to finish him off.
It's quite hard to read, but I've got some notes here from the translation.
It says the first of them did the job of shattering his breast through his shield.
The second, by his sword, severed the head.
The third of them, by his spear, ooh, poured forth the body's entrails, oof, and then the fourth of them hewed off a leg-- some other translations say it was a different body part than that-- and then, being removed, he drove it afar.
He threw the body part away, so that makes it sound like Harold was really difficult to kill, and there's no mention at all of the arrow going into his eye.
Worsley, voice-over: Unlike the tapestry, the poem is an unsanitized, hyperviolent account of the battle.
[Men shouting] [Swords clanging] Harold's body was so mutilated, it could only be identified by some marks on his skin.
One of those 4 Normans who killed Harold was William himself.
I wonder if this poem is the more accurate predictor of the violence still to come after the battle.
Worsley: When it was over and William had won, he wasn't automatically King of England.
He was kind of in limbo.
He waited for the English to formally surrender to him, but nobody came.
Worsley, voice-over: Somebody was coming, but they weren't coming to offer William the throne.
They were coming for a fight.
♪ Hundreds of miles from Hastings in the North of England, two brothers would play a significant part in this resistance.
Edwin, Earl of Mercia, and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, saw William as a foreign aggressor who was trying to take over their country.
Their rightful king was the teenager Edgar AEtheling, and they were gearing up to lead the counteroffensive in his name.
Rrgh!
♪ Worsley, voice-over: I'm meeting a medieval specialist to find out what happened next.
♪ It's just after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
What does William the Conqueror now need to do to consolidate his win?
There's a lot of unrest still within the kingdom.
People have fled the battlefield, so there's still warriors around, fled the battlefield.
political elite gathering in London.
He's killed one king on the battlefield, but there is a contender still for the throne.
It's the teenage boy Edgar AEtheling, and he is in London with Edwin and Morcar, and they come with the crucial thing-- military force, so William needs to get himself to London, and he needs to get the support of a bishop so that he can get himself crowned, ideally an archbishop.
Hmm.
How is William going to hold the land in Kent and Sussex that he's he's already gained control over once he sets off to London?
So part of that is through the castles that he builds, so quick, wooden castles put up really just to secure the area as a place of fortification and defense for his men, and they are a way of holding power over the local area because you have your garrison, your troops, positioned there in order to perhaps fight off any disturbances that arise.
What was in store for the local people living in Kent and Sussex?
Yeah.
I think it must have been a really terrifying time for them.
They must have seen William's troops committing atrocities around them-- burning houses, taking crops, livestock.
There's also the reinforcements that William calls from Normandy who come to another part of the south coast, possibly around Chichester.
Those communities en route are clearly having houses burnt.
There's pillaging of supplies and livestock in order to feed the army as they go.
There's a picture on the Bayeux Tapestry that actually we can have a little look at-- a mother and child fleeing from a burning building.
Oh.
It says, "Hic domus incenditur," "Here this building is being burnt," so this is probably depicting the scenes at Pevensey or Hastings.
The torch is setting alight to the roof, where you can see the flames rising.
And this poor, little boy, I think he's got his mouth open because he's crying his eyes out.
He's being led away by his-- Do you think that's his mother?
She's saying, "Come on.
Get out of here."
Yeah... "It's really dangerous."
and I think it's a really moving scene.
It's clearly showing us...
Refugees.
yeah, refugees, the women and children who lost their homes as part of this conquest.
I can understand why the Normans took the food, but I can't understand why they burnt the houses.
Was there also just an element of pure intimidation in doing that and destroying the homes of people, do you think?
I think there must have been, and I think William needs to use this kind of intimidating factor in order to remove pockets of resistance and also as a warning to other communities and a clear statement that William means business, that William is not going to go lightly.
If there is opposition, he's going to go in all guns blazing.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: What was meant to be a quick operation was becoming a brutal campaign of intimidation, and these castles were key.
They were a way of crushing local resistance and securing a strong supply line from Normandy.
So this is a map of Southeast England.
It's not a brilliant map, but you get the idea.
You'll recognize it a bit better when I put in France and Normandy, and this is the Channel, and William landed pretty close to here and quickly built a castle at Pevensey, where I am right now.
It was just over there.
Quite quickly, another castle sprang up at Hastings and then one at Dover, just along the coast there, but where he really wanted to be was over here at London.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: London was the political heart of Anglo-Saxon England, but getting there wasn't as simple as it looked.
With Edwin and Morcar in London, William realized a direct assault from the south was too difficult, so he marched west, devastating the land as he went.
He secured the strategic crossing of the Thames at Wallingford and advanced to Berkhamsted.
This was where he waited for the Anglo-Saxon earls, Edgar, and other leaders.
♪ At this point, Edwin and Morcar realized they'd been outmaneuvered.
♪ William promised leniency and protection to those who submitted immediately, so they surrendered and bent the knee... ♪ for now.
♪ William finally marched on London in December 1066.
♪ He was crowned William, King of the English, on Christmas Day.
♪ He then set about building his most notorious castle-- the Tower of London... ♪ but William only controlled the southeast.
♪ None of this made the whole of England his.
♪ I want to examine William's next move, and it wasn't a military one.
There's something that's nearly a thousand years old, and I'm so eager to see it.
It's a world-famous treasure, and it lives in a super secure vault.
It's the Domesday Book.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: The Domesday Book was compiled later in William's reign, but I think it might reveal his political strategy after 1066.
♪ Worsley: I'm about to see the most precious document in the National Archives that I think means it's the most precious document in British history, and it's just in here.
♪ Ah.
Oh, yes.
Ha ha ha!
There it is.
It's amazing to see it... ♪ not in a case.
If it ever comes out of this strongroom, it would be displayed with high security, the real thing.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: This is the volume of what's called Great Domesday.
It's made up of more than 800 pages, handwritten by just one scribe.
I think a lot of people will have heard of the Domesday Book without being aware of what's actually in it, and seeing it laid out like this in the columns is making me realize that it's basically a spreadsheet detailing who owns all the land.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: It's a survey of nearly every town and manor in England down to the last peasant, plow, and goat, and the reason for doing this--money.
William wanted to know how much tax he could get out of his new country, but the book also reveals something more sinister.
I asked if I could see the entry for Grimsby, the town my dad's from.
Now, at this point, my medieval Latin is letting me down, so I'm going to get a bit of help from the translation copy I've got here.
There is land for 4 1/2 plows.
There is a church and a priest.
There's a mill that produces 4 shillings, and a ferry that renders 5 shillings, and before the conquest, it was owned by an Anglo-Saxon lady called Eadgifu.
After the conquest, it's owned by a man called Richard.
That's a Norman name, so it's gone from an Anglo-Saxon lady to a Norman man, and this incredible detail is replicated throughout the whole book.
There are 13,000 settlements, from little villages to towns, and in each case, the story is the same-- the transfer of ownership from the Anglo-Saxons to the Normans.
Worsley, voice-over: So it looks like William's confiscating people's land for at least a decade after 1066.
At first, some of the English had been able to keep their property by acknowledging William as king, but by 1086, the majority of Anglo-Saxons were disinherited.
Domesday means the Day of Judgment.
There's no arguing with this book.
This is the last word in Norman power.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: William's brutal tactics are now becoming clearer to me.
♪ Firstly, there was the military victory at Hastings.
Then there was the building of castles to keep people under control, and now, by seizing Anglo-Saxon property and assets, William was further reducing their ability to resist.
The Domesday Book is more evidence of a conquest taking shape.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: But you can't conquer a country with hard power alone.
As well as subjugating people, you also have to win hearts and minds... ♪ what's known as soft power.
I'm meeting a specialist in medieval women's history.
She's unearthed a source that reveals how the Normans used this power in ordinary daily life.
Do you think it's possible that when William was looking at the future management of the country of England, he saw marriage, intermarriage, as something that would be a tool at his disposal?
I think he certainly at the start of the conquest had that plan, but from the first, say, 10, 15 years after the conquest, we don't have that many, and the reason for that is, we think, that the women were obviously very reluctant to be used as pawns in this game of the Conquest.
