Remember, kids! Unregulated capitalism is not your friend!
Remember, kids! Unregulated capitalism is not your friend!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get my cancerous scrotum looked at coughs up chimney dust
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I pulled up the Wikipedia article for the 4 penny coffins and found that George Orwell is one of the references for it. Thought that was interesting. Here's the page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_penny_coffin
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The reference is from his first book which was all about his experiences living with the downtrodden in Paris and London. In fact that's why he used the pen name George Orwell - he didn't want to risk harming the reputation of his middle class family.
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... the coffin house was popular because it offered an economical and mid-range solution for homeless clients ...
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What a nice humanitarian gesture these are. Something Bill Gates would do instead of paying his taxes.
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Another great source is Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor
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People don't want to work anymore, they just want to lay in wooden boxes all day.
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I wanted to lay in a wooden box all day before it was cool
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If you let capitalism go unrestrained and unregulated and uncontrolled.
Capitalist would be more than be happy to reintroduce slave labour, child labour and farming humans for slavery much like they do cattle or horses.
And do you own a house? A car? Property? ... even if you think you do, are you paying a mortgage or loan payments for these things? .. then you are not a capitalist. Even if you do own these things without any loan, chances are that if you are not a millionaire, you will eventually lose these things anyway.
You and I would end up being one of those people that would end up as slaves to be bought and sold.
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Remember, kids!
Unregulatedcapitalism is not your friend!-
This lead me down a rabbit hole an introduced me to "Mother's Ruin" of the cheap gin sold at the time:
It gets even more wild the more you read of that article. One guy pawning his wife for a quart of gin...then the government crackdown when things started getting even worse!
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When he was a serf, they said to him, "Let me find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else's field." But now he is a tramp they say to him, "You shall be jailed if I find you in anyone else's field: but I will not give you a field." They say, "You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside your shed: but there is no shed." If you say that modern magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but deliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopence would not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got a bed: and therefore (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to be punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame.
The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws sticking out of his hair and says, "Procure threepence from nowhere and I will give you leave to do without it."
(GK Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils)
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Damn, that rope's pretty posh by 2025 standards...
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George Orwell wrote about his experiences with those in Down and Out in Paris and London. It's a decent book and an interesting look at poverty of the day.
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Is that true? Did they really sleep on the ropes like that?
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There would be blood loss to the limbs and nerve damage from any appreciable time strung out like that.
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I find that hard to believe. The ground would be more comfortable.
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except, the ground is outside in the freezing london winter, during an age with draconian 'move along' laws that mean you'd be hassled by cops all night. ground would be more comfortable, that's why the coffin costs 4 pennies.
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No, it's a scene from a movie.
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Not like the picture. The rope was more to stop you falling off the bench where you were sitting up asleep.
For an extra penny [than a one penny sit up] you could pay to sleep literally hanging over a rope. This was possibly marginally more comfortable, as if you fell asleep the rope would prevent you from slipping onto the floor or head-butting the bench in front of you.
https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Two-Penny-Hangover/
Edit - none of the sites mentioning it have any sources. The closest to a source I've found quickly is this passage from Dickens Pitwick Papers, which to me doesn't sound like the arrangement as described in the photo but perhaps something more akin to hammocks. Especially given the part that says "down falls the lodgers"
And pray Sam, what is the twopenny rope?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick. ‘The Twopenny rope, sir,’ replied Mr. Weller, ‘is just a cheap lodgin’ house where the beds is twopence a night!’ ‘What do they call a bed a rope for?’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘Well the advantage o’ the plan’s obvious. At six o’clock every mornin’, they lets go the ropes at one end, and down falls all the lodgers. Consequence is that, being thoroughly waked, they get up very quickly, and walk away.’”
This site https://www.geriwalton.com/victorian-four-penny-coffins-penny-beds-homelessness/ says that the coffins were actually 2 pennies, or 4 with a meal. So why would someone sit over a rope for the same price? Again a hammock type arrangement here seems more logical to me.
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This was basically like Victorian pre-mobility (trains/metro) for this class, so people could commute only as far they could reasonably walk in a day. And offerings & prices prob varied.
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Libs: Is this Abundance™?
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nice try comrade!
35 comments
The lower photo is a BTS from the Great Train Robbery movie, from 1978:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hangover-drunken-sailors-ropes/