Hello and welcome to a very special live episode of Bad Gaze, live from Sheffield Dotfest,

and we're here in the

Crucible Playhouse in Sheffield. My name's Hugh Lemmy. I'm a writer and author. And I'm Ben Miller,

a writer, researcher, and member of the board of the Shulis Museum in Berlin, currently at work

on a biography of the fashion designer Rudy Gernrich. Thank you so much to everyone here for having us. Thank you so much for turning out. And... Yeah, normally at this point I say who we talked about last week, but we haven't talked to anyone last week because this is the first of this little mini tour. Ben, who we're talking about this week? Hugh, this story starts with a good Sheffield boy grabbing somebody in the ass. Perfect. A likely story, I'm sure,

see you all out later. It's Friday, after all. The boy that we're talking about, who is not the

subject of the episode, but we'll start with him, was named George Merrill. And he was born near here

in the slums of Sheffield in 1867. We once described Victorian London as the

drain of empire into which the world's resources flowed. Victorian Sheffield was perhaps one of the

empire's rapidly growing muscles. An explosion of industrial production led to the population

growing from 60,000 in 1800 to 450,000 in 1900.

And this meant slums, poor living conditions, cholera, smokestacks, bad water, severe pollution.

Merrill was one of nine. He was dedicated to his mother, who reportedly was, quote,

a racy-tongued, good-hearted woman with a stout voice and leg of mutton arms.

His family struggled after his father, a railway driver, was entered on the job, lost his job, and took to drink.

Sometimes they had too little money coming in, and sometimes not at all.

The young George often had to hide his mother's earnings from his father, so she had something with which to feed and clothe her children.

George later recalled his mother, raging.

Shall I try the accent?

You should try the accent.

He's no mortal use to me. I've had him all these years now, and I'm sick on him.

He don't bring nothing in, he don't, and he well near wears me out with botheration and anxiety. Many and many a time I've prayed on me, bending knees to him for, to be taken, but the Lord won't have proffered flesh, and that's a true saying. When I married him, he was right enough. There weren't an idle bone on his body then, till he took to drink, and now he ain't good for nout.

...