Social Victorians/Victorian Things

Victorian Things and Everyday Objects

Because they were published in newspaper accounts of elite weddings — sometimes in detail — lists of wedding gifts give us an sense of the objects that filled people's houses, that were thought important for entertaining and appropriate for a new couple setting up their own houses. Some couples received a lot of books, while some received almost none, unless we count a single Bible or prayer book. Some couples received a lot of art, both made by the giver and, apparently, purchased. Brand names occur for some things, like some kinds of china and furniture.

The most common wedding gifts were boxes, candlesticks, walking sticks, umbrellas, fans, paper knives, ink stands and individual pieces of table ware, and some couples received a great many of these. Many couples also received a lot of the implements of writing and manuscript culture. It is hard to imagine what one would do with a half dozen inkstands — perhaps every room that a guest might use would have one.

Queen Victoria's Bathing Machine

Queen Victoria's Bathing Machine, side view

Bathing Machines

Bathing machines were little wooden shacks or houses, usually on wheels, which allowed modest people a place to change to their swimming costumes and get into the water without being seen. The houses were lined up on the beach, and the users would go to their house, or the one they had rented, and enter it through a door facing the water. Inside were hooks for hanging clothing on and benches attached to the walls to sit on. When the users had changed and hung their clothing up on the hooks out of the reach of the water, the house could be rolled into the surf far enough that the users could swim out the front door and play in the water without having to stand, visible, in their swimming suits.

Queen Victoria's restored bathing machine (right) is near Osborne House, in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. The first time she ever went into the sea was in 1847 on the Isle of Wight, in Osborne. She described it in her entry in her journal for 30 July 1847:

drove down to the beach with my maid & went into the bathing machines, where I undressed & bathed in the sea (for the 1st time in my life), a very nice bathing woman attended me. I thought it delightful till I put my head under water, when I thought I should be stifled.

For much of the century women used the bathing machines and men swam nude, or at least it was common enough for men to swim nude that it would not have been shocking. There were swimming costumes for both men and women, however, which were knee-length dresses and shorts for the women, and a sleeveless top and shorts for the men. Likely to have been made of wool, they were heavy and bulky and probably itchy as well, but they covered much of the body and still were a great deal less cloth and structure than people's normal clothing.

Larry Simons says, "Finally, it's worthy of mention that in the 1997 film Mrs Brown (also called Her Majesty, Mrs Brown in the USA), there is one scene in which Queen Victoria (played by Dame Judi Dench) goes for a swim and actually USES a bathing machine (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0119280)."

Lewis Carroll mentions a bathing machine in "The Hunting of the Snark" and in Alice's Adventures Underground, in the chapter called "Pool of Tears":

"In that case, I can go back by railway." (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion that, wherever you go to on the English coast, you find a number of bathing-machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them, a railway station).

J. L. Speranza points out these citations and says, "For more on bathing-machines, see Chapter 2, Note 6, of Alice's Adventures Underground in The Annotated Alice; and The English Seaside by H. G. Stokes, 1947, pages 17-25."

In Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, the Lord Chancellor describes something as being in size "'something between a large bathing-machine / and a very small second-class carriage."

Bicycles

"Delightful Cycling Breakfast Parties"

On 29 July 1895 The Album published this look by at women cyclists in Battersea Park in London Max Pemberton. It suggests that the Hon. Algernon Bourke's experiment with a White's restaurant in the park was associated with these women stopping for breakfast and riding their bicycles in the park. It also suggests that Pemberton's informant was Bourke himself.

