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50 Interesting Posts That Shed A New Light On The Victorian Era, As Seen On This Online Group (New Pics)
Even though the Victorian era was, relatively speaking, not that long ago, looking at pictures or old items from it can feel like stepping back into an alien world. However, that’s no reason to stop exploring the time that gave us the telephone or Sherlock Holmes.
We’ve gathered some of the best posts from this online group dedicated to sharing interesting posts and pictures from the Victorian era. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote the most interesting posts and be sure to share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments section down below.
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#1
Tabby And Dixie, The Two Kittens Gifted By Secretary Of State William Steward To Abraham Lincoln, Newly Elected President At The Time, In August Of 1861
RELATED:
#2
Miriam Kate Williams, AKA Vulcana, Welsh Strongwoman And Bodybuilder C. 1900
#3
Ida B. Wells In The 1890s. She Was A Leader Of The Civil Rights Movement, A Suffragist, And A Founder Of The Naacp
When scrolling through sepia-toned photographs of the Victorian era, it is easy to assume that the 19th century was a deeply serious time filled with unsmiling people trapped in very tight clothing. While the corsets were indeed breathtakingly snug, the era itself was a bizarre carnival of contradictions, deeply weird trends, and practices that would send a modern health inspector into immediate cardiac arrest.
Beneath the veneer of stiff upper lips and prudish morality lay a society obsessed with the macabre, prone to poisoning themselves for aesthetic reasons, and employing people for jobs that sound entirely made up. If you see a photo of a stoic Victorian family, look closer, there is a non-zero chance that one of the people in the picture is actually deceased.
#4
Ladies From Zanzibar, Tanzania, Dressed On Their Best, Some Have Gold Chains And Bright Smiles, Circa 1890s And 1900s
#5
Photographs Of Cats With Silly Descriptions, Taken By Henry Pointer, Part Of A Series Of Around 200 Cat Photos From The 1870s-1880s, Known As The Brighton Cats ✨
#6
Photographs Of A Trio Of Women Frolicking, C. 1905
Damned_Cat 18 hours ago
What a bunch of hussies showing their ankles and calves like that! LOL!
The practice of post-mortem photography, or "memento mori," was surprisingly common. Because photography was expensive and rapid transit rare, a family often wouldn't have a picture of a loved one until they died, leading them to prop up the dearly departed in lifelike poses for one final, slightly unsettling group shot.
#7
German Paper-Mache "Kitchen" Doll, The Cone-Shaped Skirt Unhinges At Center Front To Reveal A Miniature Fitted Kitchen. 1870
#8
"The Irritating Gentleman" By Berthold Woltze, 1874. The Girl Has A Tear Near Her Eye And Behind The Man Is An Older Man Ignoring The Scene
#9
African American Ladies Pose For Their Solo Shots, Circa 1890s
If the long passed people in the photos don't disturb you, the fashion choices of the living certainly should. The Victorians loved vibrant colors, likely as a rebellion against the relentless gray sludge of industrial London sky. Their absolute favorite hue was a brilliant, eye-searing emerald green made popular by a dye called "Scheele’s Green."
#10
"The Crawlers", 1877. 'The Crawlers' Were The Lowest Of The British Poor
This elderly widow is sitting outside a tailor's shop, holding a baby while its mother works. She was given a cup of tea and a slice of bread daily in return
#11
Before Sequins, There Were Beetle Wings. Fabric From 1858 Embellished With Bug Wings
#12
Three Women Dressed In Their Sunday Best, Marshall, Texas, 1900 ✨
It looked stunning on gowns, exquisite on wallpaper, and festive on children's toys, unfortunately, its primary ingredient was arsenic. It wasn't uncommon for women wearing these toxic frocks to suffer open sores on their skin, or for households with green wallpaper to slowly grow ill from inhaling poisonous dust. Historians have extensively documented how this fatal attraction to bright green baffled doctors who couldn't figure out why their most stylish patients kept wasting away, proving that being a fashion victim used to be a literal diagnosis.
#13
An Exhausted Mother Making Matchboxes. Her Child Is Asleep On The Floor Under The Table. C.1900
#14
Lovers Oscar Wilde And Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas At Oxford In 1893
#15
French Actress Sarah Bernhardt, Who Was Known For Her Peculiar Tastes, Like Having Her Own Luxury Coffin Where She Slept And Her Favorite Hat With A Real Bat. Photos Circa 1860s-80s
The everyday hustle of the Victorian street was equally strange, filled with professions whose descriptions sound like entries in a dystopian Mad Libs. Before the iPhone alarm clock revolutionized our sleep schedules, people relied on a "knocker-upper." This was a person, usually an elderly man or woman wielding, generally, a long bamboo stick, who was paid to walk the streets at dawn tapping on bedroom windows until their clients woke up for their factory shifts. It was a human snooze button you couldn't easily ignore.
