From break‑dancing to planking to guerrilla gardening, today’s city streets are a playground of oddball amusements. Yet if you think modern pastimes are wild, you haven’t seen the truly out‑of‑the‑ordinary shows that lit up the pavements of Victorian London. In this roundup of 10 bizarre entertainments, we’ll travel back to a time when performers risked life and limb for a few shillings and a roaring crowd.

10 Bizarre Entertainments of Victorian London

10. Breathing Poison

One of the most audacious characters to grace the streets was a fire‑eater who called himself “The Salamander.” His repertoire featured a string of stunts that would make modern safety inspectors faint. He would ignite a plate of sulfur, inhale the choking fumes, and then daringly swallow the molten element.

Although The Salamander claimed the sulfur tasted “acidic, nasty, and sour,” eating elemental sulfur is actually harmless; the real danger lies in the gas it releases. Burning sulfur churns out sulfur dioxide, a toxic vapor that can scorch the lungs, trigger choking, cause spasms, and even lead to long‑term respiratory damage or asphyxiation.

Beyond the sulfur spectacle, The Salamander also chowed down sealing wax, praising its “pleasant taste” and insisting on the red variety. He even rode a death‑slide while cradling a cascade of live fireworks, turning every performance into a perilous fireworks display.

These death‑defying feats earned him a reputation that would make today’s Cirque du Soleil performers blush at the thought of an OSHA audit.

9. Holding Explosives As They Go Off

The most perilous act in The Salamander’s arsenal involved a bare‑handed explosion of gunpowder. Stripping down to his waist, his assistant would cascade a stream of powder down the crook of his neck and along each arm, finally depositing a pile in his hand. A spark lit the pile, and the fire raced down his limbs, igniting the powder in a spectacular burst.

“I’ve been pretty lucky with this trick,” the Salamander confessed, “only when the powder sneaks under my bracelets does it really hurt.” The danger was such that he reserved the routine for special occasions, fearing it could scorch his hair, ruin a thumb, or even maim a whole limb.

Even when everything proceeded without a mishap, the visual was harrowing. The Salamander explained that he had to keep his hand aloft; letting it drop caused excruciating pain, a scurvy‑like wound, and the slow shedding of damaged skin as new tissue formed.

8. Killing Rats With Your Teeth

Rat‑killing matches were a regular feature in a certain London pub documented by Mayhew. A pit would be filled with dozens of rats, and once a set quota—say fifty—was reached, a dog would be released to clean house. The contests were one‑sided affairs, with wagers placed on how swiftly the canine could snap the rodents’ necks.

One ferocious pup named Billy reportedly annihilated 500 rats in just over five minutes, turning him into a prized “stud” for rat‑catchers, much like a racehorse. The Salamander, ever the showman, entered the ring with his hands bound, daring to bite through 24 rats using only his teeth.

He described the gruesome process: “The rats clustered together, and I plucked them out where I wanted, biting them between the shoulders.” Astonishingly, he out‑paced Billy by four minutes, driven by sheer desperation for cash.

These grisly contests, while barbaric by today’s standards, served as a testing ground for the dogs that kept the city’s rodent problem in check.

7. Puppet Murder Sprees

Children’s entertainment in Victorian England often featured a belligerent, sausage‑loving jester who delighted in murdering his own family. The infamous Punch and Judy shows presented Mr. Punch as a chaotic anti‑hero, committing a laundry list of crimes that would make modern cartoons blush.

Mayhew’s notes recount a performance where Punch embarked on a crime spree rivaling the Manson family: he murdered his wife, hurled his baby out a window, resisted arrest, hung the executioner sent after him, and even tried to fake his own death.

The climax arrived when the Devil himself appeared to claim Punch’s soul—only to be beaten to death by the mischievous puppeteer. Despite the carnage, the performer assured Mayhew that Punch was “a chap who won’t stand much nonsense from others, because his morals are true, just, right, and sound—although he does kill his wife and baby.”

This brand of dark comedy thrilled Victorian audiences, far surpassing the slapstick violence of today’s cartoons.

6. Building Effigies Of The Clergy

Bonfire Night’s “Guys” tradition survives to this day, but Victorian street urchins turned it into a lucrative spectacle. While today we burn straw effigies of Guy Fawkes, back then children crafted towering “Guys” from trousers, boots, rosettes, and paper capes, parading them through the streets like condemned convicts.

The original image of Fawkes as a jolly folk hero is a modern invention; historically he was a religious terrorist bomber. Mayhew observed that these makeshift effigies were not only burned but also marched, with their creators collecting coins from onlookers.

Over time, the floats grew more audacious, lampooning unpopular figures. In 1856, massive effigies of the Pope and Archbishop Nicholas Wiseman were displayed, accompanied by cries of “No Popery!” Another float featured Tsar Nicholas of Russia lying at the feet of Florence Nightingale and two soldiers, with a cardinal’s red hat as wide as a loo‑table and a cape as long as a tent.

These anti‑Catholic displays sparked street battles, especially with Irish children, who fought back fiercely, turning the celebrations into a volatile mix of politics and pyrotechnics.

5. Robbing Infants

Victorian circuses featured a bizarre role known as “Silly Billy,” where adult men dressed in frilly pinafores and makeup to impersonate mischievous boys. Mayhew recorded that a true “Silly” had to master every nuance of a child’s play, spending hours watching boys at games to pick up their slang and antics.

The performance went beyond mimicry; to earn applause, the Silly was expected to engage in genuine mischief, most notably pilfering toys from unsuspecting children. This theft was part of the act’s charm, a twisted homage to childhood roguery.

Audience appreciation could be equally unsettling. Women in the crowd would repeatedly jab pins into the Silly’s flesh, treating him like a living pincushion, sometimes drawing blood from his thighs. The grotesque interaction highlighted the era’s brutal entertainment sensibilities.

Thus, the Silly’s blend of innocent disguise and outright thievery made him a memorable, if unsettling, fixture of the Victorian fairground.

4. Taking Sledgehammers To The Chest

One of Mayhew’s interviewees proudly called himself a “strongman,” a title that, in his world, meant lying flat on his back with a massive stone pressed against his chest while spectators took turns hammering it with a sledgehammer. The stones, typically flagstones about an inch thick, could be much larger depending on the performer’s stamina.

Performing under the moniker “Signor C.,” the strongman recounted bearing a stone weighing between 200 and 250 kilograms (450‑550 lb). The audience’s sledgehammer—13 kg (28 lb)—smacked the stone six times before it shattered into fragments, leaving the performer unharmed yet visibly strained.

This brutal display of endurance turned the simple act of lifting a rock into a theatrical contest of raw power, drawing crowds eager to witness the spectacle of a man surviving repeated blows to his chest.

3. Picking Up A Live Horse

The same strongman later attempted an even more audacious stunt: hoisting a live horse off the ground before a theater audience. Suspended by his ankles above the stage, he wrapped sheets around the animal’s belly and managed to lift it briefly.

Disaster struck when the bandage covering the horse’s eyes slipped, allowing the startled creature to see the crowd below. Panic ensued; the horse flailed, kicking wildly, and even knocked the orchestra’s float‑lights over with its hind legs.

Despite the chaos, the audience shouted for the show to continue, seemingly unfazed by the near‑catastrophe. The strongman eventually regained control of the animal, though he later confessed he regretted ever attempting such a reckless feat.

2. Acrobat Face‑Offs

Victorian acrobatic troupes dazzled crowds with feats we still admire today—pole balancing, extreme contortion, and daring hand‑walks. One performer greeted Mayhew by bending backward until his heels touched his head, then strolling around the room on his hands.

The training began cruelly in childhood. An acrobat recounted his father’s “cricking” method: twisting the child’s legs in their sockets and pulling them upward until the feet slammed against the head, a painful initiation into the art.

Competition among troupes could become fierce. One troupe’s performer, who could juggle his younger brothers with his feet while lying on his back, described a Run‑DMC‑style face‑off where each group tried to out‑do the other before a raucous crowd.

The rivalry eventually attracted police attention, who ordered each troupe to claim a side of town and stay put, effectively ending the public showdown.

1. Reproduction Murder Scenes And Memorabilia

Victorian street culture also catered to a morbid fascination with true crime. Without modern shows like Forensic Files, curious onlookers could purchase tiny earthenware figures depicting infamous murder sites, turning grisly history into a collectible hobby.

Beyond miniature scenes, vendors sold murder memorabilia such as decorative mugs emblazoned with a killer’s visage, allowing fans to sip tea while reminiscing about the macabre.

The “Red Barn” murder became especially popular; the very boards of the barn were harvested and sold as souvenirs. Travelers and holiday‑makers could acquire trinkets at market stalls, turning tragedy into a tourist commodity.

Michael, a former high‑school English teacher and lifelong history enthusiast, has lived in six countries and continues to chase such oddball artifacts, proving that the Victorian appetite for the bizarre still echoes today.

The modern world is filled with bizarre jobs, from policing social media to crafting click‑bait articles, but the 10 strangest jobs of Victorian England make today’s oddities look tame. As you explore this list, you’ll thank your lucky stars for a modern education—or at least for not having to earn a living in the 19th‑century underbelly.

10 Strangest Jobs of Victorian Britain

10. Female Hysteria Doctors

Since Hippocrates, physicians labeled women’s sexual energy as a dangerous disease, dubbing it “hysteria” and prescribing a peculiar cure: an orgasm administered by a qualified doctor.

Victorian society, which kept female sexuality under tight control, saw a surge in hysteria diagnoses—some doctors claimed up to a quarter of women suffered from it. This imagined epidemic spawned a slew of “9 out of 10 British doctors approve” devices designed to induce the so‑called female paroxysm.

Hydrotherapy became fashionable, and the “douche”—a long tube that sprayed water into the vagina—was touted as a remedy. A contemporary review described the experience: “The first impression produced by the jet of water is painful, but soon the pressure causes the skin to flush and a pleasant equilibrium to return, making the sensation agreeable enough that patients are cautioned not to exceed four or five minutes. After the douche, the patient dries herself, refastens her corset, and returns briskly to her room.”

Doctors closely monitored patients to prevent over‑indulgence, using devices like George Taylor’s “Manipulator,” essentially a wooden table with a vibrating sphere. While today’s vibrators boast Wi‑Fi and playlists, Victorian women endured the crude “Manipulator” to achieve the prescribed cure. The lucrative trade kept many physicians’ practices thriving until pornographic films showed women they could self‑stimulate, rendering the doctor‑administered service obsolete.

9. Lamplighter

Before gas lamps illuminated city streets, darkness made urban life hazardous. London’s alleys teemed with pickpockets and thieves, prompting the use of “link boys”—crimps wielding burning rags to guide travelers, often leading them into robbery.

The advent of gas lighting in the early 19th century transformed the streets, with The Westminster Review proclaiming gas lamps eradicated crime more effectively than any sermon.

Thousands of gas lamps required careful maintenance, birthing the monotonous yet trusted role of lamplighter. These men lit lamps at dusk and extinguished them at dawn, carrying ladders, wick trimmers, and jars of whale blubber. Occasionally, a sudden gas surge could knock a lamplighter off his ladder, but danger was rare.

Lamplighters proudly passed the trade down generations, sharing tall tales of nocturnal encounters, especially with “bug cranks”—enthusiasts who followed lamplighters to collect insects killed by the lamps, later selling them to collectors. However, the rise of electric lighting forced lamplighting families to abandon their craft, even as Jack the Ripper’s reign highlighted the limits of their influence.

8. Rat Catcher

Before modern pest control, Britain faced a terrifying invasion of oversized gray rats, which were rumored to gnaw children’s hands and feet. To combat this menace, towns hired professional rat catchers paid per rodent slain.