The society reporter has assured us that the knell of the society reporter season was heard a week or two ago, and he has taken the opportunity to indulge in a retrospect. While he finds much that deserves the epithet "brilliant" and much that he styles "fascinating" in the social events of the last three months, the best of his eulogy is reserved for the practices of the lady cyclist and the astonishing assent with which her apocalypse has been received. He tells us with fit rapture that of all the things for which the season of the year 1895 will be remembered, none will linger so long in the memory as the delightful cycling breakfast parties in Battersea Park. For Mr. Algernon Bourke, who bought a piece of ground from the County Council and promoted these "functions," he can discover no satisfying words of praise. Every morning, says he, we have looked for such pretty and graceful riders as Lady Norreys, Lady Wolverton, Miss Mabel Duncombe, Mrs. Willie Grenfell, Lady Féo Sturt, and scores of others, and have not been disappointed. The Surreysider has stood aghast at this invasion of his park. The cleverness and the daring of the performers have almost silenced the brutalities of the gamin and have converted the clamorous coster to Conservatism. Now consuming strawberries and cream at daintily decked tables, now skimming round the track with the agility of a hired fairy, always picturesquely dressed the lady cyclist has won over the East End. She has stretched out her hand across the water, and 'Enery 'Awkins has kissed it. It remains only for Archdeacons to bless and for Archbishops-on tandems-to consummate the happy union.

All this is very pleasing but many of those who are content to reserve their judgment in matters of this sort may well cry il n'y a que le matin en toutes choses. Before we make up our minds whether this boom in lady cyclists is to last, we must look on the other side of the picture. And this other side is not always pleasing. There was tried at a North London police court some few weeks ago a case which had not quite the charm and the content of these pretty breakfast parties in Battersea Park. If I am remembering it rightly, one lady cyclist ran down another, and in the [Col. 1c–2a] course of the explanations which ensued, a good deal of hair was torn out, while words were exchanged which no self-respecting paper would publish. It was declared upon oath that the ignorant wayfarers who watched the various rounds fought, and constituted themselves referees and sponge holders, were not in favour of the rational dress. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself" was the remark of one bystander. Another feelingly asked an elderly, if pugnacious, rider what she meant by putting "them things" on. And as a lady cyclist declared with tears in court, she and her kind were still doomed to meet with considerable insult whenever and wherever the rational dress was displayed on the Queen's highroad.

Such hostility must be set down to a very shabby ignorance. None the less is it a factor in the answer to the question, What is the future of the lady cyclist? Will she go on conquering prejudice in remote villages, or will she, having aired her graces in Battersea Park for a couple of seasons, forget her bicycle and return to her horse? I am inclined to think that she will do both. While it must be admitted that the exhibition promoted by White's Club and by Mr. Algernon Bourke is a mere craze, and will be swept ultimately into the limbo whereto all crazes go, it is impossible to deny that young ladies who read in distant hamlets of these doings will imitate them and add to the army of lady riders. And here we may hope to find solidity for the movement. That a woman can derive considerable pleasure from a modern bicycle, there is no possible doubt. The exercise is good for her; the costume is becoming. When once example has conquered prejudice, and the milliner has conquered both — the bicycle should flourish exceedingly. Already the world has thrust forth a vanity which has buzzed into his ears — the man's to wit. The verdict of the Bachelors is, that no girl could look so "fetching" as on a bicycle. If the greater majority are held back now by the traditions of a gloomy past, they will be held back no longer when all Belgravia rides and all the Albany goes out to see. And that such a time is at hand, the season has proved in its life and is proving in its death.

I say, proving in its death, but a word must be added to this. In a few weeks, the craze which has been London's, will be known at Eastbourne, at Scarborough, at Cromer, at Southsea. Nor is it idle to hope that when the first fury has passed, and people no longer ride because it is the thing, there will remain a host of lady cyclists who will have found a new joy and a new pastime in one of the most delightful exercises that the century has introduced to us.

Brand Names

• Bayer aspirin
• Coca Cola
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Heroin
• House of Worth
• Liberty Fabrics
• Macassar Oil
• Pepsi Cola
• Vaseline: "the word 'vaseline' was introduced as a proprietary term by R. A. Chesebrough" in 1872. According to Morris Rosenblum, "It is found in British publications in 1874 and 1876." (Baring-Gould I 450, n. 13).
• Virot hat, from Madame Virot's in Paris, milliner to Empress Eugenie

Candles, Fireplaces and Smoking

• Candlesticks were very common as wedding gifts
• Some couples received suites des cheminéess or garnitures des cheminées
• Match boxes
• Cigarette or cigar lighter
• Cigar Case
• Tobacco pouch

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and Other Reference Works

Dictionary of Slang

John Stephen Farmer. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society for More Than Three Hundred Years. With Synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, Etc. Poulter, 1890. Vol. 1: Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=A8xfcjboymkC. [Google Books incorrectly has Haterodox in the title.]