#16
The All-Female Fire Brigade At Girton College, Cambridge, 1877-1878
#17
Portrait Of American Actress Maude Adams, CA. 1900
#18
Snow Fight Between Ladies At Cumberland Valley State Normal School, Circa 1900
Even further down the career ladder were the "pure finders." In an age before synthetic chemicals, dog feces, known euphemistically as "pure", was a valuable commodity used in the tanning process to cure leather. Armies of poor collectors would scour the streets, scooping up canine deposits to sell to tanneries, creating an entire economy based on scooping refuse that Charles Dickens himself observed with morbid fascination.
#19
A Girl With Down's Syndrome, Late Nineteenth Century. On The Album Is Written "Imbeciles & Idiots Of "Mongol" Type"
Renee Kamphuys 18 hours ago (edited)
Important side note here is that the terms imbeci*e and idiots did not yet have the derogatory meaning of today but were classifications of (lower) intelligence
#20
Princess Alix Of Hesse, Granddaughter Of Queen Victoria (1890)
#21
Girl Skipping Rope At Her Backyard, Circa 1890s
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of Victorian life, however, was dinner. Without modern regulations like the FDA, food adulteration was rampant and terrifyingly creative. Unscrupulous bakers would cut flour with chalk, alum, or plaster of Paris to make bread look whiter and weigh more, while milkmen watered down their product and added sheep's brains to create a frothy "cream" layer on top.
#22
Two Children In Spitalfields, One Of The Worst Slums In London, 1903
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 18 hours ago
What about the third person in the window? Or can no one else see them?
#23
Alphonse Bertillon, The French Detective Who Invented The Mugshot, Tried The Technique Out In His Young Daughter, 23-Month-Old François, In October Of 1893
Hippopotamuses 18 hours ago (edited)
Alphonse Bertillon and his wife had no children of their own. Apparently the photo is of his nephew, François.
#24
'lady With Her Horse On A Snowy Day'. Félix Thiollier, 1899. Shows That It Wasn't Necessary To Stay Still For Photos
highwaycrossingfrog 17 hours ago (edited)
The technology to take everyday photographs of objects in motion was developed from around the late 1870s onwards, and was widely possible in the late 1880s-1890s. For the majority of the Victorian era, it was necessary to stay still for photographic subjects to be successfully captured.
If this culinary nightmare made you ill, the medical remedies were often worse than the disease. You could soothe a teething baby with syrup laced with morphine or treat a persistent cough with heroin, which was marketed by Bayer as a non-addictive wonder drug. As records of Victorian pharmacy practices show, you could walk into a chemist shop and buy enough laudanum to knock out a horse, all without a prescription, which explains why so many people in those old photographs look slightly dazed.
#25
Baby, Us, 1891-94. She's Sitting On A Cushion For Extra Height. So Cute!!
#26
Ambrotype Of A Raccoon Resting On A Chair, 1855-1860
#27
Found This Nestles In The Pages Of An Old Family Bible
PeepPeep the duck 17 hours ago
HOw sad they really wanted a Robert and question that name for lucks sakes upon the third child - only for it to happen again. I’m not a mother but this card is very sad indeed
#28
Lady Pulling A Funny Face For The Camera
#29
Photograph Of The Moon By Lewis M. Rutherfurd, Taken In 1865. National Gallery Of Canada
#30
Ella Harper, Born 1870 In Tennessee. She Had "Curved Knees" And Was A Circus Exhibit From Age 12
She was called "Camel Girl" and the "most wonderful freak of nature." She was paid the equivalent of $6300 a week
FranSinclair 15 hours ago
Sheesh good for her! If anyone laughed at her, i hope she was able to laugh right back and think "you pay my bills 💅 "
#31
A Serious Looking Princess Dagmar (Future Empress Of Russia) Being Photobombed By Her Elder Brother Prince William Of Denmark (Future King Of The Hellenes) From Behind Curtains, 1861
Ace 3 hours ago
"The Hellenes" means the Greek peoples, and refers to the Kingdom of Greece extant from 1832 to 1924. Ellas is still the Greek word for Greece, therefore the official name of the country. Derives from Hellen, a sort of Abraham figure in Greek mythology, from whom the various Greek tribes were supposed to have descended via his four sons.
