Author Topic: BBC TV "WDYTYA?" Series 8 Episode #2: Rupert Everett  (Read 75288 times)

Offline Abiam2

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #189 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 18:23 BST (UK) »
Good point  :) :) :)

Offline suzard

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #190 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 18:40 BST (UK) »
If dressmaker=prostitute, who made all the dresses then?  ;)

Maybe the prostitute =dressmaker!!! LOL


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Offline RJ_Paton

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #191 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 18:52 BST (UK) »
Something didn't need to be illegal in Victorian society to make people outcasts.  If someone could keep the immoral source of their income secret, I'm sure that they would.  It's as simple as that.

It's not as simple as that ... yes Victorian Society was extremely hypocritical, , especially later in the period (at one point records show that the Bishop of Winchester owned all of the brothels in Southwark and no doubt made a good income from them).

What I am trying to question here is the assumption that dressmaker = prostitute. Early in the Victorian period sex was not considered "immoral", that only came about later as society in one of it's many swings rebelled against the liberality of the pre Victorian period.

It's been declared a well known "fact" that dressmaker is a euphemism for prostitute but no one can point to evidential sources for this Mayhews Treatise on prostitution in London which was published in 1862 makes no mention of dressmakers.

Offline RJ_Paton

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #192 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 18:56 BST (UK) »
If dressmaker=prostitute, who made all the dresses then?  ;)

Maybe the prostitute =dressmaker!!! LOL


Suz


 :)  :)


Offline Paul Caswell

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #193 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 21:37 BST (UK) »
Still not back on Rupert ... sorry. :(

I have a particularly interesting family, my Turners. My 2nd gt grandmother Diana had two bastard children. Her mother Ann Tilley had a bastard child which also had a bastard child.

Every one of these women were either Dressmakers or Seamstresses or in the workhouse.

I think Diana moved into the workhouse when my gt grandfather Thomas was about three. That was when he was baptised; he was born three years earlier. His elder brother William was also baptised in 1857 aged 7.

Diana and her mother may have been prostitutes. I don't know ... I don't care.  :) I will love them as much either way.

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Offline Trees

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #194 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 21:45 BST (UK) »
That's the spirit Paul at least you have arrived and that's the important thing. We all have some strange goings on along the branches of our trees these diversions from the usual make the pursuit much more colourful and interesting though there are some things we turn up best not related to Great grans or spinster great aunts. There but for the grace of God walk I and  thee and all mankind
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Offline RJ_Paton

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #195 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 22:39 BST (UK) »
Still not back on Rupert ... sorry. :(

I have a particularly interesting family, my Turners. My 2nd gt grandmother Diana had two bastard children. Her mother Ann Tilley had a bastard child which also had a bastard child.

Every one of these women were either Dressmakers or Seamstresses or in the workhouse.

I think Diana moved into the workhouse when my gt grandfather Thomas was about three. That was when he was baptised; he was born three years earlier. His elder brother William was also baptised in 1857 aged 7.

Diana and her mother may have been prostitutes. I don't know ... I don't care.  :) I will love them as much either way.

Paul


They may or may not have been prostitutes which as you say is not a problem and having illegitimate children does not make automatically put them in that category. Although I haven't come across any in my own lines (not that I know of anyway) I hope I too wouldn't have a problem with accepting what they had to do to survive.

One of the complaints made in this thread against Rupert Everett were  the erroneous flights of fancy he indulged in when presented with only a little information about an ancestor and yet we have some people, who are probably very meticulous in their research, who appear to blithely accept the dressmaker/seamstress = prostitute "fact" without question. I find that very puzzling.


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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #196 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 23:07 BST (UK) »
We really can`t make such wholesale  assumptions about the meaning of the word "dressmaker" .
My great grandmother was a dressmaker and I know that she actually took in sewing for a top M/C Ladies Outfitters   ( Affleck & Brown`s )because my dad used to accompany her (about 1900) when she went to the shop with completed work and also  to pick up the next lot.
She is described as such on census returns whilst still living with her parents in Lincolshire.
There were probably some dressmakers who did have a "second income" but what hard times they lived in and what will a woman with children to feed not do for them?
After all society women indulged in activities  outside marriage and what`s the difference berween a wealthy person having numerous affairs when they had no idea what it was to ever go hungry or see their children( when they did see them !!)hungry-- the difference is absolute need.
An old lady I used to know once said about prostitutes --" They are only selling what is their own". I don`t think you can argue with that. I`m on their side  Viktoria.

Offline Phil Goater

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Re: Who Do You Think You Are 8 - Rupert Everett
« Reply #197 on: Tuesday 03 August 10 23:34 BST (UK) »
Has anyone found any male dressmakers?

Are we to assume that any such were transvestites? (!)


(At this point I need a smiley with a tongue in it's cheek!)


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