Encyclopaedia Britannica

It has been published in the United States since 1901, although the spelling has remained British.

The 9th Edition

Here is a copy of the 9th edition at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/encyclopaedia-britannica-9ed-1875/.

If the people who attended the Duchess of Devonshire's 1897 fancy-dress ball did any research on the figures from the past or from art or mythology or the arts, the 9th edition of the Britannica offers an example of what kinds of information would have been available to them. (The idea of them doing personal research like this is unlikely — more likely might be that they or their costumier studied what art and portraits were available at the galleries they frequented.) In a sense, the Britannica represents higher level popular knowledge.

The 9th edition of the Britannica (1875–1889) — the "Scholar's Edition" — was the first edition written by men (almost exclusively) who were experts in their field and who could write well. George Bernard Shaw said he read the 9th edition except for the articles about science. Some notable people who contributed articles (with the abbreviations used for authorship attribution) include the following:

• Grant Allen (G.A.): "Mimicry"
• Amelia Blandford Edwards (A.B.E.): "Mummy"
• James George Frazer (J.G.FR.): "Pericles," "Taboo," "Totemism"
• Thomas Henry Huxley (T.H.H.): "Actinozoa," "Animal Kingdom," "Biology," "Evolution: Evolution in Biology"
• Prince Peter Alexeivitch, Prince Kropotkine (P.A.K.): "Moscow", "Nova Zembla [Novaya Zemlya]," "Odessa," "Siberia"
• Andrew Lang (A.L.): "Apparitions," "Family," "Molière"
• Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (M.): "Francis Atterbury," "John Bunyan," "Samuel Johnson," "Oliver Goldsmith," "William Pitt [the Younger]"
• Clements Robert Markham (C.R.M.): "Geography (Historical Geography)"
• James Clerk Maxwell (J.C.M.): "Atom," "Ether"
• William Minto (W.M.): "Byron," "Chaucer," "Dickens," "Poe," "Wordsworth"
• William Morris (W.MO.) and John Henry Middleton (J.H.M.): "Mural Decoration"
• Emilia F. S. Pattison, Lady Dilke (E.F.S.P.): "Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres"
• Lord Rayleigh (R.): "Optics, Geometrical" and "Wave Theory of Light"
• William Michael Rossetti (W.M.R.): "Bartolemé Esteban Murillo," "Percy Bysshe Shelley"
• George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (G.SA.): "Pierre Corneille," "Daniel Defoe," "Clément Marot," "Michel de Montaigne," "Jean Racine," "Jean-Jacques Rousseau," "François Marie Arouet de Voltaire"
• Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (Mrs. Henry Sidgwick) (E.M.S.): "Spiritualism"
• Robert Louis Stevenson (R.L.S.): "Pierre Jean de Béranger"
• Algernon Charles Swinburne (A.C.S.): "John Keats"
• John Addington Symonds (J.A.S.): "Renaissance"
• William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (W.TH.): "Ether," "Elasticity," "Heat" [I can't find the byline, but the article ends with tables and a "Mathematical Appendix," so it's a little difficult to tell where it actually ends]
• Alfred Russell Wallace (A.R.W.): "Acclimatisation," "Distribution (Biology) - Introduction. Distribution of Animal Life"

The 25 volumes had

thick boards and high-quality leather bindings, premier paper, and a production which took full advantage of the technological advances in printing in the years between the 1850s and 1870s. Great use was made of the new ability to print large graphic illustrations on the same pages as the text, as opposed to limiting illustrations to separate copperplates. Although this technology had first been used in a primitive fashion the 7th edition, and to a much lesser extent in the 8th, in the 9th edition there were thousands of quality illustrations set into the text pages, in addition to the plates.

The 11th edition (1911) continued the tradition of recruiting writers who had expertise and is also known for the quality of the writing.