#32
Mothers Holding Their Babies Still For Photographs. They Were Trying To Blend In. 1850s-80s
#33
A Doll Crafted From Scraps And A Shoe Heel. It Belonged To A Child In The Slums Of London, C 1905
#34
Glass Negative Of A Irish Family, The Stafford's, 29 Of June 1904
#35
Laloo Ramparsad (1874-1905) Was A Famous Indian Muslim Sideshow Performer Who Made A Good Living Traveling In Circuses And Sideshows
Was An Advocate Against Using The Term “Freak” In Advertising. He Was Born With A Parasitic Twin Who Was Attached To His Sternum
#36
Trapeze Artist Laverie Cooper ("Charmion"), 1904
#37
Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria's Goddaughter
highwaycrossingfrog 17 hours ago
From Wikipedia: "Sarah Forbes Bonetta or Sally Forbes Bonetta (born Aina or Ina; c. 1843 – 15 August 1880) was ward and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She was believed to have been a titled member of the Yewa clan of the Yoruba people in West Africa, who was orphaned during a war with the nearby Kingdom of Dahomey as a child, and was later enslaved by King Ghezo of Dahomey. She was given by Ghezo as a "gift" to Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the British Royal Navy and became a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She married Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Lagos philanthropist."
#38
Peter Jackson, 1889. He Became A Boxer After Using His Fists To Quell A Mutiny, Later Having An International Career
#39
Before And After Photo Retouching
#40
Coal Miners Returning From The Depths After A Day's Work, Belgium, C. 1900
Hippopotamuses 17 hours ago
The trip down to the coal face would have been so claustrophobic, let alone what it would have been when you got there.
#41
Glass Negative Of Future Queen Mary (Of Teck) In Her Wedding Dress, 6 Of July 1893
#42
Portrait Of Young African American Lady, Really Like Those Gilded Frames, Circa 1850s-60s
#43
Krao Farini, An 'Adopted' Sideshow Performer Born In 1876. She Had Hypertrichosis (Excess Hair) And Was Said To Be The Missing Link Between Apes And Humans
Bored Jellyfish 14 hours ago
The last name, Farini, was actually the name of her London manager. She was from Siam, exhibited in Europe, and later brought to the US where she became one the stars for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Despite being billed as “Darwin’s Missing Link”, she was well-read and spoke several languages. She died in New York, April 16, 1926 at the age of 49.
#44
Actress And Dancer Cleo De Merode Walking And Posing For Photographers, 1905
Multa Nocte 14 hours ago
One of the most beautiful actresses and dancers ever. She was a stunner.
#45
A Second Hand Clothing Shop In St. Giles, London. Late 19th Century. The Child Is Looking At The Photographer While The Women Are Talking
FranSinclair 15 hours ago
Idt the lady in the white apron is too entertained by what shes talking about
#46
Jamie Winkler Smiles While Posing With His Little Fluffy Friend, 1890s. Glass Negatives
#47
One Of The Most Controversial Photographs Of The Period: 'Fading Away', 1858
Forrest Hobbs 17 hours ago
This wasn't a plain photograph. It was a composite artwork formed from five separate photographs. "Although the photo was staged and the woman wasn't really dying, some people believed the composition didn't afford enough dignity to what was a tragic situation faced by many families." and "Albumen print from 1858 depicting a young woman dying of tuberculosis. It formed part of a series of 5 photographs showing her final moments."
#48
Portrait Of An Unidentified Young Woman, Circa 1890
#49
The Seven Sutherland Sisters, C 1890s-1900. They Had Floor Length Hair And Were Celebrity Singers. At The End Of Concerts They Would Let Their Hair Down. They Died Penniless
Rose the Cook 11 hours ago
There was once a photo of my maternal grandmother with her hair that long. I remember seeing it as a child. No idea what became of it.
#50
Portraits Of African American Ladies, Circa 1890s
Note: this post originally had 80 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
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Apatheist 1 hour ago
I'm always amazed how many photos of black families were taken, and have survived. I always imagined photographs of the time were only for the rich white people. As for the poll - none of the first three is a surprise, one only has to read Dickens to know what it was like in the UK. The welfare state has been costly, but it has been such a huge improvement in lives that would otherwise have been intolerable.
Forrest Hobbs 17 hours ago
persephone134: the Victorian era was a period of time - 1837-1901, being the reign of Queen Victoria. It applied everywhere on Earth, not just inside the British Empire.
Load More Replies... Apatheist 1 hour ago
I'm always amazed how many photos of black families were taken, and have survived. I always imagined photographs of the time were only for the rich white people. As for the poll - none of the first three is a surprise, one only has to read Dickens to know what it was like in the UK. The welfare state has been costly, but it has been such a huge improvement in lives that would otherwise have been intolerable.
Forrest Hobbs 17 hours ago
persephone134: the Victorian era was a period of time - 1837-1901, being the reign of Queen Victoria. It applied everywhere on Earth, not just inside the British Empire.
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