The Worst Christmas Jobs 圣誕特輯 9

But it found that the theater spell danger, Christmas joy for rich kids meant misery for other children. Toy makers were the poorest of the poor, and the hardest life of all was that of the doll maker. Expensive Christmas gifts were produced in slum dwellings by anonymous workers as young as 6.

Gillie, it’s extraordinary in here. It’s like a dream! Did you actually make these?

I actually made the dolls sitting next to you there, but the ones in the far corner are rare actual Victorian dolls.

It seems such a lovely thing to do. It’s hard to believe that this would have been a worst job.

It’s a very nice job for me these days, but they worked under much different conditions to me in the Victorian times.

What sort of conditions would they have been in when they were making the dolls?

They'd been working in very crowd, small working houses in the kitchens, working with the pot wax, and the children would have been playing around and actually doing parts of the jobs as well.

So these would have been on the kitchen stove with all the kids running around.

These, they were, yea. That'll probably be the one doing the pouring of the wax.

Would be very dangerous, wouldn’t it?

It would. The wax could get so hot that it would actually combust and burst into flames as well, so I work with the hot fat.

Like sheep fat.

Yea…oh, if I hold the molds, slightly tilt , tilt and pour, into the mold

Yeah, just pour it all in.

Pour it in, yeah, that’s it.

Stop! (Good.)There you go. Now that just as settlers settle a little bit though.

How much would a doll like that have cost?

Would have been about 5 guineas which would have been a whole year’s wage for one of the workers.

The little child who was making the dolls wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy one of those.

No way, no. They were just for the spoilt, rich children.

Dolls weren’t for playing with. They were expensive accessories. It was fashionable to have dolls with faces modeled on one of Queen Victoria’s children.So I...

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spell vt. mean; result in 意謂

Ex: Such an error spells out ruin. 這種錯誤意味著毀滅。

Does lazinesss always spell failure? 怠惰必然招致失敗嗎?

tilt vi. lean to one side; move something so that it leans to one side 傾斜

guinea n. 幾尼(英國舊金幣)