From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London

In this excerpt from the BBC documentary Yesterday’s Witness: Two Victorian Girls (1970), a pair of women in their 90s recount coming of age in London in the late-Victorian era. Berta Ruck, who relocated from Wales and went on to become a successful romance novelist, and Frances ‘Effy’ Jones, one of the first women to be trained to work as a typist, prove charismatic storytellers as they recount the clothes, manners and mounds of mud that defined London at the time. What emerges is a portrait of the city as a place of widespread poverty and conservative values, but also excitement and new opportunities for women.

via Open Culture