From an Englishwoman's perspective, if your parents had to arrange a marriage for you, you much rather be married, presumably, to an Englishman, than to one of these bullies who came from the other side of the Channel because, you know, you couldn't be sure that you would be safe.
What did the Anglo-Saxon women who were in that position feel about it?
What did they do?
They obviously were very anxious about this, and some of them took matters in their own hands, and... Oh.
I have here this absolutely fascinating piece of evidence, which is a 12th-century manuscript, and interestingly, the text refers to women taking refuge in monasteries.
It refers to those women who, not out of love for the religion-- "non amore religioni, sed timore francigenaro," but out of fear from the French, have taken refuge in these institutions.
So these poor women going to the nunneries, they were feeling vulnerable sexually, you know, in the immediate physical sense and also perhaps vulnerable if they own land to being sucked into marriages so that the Normans would be taking their land off them.
Absolutely.
It's really hard to hear the voices of women in the whole story of the Norman Conquest, but here we've got a little echo, and it's a chilling echo.
You're absolutely right.
That is what this very important document shows us, and it's not generally known.
The Norman Conquest is not only a story about soldiers and battles, but it is about mothers and sisters and wives.
♪ Worsley: It's so distressing to think of these Anglo-Saxon women hiding themselves away out of fear of being forced to marry these Norman men.
They would have understood that marriage was part and parcel of a wider strategy of conquest.
Anglo-Norman marriages would lead to Anglo-Norman children, which would mean that the Normans' claims to the lands they'd taken would be legitimized forever.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: William tried this soft-power approach in his own court.
In 1067, he brought Edwin and Morcar home with him to Normandy and promised Edwin a marriage to his daughter.
It was a strategy of "keep your friends close but your enemies closer."
♪ Outwardly, they were guests, but in truth, they were hostages.
William wanted a trouble-free takeover of England, but the Anglo-Saxons were still mobilizing.
♪ That same year, a revolt began in the Welsh borders... ♪ and Exeter in the southwest rose up, forcing William to besiege the city for 18 days.
In the end, Exeter surrendered, allowing William to build a castle in the city and consolidate his hold over the West Country.
♪ The farther you ventured from the center of William's power in London, the more the insurrection intensified.
♪ In 1068, sensing it was now or never, Edwin and Morcar escaped William's court and raised rebellion in the Midlands.
Williams suppressed this, but by now, the flames of revolt were spreading northward.
Morcar and a growing gang of other English nobles started plotting another rebellion against William.
One of the English chronicles tells us that they were motivated by hatred of William for the injustice and the tyranny he inflicted upon the English.
♪ I know that the northerners mounted a much tougher and more prolonged resistance against William, but what was it about their rebellion that made it so difficult to extinguish?
Hello.
Hi, Lucy.
You'll be Katherine.
Yes.
Worsley, voice-over: I'm meeting a cultural historian in a village that Morcar used to own--Middleton, which in the 1060s was in his earldom of Northumbria.
♪ There's an ancient sculpture here that she wants to show me.
♪ Gosh, look at these.
They're amazing.
The shape of the cross is such a potent... symbol of kind of mystic power.
So this is a grave marker or some sort of commemorative monument for the person depicted on the front.
Who is this little person with the pointed hat?
Look at that.
It might look cute, but he's meant to look quite terrifying, I think, because if you look closely, you can see that he is dressed in military gear.
He's surrounded by weaponry, so I think that this is somebody who might have been a Viking.
Is that his sword I can see there?
That's his sword and shield here.
And he's got a kind of a chopper here?
So that's his ax.
We can see he's got a knife, as well, that's slung up to his belt.
We can see somebody who comes from a military background, power and strength are shown through military imagery.
He has settled here, and he is now the lord of the local area.
♪ Katherine, what was our Viking warrior doing here in this part of England?
Well, we often think of Vikings as raiders, but from the middle of the ninth century, they came to England in much larger armies.
And did they settle down?
Yes.
They conquered and settled the lands, so if we think about it, in 1066, there had been 200 years of Scandinavian influence in the North of England, and so we can see from lots of different kinds of evidence that they grew together and became one community, so some of the words that we still use today come from Old Norse.
A nice example is "window."
"Window"?
It means wind eye.
"Husband" is another one that comes from the Old Norse "husbondi," which is sort of the master of the household, and one that is quite well-known and really frequent, is place names that end in -by, which means, really, a farmstead, so we can think of Whitby, for example, or Selby near York, Grimsby.
So Grimsby is the farm of Mr.
Grim from Scandinavia.
Yeah, and we even see this in, like, small landscape features, as well, like a beck or a fell or a dale.
These all come from Old Norse.
So is it fair to say, then, that when the Normans arrived in England, this area of the North, Yorkshire and so on, it had its own quite distinctive culture?
Yeah.
I think that's definitely fair to say.
I'm getting the impression, Katherine, then, that these people would have been particularly not keen on the Normans coming in and taking over.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
I think that's true.
I wonder if William the Conqueror knew what he was getting into when he tried to subdue these folk up here.
♪ Hmm, so I've learned that the people who lived in Northumbria had a different center of gravity.
It wasn't London down south.
It was Scandinavia.
The region had its own separate identity, and the English rulers before 1066 kind of went along with that.
They were happy to have a hands-off relationship with the North, but when William, Duke of Normandy, came along, he intended to change all that.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the king was informed that the people in the North had gathered together and planned to make a stand against him if he came near.
♪ In 1068, William marched first to Mercia, where he suppressed all revolts, and then on to York, where he built a castle.
Then he installed one of his Norman enforcers as Earl of Northumbria, but his control was illusory.
♪ In January 1069, the Northumbrians killed William's Norman earl in Durham and marched to York.
Then they brought in Danish reinforcements.
In September, these combined forces stormed York... [Men shouting] and torched William's two Norman castles were.
♪ Almost all of the Norman garrison was slaughtered.
♪ They then proclaimed Edgar AEtheling as the true King of the English.
William now faced a serious challenge to his conquest of England.
He was on the back foot.
Was this the moment to go hard or go home?
I want to know how William is going to respond, so I'm going to turn to one of the key key sources for the period.
This is the work of a monk called Orderic Vitalis.
He was one of these Anglo-Normans-- he had an English mum and a French dad-- and these pages are from his most famous book-- the Historia Ecclesiastica.
The bit I want is about York, so I'm looking in the Latin text for "Eboracum," which is here.
That's what I want to read, but for ease of reading, let's go over to the translation.
They approached York looking for rebels.
The king-- that's William himself-- "cut down many in his vengeance; "destroyed the lairs of others; "harried the land, "and burned homes to ashes.
Nowhere else had William shown such cruelty," so this is William's vengeance, his punishment upon the North for having rebelled, and this word "harried" is very significant.
It means to lay waste, to devastate, and in this context, it forms part of one of the most resonant phrases in British history-- the Harrying of the North.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: But these are just words on a page.
I wonder what it was like to experience harrying as a weapon of war.
♪ I've come to York Castle to meet a senior curator at Yorkshire Museum... Hi.
Nice to meet you, Lucy.
Worsley, voice-over: who has some unusual archeological evidence.
Worsley: Why did you suggest that we meet here at the top of the tower?
Well, the tower is perhaps the best example of William the Conqueror's attempt to pacify York and across the region, really.
This building, the motte underneath it was built in 1068 for William to try and control this unruly part of the country, so this is perhaps the best symbol of the Harrying of the North still standing.
Rebellious people in Yorkshire, right?
I mean, hard to believe, right, but, yes, Yorkshire and most of the North is in open rebellion against William for most of the late 1060s.
And what have you brought here?
They look very precious.
I have brought you 3 coins, which are the protagonists of 1066.
On the left here, you have Edward the Confessor, so his death in early 1066 sparks all of the events that happen later.
I do that.
Hopefully, you get a good chance-- Ooh, I can see his little face, yes, and is he wearing a crown, Andy?
He is wearing a crown, so he's looking off to the right with a sort of pointy nose, and he's wearing this rather elaborate crown and holding the scepter, so the symbols of state.
OK, so that's the ruler before the Battle of Hastings.
It is.
What's the other ones that you've got?
Sure.