Most rat catchers came from society’s lowest rungs, seeing rat‑killing as a way to earn a living amidst squalor. Yet some turned the trade into a profession, employing hounds and trained ferrets for efficiency.

One notable figure, Jack Black, served as Queen Victoria’s official rat catcher. He famously stuffed a dozen live rats into his shirt and earned most of his income not by killing but by supplying captured rats for the era’s popular rat‑fighting spectacles—a sport actually featuring dogs competing to kill the most rats, with some achieving a kill every 2.7 seconds.

7. Crossing Sweeper

Victorian aristocrats, ever‑concerned about staining their immaculate garments, relied on crossing sweepers—often children or elderly men—to keep street crossings free of horse manure and grime.

These sweepers claimed specific intersections, sweeping a clean path for wealthy passersby until they reached the end of their “territory.” The affluent would tip them a modest sum, after which a neighboring sweeper would take over. Rivalries over turf were common, sometimes forming gangs that monopolized lucrative crossings, with police occasionally protecting them to maintain order.

Critics like writer Richard Rowe decried the sweepers, urging authorities to “thin their ranks.” Yet some aristocrats lamented their disappearance, noting how impossible it became to cross avenues without sinking ankle‑deep in filth. Ultimately, many sweepers transitioned to factory work as their niche vanished.

6. Resurrectionists

19th‑century England faced a grave (pun intended) shortage of cadavers for anatomical study. Executions provided few bodies, prompting doctors to hire “resurrectionists” who specialized in exhuming fresh corpses.These grave robbers avoided stealing valuables, focusing solely on bodies to avoid felony charges that could lead to execution. They supplied doctors with young corpses for a hefty fee, leaving empty, valuable‑filled coffins behind.

Some physicians bypassed the middlemen and stole bodies themselves, but the lucrative resurrectionist trade ended with the 1832 Anatomy Act, which legally eased cadaver acquisition. Modern observers might label the practice creepy, even necrophilic, but it was a product of its time.

5. Leech Collector

Many of us recall the childhood dread of pulling a floaty noodle from a pond only to discover leeches clinging to our skin. In Victorian Britain, leech collectors turned that dread into a profession.

Collectors waded into leech‑infested waters, often emerging with legs covered in the blood‑sucking parasites. Some endured months‑long wounds, while others used horses as leech‑bearing proxies.

Leeches were the 19th‑century equivalent of Tylenol, with doctors demanding millions. Over 42 million leeches were exported from England to France in the first half of the century. By the mid‑1800s, the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, was thought extinct in England, though a specimen was later found on a dog in 1970, sparking a modest resurgence.

As skepticism grew about leech efficacy, demand plummeted, leaving collectors with scarred legs and no career prospects.

4. Anthropomorphic Taxidermist

Taxidermy has always flirted with the bizarre, but Victorian taxidermists took it to eerie new heights. Led by Walter Potter, they didn’t just stuff animals—they staged elaborate, human‑like scenes.

Potter’s dioramas featured kittens at weddings, squirrels playing cards, and rats in a drug den raided by “rat police,” even guinea pigs engaging in cricket matches. Each animal was dressed in miniature clothing, placed in tiny homes, and posed to act out whimsical human activities.

The collection became a regional attraction; Bramber, Sussex still hosts museums dedicated to Potter’s tableaux, showcasing how a single man devoted his life to creating lifelike animal dramas that bewildered and delighted Victorian audiences.

3. Mummy Unroller

Before Beatlemania, 1822 sparked an Egyptomania frenzy after scholars deciphered hieroglyphics, opening the door to public mummy‑unrolling spectacles.

Entrepreneurs like Thomas Pettigrew bought ancient Egyptian mummies and staged elaborate shows where audiences paid a guinea for front‑row seats—or half a guinea for the back—to watch the slow unveiling. Pettigrew narrated Egyptian culture while passing around fragments of wrappings for spectators to sniff the scent of four‑thousand‑year‑old death.

He even satisfied the Duke of Hamilton’s request to have his recently deceased body mummified publicly. Later, researchers uncovered that many displayed mummies were, in fact, fraudulent reproductions.

2. Sin‑Eater

Getting paid to eat sounds like a dream, but sin‑eating had a darker twist. Rooted in folklore, the practice claimed that a designated eater could absorb a deceased person’s sins by sharing a meal from the corpse’s chest.

Until the mid‑19th century, many Britons believed a sin‑eater could ease a soul’s passage to heaven and prevent wandering ghosts. Most sin‑eaters were impoverished beggars, offering their services to villages that needed someone to consume the symbolic meal.

Despite its religious veneer, churches never endorsed sin‑eating; they largely ignored the tradition, allowing it to fade as rationalism spread. The profession carried a social stigma, as communities thought each meal made the eater progressively more evil.

1. Knocker‑Up

Imagine a world without smartphones or alarm clocks. In Victorian Britain, the solution came in the form of knocker‑ups—human alarm clocks who roamed neighborhoods at pre‑arranged times to rouse sleeping laborers.

Because many workers lived in multi‑storey terraces, knocker‑ups wielded long, metal‑tipped poles to tap on slate tablets placed near bedroom windows. Clients would scribble their desired wake‑up time on the slates, and the knocker‑up would persistently tap until the sleeper stirred.

Some industrious factories even employed their own knocker‑ups to guarantee punctuality for grueling shifts. As mechanical alarm clocks entered the market, the human wake‑up service faded into obsolescence.

I earned seven worthless liberal arts degrees in college. Follow me @filthyson to see how that’s going.

In the bustling 19th‑century metropolises, a wave of immigrants reshaped New York, Liverpool, and Glasgow, sparking fierce competition among religious and ethnic groups. Amid this turmoil, criminals discovered that teamwork made their illicit enterprises easier, giving rise to the infamous 10 deadly street gangs that ruled the Victorian underworld.

10 Deadly Street Gangs Overview

10. The Rip Raps

Taking their name from a notorious shoal in the Hampton Roads, the Rip Raps dominated Baltimore in the 1850s. The gang was adamantly anti‑Catholic and anti‑immigration, a stance that eventually prompted them to back the equally nativist Know‑Nothing political party.

And by “support,” we mean they rioted and torched the Democratic headquarters (ironically housed in the New Market Fire Company Buildings). Democrats trying to flee were seized and battered in a gruesome melee that left two dead and many injured. The Know‑Nothing candidate ultimately won the election.

The episode set the stage for the 1856 presidential race held a month later. Former president Millard Fillmore, the Know‑Nothing nominee, swept the state—its sole victory—yet the Rip Raps’ unchecked power soon attracted opposition. Mayor Thomas Swann, elected with their help, pushed to curb their violence and used his office to found a professional police force and fire brigade. By the next election, the gang had faded into history.

9. Peaky Blinders

Legend has it that the Peaky Blinders earned their moniker from flat caps fitted with razor blades along the brim. While the exact truth of that tale remains murky, the gang that inspired the BBC series Peaky Blinders was undeniably real.

Born in the poverty‑stricken streets of Birmingham in the late 1800s, the Blinders were just one of several rival crews jostling for control. They plunged into massive street brawls that could rage for hours as rivals fought for dominance, while simultaneously running protection rackets against anyone who seemed vulnerable.

What set them apart was style. The Blinders were instantly recognizable by their silk scarves, crisp trousers, and impeccably trimmed caps. Like many gangs of the era, they recruited boys as young as twelve or thirteen, who showed up in arrest records armed and ready for a fight.

8. The High Rip Gang

The High Rip Gang prowled Liverpool’s dockside districts in the 1880s. In January 1884, a Spanish sailor’s brutally beaten and stabbed body was discovered, echoing murders linked to a decade‑old local gang. A 17‑year‑old laborer was convicted and hanged, yet the High Rips kept operating.

Peaking between 1884 and 1886, their reach stretched across the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Victims—mostly sailors, dockworkers, and shopkeepers—were either slain or left with severe beatings and permanent disfigurements. Their preferred weapons were heavy belts and knives nicknamed “bleeders.”

The High Rips emerged from an earlier outfit called the Cornermen, who waited on street corners for prey. Unlike their predecessors, the High Rips were highly organized and ruthless, always armed. Police often chose to stand aside rather than risk a violent clash.

After 1886 their activity waned, but the gang lingered through the decade. Some historians even suggest connections between certain members and the infamous Jack the Ripper.

7. The Deansgate Mob

While most histories spotlight adult conflicts, the late‑Victorian era also saw a surge of youth crime. Recent research uncovered that Manchester ranked among the bloodiest English cities for teenage gangs, largely due to John‑Joseph Hillier’s Deansgate Mob.

The Mob claimed the music hall “the Casino” as its headquarters, regularly brawling anyone daring enough to step onto their turf. Hillier joined at fourteen, and by the time he rose to leadership, the Mob was entrenched in Manchester’s centre. He served jail time after assaulting rivals with a butcher’s knife, and street fights—called “scuttles”—became routine. Reporters christened Hillier “King of the Scuttlers,” a title he proudly stitched onto his shirt alongside the sharp belt buckles that defined scuttler fashion.

6. The Forty Thieves

New York earned a reputation as a gang‑ridden city, and the Forty Thieves were among its earliest crews. Around 1825, pickpockets and petty thieves who frequented a rundown vegetable and rum stall realized they could increase their loot by banding together.

For over a quarter of a century, the mainly Irish outfit imposed a quota system: members had to turn in a set amount of stolen goods or face severe punishment. The penalties were ruthless—even the wife of the gang’s first leader, Edward Coleman, was beaten to death for missing her quota. Coleman was later hanged, but the gang survived, recruiting younger “Forty Little Thieves” as apprentices and lookouts.

For many, the gang offered a way out of the crushing poverty of New York slums. Some members even forged political ties, aligning with the powerful Democratic machine Tammany Hall.

5. The Bowery Boys

The Bowery Boys, perhaps the most famous Five Points crew, existed in several incarnations throughout the 19th century. Their legend is tangled with tall tales, making it hard to separate fact from fiction.

By the 1840s, plays at New York’s Bowery theater dramatized the larger‑than‑life figure Mose Humphreys. In reality, Humphreys likely ran protection rackets with his faction. At the time, fire brigades were gang‑run, and rival brigades often fought each other at fire scenes. Humphreys eventually met his match in a fire‑fight and later fled to Hawaii to continue his racket.

Beyond the gutters, the Bowery Boys wielded political influence, championing the “little guy” against elite politicians and turning polling places into battlegrounds. Their leader Mike Walsh died in 1859, prompting poet Walt Whitman to write an obituary praising his passion and heart.

4. The Dead Rabbits

The Dead Rabbits were the sworn enemies of the Bowery Boys. By the mid‑1800s each gang boasted over a thousand members, guaranteeing that any clash turned into a legendary showdown.

The name allegedly originated when a dead rabbit was tossed into a meeting of the Roach Guard, a predecessor faction. “Dead rabbit” slang for a fight‑starter, the term stuck as the breakaway group adopted it.

The Rabbits aligned with the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall, often policing polling stations to ensure votes went their way. In 1857 they played a key role in the massive Fourth of July riots, where estimates of the death toll range from eight to a hundred and involve roughly 5,000 gang members battling for days.

They resurfaced in the even bloodier 1863 Draft Riots, which only ended when federal troops suppressed the mob. The carnage claimed countless lives, burned homes and an orphanage, and left an indelible scar on the city.

3. Rocks Push

In 1870s Sydney, “pushes” divided the streets, and the Protestant‑led Rocks Push became one of the largest. Their rivalry centered on the city’s Catholic “larrikins.”

Their crimes ranged from theft to harassing dockworkers, and women in the gang acted as decoys. The rivalry climaxed in 1871 when Catholic leader Larry Foley challenged the Rocks Push head to a bout. Foley, trained by the Canadian boxer “Perry the Black,” battled the Push leader for a staggering 71 rounds before police intervened. Defeated, the Push chief handed control over to Foley.

