Victorian Life
The Stranger Side of Victorian Life
Behind the polished manners, elaborate fashions and strict social rules of the Victorian age lay a world far stranger than we might imagine.
From extraordinary inventions and bizarre beauty rituals to forgotten superstitions, peculiar entertainments and remarkable individuals, discover the curious customs and unexpected stories that reveal another side of nineteenth-century life.
Welcome to The Stranger Side of Victorian Life.
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Victorian investigations
Why Did Victorian Britain Go Mad for Ferns?
They hunted them on hillsides, displayed them beneath glass and put their curling fronds on household objects. Victorian fern fever turned an unassuming plant into a fashionable obsession — and some wild populations paid a heavy price.
The Stranger Side of Victorian LifeWhy Did Victorians Give Each Other Jewellery Made from Hair?
A bracelet made from your mother's hair. A locket containing your sweetheart's. To Victorian eyes, these could be gifts of affection rather than reminders of death. The surprising history of hairwork reveals how people carried a little of someone they loved wherever they went.
The Stranger Side of Victorian LifeWhy Did Victorians Fear Being Buried Alive?
The terrifying history of safety coffins, graveyard bells and the nineteenth-century obsession with premature burial.
The Stranger Side of Victorian LifeWhy Did Victorian Families Decorate Their Homes with Poison?
The extraordinary story of arsenic-green wallpaper, deadly Victorian fashions and the beautiful colour that concealed a dangerous secret.
The Stranger Side of Victorian LifeWhy Did a Mysterious Woman's Photograph Survive 150 Years Beneath the Sea?
In 1857, a steamship carrying California gold sank in the Atlantic. More than 150 years later, salvagers discovered a remarkably preserved photograph of an unidentified young woman among its wreckage. Who was the Mona Lisa of the Deep?
The Stranger Side of Victorian LifeWhy Did a Victorian Man Cover an Entire Room with 44,068 Postage Stamps?
In 1892, an Ipswich businessman decorated an entire room with 44,068 postage stamps. The extraordinary Victorian interior took three months to create, became a local attraction and left behind one remarkable surviving fragment.