Secrets from the Clink ITV Wed 6 Aug 9 pm

[kiterunner]

First in a two-part series. Celebrities Johnny Vegas, Len Goodman (who has already been on WDYTYA!) and Mariella Frostrup find out about their ancestors' experiences in Victorian prisons. Follows on from "Secrets from the Workhouse" which was on last year.

[Olde Crone]

Moderately interesting but I am quite puzzled by the title - what, exactly, are the secrets?

OC

[vita]

Moderately interesting but I am quite puzzled by the title - what, exactly, are the secrets?

OC

Must watch that - the Debtors Prison for London & Middlesex was a second

home for my family. Three of them incarcerated - g/g/grandfather twice!

[Lindsay]

I thought it was quite interesting. I believe it was made by the same company who make WDYTYA so perhaps they were able to use info they'd found when researching for that.

Coincidentally I've just been reading 'The Devil in the Marshalsea' by Antonia Hodgeson - a murder story set in the debtor's prison. Absolutely riveting - I couldn't put it down.

The conditions were a unbelievably awful.

[vita]

I thought it was quite interesting. I believe it was made by the same company who make WDYTYA so perhaps they were able to use info they'd found when researching for that.

Coincidentally I've just been reading 'The Devil in the Marshalsea' by Antonia Hodgeson - a murder story set in the debtor's prison. Absolutely riveting - I couldn't put it down.

The conditions were a unbelievably awful.

Only just caught up again with this post.

Not sure I could take reading about exactly how awful conditions were,

considering my lot were such frequent visitors.

No wonder g/grandfather "appeared to feel his position acutely" before he

was taken away to be locked up.

Admit to shedding a tear when I read that.

[Lindsay]

That sort of detail really brings it home to you, doesn't it? I also have a couple of debtors, though I haven't found any details.

The book I mentioned was set quite early, though - 1720s. It's based on contemporary diaries and Gaol Committee reports, and while it wasn't a picnic later on, I think the worst abuses had been tackled by the nineteenth century.

[vita]

That sort of detail really brings it home to you, doesn't it? I also have a couple of debtors, though I haven't found any details.

The book I mentioned was set quite early, though - 1720s. It's based on contemporary diaries and Gaol Committee reports, and while it wasn't a picnic later on, I think the worst abuses had been tackled by the nineteenth century.

That makes me feel a little better, Lindsay.Would love to know exactly what

"due to his own neglect" meant in the context of g/grandfather losing

everything.

[kiterunner]

It jumped around much too much for me, so I couldn't follow the individual stories very well. And I didn't get why they were telling Len Goodman all about executions when his ancestor wasn't sentenced to death?

[Olde Crone]

I watched tonight's episode, but really did not engage with it, found I couldn't have cared less what happened to any of them. Len Goodman getting all huffed up about hard labour - had he never heard of it before and what did he THINK it was?

I am starting to get very irritated by TV's assumption that we will only watch anything about social history if it contains "celebrities" weeping over relatives they never even knew they had till TV told them.

OC

[Lindsay]

They were lucky to find the records from the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. I have a couple of rellies listed in the London Gazette as appearing there, and I read somewhere that very few records survived.

*Agrees with OC that we could do without the 'slebs' in social history programs *