Tonight we walk slowly through the England of the Georges, from the dining room to the churchyard, and look at the everyday things people did without a second thought, told quietly for falling asleep. The pictures play on the television of a quiet living room, with soft rain at the window. No music, no sudden noises, just a calm voice and the rain.
In the spring of 1832, in the market place at Carlisle, a farmer stood his wife on an oak chair with a halter of straw around her neck and sold her for twenty shillings and a Newfoundland dog. Nobody sent for a constable. It happened in market towns all over England, hundreds of times, and it was far from the strangest thing the Georgians thought was normal.
Inside: a chamber pot in the dining room sideboard, faces painted white with lead, towers of powdered hair and ivory head scratchers, teeth bought from the poor, a little dog running in a wheel to turn the roast, bread whitened with alum, the gin cellars of St Giles, climbing boys sent up the chimneys, girls strapped to backboards, opium cordials for babies and the tokens left at the Foundling Hospital, bleeding in spring for good health, a holiday visit to Bedlam, a wedding in a Fleet Street tavern, a family moving into the Marshalsea, burial in wool by Act of Parliament, watch houses in the churchyard, and a shared bed at a coaching inn while the watchman calls the hour.
It runs about an hour and fifty minutes and it is meant to be left running. You are not supposed to reach the end. If it helps you sleep, subscribing is what brings the next one to you. There are more nights like this one on the channel.

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