I was surprised by the lack of servants, too. No way was the Lady of the House (even within the middle class) going to spend four days out of seven beating the dirty laundry on rocks to get it clean. A shillin’ a week, and you could hire all the Irish girls you needed.
If I was doing this for three months, I think I’d just go in the medicine cabinet and get out the bottles of cocaine and heroin (Jumbo Economy Size) and go sit on the roof for the duration.
I had this exact same thought. Geez, can’t someone make a reproduction of the vacuum cleaner thing? Why does the stuff have to be “authentic” in that it’s 100 years old? It wasn’t 100 years old in 1900, it was brand new!
Same with that awful stove. Someone, somewhere could have made it work right or made a new one that worked like they did in 1900.
I’d rather do the “Survivor” one.
I just read in the paper the next one is going to be in the Australian outback. If I didn’t have a job and a family, I’d be signing up today!
I was wondering when you’d weigh in on this, Ike.
I picture you and your Park Slope family living exactly like “1900 House,” anyway. I’ll bet you even farm little Banjo and Pianola out to shirtwaist factories when they’re not in school, huh? Or do you force them to make artificial flowers while you read from Pilgrim’s Progess in a booming voice and wifey darns your socks?
I was so happy when socks became cheap enough that I didn’t have to wear darned ones. Always gave me blisters.
So, if not 1900 House, how far back are you people willing to go. For me, except for some (not all) of my computers and the monstro TV I live in 1980 House. Take away a couple more comforts and I’m in 1960 House. 1950 House is not much of a stretch, and I could probably survive down as far as 1920 House. But 1900 House is too much like camping. Those people would be much more comfortable if they gave up on pressed clothes and formal dinners altogether. A bucket of beer from the pub and they’re set.
In the 1900 house I would be dead.
No Insulin.
I was waiting for them to build a privy in the back.
Hey, wait, there were toilets for the middle class by then.
But they thought those things were dangerous. So they put it out in the back where the privy would have been just 10 years before.
So here’s a nice turn of the century flush model, and you still have to walk outside in the dark and the rain to the little house that surrounds it.
We’re lookin’ at generations of habit dedicated to one body function.
I have a co-worker who’s grandfaher refused to use an indoor toilet. He thought it was utterly disgusting to urinate and defecate where one lived. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
StG
This prog was on over here several months ago but I won’t spoil it for you.
The stuff that wouldn’t work was as much a test for the modern repairmen as it was for the family thenselves. It is interesting, in our so called knowledgable age, to see how much we have forgotten. Many of the problems encountered were due to ignorance rather than inadequate equipment, the stove is a good case in point.
The whole program is BS. It would take three months just to become fairly adept at living in that house; to learn the little tricks; to find them yourself because you have nobody to ask. They should provide an old lady as a technical advisor for the family. Otherwise, the whole experiment is skewed towards testing how the family uses logic and trial and error to figure out the missing instructions instead of giving them a genuine feel for living a hundred years ago. Our grandparents weren’t just dumped in an alien world (for the most part); they grew up in it and knew its ins and outs.
But I’ll still be watching Monday night. It’s like a train wreck.
Dropzone, I think you’re being unfair–of COURSE it’s not exactly like living in 1900, but I’ve already learned a lot. And if they had an “old lady” to instruct them, she’d have to be about 120.
Antracite, I think they’d allow you whatever medication you needed to stay alive–they don’t want to go into c1900 funeral practices . . .
There’s an article on the series in today’s Salon:
http://www.salonmagazine.com/ent/col/mill/2000/06/19/1900/index.html
I was thinking the same thing as I watched the coming attractions and the wife was complaining about spending so much time getting dressed. If you actually lived 100 years ago you would know how to put all that crap on.
Did anyone notice the family that was auditioned who were all dressed in turn of the century clothes? I wonder why they didn’t make it. A little on the obsessive side do you think?
Thanks for the thread-I will watch the show tonight!
I really wonder if the life was all that bad-the Victorians spent a lot of time on things which take no time at all today-thanks to our tremendous technology. The other side of this is-they May have had MORE time than us, simply because they did NOT have many of our modern innovations!
For example-they spent a lot of time writing lettewrs-indeed, the Victorians produced some of the finest letters of history-but they had the time to do it, because they wewrn’t constntly interrupted by ringing cellphones!
They took longer to dress, because the clothing was more elaborate.
But (it should be remembered) that the Victorian Era was one of tremendous innovation-ships went from sail to staem, Edison’s electric lighting was replacing oil and gas lamps, and communication via radio was around the corner. Of course, they had those “interesting” sxual hangups…
Highly recommended for people unrealistically romantic about the past, and those who laugh at them, is The Good Old Days–They Were Terrible! by Otto Bettmann, the guy who founded the Bettman Archives.
Wonderful book, Drop, I used it as a reference writing about Anna Held. Did you know HOW MUCH dried horse-poop people inhaled every summer back then? Yikes!
Now that we’ve gotten to know the family a little better, I have a few questions:
Where did they find a family with such well mannered and mature adolescents?
Did they edit out the husband yelling part? From what I saw it was the perfectionist wife who lost it.
How about that sufferage pin the wife made out of paper after she had to do laundry while her husband went to get a shave. I wonder if that was also a handy bit of editing, or did she have her snit and make a pin.
I’m glad they have hot water.
Saw episode two last night—I think they stuck the poor people with a real piece-of-crap range, which seems to be their main problem. Poor Mum, getting her family into that and having a melt-down in the back yard!
I loved the butcher who said, “If they think they can survive as vegetarians, they’re out of their minds!”
Can’t wait for next week, when Mum finally snaps and goes after the family with Dad’s straight razor . . . CAN she bury them all in the celler single-handed?
I definitely would’ve bathed in the copper used to boil the clothes. They had a fine single-person hot tub right there!
And the mum is a whiney bitca, isn’t she?
StG
Me and my husband thought the very same thing.
They could have at least heated some water in there.
LOL @ Eve!
I was thinking the same thing…she’s gonna kill them all with the straight razor!
They kept stressing how this was how a “well-off middle class” family would have lived. Someone (Ukelele Ike?) mentioned in an earlier post…wouldn’t a “well-off” family have hired an Irish girl to do (or at least help with) the laundry? And maybe some of the cleaning?
Would they have kept all the eggs for themselves or could they have sold them somewhere? (I’m thinking "Little House on the Prairie)
I want to see how long they survive on that vegetarian diet before someone snaps. The mom was totally grossed out by the sausages!
What strikes me most about the 1900’s house is the disparity between their supposed income and the opulence of the house itself. They are supposedly living on four pounds per week, yet the house is beautifully constructed with stained glass doors and hardwood everywhere. It’s an interesting paradox that we are supposedly much better off, but it’s the rare person that could afford a house built with that level of detail and quality of material. And this is a house constructed with few if any powertools!
I’m sure it has something to do with the cost of labor and material in the early 1900’s as opposed to today.