I'm a Ripperologist (someone who researches the crimes of Jack The Ripper) and to understand those, you need to understand Victorian London. In Victorian London, those who worked, worked for pennies, or a meal, or a dosshouse bed for the night. If you couldn't find work, you got sent to the workhouse where you got food and a bed in exchange for twelve to sixteen hours back-breaking labour every day (the current Tory government have brought this back in spirit by requiring the unemployed to work for free for two weeks a year) or you starved in teh butter. If you managed to find work, it was that same 12-16 hour day. No days off. And if you didn't like it, fuck you, thousands were desperate enough to take it.
There was so little charity that, in the destitute East End, something like 3/4 of women prostituted themselves at least occasionally. The cost of full sex was generally 4d, the price as a shot of gin, or a small meal, or a dosshouse bed for teh night.
Vast dosshouses charged 4d for a bed or 2d for a lean-to, a rope stretched between walls that men leaned against to get what sleep they could in their exhaustion.
That's what they're trying to bring back. And they'll probably succeed too. This time, there won't be a revolt, the plebs have been too lulled by the mindless pablum on tv (the best of tv can enlighten and inspire but most aren't watching the best). The plebs have been so trained that they'll pay for their own bread and circuses. The PtB would be trying to bring back slavery but wage-slavery is cheaper.
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