Until the Wikisource project on the Britannica is finished, perhaps the best online source is at the Internet Archive:

• Index volume here:
• List of contributors for the 9th edition: https://archive.org/details/encyclopaedia-britannica-9ed-1875/Index%20193479114.23/page/491/mode/1up

Perhaps 500,000 pirated copies of this edition — "10,000 sets sold by Britannica and 45,000 authorized sets made in the US by Little, Brown in Boston and Schribners' Sons in NY" — were made in the US.

The 10th Edition

The 10th edition (1902–1903) was the first managed and owned by Americans. It is "an eleven-volume supplement (including one each of maps and an index) to the 9th, numbered as volumes 25–35." The supplement revised the articles to be more current at the beginning of the 20th century, may have increased the coverage of North America in deference to its American readers.

John Muir wrote the article on Yosemite for the 10th edition.

Drugs

Depending upon when, of course, drugs that were not regulated and products that were generally available that would not be now:

• Arsenic
• Laudanum
• Cocaine
• Coca wine
• Heroin

According to A. E. Waite, Walter Moseley's "health had been seriously damaged by the use of drugs for occult purposes" (Howe 85 39, n. 3). Possibly W. B. Yeats had injections of ground-up "monkey glands" in order to increase his masculinity (is this true?).

Baring-Gould speaks of Sherlock Holmes, as always, as if he were a biographical rather than fictional character:

Dr. Kohki Naganuma has questioned ("Sherlock Holmes and Cocaine") Holmes' use of cocaine by hypodermic injection at this time since "Karl Ludwig Schleich, of Berlin, [was] the first surgeon to use cocaine solution in hypodermic injection [in 1891].] But Dr. Julian Wolff has replied ("A Narcotic Monograph") that "although Schleich is usually given credit for priority in the use of cocaine by injection, actually the credit should go to a great American surgeon. The first such use of cocaine was not in 1891 by Schleich, as is generally supposed, but in 1884, by Dr. William S. Halsted. … 1884 was early enough so that it was no anachronism for Holmes to be taking cocaine injections when Watson said he was."

It should be pointed out that, at this time, there was no popular prejudice against drug-takers. As Mr. Michael Harrison has written (In the Footsteps of Sherlock Homes): "In Holmes' day, not only was the purchase of most 'Schedule IV' drugs legal; Madeleine Smith and Mrs. Maybrick bought their arsenic; De Quincey and Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, their laudanum; with no more trouble than that with which they purchased their tooth-powder. No 'Dangerous Drug Act' had been passed, in its original form when Holmes bought and took his cocaine in doses that Watson's description of the typical cocaine-addition syndromes indicate to have been heavy ones. (Holmes probably purchased his supplies from either John Taylor, Chemist, at the corner of George Street and Baker Street — east side — or of Curtis and Company, No. 44, on the west side) …." (Baring-Gould I 610, n. 1; all editorial marks are sic).

Popular Medicinal Products

Bottle of heroin produced by Friedr. Bayer & Co.

Beecham's Pills

The 1909 Secret Remedies: What They Cost and What They Contain says that a box of Beecham's Pills, "advertised to be worth a guinea, is sold for 1s. 1 1/2 d., and the prime cost of the ingredients of the 56 pills it contains is about half a farthing. ... The pills had an average weight of 11/4 grains, and analysis showed them to consist of aloes, ginger and soap ; no other medicinal ingredient was found." It lists the ingredients for each pill thus:

Aloes... ... ... ... ... 0.5 grain.

Powdered ginger... ..... 0.55 "

Powdered soap... ... ... 0.18 "

Liz Calvert Smith says that "aloes are 'a bitter purgative drug, condensed from the juice of the leaves of various species of Aloes'" (Smith 2003).

Coca wine

Coca wine, developed in the mid-19th century, contained cocaine and wine. It seems to have been produced by local pharmacists from a standard formula. As the US began prohibition, the wine in the mixture had to be replaced. One Georgia pharmacist replaced the wine with a sugar syrup, making the original recipe for Coca Cola. Lindsey Fitzharris says that one brand of coca wine, Vin Mariani (the same formulation used by the pharmacist in Georgia), "was enjoyed by Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas & Arthur Conan Doyle" and Thomas Edison, and that it "contained 6 mg of cocaine per fluid ounce."