Over the next two decades, the Push faded as law‑enforcement cracked down on gang‑related rapes and murders. The name resurfaced briefly in the 1950s when a collective of writers, artists, and filmmakers adopted it, embracing gambling, horse racing, and public art to defy the conservative establishment.

2. Glasgow’s Penny Mobs

Glasgow’s reputation for toughness extended into the late 1800s, where the “penny mobs” roamed the streets. These gangs staked out territories and robbed anyone they deemed a suitable target.

The moniker “penny mob” emerged because offenders were often fined a single penny rather than jailed, and the gangs were said to beat and rob victims for nothing more than a penny. Their makeup mirrored New York’s Irish‑dominated gangs, as the city swelled with Irish immigrants fleeing famine and poverty.

Although Glasgow was largely Protestant, the influx of Irish Catholics sparked sectarian violence. Many of the penny mobs formed in response to this tension, targeting Irish immigrants and turning financial gain into a religious battleground.

1. The Mandelbaum Gang

Frederika Mandelbaum, known as “Marm,” set up shop in New York around 1864 and spent two decades building a respected crew of thieves, pickpockets, and bandits who trusted her to pay fairly for their loot. Modern estimates place the value of stolen goods at roughly $200 million.

Mandelbaum’s success stemmed from her loyalty to her thieves. She kept a law firm on retainer for any member caught by police and routinely bribed officials to look the other way.

Uniquely, many of her operatives were women. Marm championed women who wanted more than domestic chores, even opening a school to train future female pickpockets. She also owned warehouses for stolen merchandise and ran a three‑story haberdashery that hosted dinner parties for New York’s elite, where the décor often featured pilfered silverware.

The Victorian era was a strange time which was not nearly as restrained and prudish as reputation holds. It was a time when everyone was exploring the world around them, and sometimes, that meant looking at the world they couldn’t see, either. It saw the birth of Spiritualism, the popularity of seances and fortune‑telling, and the creation of secret societies. Occasionally, communing with the Devil or astral projection to other planets was on the schedule. Among these wonders emerged the 10 mystic spiritualists who left an indelible mark on occult history.

10. Mystic Spiritualists: A Victorian Journey

10. Annie Horniman

Annie Horniman had a huge influence on British theater; that is absolutely not up for debate. Originally from Dublin, she was largely responsible for creating the theater scene in Manchester, with the goal of bringing performing arts of all kinds to all people, regardless of income or social standing. She did so with her family fortune—hers was the first to sell prepackaged tea.

Annie was a huge believer in tarot and used the cards for guidance in all of her business decisions. It must have worked, because other English cities still model their theaters on her program designs. However, her 1894 venture in the Avenue Theatre in London was a complete financial nightmare.

Annie also believed that she could astrally project herself, and she frequently stopped by Saturn for a visit and a chat with the locals. A lapsed member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Horniman was sent on a series of astral projections in 1898. She believed that she was visiting all the planets. Note that astronomy was hugely popular at the time. New technology was allowing people to see more and more more of space, and books like The War of the Worlds were being published.

Horniman and her astral projection colleague, Frederick Leigh Gardner, kept incredibly detailed notes about all the planets that they visited, recording everything from what kind of atmosphere they found to some of the conversations that they had with the life‑forms they met. Traveling to each planet required a rather elaborate, symbolism‑filled ritual—for Saturn, that meant using things like the Lesser Invoking Hexagram of Saturn and traveling along indigo rays. Once they got there, Annie records, they met an armor‑clad angel who told them all about their civilization. The Saturnites were an ancient people, and they were dying. He gave them a tour, and even though he made them invisible so they wouldn’t frighten anyone, the Saturnites were able to feel their presence.

In contrast, Jupiter was shrouded with protections and illusions, and it was much, much more difficult for them to summon their beautiful female guide, who was saddened by the state of things on Earth.

It’s unknown whether Horniman and Gardner truly thought their journeys were real. It’s suggested that their writings were more an exploration of light and sense than an actual belief in a physical journey, but it’s hard to tell.

9. Madame Blavatsky

Even as a child, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a little strange. She claimed to have invisible friends that she called her “hunchbacks,” and she was often found holding and stroking birds until they fell asleep.

As a young woman, she married briefly and then left her new husband to wander the world for a decade. When she reemerged into society, it was reported that she had gained all sorts of spiritual and telepathic abilities, from controlling winds indoors to telekinesis. By 1873, she was in New York, and by 1875 she had founded the Theosophical Society. The Society had some pretty lofty goals, including uniting mankind in a universal brotherhood that had truly, completely explored the divine, mystical powers she believed all humans possessed.

Soon, the society got the attention of the British Society for Psychical Research, and their interpretation and report on the phenomenon—or lack thereof—was less than stellar. After a three‑month investigation, they claimed the whole thing was nothing but fraud and sleight‑of‑hand trickery. It’s not that they didn’t believe in the occult; they just didn’t believe that Blavatsky was authentic.

Somehow, the society survived, and in 1888, Blavatsky published what would be her masterpiece, a book called The Secret Doctrine. It’s just as bizarre as you might expect. She talks about the birth of the races of mankind and says that the fourth race, the Atlantean Race, was the one responsible for developing sin and breeding monsters. While the First Race was the color of the moon, the Second Race was gold, and the Third Race was red, the Fourth “became black with sin.” Lemuria and Atlantis were both also real and would be proven as such. They were ruled by demigods in human form, and all the problems started when an evil demigod rose to power and turned the Atlanteans into evil magicians.

8. Annie Besant And Charles Leadbeater

Besant and Leadbeater were outspoken supporters of Madame Blavatsky and the London Theosophical Society, to the point where they almost entirely turned their backs on their former lives once they stumbled into the occult. Besant had already separated from her clergyman husband and father of her two children, largely because of her anti‑religious views. Leadbeater had been an Anglican priest when he converted to the Theosophical Society, specifically citing that ritual had made the original message of Christianity effectively nonexistent. So he headed off to India, and it was there that they both embraced the idea that elements of Hinduism and Buddhism could be combined to reach the otherworldly.

Later, they would partner to write Thought‑Forms, a pretty bizarre work that was grandiose in every sense of the word, and would capture a few different things, depending on how you interpret the book. Their contemporaries understood the work as depicting everything that an understanding of the other world would open up, while today, we recognize the same ideas with a different name: synesthesia.

The book contains a series of illustrations that the authors claim people have actually seen. They’re pictures of emotions and sounds; they’re non‑visual things made visual. Music was given color and a shape, shown pouring out of a cathedral. It was a powerful attempt at making the abstract visual, and it’s not just an occult phenomenon—it’s a mental one that we absolutely don’t understand even today.

It wasn’t just simple emotions or images that they were documenting, either. They assigned colors and shapes to a wide range of emotions and intentions, from the quest for intellectual knowledge to the desire to embrace everything in the cosmos; that desire is purple.

7. Philippe De Lyon

Rasputin is perhaps one of the most notorious occultists and figures of the Russian court, but the stories of his predecessor are no less incredible.

According to the story, Phillippe Nizier‑Anthelme Vachod was born to parents Joseph and Mary on April 25, 1849. It was said he caused his mother no pain, and she delivered him while singing and overcome with joy. The storm that had been raging stopped, and a shooting star heralded his arrival. Clearly, the stories imply that he was something special.

Small miracles were said to follow him around, and by 1874 he was working in a pharmacy in Lyon, France. It was there that he got a reputation as a healer, curing disease wherever he went and eventually being dismissed from the school for fraud. By that time, though, word had spread, and he welcomed anyone in need into his home, where he healed and cured people no matter what their affliction.

One story in particular tells of how powerful Phillippe was reputed to be. Two doctors are leaving the bedside of a boy who had just died, lamenting how they were unable to save him. Philippe enters the room, where the boy has already been dead for two hours—the boy does, of course, wake up.

Philippe conjured an almost Christ‑like image and belief in his abilities. The stories that go along with him have a powerful undertone, as he always asks for something from those he heals; whether it be the forgiveness of a debt or a halt to gossiping, the general idea behind his work is that if you’re a good person, God will help. He was, sadly, less successful when it came to his own children, though, losing a son in infancy and a daughter to lifelong ill health. When asked to save his children, he claimed that his daughter’s death was postponing an event that would have been devastating for the planet.

Philippe was understandably sought after, and eventually had the ear of the Russian court. There were plenty of people that didn’t approve of him or his teachings, from doctors who claimed he was a fraud to others who claimed he was a spy of some sort. He did, however, have a group of disciples that he taught, and he has long held a place in between religion, the occult, and spiritualism.

6. Alexis Vincent Charles Berbiguier De Terreneuve De Thym

We’re not quite sure what exactly was wrong with Alexis Vincent Charles Berbiguier de Terreneuve de Thym, but his writing makes it pretty clear that he was suffering from some kind of mental illness. Unfortunately, science and psychology didn’t have the tools to truly help him, and he was sent from one occultist to another.

In 1821, he published a three‑volume autobiography which was completely unlike any life story that a rich Frenchman had written before. The volumes detailed his constant struggle with what he called “hobgoblins.” According to Berbiguier, he had killed so many of them that he had earned the title “Scourge of Hobgoblins,” but it turns out that killing them only makes them even madder.

While living in Paris, Alexis saw several doctors and clairvoyants who attempted to treat him in a variety of different ways, from mesmerism to consultations with the tarot cards. In the meantime, the hobgoblin attacks continued. Eventually, Alexis became convinced that his doctors were ambassadors of the hobgoblins, and they’d done something to make his problem worse. He recognized doctors for the traitors that they were and increased his hobgoblin‑killing efforts. He filled his rooms with hobgoblin‑killing plants and kept glass bottles to trap them in, and he did indeed trap them by the thousands.

Those around him (whether they were doctors, professors, students, or animals) became, in Alexis’s mind, hobgoblins in disguise. There were demons, too—a local druggist was really Lilith, and a doctor was Moloch. Berbiguier would spend his entire life haunted by the hobgoblins.

5. The Fox Sisters

Spirituality got a strange, strange start at the hands of three teenage sisters from Upstate New York. On March 31, 1848, the Fox sisters, Maggie, Kate, and Leah, made their first demonstration of their so‑called channeling abilities. They claimed that the spirit of a peddler was present in the house, and they did the now‑familiar routine of asking questions that were answered by a series of knocks. They headed to Rochester and then on to New York City, where they met with huge fame—even after one of the sisters, Maggie, confessed that the whole thing had been an April Fools’ joke that got way, way out of hand.

It wasn’t until 1888 that Maggie demonstrated exactly how the knocks were done, in perhaps the simplest way imaginable: It was her toes cracking against the floor. It was exactly the source of the knocking that researchers from the University at Buffalo had suggested when they investigated the sisters. This revelation didn’t stop the movement from spreading, and it didn’t stop Maggie from going back to the life of a medium, either. When she died in 1895, thousands of faithful followers came to pay their last respects.

Weirdly, that wasn’t the end of the story. In 1904, the Boston Journal reported that a skeleton had been found lodged in the walls of the house where it all started. Believers immediately thought it was the skeleton of the peddler, who had been given the initials “C.B.” A few years later, the claims were further examined, and a doctor working with the Occult Review and the American Society for Psychical Research determined that it wasn’t so much a skeleton as it was a few bones. Most of those bones were, appropriately, chicken bones.

4. William Stead

William Stead was one of the victims of the Titanic, and at the time, his was a name that was on the top of the list of the influential and powerful people that had been lost in the catastrophe. Now, sadly, he’s been reduced to a footnote in any story about the Titanic.

