Hacker Cinema
The 1900 Island
2019 · TV series · 1 season
Four families, with a longing to escape the demands of the modern world, head back over a hundred years to the turn of the 20th century. In this major new series, The 1900 Island, they are living for a month as a small Welsh fishing community on the dramatic tidal island of Llanddwyn, off the coast of Anglesey. It's a time of hand-to-mouth existence for the families - the Powers, the Davies, couple Kate Evans and Arwel John and the Barkers - as they come face to face with the harsh reality of one of the toughest ways to make a living in 1900 Britain. They must adapt quickly to their new way of life but bad weather, lack of experience and limited rations lead to hunger and frustrations. Can a last-minute effort by the women save the day.
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The best accounting I've seen of how much work people did historically were the mini-series that were aired on PBS a few years back: "Frontier House", "Colonial House", "Texas Ranch House", "1900 House", "The 1940s House", "The 1900 Island", "Prairie House", etc. Average modern families took up residence in a building of the times and had to use only the tools of the day to work as they did then. (Though they didn't have to grow their own food.)
Without exception, the work was backbreaking and unrelenting. Some of the moderns chose to quit rather than finish the month-long 'experiment'. Everyone came away with aspects of shell shock in realizing how hard life was back then for the average person, even just 70 years ago. It also became obvious that the lives of slaves or those working with only hand tools were that much harder still.
No, it's just insane to imagine that anyone in the past had easy lives. Nasty, brutish, and short, indubitably.
Fascinating to see how hard our recent ancestors had it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1900_House