This is Harold Godwinson, now, slightly less clear portrait, but hopefully, you can see he's looking the other way.
He's looking the other way, isn't he?
He's got quite chubby cheeks, has Harold.
He has.
Is that really rare?
Yeah.
We only have two of Harold Godwinson.
We don't often bring this one out, so I'm pleased to be able to share it with you today, actually.
Oh, what a treat, so who's this one?
Now you're face to face with the man himself-- William, Duke of Normandy.
I have to say, I feel intimidated by being face to face with William, Duke of Normandy.
I think he's made a very clever choice there to be looking right at me.
I find him more scary than Harold for that reason alone, maybe because I know about the Harrying of the North and what he did-- I'm extrapolating here-- but I just don't like the look in his eyes.
♪ So did all of these 3 coins belong to the same person?
No, so these are from different hoards, so we get groups of coins buried in the ground, and we call them a hoard.
And why would they be burying their coins in the ground?
In a world before banks, you buried your money in times of challenge, times of crisis, and you come back and dig it up when the crisis blows over, but the crucial question in some ways is, why didn't they come and dig them back up again?
And I guess if you're in York in the 1068 or '69, you know, there's an army coming towards you.
You bury your wealth.
You might escape town, and you might not ever be able to come and dig it back up again.
Gosh, that's horrifying to think of-- people in fear and panic thinking the Normans are coming, and the people who buried these little coins never came back to get them.
Yeah.
In some ways, the evidence of the coins, particularly the hoards from York, is some of the best archeological evidence we actually have for the Harrying of the North and its effect upon the people.
There are more coin hoards buried within the city walls of York than there are across the whole of Southern England at the same time.
The reason these were buried in the ground, the reason that we're looking at them today, is all because the person who had them was probably terrified of the arrival of the Norman army, and may have lost their life to it.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: In times of conflict, international alliances are forged and broken.
In late 1069, William bought off the Danish allies who'd come to the aid of the northerners.
He then took back the city of York.
On Christmas Day, exactly 3 years after his coronation, he paraded through the ruins of York Cathedral... ♪ but William didn't want the northerners to be able to use any of their lands to raise another army against him.
♪ He ordered the systematic destruction of villagers' homes, livestock, and crops in all the land north of the Humber River.
[People shouting] ♪ I'm going to one of the places that experienced William's wrath, Levisham in the Yorkshire Moors, to see if I can glimpse the human impact of this.
♪ I'd like to see what these different chronicles have to say.
Here's my friend Orderic Vitalis, oh, but he says that in his anger he--that's William-- commanded that all the crops and food be burnt to ashes so that there was no food left in the whole of the region, "regione," beyond, "trans," the River Humber, "Umbrana," my goodness, and he says that 100,000 people died in a famine.
♪ This chronicle's by another monk, Simeon of Durham, and he says people were so desperate for food that they ate the flesh of horses and dogs and humans... ♪ and this chronicle is from the Abbey of Evesham, which is in Worcestershire, so that's not in the North at all, but they were getting refugees from up here, from Yorkshire, and some of these refugees were so famished that when the monks gave them food, "cibum," they ate it so ravenously that their bodies couldn't handle it, and they died.
I really feel that William has got blood on his hands for this.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: William had obliterated the rebellion in the North, but he'd also engineered a famine.
♪ Inflicting violence like this on people leaves a legacy, as I think the Domesday Book might be able to show us.
♪ This page covers Eurvicsciure, or Yorkshire, the biggest county in the North, one that was right in the firing line, and I'm going to pick out this little place here within Yorkshire called Asulvesby.
Before the conquest, it was worth 10 shillings and 8 pence, but now, after the conquest, it's worth nothing, nothing at all, and that's because it's in waste.
It's been laid waste to, and now I've spotted that tiny word "waste," it's catching my eye.
I can see it's coming up again and again-- this place and this place and this one, too.
It's like Yorkshire's been wiped off the face of the earth.
At first sight, you think that this book is about accountancy and taxation, but actually, there's also a story here about a huge amount of destruction and human suffering.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: The Harrying of the North marks the end of Edwin and Morcar's power.
Morcar and other die-hard rebels joined the last desperate resistance to the Normans at Ely in Cambridgeshire, but it was quashed.
As far as we know, it was in a Norman prison that he died.
♪ As for his brother Edwin, he was ultimately betrayed by fellow Englishmen.
They took his head to William himself as a tribute to the Conqueror's power.
♪ For some, the Harrying of the North was a step too far, even by medieval standards, and many of William's supporters now turned on him.
Here's the monk Orderic Vitalis once again.
Now, Orderic's generally on William's side, but not when it comes to the Harrying of the North.
Where are my notes from the translation?
Here we are.
He says, "But for this act, which condemned innocent "and guilty alike to die by slow starvation, "I cannot commend him.
Such brutal slaughter cannot remain unpunished."
♪ Worsley, voice-over: In the 1070s, the concept of war crimes as we understand them obviously didn't exist, but there were early codes of conduct that guided how wars should be fought and how soldiers should make amends.
♪ This giant book is from the 17th century, but it's got in it a record of a much older document that was drawn up by Norman bishops just after the Battle of Hastings, around 1067.
It's a list of penances for those who kill in bello, in war.
A penance is kind of like a punishment.
It's either praying or giving alms or fasting, and this is what you have to do if you've committed different sins.
This is if you kill somebody in the magno praelio, which is the great battle, the Battle of Hastings.
You have to do one year, but--this is interesting-- if you fought in that battle as an archer, as a Sagittariis, then you might be ignorant of how many people you'd killed with your arrows, so your penance was less, just a matter of months, so there is some kind of a moral code that exists in Norman heads, oh, and this next one's interesting.
If you killed somebody for praedandi-- so that's loot or for plunder-- then you got the worst punishment of all.
You had to do 3 years of penance, tres annos.
It's fascinating.
It's like looking inside the minds of the Norman bishops who drew up this list of penances.
You get an insight into what they thought was acceptable, what was good, what was bad.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: This code of conduct was written before the Harrying of the North, and William violated its accepted standards.
♪ It's become clear to me that William destroyed the North because he failed politically.
♪ Having utterly alienated the Anglo-Saxons, he could only rule through violence.
♪ The Harrying of the North didn't completely extinguish resistance.
William would face further invasion threats from the Danes, but by 1071, he was the Conqueror of England.
♪ Even today, we still feel the impact of how the Normans took over England.
We see it in our landscape, our laws, and even in our names.
This is from the biography of a Norman celebrity-- a famous hermit, actually-- but he started out in life as a little boy in Yorkshire, one of the bits of Yorkshire that had a very strong Viking influence, one of the parts that had been harried by the Normans, actually, and the little boy's name was Tostig.
You pronounce it "Tostee," and that's a very Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian-sounding name, so what happened to Tostig?
My notes from the translation will tell me, when his youthful companions mocked the name Tostig, "Tostee," his parents decided to change it, and what did they change it to?
Well, the very Norman name of William.
It's just a tiny, little detail, isn't it, about a little boy, but I think it speaks volumes.
♪ Worsley, voice-over: If the Normans hadn't broken Yorkshire and Northumbria, it's possible that the language and culture of Northern England would be even more distinctive than it still is from the South.
♪ William's conquest meant the North would no longer look instinctively across the North Sea to Scandinavia.
Now it would look south and be part of a more tightly controlled England bound to Normandy for centuries.
♪ Before I started investigating the Norman Conquest, I think I'd assumed it was straightforward, almost inevitable, but I come to realize just how difficult it was for William to do it, and the human cost.
Now, England was invaded before the Normans came along but never successfully afterwards.
Perhaps that's William's legacy.
♪
-
The Legend of Sisqó played by Avery Brooks
I think the end of Deep Space Nine kept the old star trek adage the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one while maintaining Brooks desire to be a responsible husband+ father. ...the resulting episode, maintained sisqo the family man while maintaining sisqo a federation officer willing to do what is necessary to help the most
ARTICLE
Star Trek: Why Avery Brooks Changed Sisko's Original DS9 Ending
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine finale almost had a different ending for Benjamin Sisko before actor Avery Brooks requested it changed. DS9 was the third series in the Star Trek franchise and ran from 1993 to 1999 before ending after seven seasons. The show delivered its two-part final episode, "What You Leave Behind", in June 1999, rounding out its run with an action-packed and emotional finale that wrapped up a multitude of storylines. One of the most important storylines to get resolved, however, was the conclusion of the arc for DS9's main character, the underrated Captain Benjamin Sisko.
