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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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If we are comparing the life of an upper class Londoner with servants on the eve of WW1 to the life of a middle class Londoner shortly before the Internet, we are of course ignoring the biggest improvement of the 2nd half of the twentieth century (labour saving home appliances). But I think @BahRamYou is right that if money was no object you could enjoy a pretty modern lifestyle in Edwardian London. (And that Edwardian London is close to the first time and place that you could do so). The big things that you absolutely couldn't do (apart from electronic media) were fast travel (no aeroplanes, trains and cars ran at about half the speed they do now), certain types of fresh food (downstream of fast travel), and antibiotics. The doctor who did house calls was arguably more likely to kill you than save you in 1910.

Also there was no way of avoiding the air pollution if you regularly had to be in central London for business.

We have to pay out the nose for a trip to Broadway to get that kind of experience.

West End shows are a lot cheaper. Nosebleed seats start at £25 and top price tickets are generally around £100.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about someone where "money was no object." I was trying to focus specifically on the upper middle class. My understanding is that, at that time, it was pretty normal for anyone in the middle class to have a servant, or at least a part-time housekeeper. It wasn't really an upper-class thing, it was just a not-being-poor thing.

And yeah, no super fast travel, but the travel they did have was more comfortable than today. I don't think doctors in 1910 were all that bad, they did at least know about washing their hands and keeping things clean.

West End shows are a lot cheaper. Nosebleed seats start at £25 and top price tickets are generally around £100.

Ah really? That's awesome. But I was thinking of me, as a regular American, where I would first have to book a flight to New York to see a show. Or wait several years for the off-broadway production to come around, and I get one chance to see it or miss it forever. There's just not a lot of live theater here in most places.