27 Bizarre Facts About The Victorian Era That You Didn't Learn In School (2023)

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Victorians were fans of body modification, and many women chased after an hourglass figure with an impossibly tiny waist. The practice known as tight lacing with super-snug corsets left some women barely able to breathe. Many doctors of the era fretted that this desire for a "wasp waist" could prove fatal. Victoria and Albert Museum

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During the Victorian era, most women didn't wear a lot of makeup — it was considered tacky. Instead, they chased after translucent, white skin. Women with freckles, pimples, or blotches bought arsenic complexion wafers to clear up their skin. That's right, they nibbled on arsenic — advertised as "perfectly harmless" — just to give themselves pale skin. Helena Independent/Wikimedia Commons

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In the early years of photography, Victorians flocked to photo studios to take family portraits. But photography also gave families a new way to remember deceased relatives. These post-mortem photos, taken after death, helped grieving families memorialize their loved ones. Many Victorians would try as hard as they could to make their relatives look like they were still alive — either by forcibly propping them up or presenting them as if they were sleeping.Flickr/"Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group

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Women couldn't just throw on a swimsuit and head to the beach in the Victorian period. Instead, they rented bathing machines in order to preserve their modesty. Essentially covered wagons, these bathing machines pulled women to the beach and offered privacy as they dipped their toes in the water.SSPL/Getty Images

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French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon was tired of criminals escaping the police. So in 1879, he came up with a new method to track criminals. Bertillon would measure every suspect's head size, middle finger, left foot, and forearm. Police would file the measurements on cards along with photographs. While fingerprinting replaced Bertillon's measurements, he gets credit today for pioneering the mug shot. Wikimedia Commons

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In the Victorian era, stealing fresh corpses from their graves was an extremely lucrative criminal enterprise. A shortage of cadavers for medical school dissections created an underground trade in dead bodies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the practice of body snatching caused multiple riots when families found their loved ones missing from the cemetery. Thomas Rowlandson/Wikimedia Commons

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Victorian children spent hours each day laboring in factories and brickyards across Britain. Some of the first child labor laws kept children under the age of 9 out of the factories, but anyone older could work up to 9 hours a day. And when they reached age 13, they could work up to 12 hours. In the 1870s, as many as 30,000 children worked in Britain's brickyards alone. Lewis Hine/Wikimedia Commons

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Cholera was a deadly disease during the Victorian period. The terrifying affliction killed thousands in London, where raw sewage was often dumped in the River Thames. Even worse, when Dr. John Snow warned the city that contaminated water could spread the disease, his warning was not accepted in official circles. A committee appointed by parliament to investigate the epidemic even said, "After careful inquiry, we see no reason to adopt [Snow’s] belief." Wellcome Library

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Corsets and crinolines defined the early years of Victoria's reign. In the 1850s, cage crinolines grew larger than ever before thanks to new technology. Made with spring steel, these crinolines provided a sense of lightness and flexibility. The widest skirts measured 18 feet across.George Cruikshank/Wikimedia Commons

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The Victorian period celebrated nature. And the Victorian obsession with nature translated into some strange fashion trends. Women covered their hats and gowns with bird feathers — and sometimes entire bird corpses. In 1886, an American ornithologist reported sighting pieces of 40 native birds on the hats of fashionable ladies in New York City. Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Mummies were all the rage in the Victorian era, when British visitors to Egypt often came home with a mummy as a souvenir. Victorians even held mummy unwrapping parties. One host sent out printed invitations that read, "Lord Londesborough at Home: A Mummy from Thebes to be unrolled at half-past Two." Guests would gather to see what lay beneath the mummy's wrappings.Paul Dominique Philippoteaux/Wikimedia Commons

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The Victorians invented one of the first homeless shelters in London — but the 19th-century version was pretty creepy. For just four pennies, homeless Londoners could rent a coffin-shaped bed from the Salvation Army. Wikimedia Commons

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What's a garden without a gnome or hermit? Wealthy Victorians didn't want to leave their grounds empty, so they hired real-life humans to serve as ornamental garden hermits on their property.

When Charles Hamilton posted an ad in the paper to hire a garden hermit, he explained, "…he shall be provided with a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hourglass for timepiece, water for his beverage, and food from the house. He must wear a camlet robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard, or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr. Hamilton’s grounds, or exchange one word with the servant."

