Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman returned to screens to explore Victorian Britain at a crucial moment
Rob Rinder was left speechless(Image: Channel 5)
A devastating discovery was made during a new documentary series.
Last year, Channel 5 introduced Rich Lives, Poor Lives, a new history documentary series where presenters Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman investigate key moments in British history from the perspective of both the rich and the poor.
Rob and Ruth returned to screens on Tuesday (August 4) to front a new instalment of the series, which saw them travel back to the 1840s when railway mania swept Britain and transformed the fortunes of the rich and poor.
During the episode, Rob followed wealthy Victorians who poured their money into the railway boom. They included George Hudson, known as the “Railway King”, who seized on the craze to build a vast personal empire, and Lord Morpeth, an aristocrat who embraced the railways.
Meanwhile, Ruth investigated the lives of those who built and worked on the railways. The presenter uncovered the stories of railway worker Thomas Eaton and Mary Arguile, Britain’s first female station mistress.
Later in the episode, Rob and Ruth compared the differences between first class and third class on one of George Hudson’s trains.
Back in the 1840s, hundreds of third class passengers were jammed into small cattle wagons, leading to many people reporting injuries, including black eyes, bruised faces, and bloody noses.
“Oh my goodness. You go on a nice day out and you end up coming out like you’ve been boxing,” a surprised Rob said.
The pressure to squeeze more and more money from the railways took its toll, something the unskilled laborers up at the Woodhead Tunnel, including Thomas Eaton, knew all too well. Reports of terrible accidents at the tunnel soon reached the desks of the government.
On the 23rd of June 1846, Thomas Eaton was one of 32 witnesses summoned to Westminster to give his testimony to a committee.
Ruth revealed what happened as she stood in a courtroom alongside Rob. Reading out Eaton’s testimony, Ruth said: “Several were killed, sometimes when the engine was drawing them up, sometimes striking at the side. It threw them out and killed them.”
Eaton saw about 40 people killed in the 18 months that he worked on a particular section of the line. The death toll on that area of the line was at 3% of the workforce, a revelation that stunned Rob.
Ruth went on to say: “It was pretty sobering stuff, but the men running the inquiry didn’t seem as sympathetic as you’d expect.”
The members asked if the accidents were caused by the workers’ “carelessness”, suggesting that it was the fault of those who died.
“The worst was yet to come,” Ruth then noted, before reading the testimony of an engineer called Purdon. When asked if there was a safer way to work, he replied: “Oh, well, perhaps it is safer, but it is attended with such a loss of time, and the difference is so very small, I would not recommend the loss of time for the sake of all the extra lives it would save.”
A horrified Rob then said: “Gosh, that’s an admission. Profit over lives.”
The Victorians with Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman is available to stream on Channel 5