The Victorian era is a period that stretches during

the reign of Queen Victoria. For the British, this era

was very prosperous due to profits gained from the
overseas Empire. The term “Victorian morality” is
often used to describe sexual proprietary, hard work,
honesty, thrift, a sense of duty and responsibility
towards the less well off. When Victorians spoke
about justice, ending poverty or child-labour and
about improving the quality of life, their vision was
global.

Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace on

May 24th, 1819, as an only child of the Duke of Kent
and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. She was
carefully raised by her mother, after the death of her
father before her first birthday. At the death of her
uncle on June 20th, 1837, Victoria took the throne
and became queen at 18 years of age. Her first Prime
Minister, Lord Melbourne, educated Victoria in
government and politics.

Queen Victoria became queen when respect for the

throne was low. However, she became a model of
virtue, and also made the word Victorian itself
synonymous for virtue, modesty, and respectability.

In the February of 1840, she married her cousin,

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and until his
death, he was the main part of her life. She and
Prince Albert had nine children; five sons and five
daughters. On Dec. 14th 1861 Albert died from
typhoid fever at Windsor Castle. Victoria never
recovered from the loss of Albert, and wore
mourning clothes for over 10 years after his death.

During Victoria’s reign, many events, such as small

rebellions, the union of Canada, and self-government
in Canada took place. Queen Victoria died at her
winter home on the Isle of Wright on January 22,
1901. She died a respected woman and queen, and
was the longest reigning monarch of Britain, having
reigned for almost 64 years.
 During the Victorian Era, life was either luxurious
or burdensome. It all depended on your social class.
If you had money and a good education, life was
probably very easy. On the contrary, the poor had to
face difficulty on a daily basis.

The wealthy, with high education and social status,

life was lavish. Money earned was plentiful to keep
because of the lack of income tax. They lived in
houses with many servants. The wealthy only grew
richer after the Confederation of Canada.

Many people, however, had to struggle to make a

living. People below the poverty line, numbers of
which were in the thousands, lived in tiny one or two
room cottages. In general, workers were not paid
well for their long hours, and because there wasn’t
employment insurance or health care, if a person
couldn’t find work or was injured at the job, they had
to then depend on relatives and the church.
 Most of the immigrants in Canada during the
Victorian era came from either Ireland or Scotland.
They were very poor, and had to find work as manual
labourers. Although they came to Canada for the
opportunities, they still faced a lot of hardship.
 The Native peoples, who were the original people of
the Eastern Woodlands, were pushed aside in pioneer
Canada. Native reserves were located at the edges of
the main settled areas, where they were forgotten
and ignored, unless Europeans wished to buy land or
employ them.

The Native peoples were forced to adjust to the

ways of the Europeans. Those who relied on hunting
and fishing for food, had to turn to fruit and
vegetable gardening to keep themselves alive. Many
had never even grown a single crop before this.
Some, however, were agriculturalists for a long time,
so they knew how to deal with the Europeans.
 Since many of the aboriginal peoples were
desperately poor, it was hard for them to keep hold
of their lands. Much of the territory they had gotten
recognized in treaties earlier on was lost. Despite the
pressure for them to change into the European style
society, their culture remained intact, and elders
kept traditions alive, which are still being passed
down today.
 The Victorian Age was also characterised by its rabid
changes and developments in every possible way –
medical, scientific and technological knowledge, as well
as changes in the growth and location of the population.
These rapid transformations deeply affected the mood
of the British Empire, and gave forth a confidence and
optimism that led to prosperity for Britain.

In 1876, Victoria was declared the Empress of India.

The English Empire was constantly being expanded,
and Britain’s attitude was to expand its control around
the globe. Britain felt as though it had an obligation to
enlighten the less fortunate. They also saw themselves
as destined to rule the world. To do so, they needed
money, resources, labour, and new markets.
 The British Empire was the largest empire in
history. It consisted of over 25% of the world’s area
and population and included India, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia, Hong
Kong, as well as other islands. During the Victorian
era, Britain’s population grew to over 21 million, and
by the last years of her reign, Queen Victoria was
queen to over 410 million people.
Victorian Canada had an outpour of art and literature. Because literacy was improved, there
were many new publications of magazines and newspapers, as well as novels and poetry.
Painters of the era focused on landscapes and romanticized portraits.