Stead has been credited as being the founder of what we now think of as investigative journalism. In 1885, his expose on child prostitutes that were living and working in the streets of London not only brought a whole new level of attention to the problem but also set a new tone in newspapers. (Bizarrely, he was ultimately arrested for his involvement in the story, as he took the child on which the story had focused away from her home without her father’s consent; he spent three months in jail.)

In 1892, Stead came forward with another bit of news: He was getting messages from the afterlife. Specifically, they were messages from dead journalist Julia Ames, and he believed in them so much that he organized an office in which women would sit, receiving messages from the Great Beyond and getting those messages to loved ones.

Regardless of anyone’s belief in the occult, he did leave behind something that was absolutely prophetic. His short story How the Atlantic Mail Steamer Went Down was about a Transatlantic ship that sank with devastating loss of life, because the ship only had lifeboats capable of carrying 390 of the 916 passengers that were on board. He also included a warning that while the story was fictional, it was incredibly plausible.

3. William Wynn Westcott

Born in 1848, Westcott had an incredibly learned background. By 1871, he was a partner in his family’s medical practice and would later become the Deputy Coroner for Northeast London and Central Middlesex. He was an active member of the Freemasons and the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Obviously, he really liked secret societies, so he started his own.

According to accepted lore, Westcott came into the possession of some cryptic manuscripts in 1887. They were written in a code that he could, fortunately, crack, and it turned out that they were instructions for the rites and rituals of the Isis‑Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn. Supposedly there was also instructions on how to contact an “Adept” and get permission to form the society in Britain.

The society took off, and by 1888, there were several temples. Westcott himself had become the “Praemonstrator of the Kabbalah to the Isis‑Urania Temple of the G.D.” But, not surprisingly, the crown tended to frown on that sort of thing, and Westcott, after some of his super‑secret papers had been discovered in a London cab, was forced to leave the organization if he wanted to keep his job. Nevertheless, it flourished without him.

Even today, the organization claims that it’ll help prospective members connect with other spiritual people, attain enlightenment, discover all the secrets of the occult in an easy, step‑by‑step program, and be given all the secrets of “sexual alchemy and soul power.”

2. Allan Kardec

Spiritualism and Spiritism are two different things, and the latter was founded by Allan Kardec in roughly 1856. Kardec, who took his first and last names based on names he claimed he’d had in previous lives, was born Hypolyte Leon Denizard Rivial in 1804. Although he originally studied law, he disapproved of the field’s intolerance, so he turned to translating textbooks and running a school for boys. By 1850, he had been completely taken with the idea of table‑turning, or moving objects from where they sat, and wrote his first book based on spirits that he claimed to be able to channel.

The Spirits’ Book is still widely available, and it’s gone through a series of 25 editions. According to Kardec, Spiritualism was the belief in something that existed within a person’s soul, and that’s not what he was going for. His book was on spirits—actual entities that existed—and communication with them. Much of his initial interest and later proof of the spirit world was based on the phenomenon of table‑turning. In his argument, Kardec pointed out that we don’t dispute that there are forces that we can’t see acting on the world around us, like the forces that cause earthquakes, and said that his beliefs were no different.

Much of the information Kardec got about the spirit world came from mediums gifted in involuntary writing. He was optimistic that as the mediums’ knowledge progressed, conversation would have been easier. Through spirit communications, he formed the basic rules that guide the interaction between the corporeal world and the spirit world.

The bodies we inhabit are temporary vessels for spirits, which exist in an infinite, eternal place. Spirits can be made visible, and some can even be touched. While a spirit exists in a body, there’s a tenuous link between the corporeal and the incorporeal. Kardec also goes into good and evil spirits, with the good ones belonging to the highest order and the evil ones being, essentially, the lower‑class citizens of the spirit realm. Spirits are also always in a state of movement throughout the hierarchy, moving up through the ranks each time they’re reborn. It’s the spirit that dictates personality and person. Kardec also says that every time spirits are reborn, they’ll find other spirits that they’ve known in past lives and eventually remember connections, friendships, and past incarnations.

1. Anna Kingsford

Anna Kingsford was a president of the Theosophical Society, and it’s thought that she was one of the inspirations for the name of the mysterious German woman, Anna Sprengel, who supplied William Wynn Westcott with the documents that he claimed outlined the rules and regulations for the founding of the Golden Dawn. She’s something of a contradictory figure, too. On one hand, she was one of Britain’s first female doctors, and she was one of the driving forces behind the development of an animal rights movement. She also believed that she could talk to fairies, travel through time and space, and that she had channeled visions which included the creation of the universe.

The result of these two very different sides of Anna’s personality is that her writings are incredibly detailed, and, unlike a lot of writings on the occult, they remain consistent throughout. Her huge volume of work is fascinating.

In Clothed With The Sun, she touches on things like the life of Nebuchadnezzar, the story of Persephone, the Greek gods, the trees of creation, the Christian disciples, death, sin, and life. She paints pictures of scenes as she says they truly were, as she’s seen all these moments in visions.

Kingsford writes about some pretty bizarre things, too, like a vision of walking with Jesus and being approached by a man who could see a person’s past lives. She asks Jesus why he has come to Earth as a man instead of a woman when, clearly, woman is the highest form of life there is. Christ answers that while he has been a woman, he has returned as a man in his current form only on the outside, because the tasks and the life ahead of him were not suited to the body of a woman. This is one of three reasons why a spirit can move backward down the reincarnation ladder from female to male; another is transgressions of the spirit. He assures her that on the inside, the spirit within was completely female.

When you think of Victorian England, you probably picture stiff collars, foggy London streets, and a queen forever draped in black. But beyond the soot‑covered rooftops and the ever‑present soot, there was a whole subculture of grief‑fashion that would make today’s Instagram influencers blush. In this guide we’ll count down the 10 strange mourning practices that turned sorrow into a full‑blown aesthetic, from legally binding love notes to tiny wax babies. Grab your lace‑trimmed parasol and let’s step into a world where death was not just inevitable – it was downright stylish.

10. Strange Mourning Items Unveiled

10. Extravagant Wills

Most young people don’t obsess over the thought of their own death, but of course, in the Victorian era, mourning was in fashion. People wrote down what they would like to happen in case of their death, even when they were perfectly healthy. Knowing that the letters and wills would be kept by their families forever, they would flourish them as if they were writing poetry.

A woman named Mary Drew practically wrote an entire book of instructions for what to do after her death. She’d had a miscarriage and was dying in the hospital. Her last will and testament was 56 pages long. During the Victorian era, receiving mementos that once belonged to the dead was extremely important. The vast majority of the items Mary gave away were pieces of jewelry to female friends and books for the men. For the friends who were left without getting anything valuable, Mary made sure locks of her hair would be cut and given to them.

9. Hair Jewelry

Queen Victoria kept her late husband Prince Albert’s hair inside a locket that she wore every single day. It became very common for people to keep locks of hair that once belonged to their loved ones. Many women decided that they wanted to carry a piece of a deceased loved one around with them all the time, just like Queen Victoria. So, what better way to do that than by turning their hair into jewelry?

As the years went on, people became more creative with their hair jewelry. They began to braid and weave the hair into intricate designs on brooches, earrings, and necklaces. Sometimes, they even made wreaths of the various locks of hair collected from multiple dead loves ones. Since hair is very resistant to decay, it was a good thing to keep around that was never going to rot. These hair jewelry pieces are still remarkably well‑preserved today in museums.

8. Mourning Rings

While hair jewelry could be made even if the death of a loved one was sudden and unexpected, it wasn’t enough for some people. If someone knew they were going to die within a few months, they sometimes commissioned special jewelry for the occasion.

One woman in particular, Ada Lovelace, was diagnosed with cancer in 1852. At the time, this was an absolute death sentence. So, she wrote instructions for special rings to be made for her husband and oldest daughter. On her husband’s ring, she wrote that she would hope their souls would be eternally bound. Even though she didn’t get along very well with her daughter, she said she honored her “sincerity.” For her two youngest sons, she left some money, asking them to buy rings for themselves in her honor.

Mrs. Lovelace was not the only person to give mourning rings, either. Documents and diaries from the Victorian era tell stories of specialized rings that people wore on a daily basis.

7. Mourning Dress

Whenever someone died, the family was socially obligated to wear all black every day during a designated mourning period. The clothes were called “mourning dress” and were a symbol to the rest of the world that the wearers were sad and needed to be left alone. People whose loved ones recently died were expected to not show up to parties or other social engagements. If anyone whose loved ones recently died showed up in public in clothing that looked too colorful and cheerful, it was a sign of disrespect. However, it put a lot of stress on the wives of families to make sure everyone had black clothes that would fit, especially if they had growing children.

In 1875, a pamphlet calling out the custom was finally published by a writer named Keith Norman MacDonald, saying that it was silly and actually embarrassing. Despite the fact that many people were self‑aware, the mourning dress tradition continued for a few more decades.

6. Mourning Lingerie

During the Victorian era, mourning dress wasn’t just what people wore on the outside. Women wore black all the way down to their lingerie. At the time, death wasn’t just cool; it was sexy. Women were encouraged to take arsenic and opium in order to look very pale and near‑death, because women dying of tuberculosis were considered to be very beautiful. Combine that deathly‑white skin with black lingerie, and it was enough to drive some men wild.

During the Victorian era, people were very repressed on the outside and secretly very kinky in private. White lingerie was seen as being innocent, usually reserved for a woman’s first sexual encounter on her wedding night. After the Victorian era, people became more open about their sexuality, and images of pinup girls and bombshell blondes in movies always wore black lingerie, because it was seen as far more erotic and sexually aggressive than any other color.

5. Postmortem Photographs

Since photography was newly accessible to even middle‑class people during the Victorian era, people felt the need to remember what their loved ones looked like before they were put in their graves. At the time, anyone who was alive needed to stay perfectly still for a very long time, which is why pretty much everyone in old pictures was frowning or had a relaxed facial expression. Photographing someone who was dead was much easier, considering that they weren’t going to move and blur the picture.

Another trend at the time was “spirit photography.” The images of another person or the same subject’s face would be floating in front of the subject. Even Queen Victoria’s son, Arthur, had a spirit photograph. During the long exposure, his nanny leaned into the frame, trying to fuss with his clothing, and ended up semi‑transparent in the picture.

People who were dabbling in the occult believed that ghosts had found a way to show themselves through photographs. The National Science and Media Museum has a gallery of their spirit photography collection from the Victorian era. By the late 1800s, the public understood that it wasn’t really a ghost, but they would still have some fun by creating their own silly ghost photos.

4. Sketches

Not every family could afford a photograph of their dead loved one, and some still preferred drawn or painted portraits.

An artist named John Callcott Horsley would do volunteer work by visiting a morgue to sketch images of recently deceased children. Many families were too poor to pay for photos or professional portraits. If he heard a child had died in town, Horsley would go there quickly, while the facial muscles were still relaxed and it looked more like the child was peacefully sleeping, rather than dead. He wrote in his diary, “I had a duty to do it. Indeed had I not done it, it would not have been done.” When John’s own father died, the first thing he did was pull out a sketchbook.

Other artists would make sketches of family members while they were still alive, if they caught tuberculosis or any other illness that was basically a death sentence.

3. Effigies And Death Masks

When Queen Victoria’s husband died, she had an effigy made of black marble in his likeness that was placed in the Frogmore Mausoleum. She was very happy with the likeness of her love, saying that it reflected his “sweetness and calmness.” When Queen Victoria eventually died, she joined her dear Prince Albert in her tomb. The top of the grave was decorated with an effigy etched out of white alabaster.

Obviously, something like this was time‑consuming and very expensive. The queen was not the first to do this, either. During her lifetime, wealthy families would pay for alabaster effigies of their loved ones. Photographs were taken of dead relatives almost immediately after their death and then used to make statues for the family tombs. Sometimes, there were even casts taken of the head of the dead person so they could make an even more accurate death mask.