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Victorian London stank. After untold amounts of raw sewage were dumped into the River Thames, it became a cesspool. Scientist Michael Faraday even described the river as "an opaque pale brown fluid." During the Great Stink of 1858, a heat wave carried the foul order across London, finally convincing the city to reform its public health policies.Punch Magazine/Wikimedia Commons

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Many Victorian mourning practices seem quite strange to us today. For example, when a person died, mourners would often clip off a piece of their hair and preserve it in jewelry to remember them.Wikimedia Commons

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Crystal Palace, built in 1851 for the first World's Fair in London, didn't just show off plants, animals, and luxury items from around the world. It also featured a human zoo. Visitors to the Crystal Palace were encouraged to gawk at 60 Somalis, who were transported there from Africa. Getty Images

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Insects were all the rage in Victorian fashion. Women donned live beetles as jewelry and adorned gowns with dead butterflies. Before long, they started to push some species to the brink of extinction. One 1890 article reported, "Not content with her slaughter of the innocents in the matter of birds, Dame Fashion has extended her murderous designs to moths and butterflies."Ardern Holt/Wikimedia Commons

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The future Edward VII started a trend after his visit to Jerusalem in 1862: tattoos. Once some of the royals gave tattoos their stamp of approval, thousands lined up to get their own. According to one contemporary estimate, more than 100,000 Londoners sported tattoos in the Victorian era. While the British generally hid their tattoos, American Maud Wagner proudly showed off her ink. (Though Wagner lived during the Victorian era, she began her tattooing shortly after that period ended.)The Plaza Gallery/Library of Congress

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Victorian mental asylums locked away criminals, people with mental illnesses, and people with learning disabilities. According to reformer Harriet Martineau, public asylums contained "chains and strait-waistcoats, three or four half-naked creatures thrust into a chamber filled with straw, to exasperate each other with their clamour and attempts at violence; or else gibbering in idleness or moping in solitude." Mental asylum portraits capture the chaos and tragedy of life in a Victorian asylum.Museum Of The Mind

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Mummies had a lot of uses during the Victorian era. Painters used "mummy brown" in their works, a color that was literally made from ground-up mummies. And some people treated diseases by taking mumia (or mummia), a medicine made from mummies.Bullenwächter/Deutsches Apothekenmuseum Heidelberg

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Victorians feared nothing more than being buried alive. So they designed "safety coffins" just in case they woke up six feet under. These coffins were outfitted with bells above ground in case of "premature burial." But there was one major problem with safety coffins: As bodies decayed and naturally swelled, they might mistakenly activate the bell system.Christian Henry Eisenbrandt/National Archives

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Victorians may have invented the super villain before the 20th century gave us modern superheroes. For proof, just look at Spring-Heeled Jack, a legendary bogeyman who dressed up in a cloak and attacked people with his claws. Some believers even claimed Spring-Heeled Jack was able to breathe fire.Wikimedia Commons

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Victorians were willing to die for fashion — literally. The crinoline dresses popular from the 1850s to about 1870 were incredibly flammable. During the height of crinoline fashion, an estimated 3,000 women died when their dresses caught fire. Wikimedia Commons

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Victorian factories pumped massive amounts of black smoke into the air. London coal fires added to the toxic mix, creating a thick smog in the city. The pollution stained buildings, caused an awful smell, and created a lot of laundry problems. In fact, Victorian men often dressed in black to help them hide unsightly stains from London's pollution.Wakefield/Wikimedia Commons

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Valentine's Day wasn't just for lovers in the Victorian era. Some people mailed insulting cards called vinegar valentines to their enemies. These cards were so mean that they reportedly caused some recipients to commit suicide.Missouri Historical Society

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Since divorce was expensive during the Victorian period, some men simply opted to sell their wives instead. Bizarrely enough, this would often take the form of a cattle auction, as the husband would bring his wife to a market and give her away to the highest bidder. Even as late as 1901, jurist James Bryce noted, "Everybody has heard of the odd habit of selling a wife, which still occasionally recurs among the humbler classes in England."Wikimedia Commons

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Not all Victorians welcomed the railway boom. Many worried that the sounds and motions of train travel could turn people into lunatics — and this "railway madness" could strike at any time. In 1864, one newspaper told the story of a sailor who swore, shouted at, and attacked people in his carriage. That same year, the Victorian Railways posted a new rule isolating "insane persons . . . in a compartment by themselves."Adolph von Menzel/Wikimedia Commons

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27 Bizarre Facts About The Victorian Era That You Didn’t Learn In School