Suffer the Little Children

Season 1Episode 260 minDec 6, 2010
Suffer the Little Children
Ian Hislop continues his celebration of the dynamic and eccentric Victorian reformers who brought about the most remarkable period of social change in British history. Here Ian looks at the do-gooders' dramatic struggle to give youngsters a proper childhood, sending them to school instead of up chimneys, helping rather than hanging juvenile delinquents and raising the age of consent. Dr Barnardo founded one of the most famous charities of his era. But his methods were decidedly dodgy: he was guilty of misleading advertising, photo-fakery and even child abduction. Yet, we owe our own concept of child protection - that children have rights independently from their parents - to Thomas Barnardo. Indefatigable Bristol spinster Mary Carpenter's radical approach to helping young offenders was years ahead of its time. But even her patience ran out with some of the errant teenage girls at her pioneering reformatory school. Maverick newspaper editor WT Stead shocked the nation with his lurid expose of child prostitution - an exclusive which involved him buying a 13-year-old virgin for five pounds. His style and methods make today's tabloid newspapers seem tame. Stead managed to get the age of consent raised to 16, where it remains to this day. Thanks to the Earl of Shaftesbury, children as young as five stopped being sent down mines. His lifetime's work for children is celebrated in the famous monument at Piccadilly Circus - not actually Eros (sexual love) but Anteros (selfless love).Charles Kingsley's best-selling The Water Babies was crucial in banning the practice of sending small boys up chimneys. To him children were innocent, not tainted with original sin. Yet after him, Victorians sentimentalized children to a degree which we today find hard to stomach. Ian discovers how these Victorian do-gooders' ideas might have something to offer us today, with the help of Kids' Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh, Barnardo's boss Martin Narey and the current Lord Shaftesbury, 30-year-old former DJ Nicholas Ashley Cooper.
Suffer the Little Children has aired on Dec 6, 2010 at 9:00 PM
Previous EpisodeNext Episode

Trailer

We do not have any trailers for this episode

Recently Updated Shows

Recently updated shows that might be of your interest.
Mayor of Kingstown
Running

Mayor of Kingstown

Mayor of Kingstown is set in a small Michigan town where the only industry remaining are federal, state, and private prisons, the story follows the McLusky family, the power brokers between the police, criminals, inmates, prison guards and politicians, in a city completely dependent on prisons and the prisoners they contain. It is a stark and brutal look at the business of incarceration.

GenreDrama
Twisted Metal
Running

Twisted Metal

Twisted Metal is about a motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. With the help of a trigger-happy car thief, he faces savage marauders driving vehicles of destruction and other dangers of the open road, including a deranged clown who drives an all too familiar ice cream truck.

Yellowjackets
Running

Yellowjackets

Yellowjackets follows a girls' high school soccer team. In 1975, the Dearborn High Yellowjackets became the first team in state history to qualify for the Girls' U.S. Soccer Championship Series in Manchester, NH. They never got the chance to compete. Equal parts survival epic, horror story and pitch black coming of age, Yellowjackets tells the story of the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the Ontario wilderness, chronicling their descent from a friendly, cooperative team to warring, cannibalistic clans. At the same time, it follows the lives they've attempted to piece back together nearly twenty-five years later, proving that the past is never really past and what began out in the wilderness is far from over.

The Lincoln Lawyer
Running

The Lincoln Lawyer

Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.

Dexter: Resurrection
Upcoming

Dexter: Resurrection

Dexter: Resurrection, a continuation of Dexter: New Blood, takes place weeks after Dexter Morgan takes a bullet to the chest from his own son, as he awakens from a coma to find Harrison gone without a trace. Realizing the weight of what he put his son through, Dexter sets out for New York City, determined to find him and make things right. But closure won't come easy. When Miami Metro's Angel Batista arrives with questions, Dexter realizes his past is catching up to him fast. As father and son navigate their own darkness in the city that never sleeps, they soon find themselves deeper than they ever imagined - and that the only way out is together.