Sisko's character arc revolved around him coming to terms with his role as the Emissary, an important spiritual leader to the Bajoran people chosen by their gods the Prophets to save Bajor by finding the Celestial Temple. Sisko learned he was the Emissary in episode 1, and this fact was the basis for many of his storylines throughout DS9. In "What You Leave Behind", Sisko finally fulfilled his destiny by stopping Gul Dukat from releasing the Pah-Wraiths, and subsequently joined the Prophets in the Celestial Temple. In doing so, Sisko left behind his life and agreed to reside with the Prophets as one of them, a non-corporeal being outside of time and space. Unfortunately, this also meant Captain Sisko left his family behind in the corporeal world, including his then-pregnant wife, Kasidy Yates-Sisko.
During his final scene, Sisko was allowed to see Kasidy one last time, to tell her what had happened and let her know that despite everything, he would return to her one day. In the original ending, however, the scene depicted Sisko telling Kasidy he would never return and would stay with the Prophets forever, never seeing her or his son, Jake, again. This would have been a much less ambiguous, if sadder, ending for Sisko and his family. This version made it all the way to production and was even shot, but after the initial filming, Avery Brooks contacted Deep Space Nine's executive producer Ira Steven Behr to request the scene be changed. Brooks told Behr that after giving it some thought he was uncomfortable with the implications of a black man essentially abandoning his pregnant wife to raise their unborn child alone. Behr apparently agreed with Brooks since the scene was re-shot and changed to the ending viewers are now familiar with.
Although the change was small, Brooks advocating for it helped make sure Sisko was not written completely out-of-character in the finale. Being the first black man to be the lead in his own Star Trek show, Sisko was a groundbreaking character for the franchise, but over the years, fans and critics have cited that one of the most important things about him was the fact he was a black male character who was a family man. At a time when the representation of black men as devoted fathers was scarce in media, Sisko served as a positive example for many. Brooks changing Sisko's ending to be consistent with his portrayal as fiercely loyal to his family made sure this reputation wasn't marred right at the end like it might have been if the scene had not been altered.
Despite Brooks' change adding a hopeful note, Sisko's ending was still bittersweet. Additionally, even with viewer interest and the Deep Space Nine creative team having ideas of how to carry on, there has not yet been a continuation of Sisko's storyline, meaning fans have never gotten to see his prophesied return to his family. Even so, Avery Brooks making sure Sisko eventually would return was a very smart move and served to make the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine even better.
URL
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-ds9-sisko-ending-return-avery-brooks-change/FROM Steven Barnes OF LIFEWRITING
Avery Brooks was a shattering revelation. The most "male" black man I'd ever seen on television. I almost couldn't believe what I was watching. And according to Brooks, Robert Urich was instrumental in demanding that Hawk be Hawk. Bless him. Bless them both. Brooks eventually sacrificed his career to resist studio attempts to turn Sisko into a Magical/Sacrificial Negro...preferring to be a good father to his son. He didn't quite succeed, but the effort itself would have made Hawk proud. -
Cicely Tyson in the Blue Bird 1976
Have you ever seen the film? Cicely Tyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda were in a soviet-statian co produced film about children on a journey which will help them find the greater meaning in hearth plus home than gold plus ego.
The Blue Bird in 1940 starred Shirley Temple and had sondergaard who was originally cast as the wicked witch in 1939 wizard of ozCicely Tyson/Elizabeth Taylor/Jane Fonda/Ava Gardner were in a movie together in the 1970s and it is a fantasy children's film wow
https://ok.ru/video/2135063792291
and the blue bird has made it into modernity, a 2011 version was made I think it is interesting how these two films , film history has diverged since they first went to battle in the 40s
https://youtu.be/XXg1ArCr8b8?si=Sa5iTl2BVNCx1zZn
the baum photo gallery
https://photos.app.goo.gl/R3tuukJR4BdMvkHP7
the blue bird book- free to read
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/maurice-maeterlinck_georgette-leblanc/the-blue-bird/alexander-teixeira-de-mattos
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/8606
https://librivox.org/search?title=The+Blue+Bird&author=MAETERLINCK&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced
I selected the play
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8606/pg8606-images.htmlThe BLue Bird film in 1940 was made as a response to the wizard of oz 1939
https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/1144642257/5184403693 -
Lucy Worsley Investigates
Jack the Ripper
MY THOUGHTS
Learned some things about the killer who got away with it commonly known as Jack the Ripper. The environment of London where the murders happened I didn't know. The genesis of the Ripper murders for true crime is well explained. Very nicely done. For True Crimes... The blunt bloody mess of a crime is hidden underneath the media construct of motives and actors in the murder, the common populace financial or viewing endearment to stories that have real elements while laced with attention getting aspects to discuss safely in their homes, the ease of marketability to fantasy with a bit of truth keeps producers of content rehashing or reimagining the event until the murderer is the only element that has any truth.
VIDEO
UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR
https://www.pbs.org/video/jack-the-ripper-bf6dux
TRANSCRIPT
♪ Lucy Worsley: On the 7th of October, 1888, London was in the middle of a media frenzy.
[Bell dings, hoof beats clopping] A tabloid newspaper had published a murder map.
♪ It showed the locations where, just days earlier... several women had been brutally murdered.
Spectators flocked like tourists to London's East End to visit the killing sites.
♪ True crime is now a modern-day obsession.
But how did the case of Jack the Ripper, back in 1888, set the template for this dark world of entertainment based on violence?
♪ In this series, I'm re-investigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.
Oh, yes.
Here we go.
Man: And now you're face-to-face with William the Conqueror.
Woman: They know that sex sells and that violence sells.
Lucy: These stories form part of our national mythology.
They harbor mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries.
It turns very dark here.
Woman 2: Clearly showing us-- Lucy: Refugees.
They're such graphic images of religious violence.
But with the passage of time, we have new ways to unlock their secrets, using scientific advances and a modern perspective.
He was what we would now call a foreign fighter.
Lucy: I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.
I'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clues...
The human hand.
to get closer to the truth.
Man: It's like fake news.
Lucy: You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence?
♪ In the autumn of 1888, it seemed everyone was talking about one story.
A murderer was on the loose in these streets in East London.
The killer had already targeted and butchered several women, and the press could not get enough of the story.
Here's that exact, same murder map from 1888.
We're talking about a serial killer.
Of course, we're talking about Jack the Ripper.
The entire nation-- in fact, the world-- was gripped by this unsolved case.
These murders are now more than 130 years old, and we're still obsessed.
I should make it clear that this isn't yet another search for the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Instead, I'd like to investigate how this case became the prototype for all the true-crime stories to follow.
♪ I've come to the other side of London, to Kensington Palace, the childhood home of Queen Victoria.
This might seem like an unusual place to begin my investigation, but I've long studied Victoria's life, and there's some evidence in her personal diary I want to get my hands on.
♪ This is a page of her diary from the 4th of October, 1888.
"Dreadful murders," she writes, "of unfortunate women of a bad class in London."
I wonder what she means by "unfortunate women of a bad class."
That sounds like a euphemism to me.
But the case was clearly on the Queen's mind.
♪ Victoria even telegraphed her Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, with some strongly worded advice.
Her words were sent in code to prevent messengers reading the top secret information enclosed.
♪ Here, the Queen is scribbling in her own writing what she wants the telegram to say.
"This new, most ghastly murder "shows the absolute necessity "for some very decided action.
All these courts"-- she means the little streets of Whitechapel-- "must be lit "and our detectives improved.
They are not what they should be."
And then she goes on to give the Prime Minister a telling-off.
"You promised," she said, "when the first murder happened, to consult with your colleagues."
But, she says, these things have not been done.
Queen Victoria is applying serious pressure on her Prime Minister to track down and capture the killer.