2. Funeral Dolls

Normally, at a wake, an open casket allows mourners to see their dead loved one for the last time. However, many people felt that it was just too much to bear seeing a dead baby. So, they created wax dolls to look like their children, even using the real hair from their head. In certain circumstances, if a child was stillborn, miscarried, or lost somewhere outside of the home, a wax effigy could be buried in the place of the actual body.

Death was so much more common during the Victorian era that children were exposed to it far more often than they are today. In the late 1800s, the University of Wisconsin published a book called A Study of Dolls, and they revealed that out of the test group of children, a large number had given their dolls a pretend funeral and even went as far as to bury the doll in the backyard. An smaller number of children would dig the doll up, just to check if the dead really do go to Heaven.

1. Stationery And Memoriam Cards

In the Victorian era, if someone received their mail and saw a white envelope with a black border, they knew someone was dead. In the works of Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens, this special mourning stationery makes an appearance every time a character learns of anyone’s death. The idea was that the black lines would prepare the reader to know that bad news was inside, and it gave them a chance to open it in private.

Inside these envelopes, there weren’t always just letters. Sometimes, the families paid for elaborate “memoriam cards” that had images in filigree or even looked like doilies. When a child died, the memoriam cards were done on white paper to symbolize the loss of an innocent life, and the death of an adult was done on black paper.

As the years went on, people began to see buying special mourning stationery as a frivolous expense, especially when everyone already had regular stationery around the house that could be used, instead.

Shannon Quinn (shannquinn.com) is a writer and entrepreneur.

Opium dens, the oblivion of laudanum, the relief of morphine, and the illicit activities of a drug culture so captivated that they didn’t even know how much danger they were in—the Victorian era is forever linked with the idea of opium. It was important enough for nations to go to war over it, and it started the idea of drug laws, something that we still fall back on today in hopes of keeping the same thing from happening again.

10 The London Myth

When it comes to opium dens in the Victorian era, surely there was nowhere that had more of these seedy places than London. We read about them in the works of Dickens and in Sherlock Holmes, and it’s one of the quintessential images of the darker side of Victorian life. Only, it’s not exactly true.

While there were opium dens in London, there were nowhere near as many as we tend to think. They were confined to the dock areas, where they were run by Chinese immigrants and their often English wives. Even at the height of opium use in London, the Chinese community only numbered a few hundred people, but it was their presence, and their association with opium, that made the idea of the opium den grow to larger-than-life proportions.

When opium dens first opened in London, they were mainly meant to serve sailors. Aside from opium, the sailors were looking for one other thing—women. As such, the dens developed into even more scandalous locales, where local women either became prostitutes or married into the Chinese community. And that, in turn, made the community a threat to the established way of British life despite its small size. By the 1920s, there were rumors of a global Chinese empire fueled by opium. Race riots and hatred were encouraged by less than reputable newspapers.

We’ve heard the opium dens of London described in scores of different books, but every description that we have of what went on in these dens of sin comes only two real-life opium dens. They were located in New Court Shadwell, and visiting them became the thing to do. Gradually, smoking opium was handed off from sailors and the lower class to the upper class, which was looking to add some spice to their life. The allure of crossing cultural and class boundaries elevated the idea into the exotic, often-talked-about opium den, immortalized in literature and pop culture as something much larger than it actually was.

9 Pennsylvania Avenue’s Opium Den

Not surprisingly, there were opium dens in port cities all over the world, even one on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. It was located at 325 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, to be exact, about where Constitution Avenue intersects with Pennsylvania. On July 22, 1907, The Washington Post ran an article about a police raid of Moy’s Store, a front for a so-called “hop room.” The article, which is laden with every sort of racial slur and offensive stereotype you can possibly imagine, tells a pretty sordid story.

According to Lee On, who ran the hop room, a man named Harry Puryear burst into the room armed with a revolver and demanded opium. When On ran, the police showed up to find the armed man, tables of drug paraphernalia, and a major problem—Puryear was the nephew of a former police chief. According to Puryear, he was only there to try to borrow some money, and when he saw all the opium pipes, he was so clueless as to what they were that he had to ask.

Opium dens had been around in Washington, DC, for some time. Another Washington Post article talks about a September 1894 raid on one at 425 10th Street Northwest, where police were greeted by the sight of nine opium smokers “almost completely under the influence of the subtle drug.” Edward Williams, who gave his occupation as “gambling,” faced charges for keeping the place. The club was officially called the Excelsior Pleasure Club, a legitimate club that was incorporated as a front for the well-dressed patrons who visited regularly. Police had been looking for two “notorious opium fiends” named Matinee Charley and Gypsy Joe, but all they found were several government employees.

8 The Terminology We Still Use

Many of our words have their roots in Victorian England, and if you talk about your friend’s “bachelor pad,” you might not realize what you would have once been implying. “Pad” is arguably a weird term for a residence. According to Jesse Sheidlower (who is a lexicographer, former president of the American Dialect Society, Random House editor, and one of New York Magazine’s 100 smartest people in New York), the terminology goes back to opium use.

“Pad” originally popped up in the 17th century, when it was used to refer to a rag or straw bed. Such things were usually used by transients or criminals, and while we’re not sure where that started, we do know that by the time that the early 20th century rolled around, “pad” had morphed into meaning something else. Now, a pad was a different kind of bed, and it was in the rooms used by opium smokers. Users would crash on their pad while the drugs worked their magic, and it wasn’t long before it was associated with all sorts of criminal activity. A pad became a place not necessarily for opium, but for any kind of shady dealing.

By the 1960s, the hippie movement had commandeered the use of the word, and it started to become more associated with the idea of an apartment. It’s still kept a bit of its original meaning, as “pad” generally doesn’t refer to any dwelling larger than an apartment. That’s because most of the criminal activity with which “pad” was originally associated was small-scale.

7 The Opium Vampires

While opium was first associated with docks and sailors who’d become addicted to the drug while overseas, by the end of the Victorian era, opium was firmly entrenched as the drug of the exotic and the decadent. Not everyone was so enthralled with the idea of opium, and in the 1920s, female addicts of a certain standing became known as “opium vampires.”

Opium vampires were largely upper-class women who had little else to do with their time and the money to afford whatever pastime they set their minds to. In 1926, Sara Graham-Mulhall wrote an expose on the opium culture called Opium: The Demon Flower. She wrote of women who were so addicted to the drug that nothing, not even pregnancy, could stop them from taking it. By that time, it was too late, and they were so filled with the drug even on a cellular level that they had no hope of bearing a healthy child.

The opium vampires were a Victorian-era version of heroin mothers and crack moms, and they were seen as something of a polar opposite to the good, respectable sort of woman that was the ideal. They were also seen as more than just self-destructing; they were vampires in almost every sense of the word. They were seen as preying on men, relying on their allure and their exotic charm to entice. They were seen as incapable of caring for themselves or their children, and Graham-Mulhall called for the unconditional removal of any child born to one of these fashionable, well-off, and cursed addicts.

Graham-Mulhall also went on to warn about how these opium vampires spread their habit like a disease. They went away on exotic vacations and returned to colleges with a new habit. They targeted younger men, and they were called “actresses in the great drama of opium.” They dazzled with their high-society ways and lured the unsuspecting into addiction and ultimately downfall.

6 Godfrey’s Cordial

It’s well known that opiates were a frequent ingredient in medications of all sorts, but there’s one in particular that stands out from the crowd. Godfrey’s Cordial was also known as “comfort,” and is mind-blowingly common. One version, made by the Loewy Drug Company in Baltimore, Maryland, lists its ingredients as 1.6 grams of opium per fluid ounce, 5 percent alcohol, potassium carbonate, and sassafras oil. At the time, a single adult (or young teenager) would often be responsible for caring for a whole flock of children when parents and other family members went to work. It could be a little overwhelming when the kiddos were, you know, conscious. Godfrey’s Cordial was nothing less than a godsend.

One anonymous statement to the benefits of the deadly mixture was this glowing review: “The young’uns all lay about on the floor like dead’uns, and there’s no bother with ’em. When they cry, we gives ’em a little of it—p’raps half a spoonful, and that quiets ’em.” Another testimony came from a 14-year-old girl who was often tasked with watching a whole pack of kids. She was grateful “that they leave me plenty of stuff, ’cause then, when they begins to cry or get troublesome, I shoves some of it in their mouths, and that stops ’em”.

As barbaric and dangerous as it was effective, this practice was so normal that it’s amazing anyone survived past infancy. In 1862, a survey in Coventry found that 12,000 doses were given to kids every week, and chemists in the 1840s would often measure their sales not in ounces or bottles, but in gallons. In 1871, a Lincolnshire chemist (one of several in the area) who served around 6,000 people reported that he sold about 25.5 gallons every year, while one of his competitors dispensed about six pints a week.

It wasn’t just child care workers who resorted to Godfrey’s to keep their charges quiet, either. Women who worked from the home in domestic industries like lace-making often doped their children up so they could work uninterrupted, like the sad case of Nottingham lace maker Mary Colton. She relied so heavily on Godfrey’s Cordial that her baby grew thin and sickly enough for neighbors and friends to feel it necessary to intervene and suggest that she start the baby on a regimen of another substance that was bound to bring back the child’s color and appetite.

What was the substance that they all prescribed? Laudanum.

5 The Roosevelts And Opium

The US has its share of old money and pseudo-royalty, and not all of them made it in ways that their descendants are proud of.

Warren Delano, grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was part of a massively successful seafaring family. When he came of age and entered the family business, he journeyed from South America through the Pacific Islands and finally into China, where his experience as a merchant and trader allowed him to become the head of Russell and Company. At the time, the company was one of the major players in the tea business, overseeing the export of Chinese tea to the rest of the world. While tea was certainly in demand and certainly profitable, Delano found something even more profitable during his nine years there—opium.

At the time, it was technically illegal to trade in opium, but illegality only occasionally stopped people when there was a literal boatload of money to be made. In letters home, Delano wrote of the effects that he knew opium had on those who became addicted and talked about the corpse-like addicts he’d met. He then went on to justify it and liken it to the trade of wine and spirits that the US was already engaged in.

Operations proved more than a bit tricky, however, and in 1836, the Russell and Company facility was stormed by 8,000 men, up in arms over the trafficking of a substance that had created millions of addicts. Delano got out of the business and headed back to the US, where he attracted a wife with his newfound wealth. They moved to China for three years but eventually settled in New York.

A financial panic in 1857 caused Delano’s wealth to evaporate even more quickly than it had come, causing him to return to China for five more years. Since opium was still popular, he went back to the business. He eventually scored a huge client—the Medical Bureau of the US War Department. The Civil War was in full swing by then, and Delano contracted with the US government to be their opium supplier. He spent the duration of the war in China and shipped medical opium back to the States. He was joined by his family, including his daughter Sara, who would become the mother of a president.

4 The First Morphine Murder

In 1823, France was host to the first trial of a man accused of using the opium-based drug morphine as a tool for murder. The accused was 27-year-old doctor Edme Castaing, and his story was a bizarre one of desperate measures taken to secure a lavish lifestyle.

He was already living beyond his means by the time that he began caring for the unlikely named Hippolyte Ballet. Hippolyte was dying a rather slow death from tuberculosis, which gave him enough time to rewrite his will to exclude his brother, Auguste, and keep him from inheriting any of the fortune that was going to be up for grabs upon his death. Castaing and Auguste not only destroyed the new will, but hurried Hippolyte’s death along with a fatal dose of morphine.

Castaing, now in good with his new friend Auguste, convinced him to rewrite his own will to include the doctor. Once the will was safely in the hands of legal counsel, Castaing took Auguste for a ride to a farm in the country. While they were there, Castaing slipped a lethal dose of morphine into Auguste’s wine. Suspicions mounted, and the doctor went on trial.

