Nanny West calls baby Sybil Branson a "Filthy cross-breed". Many people in the 1800s considered the Irish to be a lower form of evolution, with signs and advertisements saying "No Irish Need Apply". While these views were anachronistic in the 1920s, many people still held them - as is shown by Nanny West's prejudice.
Barrow says to Countess of Grantham that Nanny West isn't "quite all Sir Garnet." This is a reference to Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley. "His reputation for efficiency led to the late 19th-century English phrase 'everything's all Sir Garnet', meaning 'all is in order.'"
When Mrs. Hughes tells Mr. Carson that Charlie Grigg is in the workhouse, she tells him its "as bad as if we were reading about it in a novel by Dickens." Mr. Carson's response, "Haven't they closed the workhouses?" paraphrases a line from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."
First appearance by Jeremy Swift as Spratt, butler of the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith).
The workhouse inmates are seen picking oakum, a monotonous, unpleasant task which consisted of taking pieces of rope and unraveling and shredding them into fibers. Picking oakum was used in workhouses as a way for able-bodied inmates to earn their board and lodging.