She was appalled by these heinous crimes.
But just how were these murders catapulted into the diary of a Queen?
Hi.
Can I come on?
Thank you.
[Air brakes hiss] From the 1860s, newspaper circulation expanded as more people learned to read and the tax on paper was abolished.
♪ Fleet Street was where the nation's news was crafted and debated.
The top papers were all based here, and a new mass readership was born.
[Printing press clanking] ♪ The case of Jack the Ripper would begin with Mary Ann Nichols, also known as Polly, and she knew this vibrant newspaper world very well.
Her husband William got a job as a printer's machinist in Bouverie Street, just off Fleet Street.
♪ Just around the corner from Bouverie Street is the Church of Saint Bride's, the journalists' church, and it was here in 1864 that William Nichols and Mary Ann got married.
I've got here a copy of a page from the parish register.
Let's have a look.
Oh, here we go.
A marriage at Saint Bride's.
There's William Nichols, profession printer, and there's Mary Ann Walker.
It was her friends who called her Polly.
She was just 18 at the time of this wedding, and it's curious to think that William Nichols had no idea that one day his new wife was going to become part of perhaps the biggest story that these Fleet Street journalists would ever see.
Polly and William were married for 16 years, but after five children and accusations that William was having an affair, Polly walked out.
By 1888, she was scraping by on the streets of Whitechapel.
She would be brutally murdered there on the 31st of August.
♪ Today, Polly Nichols is recognized as the first victim in this notorious case.
I think I can maybe get an insight into our true-crime obsession by tracking how the press portrayed Polly's death.
I've come to the British Library, which holds a massive newspaper archive.
♪ Some of the police files from this case are missing.
In fact, some of them were stolen, which means that newspaper accounts are one of the key sources that I need to consult.
There's so much information here.
It's incredibly detailed, but there is a problem.
♪ I am all too well aware that you can't always rely on journalists for balance and accuracy.
They're more than capable of spinning a story.
♪ [Crank squeaking] This is the "Pall Mall Gazette" from the 31st of August.
That's the day that Polly was killed.
I think this is one of the very first mentions of her death, but she's not named.
There didn't seem anything particular about Polly's death at first.
See what happens in the paper the next day.
Oh, yes.
And here, she's actually named.
"Mary Ann, or Polly, Nicholls."
And they've dug a bit into her story, who she was.
And this is not without judgment.
It says here she was "the worse for drink."
♪ This is "The Star" newspaper.
More sensationalist coverage, and they've called their article "The Whitechapel Horror" and they say, "These are the crimes of a man who must be a maniac."
♪ By the 8th of September, there's a real sense of the story escalating.
It's made the front page of "The Illustrated Police News," and this is just extraordinary.
There's been a reconstruction visually of everything that's happened so far.
So here's the finding of the body.
We've got the, uh, the doctors in the mortuary, the inquest, and here is poor Polly, laid out dead in her coffin.
"The murdered woman at Whitechapel Mortuary."
It is incredibly distasteful.
[Scoffs] But this was a-- a really low-brow newspaper, and at the back, you'll find adverts for how to buy porn.
[Whooshing] Newspapers were now competing to provide the most lurid coverage they could.
And look.
We've got gory illustrations of Polly's injuries on the front page.
Blood and gore continue to characterize the true-crime genre today, but what drove the papers towards this sensationalism in 1888?
Media moguls had invested heavily in the new rotary presses.
These ones could churn out 10,000 newspapers in an hour.
But margins were tight in this business.
For anyone to make a profit, there had to be huge sales, so this meant that proprietors were after really splashy stories.
[Clanking] To discover the vital ingredients of a really splashy story, I've enlisted a former crime reporter who's very familiar with the business.
Lucy: Paul, why was it that the press got obsessed with this particular case?
The Ripper case had all the kind of classic elements of a salacious tabloid story, didn't it?
Because it had the element of sex to it, it was a whodunit, obviously, the murderer was on the loose.
There was the conspiracy-theory element to it, that it could have been somebody from the elite, and then you just got this whole sense of moral outrage that something so vile could take place in London.
Do you think it was quite new in the 1880s to read about this kind of story in the mainstream papers?
The mainstream seemed to be working off the back of the popularity of the shilling shockers and the penny dreadfuls, those salacious fictions that were sold for a penny on street corners.
And so they saw how popular they were, and crime started getting more into the mainstream press.
Mm.
That's a bit of a new development.
Now, as a crime reporter today, how do you know what's ethical to print?
Well, today, it's a lot easier because the press broadcasters, they have regulators, so they have rules to follow on accuracy, privacy, harassment, and things like that.
It's not the kind of wild west that it was in the 1800s, and they were just thinking about, "How can we generate more readers?"
It just seemed like a free for all if you look back on it.
I guess there was so much here that was novel and exciting and, in a horrible sort of a way, thrilling to Victorian readers.
It would have been thrilling.
It would have been shocking.
More people bought these newspapers when they led on these stories.
And then, if you fast-forward to now, look at the popularity of true crime, the true-crime genre.
There's still this sort of thirst for this kind of story.
Lucy: Here was one of the first unsolved cases to connect with a mass audience.
The Victorians already enjoyed mystery novels, and now this real-life case tapped into their fears about violence and kept the reader guessing.
Having talks to pull, it does seem significant that this almost "perfect" crime story came along at a time when the newspaper business was changing and expanding.
For the journalists involved, it must have been a really fast-moving, exciting world.
♪ And just nine days after Polly was killed, the journalists had another murder to write about.
♪ In 1869, Annie Chapman had married John, a coachman.
John's job meant that Annie had a comfortable life.
That's how they could afford to have this studio portrait taken.
But Annie's relationship would turn sour.
Caring for a disabled son and losing a 12-year-old daughter, Annie fell deep into alcoholism.
When John died, any support Annie had was gone.
[Flash powder whooshes] ♪ I think what I take away from the story of Annie is just how easy it was in Victorian London to fall far and fast.
In 1888, there was no safety net for women like Annie-- no financial support, only the workhouse, and that was so grim that many women preferred living on the street.
♪ Annie was murdered in the early hours of the 8th of September, 1888.
Her body was found around 6 a.m. in a backyard in Hanbury Street, Whitechapel.
Rumors that these killings were linked intensified in September.
Here's the "Pall Mall Gazette" on the 8th.
They say, "Another murder" and "More to follow?"
They're basically hinting that there's a serial killer on the loose.
Polly and Annie's murders had troubling similarities.
Both women were murdered after midnight in the same part of the East End, and both had had their throats slashed.
I'd like to do some detective work of my own.
What seems to link Polly and Annie is Whitechapel.
Why do all roads lead here?
♪ Whitechapel today is a vibrant, diverse area on the edge of London's financial district.
But according to the newspapers, at least, Victorian Whitechapel was a distinctly dangerous place.
Overcrowding was common.
Riots often happened.
People poured in, desperate for jobs, though, as Whitechapel was near to the factories and the docks.
We can safely assume that one of the reasons Polly and Annie came here was to look for work.
♪ This is where Polly was living in the summer of 1888-- number 56, Flower and Dean Street-- and...this is where she was killed-- Buck's Row, that was called.
And Annie lived at Crossingham's Lodging House, which was at Number 35, Dorset Street, and her body was found in Hanbury Street, over here at number 29.
♪ When you look at the map of Whitechapel like this, it's only a mile across.
There's something so intriguing about how such a small area of town managed to create such an enormous nationwide panic.
♪ This archway is all that's left of Flower and Dean Street, where Polly was staying.
But don't be fooled by the street's floral name.
It was said it was too dicey for a single policeman to go in there on his own.
They had to patrol in pairs for protection.
The newspapers named Flower and Dean Street as the foulest and most dangerous street in London.
♪ These sensational headlines about Whitechapel were meant to grab attention, but could mislead.
As a historian, I want to check them against other sources.
There's a set of groundbreaking maps which might give me an insight into the social conditions at the time.
Let's just unfold them here.
So these were done between 1886 and 1889, and the first section to be done was the East End, including Whitechapel.
[Gasps] Here we go.
Here we are.