The idea of morphine as a deadly substance was so new that it was tough to prove. There were a couple telling pieces of evidence against Castaing, though, including his recent purchases of a relatively large quantity of morphine, his known experimentation with different poisons, and a series of inquiries he’d made trying to find out what poisons were likely to go undetected during an autopsy.

Of course, there was also the massive amount of money that he suddenly came into after the deaths of the two brothers. Castaing was found guilty. He continued to insist that he was innocent, all the way to the guillotine.

3 Alchemy And Opium

Alchemy has given birth to a wide range of modern ideas, and even though laudanum is most often associated with the Victorian era, it had a long, strange history before that.

Credit for its discovery is usually given to Paracelsus, who started the process by mixing opium with alcohol and finding out that it was much more soluble in this form than it was when it was added to water. The simplified version of the history is that he added opium to wine, threw in some spices to make it more palatable, and went on to claim that it was a miracle concoction which even allowed him to raise the dead. (The one thing that it couldn’t do, however was cure leprosy.) Although the basics of the drug were the same as the one that would change the face of the Victorian era, Paracelsus’s laudanum had a few extra ingredients: He included powders of pearls and gold and gave it its notorious name, based on the Latin word laudare, meaning “to praise.”

By the 17th century, there was a new version of laudanum on the market. English doctor Thomas Sydenham claimed to have reinvented laudanum and made a new tincture based on the work of Paracelsus. His version was made from opium, cinnamon, cloves, saffron, and high-quality sherry. He claimed that his version could cure just as many diseases, ills, and illnesses as Paracelsus’s tincture, and a key part of its popularity seems to have been saffron. Sydenham’s version became the drug whose popularity lasted for centuries, hailed as a miracle cure and initially a legitimate medicine. It was only later that it became known for its widespread recreational abuse. In areas where saffron wasn’t widely available, it was left out of the recipe, and laudanum failed to take hold in those areas like it did in other parts of Europe.

2 Branwell Bronte

The Bronte sisters are well-known for their depictions of contemporary life and love, and part of that society was the impact of opium. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte wrote of the fictional Lord Lowborough. He was a down-on-his-luck member of her main character’s inner circle, beleaguered by his wife and plagued with an addiction that countless people of the era would find familiar.

His melancholy misery had a very real-life inspiration—Anne’s brother, Branwell. Addicted to both laudanum and gin, he was her source for getting inside the head of a man so desperate to escape the realities of life that nothingness was preferable. Letters between the sisters talk about his descent into the “full oblivion” of his addiction. He didn’t notice when his family spoke to him most of the time, and when he did, he described “such strange and wandering images [that] filled the room.” Sinking farther and farther into debt, any money that he did get went to feed his addiction, and it all stemmed from an affair that was worthy of a Bronte novel in itself.

At 25 years old, Branwell was hired by Reverend Edmund Robinson to tutor one of his children. He went to live with Robinson’s family at Thorp Green Hall, where he promptly fell in love with the lady of the house. Just what happened next is a complete mystery.

According to Branwell, he began a torrid love affair with the 43-year-old mother of five. The feelings were absolutely mutual, and the affair lasted for two and a half years before it was discovered by the reverend, who immediately fired Branwell. He’s the only one who said that there was any kind of mutual affair, though, and according to The Bronte Society, one of the only things he was probably guilty of was overestimating the lady’s opinion of him.

Regardless, he was still fired in 1845 and would later sink into a deep depression and drug addiction from which he would never recover. He wrote poetry dedicated to the lady of Thorp Green Hall while drowning reality in a cloud of alcohol, opium, and laudanum. It was made even worse when Reverend Robinson died. Branwell couldn’t return to his lady-love because she told him there was a stipulation in the reverend’s will that she would lose her children and her estate if she ever continued contact with him.

In truth, there was no such stipulation, and she went on to marry a wealthy widower almost 30 years her senior. Branwell died three years after he was fired.

1 Experimentation And Morphine

By 1815, morphine was the go-to remedy for pain and for those who were trying to get off opium and laudanum. It was discovered in 1805 by a German scientist named Friedrich Serturner, and he went to some terrifying lengths to prove that his findings were the real thing.

He’d started his research about two years earlier, and it was all based on his observations that some samples had a clear pain-numbing effect, while other samples didn’t. He figured that opium must contain something that could counteract pain, but it wouldn’t work unless the dose was high enough. Using ammonia to separate opium into its base components, he isolated what he called morphine.

No scientific find is given any kind of attention whatsoever without some solid proof, so he started down the horrific path of dosing mice that lived in his basement and then dogs that wandered around his neighborhood. The mice and the dogs died, but Serturner wasn’t dissuaded. Still convinced that he was on to something, he decided that he needed to test his drug on living creatures that could tell him exactly what was going on and what they were feeling. He did what any enterprising 20-year-old would do: He recruited three teenage friends and handed out his morphine and alcohol mix.

By the end of the experiment, he and his friends each consumed around 10 times what’s now recommended for a single dose of morphine. They started to experience nausea, fever, and dizziness. Serturner, who was taking the same stuff, thought they were poisoned. He handed out 8 ounces of vinegar to induce violent vomiting, followed by carbonate of magnesia and a long sleep. The aftereffects of the morphine, headaches, stomachaches, and extreme fatigue, lasted for a few days after their experiment, but it gave Serturner the data that he needed. By 1831, he had received a massive cash prize from the Institute of France for his work in medicine, but there’s no record on whether or not he shared the 2,000 francs with his friends.

The Victorian period, spanning 1837 to 1901, was a time of astonishing creativity mixed with a healthy dose of eccentricity. In this roundup of 10 bizarre inventions, we explore the oddball gadgets that Victorian inventors dreamed up – ranging from coffins that could signal the living to devices meant to curb private pleasures.

10 Safety Coffins

During the 19th century, physicians often misdiagnosed deep comas as death, leading to premature burials. To address this grim mistake, “waiting mortuaries” were established, where bodies were stored until obvious decay set in. Yet these facilities merely swapped one problem for another, as they soon filled with more “dead” bodies than living ones. The solution arrived in the form of safety coffins.

These coffins resembled ordinary burial boxes but incorporated clever mechanisms to alert the world above if the occupant was still breathing. Some models featured a cord attached to a bell that rang whenever the presumed corpse moved. Others employed a tube that, when exhaled into, raised a flag above ground. A few even included a tiny ladder, enabling the buried individual to climb out of the grave. Such inventions aimed to give the mistakenly interred a fighting chance at freedom.

9 Wave And Rocking Baths

Victorians were firm believers in the curative power of water, often traveling for weeks to bathe in remote streams and rivers. To spare them the arduous journeys, engineers devised wave and rocking baths that mimicked the gentle sway of a flowing river within a domestic setting.

The tubs resembled conventional bathtubs but boasted a curved, raised rim that allowed users to rock the vessel back and forth, simulating a river’s current. Manufacturers produced a variety of designs – from adult‑sized cradles to enclosed rocking chairs – each convertible back to a standard bathtub by inserting a wooden block at the curve’s base to halt the motion.

8 Mustache Cups And Spoons

In an era when a well‑groomed moustache signified gentlemanly virtue, Victorians went to great lengths – even applying wax – to maintain a sleek, sturdy look. Unfortunately, hot tea and coffee would melt the wax, staining the facial hair. Enter the mustache cup, a clever solution to keep whiskers dry.

Invented by Adams Harvey, this cup resembled a normal teacup but featured a semicircular guard over the rim, shielding the moustache from contact with the beverage. The novelty soon extended to mustache spoons, which sported a raised shield along the wide edge, preventing the spoon from grazing the moustache. Both accessories fell out of favor after World War I, when the fashion of elaborate facial hair waned.

7 The Motor Scout

Frederick Richard Simms unveiled the Simms Motor Scout between 1888 and 1889, marking one of the world’s first armed vehicles. Though resembling the American Davidson‑Duryea armed tricycle, the Scout sported a .303‑calibre machine gun and four wheels, earning it the moniker “quadcycle” rather than a true automobile.

The Scout’s protection was minimal – armor wrapped only the gun, leaving the driver’s back and sides exposed. While never deployed in combat, the vehicle demonstrated that four‑wheeled machines could serve as mobile firepower. Simms later expanded the concept with the Motor War Car, widely recognized as the first armored car and, in some accounts, the inaugural armored tank.

6 Rotary Hairbrush

Victorian inventors, convinced that mechanising every task signified progress, created the rotary hairbrush – a bizarre, engine‑driven device for grooming. The brush comprised a system of wheels and pulleys powered by water turbines, steam, gas engines, or even manual effort.

Its primary purpose was to brush a client’s head, though the patent claimed it could also brush the body during bathing and even brush clothing. Edwin Gillard Camp patented the brush, leasing it to hairdressers for a £45 down payment and a £1 semi‑annual fee. Despite concerns that hair dust caused respiratory issues for predominantly male stylists, some dismissed the health worries as moral panic.

5 Atmospheric And Pneumatic Railways

While today’s locomotives rely on electricity or diesel, Victorian England experimented with air‑powered trains. Two variants emerged: atmospheric railways, which traveled above ground, and pneumatic railways, which operated underground.

The first atmospheric station opened in Ireland in 1844, soon followed by a counterpart in England. Trains were propelled by a series of pumping stations spaced roughly three kilometres apart, forcing air through a tube beneath the tracks. High maintenance costs and rodent damage to leather seals eventually doomed the system.

Pneumatic railways arose after the London Post Office sought faster parcel delivery. The London Pneumatic Dispatch Railway (LPDR) shuttled people and mail through underground tubes, but the high cost of upkeep and a limited nine‑minute operating window – after which air loss slowed the train – made it impractical. Operators often had to enter the tube and manually pull the stalled train with a rope.

4 Cranks

Victorian prisons invented a variety of punitive devices, one of which was the “crank.” This contraption consisted of a heavy stone‑laden box attached to a wheel and handle. Inmates were forced to turn the handle, rotating the wheel and moving the stones, in order to earn a meal or drink.

Some prisoners were required to crank as many as 14,000 rotations per day, with wardens tightening the mechanism to increase difficulty. This harsh regimen gave rise to the nickname “screws” for prison officials. Inmates who struggled with the crank were sometimes placed in a straitjacket, hung on a wall, and forced to stand for up to six hours.

3 Cholera Belts

Epidemics of cholera and typhoid plagued Victorian Britain, exacerbated by poor sanitation and sewage dumped into drinking rivers. Lacking modern germ theory, many believed foul smells caused disease, and they had no effective treatment for cholera.

Enter the “flannel binder,” colloquially known as the cholera belt. This contraption, a tightly wrapped flannel band, was thought to protect wearers from the disease. In reality, it offered no medical benefit, yet it enjoyed widespread use, even among British soldiers, who kept the belts on hand for potential outbreaks.

2 Electrophone

The Electrophone was a pioneering London service that transmitted news, theatre performances, and church services straight to a subscriber’s telephone. Its roots trace back to the French Theatrophone invented by Clément Ader in 1881.

Managed by M.S.J. Booth, the Electrophone relayed readings from his office (and from affiliated newspapers) and streamed live performances from venues. Listeners simply asked their switchboard operator to connect to the Electrophone, and could even request specific music. Subscriptions cost £5 per year, but the service ceased in 1925 as radio broadcasting offered free, widespread audio.

1 Jugum Penis

Victorian morality deemed sexual activity, even within marriage, a sin unless for procreation. Masturbation was condemned as equally immoral and blamed for a fictitious ailment called “spermatorrhoea,” which was said to cause irritation, anxiety, madness, and even death.

