Tag: Victorian
In Victorian England, fashionable people would pay to attend mummy unrolling parties, and the more you paid the nearer you could see the performance. Europeans had been buying mummies …
In Georgian and Victorian times, armies of bathing machines protected a woman’s modesty before she slipped into the waves. (Image credit: Messy Nessy Chic) People entered the changing room on …
Chastity belts are a story that’s been told for hundreds of years. Medieval men going off to the crusades (for years at a time) would fasten an metal underwear …
The most bloodthirsty Medieval torture device, the Iron Maiden, was the product of two Victorian minds. 19th century art collector Matthew Peacock pieced together the Iron Maiden from real …
For one shilling in 1846, Victorian londoners could see the Euphonia, a talking robotic head with ringlets. Sometimes, it even sported a dress. The machine had bellows for lungs, …
Victorian men unable to grow “soup strainers”, “thigh ticklers” and “Piccadilly weepers” resorted to false facial hair, “beard generator” creams or even crime. Everyone from writers such as Dickens …
The world’s first traffic lights were installed in 1868 to allow politicians to safely cross the busy road to enter Parliament. Image Source In the months before its installation, …
In the 1890s, Victorian fashionistas wore live jewel beetles, ensnared in delicate gold cages attached to chains and brooches. Fabrics from India embellished with beetle wings were already popular as …
Hydropathy, or the water cure, was all the rage in the 19th century. But visiting a water cure was expensive. A week’s stay could cost $10 when the average …
The first man to truly “go postal” was a peculiar English gentleman named W. Reginald Bray. The Human Letter Whether Bray was peculiar before is unknown, but his purchase …
Victorian women were told that Bicycle Face would ruin their beauty. Bicycle Face is the tense expression of concentration required for dodging traffic. Not only would this ruin women’s good …
On Bike to Work Day, let’s remember the cyclist menace of the Victorian era – scorchers. Some Victorians went extraordinarily fast on their bicycles, often to the point of putting those …