According to Charles Booth, who created this map, he says, "I am sick "to death of novelists and journalists painting these very lurid pictures of life in the East End."
He says, "My work, my volumes are going "to strip it all back to sober facts and numbers and statistics and nothing else."
Who was Booth?
Can you tell me a bit about him?
Yes.
He was a very, very successful captain of industry.
He was an absolutely brilliant employer.
He ran the Booth Shipping Line, and he could not understand why there was so much unemployment in London and why all the charitable donations that are poured in for the unemployed just weren't hitting the target, so that's how his survey gets going.
They're really rather beautiful with all the different colors.
I think so.
Quite sophisticated for the 1880s, I have to say.
What do the colors mean?
Now, starting at the bottom, black is a very unusual designation for a work of social science.
Not only is it an indicator of chronic poverty, it also brings the angle of morality or character into it, which means "vicious, semi-criminal."
Here is Dorset Street, jet-black.
Oh, where's Flower and Dean Street?
They're here, and Thrall Street and Fashion Street.
That's another jet-black region.
Why do you think that the victims of Jack the Ripper were drawn to live in this Whitechapel area, particularly these black streets?
Mm.
All of these streets were filled with common lodging houses, and Whitechapel has more than any other district.
It is the place with the greatest concentration of this very cheap form of a roof over your head, and so it absolutely attracted people who were just, you know, financially not able to manage.
Would we call it a hostel today, do you think?
That's what I think.
People lived out on the street a lot more in the poorer parts of London because you didn't want to have to be indoors unless you had to.
So, when you're walking through it as a stranger, like Booth was, you're seeing life out on the street.
But of course, living your life out on the street like that also puts you at risk.
Absolutely right, which, of course, leads into the Ripper killings.
How do you think the people who lived in the yellow-- upper-, middle-, and upper-class areas-- how do you think they felt about the people who lived in the black areas?
I think a significant number of people in the upper-class streets headed east to do what would become known as slumming.
So, after a night at the opera, for example, or a splendid meal in a restaurant, they would hire their carriages and ask to be taken into the sort of very darkest heart of East-End poverty.
And we have quite a few anecdotal snippets from people saying that these tiny little streets and alleys ended up after hours being filled with the most intolerable people, braying and laughing in their sort of fantastic clothing, just treating the poor locals as they were--like they were animals to be looked at in a zoo or perhaps in the old days of Bedlam, when people went to laugh at the patients.
So that was deeply resented.
♪ [Trotting hooves clopping] Lucy: It wasn't just the press whipping up the story.
Newspaper readers were also complicit.
Victorians wanted to experience London's underbelly for themselves and get a thrill out of its perceived dangers.
♪ True crime in general gives us that same thrill.
[Horn honks] It's not just entertainment.
It explores our deepest fears and anxieties about society.
[Clock tower bell chimes, flash powder whooshes] [Siren wailing] By the 10th of September 1888, panic in London was rising.
There had been a marked escalation in the level of violence inflicted by the killer, and he was still on the loose.
Like had been done to Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman's throat had been cut.
It's horrible.
Also, her body had been disemboweled, and some of her organs were missing.
The police were struggling to make any progress with the case, but there was something new that they could draw upon for help--science.
♪ As Annie's death was considered suspicious, a full autopsy was conducted.
The information from this autopsy was revealed in open court on the order of the coroner, Dr. Wynn Baxter.
Dr. Baxter was keen for transparency, but this meant the reporters put virtually every single salacious detail straight into the press, uncensored.
♪ He was of the opinion "that the person who cut the deceased's throat "took hold of her by the chin, and then commenced the incision from left to right."
It's interesting about what was in her stomach, which was nothing.
She was hungry.
Poor lady.
It's so intriguing to see the authorities grappling with this new situation.
On the one hand, releasing so much medical information to people who weren't doctors would have increased the horror and the fear.
On the other hand, though, it also unleashed in the general public a fascination with this wonderful new world of forensic science as a means of potentially catching killers.
And that's something that's still with us to this day.
♪ It's no surprise that the newspapers took full advantage of this openness from the authorities, and sales rocketed.
The Central News Agency in London began sending the story across the Atlantic via telegraph.
Reporters now swarmed into Whitechapel in search of new stories to feed the wires.
The press was starting to do something different.
They were not just reporting on the crimes themselves.
That was no longer enough.
♪ By the 10th of September, the story was dominating the Victorian equivalent of 24-hour rolling news.
There were the morning, the evening, the Sunday editions of the papers to be filled.
The police hadn't made any official statements, but journalists rushed in to fill that vacuum.
They were now using Pitman's shorthand, invented earlier in the century, so they could very quickly take down the statements of any witnesses.
And they were competing to get scoops-- another new word of the 19th century.
The whole business had become a contest between the journalists to get their own exclusive angles and to put forward a convincing motive for the killings.
So if the journalists were desperate to suggest a motive for the crime, I think I should examine how they and the police combed over Polly and Annie's personal lives.
Could I have, uh, a pint of that one, please?
I don't just want to visit the places these women died, but also where they lived.
I've come to the Ten Bells Pub in Whitechapel, a place they used to visit.
♪ I'm meeting the author of "The Five," a biography of the lives of the five victims, and an expert on historical sex work.
Hallie, what I've learnt so far is that Polly and Annie were vulnerable.
They had no fixed address.
they had addiction issues, but this isn't necessarily how society saw them at the time, is it?
Well, society saw them in a number of different ways.
I have here the police reports that were written up when the bodies of Polly, or Mary Ann Nichols, were found, and Annie Chapman.
And it's very interesting because the police officer who filled in this document, under the heading of professional calling, wrote the word "prostitute," OK?
There it is, in black and white.
Yes, absolutely.
Prostitute.
So why--why did the policeman who completed this form call her a prostitute?
You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence, are you?
Well, a lot of assumptions were made-- [chuckles]-- at the time about what a dispossessed woman actually was.
It's a real sliding scale at this time.
If she was actually engaged in selling sex, if she was engaged in, you know, living with a man who was supporting her who she wasn't married to, you know, and Victorian society just liked to tar all of these women with the same brush.
They were all the same thing.
There was really no nuance applied.
I mean, and there is--this word, "prostitute" was used so loosely, including by people who claimed to be experts in it.
So, in the 1870s, somebody sort of published this supposedly authoritative treatise on prostitution in London and claimed there were 80,000 prostitutes in London.
But if you read it, if you go beyond that statistic, which gets repeated over and over again, you see that he included in that estimate any woman living out of wedlock with a man.
No way.
So, you know, that-- and that number then gets repeated by historians through time, saying, "This is how big the prostitution problem was in London," but it's taken totally out of context.
That's a very broad definition.
Right?
Ha ha ha!
Exactly.
It was impossible to tell who among the lodging-house community of women were prostitutes and who were just ordinary, poor women.
It was just so blurred.
Hallie, how was this issue probed in Polly's inquest?
Well, it's very interesting because-- and we have here Polly Nichols' inquest, and the coroner's court was very keen to put her under moral scrutiny, as if to blame her for her own murder.
And so they had her father, obviously, testify, and a number of questions were asked of him, and one of the questions was, "Was she fast?"
So was she immoral?
Well, did she run around with bad people?
And he said, "No, I never heard of anything of that sort."
But the coroner was really intent on kind of proving in some ways that she sort of got what she deserved.
Julia, do you think that Victorians were "keen" to think of these women as sex workers?
Because do you think that, in the Victorian mind, explains the crime that otherwise seemed motiveless?
Julia: In a way, yes.
In the 1880s, it's this moment when more and more women are on the street, and so the police and moralists are going, "Oh, how do we tell the difference, you know, how do we now know?"
We used to know, if you're on the street at a certain hour, that means you're a woman of ill repute.
Now that more and more women are coming to the West End for theater, for restaurants, for pleasure, these things that women weren't really allowed to do, those old rules don't apply anymore.
So we jumped right into the middle of this culture war about what prostitution means.
I think "culture war" is, you know, it's-- it wouldn't be a word they'd use, but I think it's a word that we could--yeah...
It certainly makes sense, yeah.
definitely apply to this moment.
Lucy: What started as a news story about two murders had become a story about moral outrage.
