Mel O'Drama
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Has anyone been watching this fascinating series?
Series Three is now three quarters of the way through its four parts. The timing is quite uncanny. With the toppling of Colston's statue in Bristol last week, the house's connections to Bristol's slave trade have a currency and Episode One was fresh in my mind as the events in Bristol unfolded.
Each new era has brought its own fascination as it's thoroughly explored. This week's third episode delved into a resident using a pseudonym and coded advertisements to sell mail order abortion pills in 1909.
Here's a review of Episode One.
Series Three is now three quarters of the way through its four parts. The timing is quite uncanny. With the toppling of Colston's statue in Bristol last week, the house's connections to Bristol's slave trade have a currency and Episode One was fresh in my mind as the events in Bristol unfolded.
The name Guinea Street is itself a clue about Number 10’s origins. It is named after the Guinea Coast in west Africa, a hub of the international slave trade. And the date the house was built, 1718, was at a time when Bristol was becoming Britain’s premier slaving port. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the man who built the house, Captain Edmund Saunders, was a prolific slave trader himself, trafficking men, women and children from Africa to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean.
Saunders wasn’t the only resident with connections to the slave trade. As David finds out, the same is true of the first full-time resident, Joseph Smith. Smith was another sea captain, and while hunting for more information about his life, David uncovers extraordinary evidence from one of his voyages from 1721. A handwritten account from one of the ship’s crew reveals a story of piracy, peril and revenge which moves from the Caribbean back to Bristol, and eventually ends in London and the gallows.
Each new era has brought its own fascination as it's thoroughly explored. This week's third episode delved into a resident using a pseudonym and coded advertisements to sell mail order abortion pills in 1909.
Here's a review of Episode One.