What a Victorian Goods Porter Actually Did at Camden - London, 1849 | History for Sleep

Ad-free on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4gbd... A quiet history for sleep: over two and a half hours of one November night in 1849, in a carriers' goods shed at Camden - slow second-person narration to fall asleep to, no music and no sudden sounds. It is Thursday, the twenty-second of November, 1849, a damp week with rain on and off and a moon not yet at half. You are a goods porter in one of the two carriers' sheds at the goods station at Camden. Parcels come off the spring-waggons on one side and into the railway's waggons on the other, and the paper shows any that have not gone out. The clerks sit at their little desks under gas, inside arbours of iron rods. The cholera count this week came to two. The whole place has been called the greatest railway port in England, or indeed in the world. This is one night in the shed, in order. The goods station and the far edge of the platform, where the wet rails draw the lamplight away in thin lines. The receiving shed: twenty-four steam-cranes and twenty-one wooden ones, all worked at once by one engine of sixteen horse power. The horses in their stalls. The evening rush, every evening from seven till about ten o'clock. The clerks and the paper: one carrier's invoice-forms and truck-labels are black, the other's red. The goods: Russia tallow in casks with its own set of porters, a waggon-load of raw silk, filberts for Birmingham, and a family warming-pan tied round the body of an eight-day clock. Sheeting the trucks. The open yard: the weighbridge, and a series of ten turn-tables. The rush ends. Cattle lowing across the dark till midnight. The railway side, where the goods trains' engines are kept. The small hours, the coke furnace glowing dull red across the yard. Coal smoke from the canal side. And first grey at the open side of the shed. Victorian life at the pace it was actually lived: British history and Victorian history of London's railway goods shed, a Victorian goods porter on a wet November night in 1849, for anyone who falls asleep better to the slow work of a quiet shed than to silence. Nothing goes wrong - the night is the work. A sleep story in the second person, no music, no sudden sounds. Made to be slept through - you are not supposed to reach the end. If you fall asleep to this, tell me in the comments where you are listening from - I read every one. Subscribe if you would like another night like this. Chapters 0:00 Every parcel counted 9:22 The goods station 18:24 The receiving shed 28:26 The horses 39:09 The evening rush 50:33 Clerks and paper 1:01:10 The goods 1:11:53 Sheeting the trucks 1:23:08 The open yard 1:34:05 The rush ends 1:45:10 Cattle till midnight 1:56:19 The railway side 2:06:40 The small hours 2:17:36 Beyond the walls 2:29:13 First grey All days:    / @onesleepyday   Subscribe:    / @onesleepyday