Heroin

Although C. R. Alder Wright synthesized what we now call heroin in 1874, nothing was done with the invention beyond one test on animals. Felix Hoffmann, who was working for pharmaceutical company Friedr. Bayer & Co. in Germany, re-invented the chemical independently, 11 days after he had synthesized aspirin for the first time, 21 August 1897. Bayer lost trademark rights to heroin and aspirin after Germany's defeat in World War I.

Electricity and Gas

The newspapers reported as people had electricity installed in their houses. Richard D'Oyly Carte is said to have had the first house in London to have electricity and an elevator, and the Savoy Theatre, which he built, was the first public building to be lit only with electricity. The Savoy Hotel was the first to be lit with electricity and the first to have electric elevators.

Electric lights were used for the coronation of King Edward VII; Queen Consort Alexandra's coronation dress had silver threads in the weft, making it quite a statement under the electric lights in Westminster Abbey.

1840s–1850s

The "moniker" city of light

had taken on new meaning in the 1840s and ’50s when the boulevards were lit up at night and the city flourished, as Charles Baudelaire wrote, “in the light of the gas lamps, illuminated . . . and as if drunk on it.” Gaslight allowed for the emergence of a truly nocturnal city. At sunset, twenty thousand lampposts ignited automatically, fed from fuel lines connected to subterranean gas mains. Scores of lamplighters lit another three thousand streetlights manually. These new lights could illuminate a far larger area than before — a boon to safety that also transformed Parisians’ sense of their city’s potential, enhancing the culture of spectacle for which it was already famous, and leaving giddy visitors with an impression of ineffable modernity. The capital, wrote Joachim Schloer, became “like an island of light against the surrounding darkness.”

1860s

1860 April 24, Eugénie hosted a masked costume ball, "the highlight of the social season":

The banquet hall boasted a huge fountain, upon which shone the new invention of electric light, "so adjusted as to give the watery spray as it rose and fell the appearance of frosted silver," one correspondent reported in awe. "The scene was most beautiful, and called vividly to mind those abodes only read of in the Arabian Nights." ... "Too much praise cannot be attributed to her Majesty,… who planned so magnificent an entertainment," was the general consensus. "It was worthy of an Empress."

1870s

Under Bismarck's seige of Paris 1870–1871, in late November and December of 1870,

Supplies of gas had been summarily cut off. The light that had illuminated Second Empire Paris, transforming social life in the process, had been in short supply for over a month. Earlier in the siege, Thomas Gibson Bowles, the founding editor of Vanity Fair, had noticed the “astonishing” effect that halving the supply of gas to the streetlamps had had on the atmosphere. “It has changed the aspect of the town,” he wrote, “and no less striking is the influence it exerts in driving people home at an early hour. ... [/] Temperatures were now consistently below freezing. After two heavy snowfalls, the city was blanketed in snow from December 12 until early January. With Christmas approaching, Paris was still resisting, but the optimism of autumn had guttered out. Hungry, sapped of its glamour and pride, the city was bracing for a winter that would prove the coldest in living memory. (276–278 of 667)

1880s

Electricity

would have been theoretically possible [in England] at any time after 1880 but in practice it was most unlikely, for the original legislation was most restrictive and the first supply companies found it practically impossible to function. Only later in the eighties / were the restrictions removed. (Baring-Gould II 566–67, n. 19)

1887, Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee:

Now London was like an enchanted city, flickering with gaslight, oil light, limelight, electric light, candelabra, and fairy lights. So many lamps illuminated the city that in some parts it was brighter than day. A Mr. Breidenbach of Bond Street arranged for jets of violet-scented perfume to be sprayed fifty feet into the air, then lit up by electric lamps.

1890s

1894

Electricity was available in Hampstead (Baring-Gould II 567, n. 19).