The press, taking their lead from the authorities, were all too keen to attach blame to the victims.
So it seems that all too quickly, Polly and Annie got reduced to this one little word of "prostitute."
And, sadly, I feel like this way of looking at women hasn't been left behind in the Victorian age.
♪ From the 10th until the 29th of September 1888, there were few developments in the case.
Even in this age of sensational journalism, there was a limit to how long newspapers could spin things out.
The story was running out of steam.
It might have become just a footnote in history... but then everything changed.
♪ On the 30th of September, 1888, what became known as the "Double Event" unfolded.
It involved a Swedish woman, Elizabeth Stride.
She'd been shunned for having an illegitimate child and wanted a fresh start.
But by 1888, Elizabeth found herself in Whitechapel and reliant on charity.
♪ As an immigrant, Elizabeth had registered at the Swedish church, which today is here in Harcourt Street.
♪ Now, the church often gave financial assistance to Swedish people in London who found themselves in need, and one of those people was Elizabeth Stride.
This is a record from the archives of the church of payments made, and it's for the third quarter of 1888.
Oh, yes.
Here she is.
"Stride, Elisabeth."
She's received... a shilling.
Ooh, and look at this.
Here's a coincidence.
A very strange one.
Down at the bottom, this page of the accounts has been signed off by the priest ten days later, on the 30th of September... and that was the very day Elizabeth was killed.
♪ Elizabeth wasn't the only woman in danger that night.
Having left an abusive relationship, Catherine Eddowes found herself dependent on alcohol, and in and out of the pawn shop.
♪ On the evening of the 30th of September, within the same hour and less than a mile apart, both Elizabeth and Catherine were killed.
Elizabeth Stride was last seen at 12:45 a.m. in a narrow street called Dutfield's Yard.
She was murdered about 15 minutes later.
Catherine Eddowes was last seen at 1:30 a.m., and her body was found just before 2:00.
It was under a mile from Elizabeth's in Mitre Square.
Four women had now been killed within a single month in the vicinity of Whitechapel.
♪ Before the double murder of Elizabeth and Catherine could even reach the front page, something else shocking had taken place.
A letter, purporting to be from the killer, arrived at the offices at the Central News Agency.
This letter would be a turning point in the legacy of this story and the true-crime genre.
♪ Now, this letter is such an important piece of evidence in this case, and I've got a really rare opportunity to see it.
Yes, the real thing, here at the National Archives.
♪ This is one of the most famous letters in history.
[Gasps] Wow.
Lucy, voice-over: I'm showing this letter to a criminologist who works with violent offenders.
Is he convinced that this letter is really from the pen of the killer?
"Dear Boss, "I keep on hearing the police have caught me, "but they won't fix me just yet.
"I have laughed where they look so clever "and talk about being on the right track.
"I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled."
Hang on.
That's so powerful.
"I am down-- I am down on whores," he says.
What the writer's doing here is giving us something that this case did not have, which is a motive: "I'm down on whores."
In my own work, one of the things that people ask all the time: "Why did they do it?"
That the assumption is that the individual had some issue with prostitutes.
"My knife's so nice and sharp "I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.
Good luck.
Yours truly..." [Scoffs] "Jack the Ripper."
"Jack the Ripper."
The first time in history those words appear.
Yup, he wants to say, "Yeah, "I'm probably walking around you, I'm there."
Yes.
"You can see me all the time."
Yeah.
But actually, nobody knew who he was.
What do you think the significance of the red ink is, Martin?
It's quite simple.
It becomes symbolic of blood.
There's a line here.
It says, uh, "I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle."
That means the blood from the supposed killing.
Yeah, what--my thing is, if you mutilated someone in the way that the autopsy reports are, I'd like to know, how do you suddenly stop and scrape a lot of blood, or a vial of blood into--it says "a ginger beer bottle..." "to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can't use it."
Well, even if it was glutinous, if it was fairly--you'd still be able to write with it.
Depends on the implement you're using.
So you think this description of what the killer is supposed to have done, it doesn't stack up.
It doesn't ring true to you as something that would have really happened, putting blood into a ginger beer bottle with a plan to write a letter with it later?
In terms of my work, having worked with people who have done horrendous things, what tends to happen is when the crime happens, the emotional impact of witnessing what they've done has significant impact.
They don't satirize what they've done because if you really want to tell someone you've killed someone, you don't have to really go out of your way to write it in red...
True.
unless you're going to make a point with it.
Do you think it's a bit odd that they've sent it to the Central News office, rather than the police?
Of course I do, because you and I both know the moment you send a letter to a newspaper boss and they read it, they're just looking at sales.
So the moment you get this, you're thinking, "I can make a lot out of this," and then the police will start thinking, "Well, how come we didn't know about this first?"
That still happens to this day.
It's like fake news.
So whoever did this knew that they were going to generate publicity.
Hmm.
They knew.
You think the letter is basically a fake?
Writers are very, very good at fabricating the truth to make you believe it, and we're looking at this retrospectively, but I should imagine they could get away with it because there wasn't the forensic awareness to be able to prove it, because if they did, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it now.
What are the repercussions?
This is a very, very clever way to fuel the kind of obsession with dangerous individuals.
We get caught up in "Who is it?
What did they look like?"
When we look at crime fiction, we love the bad person.
Actors love the bad person.
Everybody loves the bad person.
If you presented the reality about what victims went through, as a society, we'd have to respond differently to their act.
♪ Whoever wrote it came up with this really potent brand of The Ripper.
It's impossible now for us to even think about a serial killer without thinking about Jack, and all that from a letter that was written by somebody who I believe had nothing to do with the actual deaths of Polly and Annie.
♪ Today, most people agree that the Jack-the-Ripper letter is a hoax, sent by a Central News Agency journalist named by a former Scotland Yard detective as Tom Bulling.
But every time there's a serial killer on the loose, the name Ripper still gets trotted out.
♪ So, between the 1st and the 4th of October, 1888, both the deaths of Elizabeth and Catherine and the letter purporting to be from Jack were reported in the papers.
The case was now notorious worldwide, and the manhunt for Jack the Ripper was now on, and anyone could join in.
Lots of these newspaper readers now turned armchair detectives, and they did the Victorian equivalent of wading into debates online.
They wrote in letters with suggestions about the case to the police and to the papers.
I've asked the National Archives to send me some examples so I can get an idea of where these armchair detectives were going to take the Ripper story next.
Here we go.
These are good.
Some people were trying to help and were well-intentioned.
This letter from Thomas Blair of Scotland-- [chuckles]--has what he thinks is a good plan.
He proposes that police officers "be selected "of short stature, "and as far as possible, "of effeminate appearance, but of known courage."
"And they are to be dressed as females "of the class from whom the victims are selected, "and sent out onto the streets at night to entrap the murderer."
Not sure that's a very sensible plan.
Then others were just malicious, kind of copycats, fearmongering.
There was one letter from somebody called "George at the High Rip Gang."
He said he was going to get to work in the West End, cutting up gilded ladies and duchesses, the posh women there, while his pal Jack continued his work in the East.
And here's a letter clearly intended to cause trouble and fear.
This person obviously knows about the "Dear Boss" letter.
They've written in the same red ink, and it begins, "Dear Sir, "I shall be in Whitechapel on the 20th "of this month-- And will begin some very delicate work."
"Yours till death, "Jack the Ripper.
Catch me if you can."
♪ The public's investment in solving this crime mirrors the way that modern audiences engage with unsolved cases today.
But these self-appointed Sherlocks flooded the Victorian police with false leads and triggered public hysteria.
♪ [Woman exhales] Lucy: By the end of October 1888, the newspapers were reporting that women traveling at night were half-mad with fear and carrying knives and guns.
♪ A woman named Mary Jane Kelly, concerned about the murderer, offered up her home to the vulnerable sex workers she knew in Whitechapel.
Ten days later, she herself was murdered.
[Woman exhales] Lucy: Because of the victim's profile and the way she was killed, she's believed to be the final victim of Jack the Ripper.
[Woman exhales] ♪ Mary Jane's remains were discovered at 13 Miller's Court on the 9th of November, 1888.