By the 1890’s, life was becoming less dangerous due to the implementation of sewer systems,
water works, and other health measures .This resulted in the gradual decline in the number of
epidemics and fires.

City life was still filthy, however, and had a mortality rate of almost double that of rural life.
Living conditions in cities were surveyed, and one done in Montreal showed that cities were
divided into two subsections. Gaps between the rich and the poor were evident in all Canadian
cities. “Below the hill”, which was the poorer sections of the city, and “above the hill”, which
were nicer houses and stately churches. Houses that were above the hill had modern plumbing,
while houses below the hill made use of ground pits. For example, Vancouver in the 1870’s was
an ugly, smelly city that had no sewers or drains.

Life in a rural farm was regulated by weather the season. Most work varied from day to day.
People who worked in a family-based economy found it handy to be handy in many different
skills, unlike in the city, where being the master in one made it easier to get a job.

Men in a rural farm had many jobs including hunting wild animals in the fall, clearing land,
cutting firewood, and possibly working for a timber company when winter came around. Many
farmers also served their communities with jobs such as blacksmith, carpenter, and tanner.

Women were responsible for the bearing and raising of children, preserving and preparing
food, weaving cloth, and making and washing clothing. The term “spinster”, meaning
unmarried woman, was derived from the custom of single daughters spinning yarn. As for
community jobs, women served as midwives and healers.
Women in a farm also had to take care of the garden, dairy, and even perform outdoor work
during peak periods. In fishing communities, they did more of the farm chores, and cleaned and
dried the fish that the men caught. Women who lived in hunting or gathering societies were
often adept at skills such as fishing, trapping, and guiding.

Not only did women make their family’s clothing, but they also wove the fabric, and made the soap that
washed them. They repaired clothes that were torn, and used ones beyond fixing for something else. After
manufactured soap, candles and dyes were sold, life was a bit easier, but those who lived in more remote
areas, or lived on a budged still had to rely on their own resources.

Conditions of the working class were still bad, though, through the century, three reform bills
gradually gave the vote to most males over the age of twenty-one. Contrasting to that was the
horrible reality of child labour which persisted throughout the period. When a bill was passed
stipulating that children under nine could not work in the textile industry, this in no way applied
to other industries, nor did it in any way curb rampant teenaged prostitution.

Humans throughout history have developed and implemented medical beliefs to explain and
attempt to mitigate birth, death, injury and disease.
While valid medical knowledge obviously exists throughout history, before the Victorian era it
was largely bound up in magical and religious contexts.

The Victorian era is often presented today as sort of a quaint, nostalgic era.

Alternatively, Victorian streets serve as the setting for some of our more classic horror fiction
because of the effects of a centralizing, industrialized society.

While both these views may be true from our modern perspective, both also miss the point.

The Victorian era, defined as the length of Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901, was a
period of history offering unprecedented scientific discoveries and global exploration.

People living in Western societies at that time had every reason to believe that the ancestral
enemies of disease, malnutrition and madness would soon be conquered forever.

Victorian literature reflects an almost divine sense of hope for the advances science would bring,
and, in fact, science as we know it today was definitively formed in this time.

We have a difficult time imagining the Victorian era today. In our modern times, most citizens of
Western societies take things like food inspection, adequate sewer systems, centers for disease
control, refrigeration, aseptic techniques, anesthetics, and antibiotics for granted.

We've gotten to the point where most of us never even see the multitudes of workers checking
our groceries for safety or pasteurizing our milk.

Try, then, to imagine a world in which sewage systems were a brilliant innovation after centuries
of open street canals, in which contagion finally started to be understood after centuries of
ignorance, and mechanical innovation became precise enough to reliably see things smaller than
the human eye can even detect unaided.

The Victorian era contributed previously unimaginable inventions and changes to our very way
of life.

Pre-Victorian Culture and Context

Before the 19th century, the world had struggled through several periods of alternating education
and ignorance.

In medicine, herbalism was the most consistently effective tool at the physician's disposal, and
herbalism itself was (and still is) often plagued by superstition and magical thinking.

