Family life before television

On Saturday night, reality TV shows X Factor and The Voice were each watched by more than 12 million people in the UK. Millions more went to the cinema and played video games on their computer or games console. But what happened before these modes of entertainment could occupy people’s evenings?

Dr Abigail Williams of the English Faculty has been looking into what people did in the 18th Century before technology as part of the Digital Miscellanies Index project, and is giving a talk on her findings at Dr Johnson's House museum in London tomorrow evening (Thursday April 19).

‘It was all homemade fun,’ she explains. ‘The key difference is that there was not the modern phenomenon of atomised households, where each child has their own TV or computer in the bedroom and no one watches the same thing at the same time. In the 18th century, people did everything together.’

One reason for this is that the conditions in an eighteenth-century house made amusing oneself much more difficult. ‘More light comes out of a modern fridge when you open the door than there was in the whole of an eighteenth-century house of an evening,’ Dr Williams says.

‘Most rooms were dark and cold and you would have spent your time in one big smoky room together. People would play games, devise riddles and puns and read aloud extracts from different books to each other – travel books, novels, poems – surfing culture like we switch TV channels.’

As books were read aloud, people could do useful activities like sewing  or embroidery. Communal female activities included making scrapbooks of favourite poems and sharing them with one another, while men might attend catch and glee clubs where they drank and sang drinking songs.

Children were a central part of activity in the home, Dr Williams says. ‘Children were encouraged to read and perform before families and visitors and to listen to and join in conversations – which would have been a good thing as recent research has suggested that children get significant educational benefits from talking about their day and chatting to their family around the dinner table.’

Not every activity could be classed as improvement, though. An entry in James Woodforde’s diary for December 1759 records:

26th – Had a bookcase put up in my study by Bozwell. Had a bottle of my wine.

27th – Had two bottles of wine

28th – Had the 7 lecture of Phil Hayes. Had 2 bottles of wine

29th – Had two bottles of wine

31st – Had three bottles of wine

Well, it was Christmas...

Top image: Farmer Giles proudly shows off his daughter' Betty's talents to their neighbours on her return from school, by James Gillray '; Bottom image: A woman reading aloud has her companions hooked in James Gillray's 'Tales of Wonder'