She could only be identified by her ear and her eye.
♪ Attention shifted to Shoreditch Town Hall, as it was announced as the location for Mary Jane's coroner's inquest.
♪ Reporters were poised to revel once again in the hideous forensic evidence, but they would be disappointed.
I can see here from the transcripts that the new coroner, Dr. Macdonald, wasn't happy with having all the gory details of what had been done to Mary Jane revealed in the open court.
That was quite unlike his predecessor, Dr. Baxter.
It says here, "Dr. Macdonald's own opinion is "that it's very unnecessary to go through "the same evidence time after time.
He felt it ought to be discussed in a closed police court.
So this meant that unlike the inquest of Polly Nichols, which lasted for five days, the inquest into the body of Mary Jane Kelly only lasted for one.
♪ After Mary Jane's funeral on the 19th of November, the police tried to stifle media coverage by withholding further details, but with the papers not getting what they wanted, some of them turned their attention on the police themselves, and the women of Whitechapel were getting desperate.
This article in the "Morning Post" perhaps explains why Queen Victoria knew so much about the case.
It's a report of a petition that's been sent to her by 4,000 women, and they have written, "Madam, "we, the women of East London, "feel horror at the dreadful sins that have been lately committed in our midst."
♪ The newspapers' justification for their blood-and-guts approach to the Ripper story was that it would attract more readers, raise awareness, and generate change.
But did this approach actually work?
Lucy: Which cell do you fancy, Roz?
Roz: Ooh, I think maybe Cell 4.
OK. Looks like a good bet.
Lucy, voice-over: My cellmate for the day is the author of the book "Violent Victorians."
I hope she has the answer.
Roz, what did the journalists say that the detectives hadn't been doing or had been doing wrong?
Now, they were highly critical of the detectives and the way the whole investigation was run.
One paper in particular was the "Pall Mall Gazette"... Oh, yes.
which I have with me here.
"Police not available."
It says that the detectives are at fault, hopelessly at fault because... what's the explanation?
Yeah.
It just says that they're--they're useless.
"The comment of a Whitechapel costermonger, 'The police can't find nothink.'"
To be honest, they were doing all they could with the resources that were available to them.
What we've also got to remember is the police had a lot of interference, outside interference with their investigation.
Ah.
So, as well as the vigilante groups that were established, who'd roam around the East End, they also got thousands of letters from members of the public, people pretending to be Jack or giving them information.
They had to sift through all of those.
So one thing the journalists were doing was criticizing the police.
That filled up column inches.
What else was there?
So the newspapers at this time, they were already running this kind of critique of both the police and the investigation, as well as society.
It's because this is the era of New Journalism, and the idea of social reform in New Journalism is very, very important.
And I have this wonderful cartoon here from "Punch" to show you... that just sums it all up beautifully.
"The Nemesis of Neglect."
Neglect.
Yeah.
Gosh.
This figure is called Crime, and he's holding a knife and he is kind of saying Jack the Ripper is this--this specter of crime that's arisen from poverty-stricken, dirty conditions at the East End.
Jack the Ripper was representative of everything that was wrong with the East End of London.
Once the story of Jack the Ripper shines a searchlight onto Whitechapel, and all these middle-class people get concerned about conditions in the area, does anything change?
It does, Lucy.
There are a number of things that the reformers want as a result of the Jack the Ripper murders: they want better lighting, they also want more police supervision, they want more police patrolling, and finally, what they want, they want to get rid of those common lodging houses that they see as being the center of the slum, being where all of the misery and the problems of the East End emerge from, and so, to do that, they-- they suggest a program of slum clearance and in their place to build tenements.
Now, of course, the problem there is that the new tenements they build are not necessarily for the people who were using the lodging houses in Flower and Dean Street.
Slum clearance in the 19th century tends to just exacerbate overcrowding and slum conditions in other neighborhoods as people are pushed out.
Ah, so you build some fancy new buildings, and no one can afford the rent, so they go--where do they go?
Further east.
Lucy, voice-over: Exploring social justice is still a theme of true crime today.
We often justify the pleasure we take in the gory details by arguing that this has a higher purpose.
The Victorian Ripper coverage did draw attention to the harsh realities of life in the East End.
But none of our five women-- Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, or Mary Jane-- would have qualified for the new social housing.
♪ I believe the story of Jack the Ripper in 1888 set the template for a new kind of entertainment based on murder: how a crime story is constructed, commercialized, and then consumed.
♪ All the ingredients are here: the unknown killer, the dark city, the fallen women, the forensics, the police failings.
But I've learnt that this isn't the truth.
It's a kind of dark media fantasy, and it concentrates our attention on the anti-hero of the story--the killer, at the expense of the humanity of his victims.
♪
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Critmas 2024
Critiques I gave to others
Critiques given to me
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Poetic Critique of Luthien and Beren by jjwinters
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Poetic-Critique-of-Luthien-and-Beren-by-jjwinters-1143440896
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2024 work list
literal list
https://rmnewsletter.substack.com/p/2024-art-list-rmnewsletter
list with image previews- scroll under the Cento
https://rmnewsletter.over-blog.com/2024/11/12/01/2024-rmnewsletter.html
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Public Domain 2025
Tintin - 1929 books only
Popeye - don't derive superhuman strength from spinach, rub the hairs on Bernice the lucky whiffle hen
Tarzan - tarzan comic strip 1929 to 2002, muralist, you can do it, with permission of a building
Ernest Hemingway's - a farewell to arms
Virginia woolf's a room of one's own
William Faulkner- the sound and the fury
->Dashell Hammett's - the maltese falcon
Eric Maria Remarque- English language version of all quiet on the western front translated by ween
E.B. White + JAmes Thurber - is sex necessary
Patrick Hamilton - Rope [ stageplay]
Alfred Hitchcock first sound film Blackmail
John Ford - The Black Watch
Cecil B Demille- Dynamite
Clara Bow film- the wild party
The return of sherlock holmes
Atlantic 1929
marx brothers - the cocoanuts
Harold lloyd- welcome danger
buster keaton- spite marriage
G W Pabst- two films: pandora's box and diary of a lost girl , both starring louise brooks
Luis Bunuels- Un CHein Andalou co written by salvadore dalie
->Fritz lang - woman in the moon , technical director was a rocket scientist named hermann oberth was also the technical advisor fro the book Tintin book, destination moon. he was a nazi.
->King Vidor - HAllelujah featuring all black cast
On with the show- first feature length all talking all color film
->The Hollywood Revue - no plot, just musical skits, every mgm actor, singing in the rain the song came in 1929
cole porter- what is this thing called love
Happy Days Are Here Again- song -
Favorite works from 2024
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/Confetti-Badge-Queries-1141712562
answering the following questions
What’s an artistic skill you’re hoping to learn or improve this year?
Are you planning to try new media or tools when creating this year, and if so, which ones?
What would you say you’ve learned about yourself as an artist in the past year?
Share your favorite deviation from 2024 in your comment!
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I am a Brian thompson fan, my fellow writers, if you can spare a character, consider making a geek or a nerd who doesn't have the usual physical form
words from Brian Thompson, i think
"Many people back in the day thought I was a mindless thug, because that's what I used to play, but I also can't complain. It got me where I am today, with a great career and a loving family. If you're very physical in stature, you're gonna get hired for action movies. The movie star, especially the action star is always going to be chasing someone so they need an equal adversary. I'm never going to play a nerd or a geek, even tho I went to college, played the clarinet, and I am not ashamed to admit I was, and still am, more sensitive than my wife."
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The funny thing is, if a man never marries a woman cause every woman he know makes less than him, women will feel slighted. That is right Eddie HALF! where so many woman, former mrs besoz/gates/or others gained their money.
But the questions are
- what did her father raise her to do?
- Did her mother raise her to love a man?
- Did her mother ever love a man?
- Will she accept a man not being married to a woman if he has to pay all the bills?
The scene where the 6888 get saluted by all the white soldiers never happened? why do we blacks like to lie about the history of the usa? is the idea of the usa so important it must be advertised over the reality.
The Six Triple Eight
wiki reality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6888th_Central_Postal_Directory_Battalion
wiki film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Triple_Eight