For instance, today we know that overdose on angelica (Angelica archangelica) can cause some
very problematic side effects and shouldn't be done except under the supervision of a
knowledgeable herbalist. However, because of the name and beneficial effects that angelica can
have when properly administered, it was often seen as a cure all and thrown at everything the
herbalist didn't know. Of course, this type of treatment often caused more harm than good.

In another example of medical magical thinking, multitudes of Europeans did not eat tomatoes or
potatoes for years after their discovery in the New World because tomatoes and potatoes both are
part of the same family as nightshade. Nightshade is a deadly plant even in minute quantities,
and relatives were believed to be equally as deadly on general principle.

A lot of ancient medical knowledge was contained in religious texts.

For instance, the Old Testament of the Bible contains multiple passages for communal living that
make a lot of sense to any modern microbiologist.

If you're living in a desert without modern antiseptics or antibiotics, certain precautions like
isolating infected people, washing after handling a corpse, isolation of menstrual blood, and
avoiding pork and blood that spoil easily make a whole lot of sense.

These guidelines are still followed today by many Jews for devotion's sake, and I mean no
disrespect to them for it. However, these commandments also did a lot to avoid contagion
vectors in ancient Jewish tribes, thus avoiding the wrath of God as expressed by disease.

Prior to the Victorian era, disease was seen by many peoples and cultures as a
social/religious problem.

You didn't get sick because you caught a virus, you got sick because you offended a spirit or
deity with your actions.

This paradigm is still a problem for many medical aid programs in sub-Saharan Africa today,
where native people want to know what spirit or deity they offended to get the HIV virus and
what spells can they do to appease the spirit and get rid of said sickness.

Translating the Western medical knowledge about the HIV virus to the native people in such a
way as those affected truly understand, and more importantly, believe the medical aid volunteers,
serves to highlight the vast differences between the pre- and post-Victorian attitudes. Rescue
societies are finally starting to avail themselves of another Victorian invention, anthropology, to
try and bridge the huge culture gap.

This social/religious context for disease also makes historical calls to God for enemy smiting
make a lot more contextual sense.

Plague could strike anywhere, and for any reason, rendering resistance to an invading army
rather impossible. Besieged populations stuck with insufficient room to properly dispose of
human waste and forced to live in close conditions were especially susceptible to plague
epidemics, thus giving a besieging army easy pickings.
The circumstances surrounding the Black Plague are perhaps the best illustration for
historical views on disease.

We know today that bubonic plague is carried by fleas that usually ride on rats. However,
medieval people were aware of no such thing.

By and large, they believed that bubonic plague was some sort of curse or judgment by God.
Cats, the main urban predators of rats, were also associated with witches and black magic.
Therefore, the populace of many countries killed cats wholesale, thus allowing the rat population
to run rampant and sealing their own fate.

Superstition infused herbalism, folk cures, and metal-based compounds, all of which could be
and often were poisonous, supplied the vast majority of "medications" people took.

Victorian Culture and Context

Then, the Victorian era showed up with a bang and a roar. The beginning of the 19th century
didn't look all that different from the entirety of the 18th, but by the end the world resembled the
one we know today.

This transformation is often underappreciated in its scope. Considering the length of time that
change had usually taken the vast majority of Western society, this is somewhat akin to waking
up to find yourself in the world of science fiction tomorrow. No wonder science fiction became
so popular, it seemed to be right within reach.

For the first time, religion started to lose its grip on broad groups of people.

Objective observation came into vogue among the higher levels of society, and scientists had
time for those time-consuming experiments. Scientists also had improved laboratory techniques
and precision laboratory tools as a gift of industrialization.

In fact, industrialization was giving everybody more time to do things like read and discuss
philosophy, fiction, art and, of course, science. We first saw the deleterious side effects of
industrialization in the Victorian era as well, with the fogs of London and the miserable masses
of child labor required to run the factories of the time.

The Victorian era was also the first time that many people could go and interact with wildly
different cultures and environments.

Prior to the world-spanning British Empire of Victoria's reign, travel had meant going maybe a
hundred miles from the place of your birth. Everything else was either exploration or full-scale
moving, usually for colonization or immigration. People didn't go on pleasure jaunts to other
countries until newly invented railways made it easier.
Inventions started being widely implemented seemingly at the speed of light. In fact, light was
one of the main inventions of the time, starting with the gas light and heat system of London
started in 1880's. For the first time in history, streets were relatively well lit at night, allowing a
lot more of a nightlife than in centuries past. The first incandescent electric lights were
introduced in London in 1882, although they wouldn't become common for many decades to
come.

