What London's Victorian POOR Really Ate

On a winter night in 1850, a London street child could buy a hot baked potato for a halfpenny, and might hold it to warm their hands before eating it. This episode walks through a day of eating in the poorest streets of Victorian London: the watercress girls of Farringdon at dawn, the coffee stalls, the eel and trotter sellers, and the family dinner carried to the baker's oven on Sunday. Using Henry Mayhew's interviews, Arthur Hill Hassall's food tests for The Lancet, Dr Edward Smith's diet survey and John Snow's cholera notes, we look at what the poor actually ate and drank, what was secretly in it, and why oysters were once the food of the poor. ⏳ CHAPTERS 0:00 A Halfpenny Potato 2:16 The Watercress Girl 5:29 The Quartern Loaf 8:55 A Cup at the Coffee Stall 12:22 Trotters, Whelks and Hot Eels 15:56 Poverty and Oysters 19:23 One Room, No Oven 22:49 The Doctor Who Counted Dinners 26:13 The Cow With the Iron Tail 29:51 Death in the Pot 33:45 The Pump on Broad Street