To curb this perceived vice, inventors produced the “jugum penis,” a metal apparatus fitted with sharp, tooth‑like edges that clipped onto the base of the penis, preventing engorgement and thus erection. The device epitomized the era’s extreme attempts to control private behaviour through bizarre engineering.

10 Bizarre Inventions From the Victorian Era

From coffins that could ring bells to anti‑masturbation contraptions, the Victorian age proved that ingenuity knows no bounds – even when it veers into the absurd. These ten inventions remind us that history is full of creative, if sometimes misguided, attempts to solve the challenges of their time.

While history books and romantic novels from England’s Victorian Era depict people as being very uptight, there were actually more brothels than there were schools. It is estimated that roughly 80,000 women were working as prostitutes in London alone, which reveals how sex‑obsessed the culture truly was.

10 Fascinating Facts Unveiled

10 Paying Job for a Woman

During the Victorian era, the only career options for women were low‑paying professions, and many had dangerous working conditions. There were street vendors (who assisted their husbands with their businesses), factory workers, and shop girls. If a woman was very lucky, she could be a household servant in the estate of a lord or lady.

Even educated women who learned high‑level skills at business colleges, like typing and shorthand, only made an average of £25 per year. That still wasn’t enough money for women to support themselves or their children without the aid of a husband.

Prostitution was the one and only job where a woman could have shorter work hours and earn high wages in cash without depending on a husband to support her. If she was exceptionally beautiful, she could earn enough to achieve total financial independence. If a lower‑class woman could afford nice clothes and the finer things in life, it most likely meant that she was a prostitute.

9 There Were Three Levels of Prostitutes

While all prostitutes had to do similar work, there were three levels that a woman could fall into. The lowest class were young women who worked in brothels. They were forced to sleep with whichever men the madame assigned to them and often lived in dirty living conditions.

The middle‑class prostitutes were independent women who had their own apartments as well as streetwalkers. They could pick and choose their own clients. This meant that no madame or pimp was taking a huge chunk of their profits. However, being an independent prostitute meant that a woman wouldn’t have the protection of the brothel community or on‑site medical examiners.

The highest class of prostitutes were women who were beautiful and educated enough to only work for only high‑class clients, namely aristocrats or members of parliament. Some worked exclusively for one man. Many of these courtesans ended up marrying their benefactors.

8 Married Women Sold Themselves on the Side

Since many of the lower‑class jobs simply didn’t pay enough to support a large family, it was common for the wives of street vendors to offer their sexual services on the side while they helped their husbands run the family business.

Husbands were completely fine with allowing other men to sleep with their wives. In fact, 50 percent of street vendors’ wives were reported to moonlight as prostitutes. In some instances, the wife happily worked as a prostitute since it was a way for her to earn income. In other instances, the husband was acting as a pimp, using his wife as his property, lending her out as he pleased.

Many single working women (seamstresses, shop girls, and servants) also worked as casual prostitutes to supplement their low incomes. However, if it was discovered that a woman had lost her virginity before marriage, it meant that she was “fallen” and doomed to continue living a life of prostitution.

7 Child Prostitution Was Legal

During the Victorian era, the age of consent was only 13 years old. Child labor still existed at the time. Many lower‑class people saw their children as commodities because they could bring income into the family. Boys and girls as young as 11 or 12 could pass as 13 year olds and had no choice but to enter the trade if their parents sold them into it.

W.T. Stead, who has been called the very first investigative journalist, published “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” in Pall Mall Magazine. During his investigation, Stead took it upon himself to prove how easy it was to purchase the virginity of a 13‑year‑old girl. For a mere £5, Stead purchased someone’s daughter, whom he called “Lily.” This covered the cost of a medical examination to ensure that she was a virgin, and a cut also went to the brothel owner. Since she was still a child, Lily’s parents, who were alcoholics, were the ones who took the money she earned as a prostitute.

After confirming that she was a virgin, the medical examiner recommended that Stead drug her with chloroform so she would be unconscious and not put up a struggle while he raped her. The public was horrified when they read Stead’s articles, and his work led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which made the age of consent 16 years old.

W.T. Stead is seen as a hero for fighting for the rights of women, and he was nominated with a Nobel Peace Prize. He died on the Titanic in 1912. Today, the Stead Memorial Fund continues to fight against sex trafficking.

6 Themed Brothels

Like today, men of Victorian England had varying desires. However, they generally couldn’t express what they wanted sexually in the confines of marriage. Proper women were not encouraged to be sexual at all and reserved sex for having children.

There were various brothels dedicated to different themes: Traditional, S&M, cross‑dressing, gay brothels, and others were willing to fulfill kinky fantasies. For whatever reason, spanking was a very popular theme in pornography, and there were entire brothels dedicated to it. Flagellation brothels were places one could go to be whipped by either women or men.

Sadly, some brothels catered to pedophiles by specializing in young girls and virgins. Since there was a very real fear of venereal disease, some men only wanted to deflower virgins because there was a guarantee that they wouldn’t catch anything. Only wealthy men could afford to deflower a virgin; soldiers or another working‑to middle‑class men typically didn’t have this option.

5 Prostitutes Were Educated

In the 1800s, many women actually did receive a formal education. After receiving tutoring from governesses, high‑class women were sent to finishing schools, which taught them social skills, etiquette, and “accomplishments” like drawing, playing the piano, and dancing, which would make them attractive for marriage. However, they were rarely taught any skills that could actually earn a living.

The majority of working‑class women couldn’t read or write. Henry Mayhew wrote that while only 5 percent of low‑class prostitutes could read or write, it was common for them to eagerly ask men to read newspapers to them so they could stay up‑to‑date on current events. Higher‑class prostitutes learned to read and write.

Many women in the higher classes weren’t educated in politics or current events since they were expected to be the “angel of the home.” This gave prostitutes an advantage in terms of becoming more cultured and knowledgeable of the world around them.

4 Victorian Sex Guides

Men of wealthy Victorian society could look through “sporting” guides, which were very similar to shopping catalogues. These books detailed prostitutes’ ages, physical descriptions, personality type, and their cost, usually £2–£3 or £5 for a virgin. This way, a man could decide ahead of time between the various women he wished to have sex with. Of course, those without wealth were left to find a companion using other means.

In Victorian England, one of the most famous guides was The Swell’s Night Guide Through the Metropolis. In 2018 an extremely rare first edition of this guide was unearthed. The salacious book provides an eye‑opening insight into prostitution in Victorian London. The book rates individual women, describing one, Miss Allen, as a “perfect English beauty” and another, Mrs. Smith, as a “very agreeable woman” with “pouting lips.”

The historic book, written by The Hon F L G in 1841, went to auction and was expected to sell for between £800–£1,200. However, the guide went for an astonishing £4,000.

3 Charles Dickens Tried to Save Fallen Women

In 1847, Charles Dickens, together with a millionaire heiress and philanthropist named Angela Georgina Burdett‑Coutts, decided to pay for the establishment of Urania Cottage. It was a place where prostitutes, former prisoners, and women from workhouses had the option to escape their often dangerous, tragic lives. Urania Cottage aimed to teach these women other skills that they could use to transition to other jobs.

Dickens wrote a pamphlet titled An Appeal to Fallen Women, encouraging young ladies to go to Urania Cottage for a fresh start. While he was doing a public service in helping these women, it was also part of his writing process. He interviewed many of them, hearing their life stories. Dickens would then use their stories to inspire his fiction. In David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, he created characters that could be classified as “fallen women” and depicted them as victims of circumstance rather than evil manipulators. His writing helped Victorian audiences sympathize with these women on a human level.

2 Forced Medical Examinations

Some of the most frequent customers at brothels were young men in the military. Venereal disease was so common in the 1800s that it killed just as many military men as war. It also left many able‑bodied men unfit for battle.

In 1864, to prevent the spread of disease, The Contagious Diseases Act was passed. In towns situated near naval bases, any woman (even if she wasn’t a prostitute) suspected of carrying a sexually transmitted infection was forced to undergo a medical examination. If a woman resisted, she would be strapped down to a table. If it were discovered that she was infected, she would be forced into hospitalization for up to three months.

While the risk of contracting venereal diseases was high for prostitutes, they were actually much healthier than average working‑class women because they did not have to endure grueling 14‑hour workdays in factories.

1 Reformatories

Although prostitution was legal, many ladies of the night were arrested for crimes like public drunkenness or gathering in the streets. Those behaviors were considered illegal under the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847. Many of those small crimes resulted in a year in prison.

There were also places called reformatories, which aimed to rehabilitate fallen women. Religious groups often ran these. The attitude of the people who ran the reformatories was that prostitutes acted out on their own selfish desires.

In many ways, living in a reformatory was worse than jail. They required women to stay for a minimum of two years to ensure they were “cured.” Women were also required to show a deep sense of self‑hatred for their evil actions and a desire for forgiveness from God for their sins to qualify for housing. Reformatories required women to wake up at 5:00 am, pray four times per day, attend religious services twice a day, work hard labor, and be locked in their bedrooms by 8:00 pm.

Shannon Quinn is a writer and entrepreneur in the Philadelphia Area. You can see her other work at shannquinn.wordpress.com.

In our plush, modern lives – with bacon pizza, extra bacon, and a side of bacon at the tap of a smartphone – we’ve mostly forgotten that our 19th‑century ancestors had to survive on some truly odd fare. The lower‑income families of Victorian London lived in cramped tenements without kitchens, so street vendors became the original fast‑food heroes, hawking dishes that would make most of us wince. Below are the 10 weird foods you could have bought from a bustling cobblestone corner if you’d dared to travel back in time with a sturdy stomach.

10 Weird Foods Highlight

1 Sheep’s Trotters

Sheep’s trotters, either served steaming hot or chilled, were a staple for penny‑pinching patrons. Vendors would buy whole hooves cheap from nearby slaughterhouses, strip the skin, give them a quick parboil at home, and then set them out on the street. A customer could take a whole trotter, gnaw the sticky marrow and fat off the bone, and savor the gritty, gelatinous texture. If you were lucky, the seller would have scraped the grubby, mud‑caked bits from between the toes before cooking – or at least before you sank your teeth into it.

2 Eels

Eels, imported all the way from Holland, arrived in slabs, were cut into bite‑size pieces and boiled in a thick broth. The liquid was enriched with flour and parsley, then seasoned with pepper, and kept simmering for eager buyers. A portion of tender eel meat was ladled into a small cup, with its broth served separately. Patrons could splash a dash of vinegar over the meat, and a pat of butter cost extra. The vendor demanded the cup back quickly, as the next customer waited, and often gave the cup a quick dip in a bucket of murky water before serving – a practice that, if you were lucky, might have been skipped.

3 Saloop

Saloop, a beverage dating back to the 1600s, was a sweet, heavily sugared drink touted as nutritious. Originally brewed from ground orchid roots, its formula shifted in the late Victorian era to sassafras bark, blended with milk and a heap of sugar. Served hot, it was considered a hearty way to start or finish the day. If you were lucky, the drink was prepared with genuine roots or bark, rather than a hodgepodge of used tea leaves pilfered from the trash heap.

4 Plum Duff

Plum duff was essentially a carb‑laden boiled pudding, a dense, dough‑like confection studded with raisins (the “plums” of its name). The result was a gluey, sweet mass that children and adults alike loved for its filling power rather than its nutritional virtues. A splash of treacle could be added for an extra hit of sweetness, and if you were lucky, the raisins were genuine dried fruit and not, say, mouse droppings masquerading as fruit.

5 Pickled Oysters, Whelks, and Periwinkles

Shellfish of all sorts – oysters, whelks, periwinkles – could be bought for next‑to‑nothing. Because fresh shellfish spoils quickly, vendors often pickled them in brine to extend shelf life. Some customers preferred the raw, still‑alive version, while others boiled them. The pickling process was meant to preserve freshness, but if you were lucky, the batch you bought was truly fresh when it hit the brine, rather than already on the brink of decay.