At the same time, the first city-wide sewage system was implemented in London in 1858
connecting 82 miles of main sewers with 1,000 miles of street sewers. Prior to the building of
this massive system, sewage systems had basically constituted an open canal down the street.

However, keep in mind that this was London. Life wasn't all gaslit wonder and clean streets
everywhere by any stretch of the imagination. London was the center, home and heart of the
Victorian era, and millions around the world continued to suffer terribly from all the same old
things, along with the new invention of colonialism that discounted their basic humanity and
sought to undermine their cultures for material gain. Even in London, thousands upon thousands
died in terrible conditions brought about by factories and lack of knowledge or wisdom regarding
public health.

In short, the Victorian era was a time of incredibly rapid change, advancement and
experimentation. It improved the lives of countless people with its inventions and its new
philosophies, but it had a dark side of oppressed people, cultural indifference to outsiders and
ethically questionable actions based on nationalistic interests instead of anything resembling
humanitarian or compassionate beliefs. Sound familiar?

During the 19th century, so many advances were being made in chemistry, lab technique, and
medical equipment, that the list of inventions is long, and includes::

Anesthetics in 1846

The opthalmoscope in 1851

The hypodermic syringe in 1853

Antiseptics in 1865, along with proof of germ theory

Pasteurization in 1862

Discovery of tubercule bacillus (responsible for tuberculosis) in 1882

Discovery of cholera bacillus in 1883

Rabies vaccination in 1885

Chicken cholera vaccination in 1885

The contact lens in 1887

The X-ray in 1895

Not all of these were by the British Victorians. In fact, many were from other countries such as
Germany, France, and Russia.

Nursing also came to the forefront as a profession in the Victorian age due to the work of
Florence Nightingale, who opened St. Thomas Hospital in 1852 to attend to some of the injured
coming home from the Crimean War. She proved that nurses could provide increased patient
hygiene and nutrition that overworked doctors did not have the time to attend to, and
revolutionized the medical world in doing so.

Victorian Ideas of Cleanliness and Infection

Keep in mind that these were all new, radical notions to your average Victorian, and often barely
understood notions at that. Full and comprehensive knowledge of how contagion works for
bacteria and viruses was still fairly far off in the future.

Your average Victorian citizen had no idea that some viruses could travel through air, while
some needed to go through bodily fluids.

They also often did not understand that a symptom-free person could still be contagious.

In addition, food inspection and freedom from food-borne illnesses was also still fairly far off,
and consistent food refrigeration was still several decades away even at the end of Victoria's
reign.

Antiseptics were still rare, antibiotics unknown.

Therefore, Victorians did the best with what they had, and their regimes to fight dirt and
contagion would put most housekeepers to shame today.
The huge jump in human survival during the Victorian era had less to do with concrete,
applicable medical advances, many of which were in development, and more to do with
increasing awareness of public health and nutrition.

During the 19th century, discovery after discovery was being made in the science and
technology fields. There were many idea

Science and Technology

The Victorian era ushered in a tremendous surge of technological invention. Victorians believed in
progress and viewed with optimism their Industrial Revolution. Steamboats allowed America to engage in
transportation and trade as never before, while railroads connected the nation from north to south and
east to west. During this period, the ingenious and prolific Thomas Edison developed the first electric light
bulb and phonograph, and improved numerous inventions such as the telegraph, telephone, and motion
picture projector. In 1852, Elisha Graves Otis invented the world's first safety elevator that would
accompany the new skyscrapers of the day. During the 1890s, Henry Ford devoted himself to designing
an internal combustion engine and developing an automobile capable of being mass-produced. At the
same time, Victorians were introduced to the bicycle, a symbol of freedom that both men and women
enjoyed. Other inventions of the era include Isaac Singer's lockstitch sewing machine; John Hyatt's
celluloid, a substance that was used in Victorian shirt collars; John Roebling's steel cable, which as used
to construct the Brooklyn Bridge; and Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper that made America a world-
class wheat producer.