6 Donkey’s Milk

While regular cow’s milk was a summer staple sold by street‑side milkmen, a niche market existed for the more exotic donkey or ass’s milk. Some women swore that drinking this milk, or eating its curds and whey, kept them looking youthful. Vendors would carry pails or milk cans slung over their shoulders, sometimes even milking a donkey on the spot. If you were lucky, the milk you received was genuine dairy and not a dubious mixture of chalk and water.

7 Bloater

The bloater, a whole salted herring, was cold‑smoked with its head, eyes, gut, and all – hence the name “bloater.” Vendors would impale the fish on a long fork, toast it over a flame, and sell it to hungry passers‑by who ate the entire soft, flabby creature. If you were lucky, the bloater still held its roe, adding a burst of flavor. And if you were really lucky, the fish slipped off the fork, a stray cat nabbed it, and you were spared the task of chewing through the whole thing.

8 Ginger Beer

The original ginger beer was a mildly alcoholic brew, made by boiling water with ginger and sugar, then adding yeast, citric acid, and cloves. It was bottled and sold within a few days, its gentle fermentation achievable in as little as twelve hours. A cheaper “playhouse” version sweetened the mixture with molasses. Vendors crafted the drink at home, often in the same washtub used for boiling a baby’s dirty diapers – if you were lucky, they found a cleaner container.

9 Rice “Milk”

Rice “milk” was a thin, watery porridge made by boiling rice in skim milk. Served hot, a spoonful of sugar and a pinch of allspice completed the beverage. Female vendors often sold it from a metal basin perched over a charcoal fire, scooping the steaming liquid into cups for customers who stood on the street while they slurped. If you were lucky, the vendor wiped the spoon clean before handing it over, sparing you the surprise of a stray bite of someone else’s residue.

10 Fresh Animal Blood

Although not strictly a street snack, fresh animal blood was touted as a cure for consumption (tuberculosis). Patients would line up at slaughterhouses, cups ready to catch the hot blood as it was collected straight from a freshly killed animal. They were instructed to swallow the blood immediately, believing it would bolster their constitution. If you were lucky, the animal was already dead when the collection began, sparing you the grisly sight of a living creature being bled.

11 Meat Pies

Meat pies, a beloved street staple, were usually filled with mutton or scraps of beef – the gristly, rubbery bits that other vendors shunned. Pie sellers complained that passers‑by would jeer, shouting “Meow! Meow!” as they walked by. Henry Mayhew’s 1851 work, “London Labour and the London Poor,” records a pie vendor insisting that cats were rarely used as mascots any more. The pies offered a quick, filling bite for the working‑class crowd, even if the filling sometimes resembled a mystery medley of leftovers.

While the Victorian poor endured these eccentric edibles, the lower‑middle class also dabbled in strange dishes – but that tale belongs to another list. For now, these ten bizarre bites give a flavorful glimpse into the gritty culinary world of 19th‑century London.

When we talk about the 10 dangerous beauty practices of Victorian England, we’re diving into a world where glamour often meant peril. From porcelain‑white skin to waist‑shrinking diets, women of the 1800s were willing to risk health, sanity, and even life for a fleeting glimpse of societal approval.

10 Dangerous Beauty Trends Unveiled

10 Face Bleaching

Having an extremely pale, fair complexion was important to women in the 1800s. Upper‑class women wanted to show that they were wealthy enough to not have to work in the hot sun. They wanted their skin to be so pale that it was “translucent,” as in you could see the veins in their faces. Victorians had an obsession with death and actually thought that it was attractive for women to look sickly or dead.

The Ugly‑Girl Papers by S.D. Powers recommended that women coat their faces in trace amounts of opium from lettuce leaves overnight and wash their faces with ammonia in the morning to ensure that they would always look as fresh and pale as possible.

Arsenic wafers were supposed to remove freckles and tans, making women look younger and more attractive. They were fully aware that arsenic was poisonous and addictive but chose to do it anyway for the sake of achieving their ideal of beauty.

9 Burning Hair

In the 1800s, curly hair was popular. Early curling irons were tongs that needed to be heated in a fire. If a woman pulled the curling iron out of the fire and applied it to her hair too quickly, it would be so hot that her hair would literally burn off.

As a result, baldness became a common problem for women in the Victorian era. Even if they became skilled at curling their hair, it was still a lot of strain on the scalp to constantly style it in tight curls.

Women did not seem to put two and two together and tried multiple remedies of teas and medicines. It was even suggested that hair should be bathed with ammonia and water to stimulate growth. Exposure to ammonia can cause respiratory problems and burn the skin. It can also cause blindness.

S.D. Powers suggested a mixture of equal parts sulfate of quinine and aromatic tincture for baldness and loss of one’s eyebrows in a fire. She also advised women to avoid having their curling tongs make direct contact with their hair, which many people did not realize until it was too late.

8 Blood Purification

During the Victorian era, many people died of consumption (tuberculosis) and the society had a creepy fascination with death. In The Ugly‑Girl Papers by S.D. Powers, she declared that the clearest, most beautiful complexions were seen on people in the earliest stages of consumption. Women with consumption were constantly vomiting blood, and Powers claimed that this was actually purging the impurities from their body, which made their skin clear and white.

To replicate this, she advised women to eat as little as possible. This allowed them to maintain just enough strength to function while also weakening their bodies. Powers suggested a meal plan that consisted of a handful of strawberries for breakfast, half an orange for lunch, and cherries for dinner . . . and, if you really must, it was okay to have some warm broth, too.

Powers also believed that ammonia carbonate and powdered charcoal was a must in any woman’s beauty regime. These toxic chemicals were supposed to sit on women’s faces. In addition, women were instructed to take a variety of medications every three months to “purify” their blood, although they were really making themselves sick to achieve the look of being close to death.

7 Nose Machines

During the Victorian era, many men and women were unhappy with the noses that they had been born with—just like today. Years before plastic surgery existed, there were a variety of companies that manufactured “nose shapers” or “nose machines.” These metal devices were strapped to a person’s face to squeeze the soft cartilage of their nose to be smaller or straighter than it was before.

Over the years, nose shapers continued to be sold. Heather Bigg invented a spring‑loaded contraption with straps to hold the metal around the patient’s face while they slept overnight and occasionally throughout the day. This trained the person’s nose to begin taking a more attractive shape.

Dr. Sid, a surgeon from Paris during the Victorian era, reported to his English colleagues that he had created a metal, spring‑loaded contraption that squeezed a 15‑year‑old patient’s large nose for three months until she was happy with the results.

6 Tapeworm Dieting

Corsets were popular during the Victorian era to make women’s waists as tiny as possible. To lose weight, some women would swallow a tapeworm pill on purpose. The slithery little creature would hatch inside the stomach and devour any food eaten by the woman.

After she was done dieting, the woman would take pills to kill the tapeworm. But it was also believed that sitting in front of a bowl of milk with your mouth open would entice the worms to crawl out on their own. However, tapeworms are known to grow as long as 9 meters (30 ft), so even if that method worked, people could choke in the process.

Dr. Meyers of Sheffield invented a device that was supposed to remove tapeworms from people’s stomachs. It was a metal cylinder filled with food that he would slide down the patient’s throat. They were instructed to avoid eating for several days, which would force the tapeworms into the cylinder to eat the food.

In theory, once the worms were in the tube, he could pull the tube out of the patient and remove the tapeworms from their stomachs. Sadly, many of his patients choked and eventually died from his invention.

5 Deadly Nightshade Eyedrops

Along with the near‑dead color of their faces, women with tuberculosis were known for having dilated pupils and watery eyes. When someone is in love, their pupils dilate as well. In Victorian era England, women with large pupils were considered extremely beautiful. To achieve this look, they would use eyedrops containing nightshade from the belladonna plant.

The belladonna plant is one of the most poisonous plants in existence. Consuming a couple of berries or a leaf can be fatal. In smaller doses, the poison may cause irritable bowels, rashes, swelling, and even blindness. Women of the Victorian era knew of these dangers and continued to use this poison anyway.

In her later years, Queen Victoria used belladonna drops in her eyes in an attempt to get rid of her cataracts. Although the drops did not cure her condition, the pupils dilated, improving her eyesight, so she continued using them and refused surgery.

4 Poisonous Dental Hygiene

In The Ugly‑Girl Papers, S.D. Powers recommended swallowing a teaspoon of poisonous ammonia mixed in a glass of water to improve the breath and prevent the decay of teeth for someone with an “acid stomach,” which we now call acid reflux. For toothpaste, she recommended using burned bread or charcoal twice a day to clean your teeth.

In the guide Personal Beauty: How To Cultivate and Preserve It in Accordance with the Laws of Health, the author recommends that if someone’s teeth are beginning to rot, they should use a mouthwash made with brandy, spirits of camphor, and myrrh. Swallowing spirits of camphor can lead to death, although it is used for infections and healing in vapor rubs.

For toothaches, cocaine lozenges were easily available for purchase at a local pharmacy. They were also believed to cure coughs and colds. Obviously, these lozenges must have been popular because people became unwittingly addicted to them.

3 Chemical Hair Removal

S.D. Powers published in The Ugly‑Girl Papers the age‑old myth that plucking a hair will cause three rougher and darker hairs to sprout in its place. This myth is actually false, and it is still told to young girls to this day. Instead of using tweezers or shaving, Powers had a variety of suggestions, including a seemingly harmless practice of drying out the skin with a paste of wood ashes so that hair would simply rub off.

However, not all of her hair removal ideas were so innocent. She also suggested killing two birds with one stone by whitening your forearms and removing hair at the same time. For this, she advised her readers to use chloride of lime, which is a chemical used to bleach cotton, followed by a vinegar rinse. At the very least, she told women to do this by an open window and even admits that the chemical can eat away your skin if left on for too long.

2 Mercury And Lead Eye Shadow

Fine Victorian women did not wear eye shadow. Since women wanted to look as natural as possible and did not want to be pegged as fallen women, they mainly focused on their complexions.

They used little eye makeup and focused more on sculpting and filling in their eyebrows. However, they could get away with homemade creams above their eyes, just to make them stand out. Some women would make light brown eye shadow out of cold cream and crushed cochineal beetles.

It was rare for anyone to wear eye shadow purchased from a store, which was called “eye paint” in the Victorian period. However, when a prostitute or a daring Victorian lady decided to try eye paint on a special occasion, she was slathering on cosmetics made from deadly chemicals.

These included red and white lead to color the paint as well as mercuric sulfide. The cosmetics also contained antimony, cinnabar, and vermilion. These chemicals poisoned the body, and mercury is even known to cause insanity.

1 Arsenic Baths

Lola Montez, a famous actress during the Victorian era, gave much more practical beauty advice than that in S.D. Power’s The Ugly‑Girl Papers. Montez wrote her own book called The Arts of Beauty, Or, Secrets of A Lady’s Toilet.

According to her book, as she was traveling in Bohemia, she learned that it was common for women to take baths in and drink out of arsenic springs. She admitted that it was extremely dangerous, but at the same time, she admired how wonderful their skin looked as a result. She also explained that if women did not continue with the habit on a regular basis, they would die.

Arsenic is commonly used as a poison to kill rats, and it was easily attainable at pharmacies during the Victorian era. Women were not the only ones to see arsenic as potentially appealing. For years, it was seen as a primitive version of Viagra that increased male sexual potency. In small doses, it caused a euphoria or delirium, which made people addicted in both a chemical and psychological sense.

Shannon Quinn is a writer and entrepreneur in the Philadelphia area. You can see the rest of her work at shannquinn.wordpress.com.