1897

For Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee:

The Queen came up from Windsor on 21 June 1897, and stayed the night at Buckingham Palace. £250,000 had been spent on London street decorations, ... mingling thousands of tiny gas jets – a novelty when the Queen was young – with the totally newfangled electric light bulbs.

In her journal, Queen Victoria says about the procession from Windsor to Buckingham Palace [? confirm from and to where],

Before leaving I touched an electric button, by which I started a message which was telegraphed throughout the whole Empire. It was the following: [975–976] 'From my heart I thank my beloved people, May God bless them!'

Food

Punch

Punch was a drink served cold or at room temperature in glasses, often colored or flavored by the citrus fruits currently in season. In 1889, Mrs. Beeton says of punch,

Punch is a beverage made of various spirituous liquors or wine, hot water, the acid juice of fruits, and sugar. It is considered to be very intoxicating; but this is probably because the spirit being partly sheathed by the mucilaginous juice and the sugar, its strength does not appear to the taste so great as it really is. Punch, which was almost universally drunk among the middle classes about fifty or sixty years ago, has almost disappeared from our domestic tables, being superseded by wine. There are many different varieties of punch. It is sometimes kept cold in bottles, and makes a most agreeable summer drink. In Scotland, instead of the Madeira or sherry generally used in its manufacture, whiskey is substituted, and then its insiduous properties are more than usually felt. Where fresh lemons cannot be had for punch or similar beverages, crystallised citric acid and a few drops of the essence of lemon will be very nearly the same thing. In the composition of "Regent's punch," champagne, brandy and veritable Martinique are required; "Norfolk punch" requires Seville oranges; "milk punch" may be extemporised by adding a little hot milk to lemonade, and then straining it through a jelly-bag. Then there are "Wine punch," Tea-punch" [sic] and "French punch," made with lemons, spirits, tea and wine, in fantastic proportions. But of all the compounds of these materials, perhaps for a summer drink, the North-American "mint julep" is the most inviting. Captain Marryat gives the following recipe for its preparation: — "Put into a tumbler about a dozen sprigs of the tender shoots of mint; upon them put a spoonful of white sugar, and equal proportions of peach and common brandy, so as to fill up one third, or, perhaps, a little less; then take rasped or pounded ice, and fill up the tumbler. Epicures rub the lips of the tumbler with a piece of fresh pineapple; and the tumbler itself if very often encrusted outside with stalactites of ice. As the ice melts, you drink." The Virginians, says Captain Marryat, claim the merit of having invented this superb compound; but, from a passage in the "Comus" of Milton, he claims it for his own country. (Beeton 1889 1220-21)

Biscuits

Mrs. Beeton covers biscuits in her Book of Household Management and provides a page of illustrations (1109). Biscuits are both sweet and savory, depending on the recipe, what Americans might call both cookies and crackers.

Grooming and Hygiene

• Macassar Oil
• Button hook
• Scent bottle
• Shoe horn

Household Goods

• Paper and Writing Tools
• String box
• Suite de cheminée (or fireplace suite); Garniture de Cheminée

Doily

A simple and well-supported etymology traces the doily to "a 17th-century London draper" whose "cheap and genteel" "woolen stuff" was eventually used for "'a small ornamental napkin used at dessert', known as a 'doily-napkin.'"

On 22 January 1895, the New Zealand Bruce Herald reprinted this folk etymology from the New York Recorder. It is useful for its recording of the variant spelling, versions of which appear in British newspaper at the end of the 19th century as well.

The word doyley, now a familiar one with ladies, is derived from the name of Robert D'Oyley, one of the followers of William the Norman. He received a grant of valuable lands on the condition of a yearly tender of a tablecloth of three shillings' value at the feast of St. Michael. Agreeably to the fashion of the time the ladies of the D'Oyley household were accustomed to embroider and ornament the quit-rent tablecloths; hence these cloths, becoming curiosities and accumulating in the course of years, were at length brought into use as napkins at the royal table and called doyleys.

Lady Helen Stewart received several "d'Oyleys" on her 1902 wedding to Lord Stavordale.

Tableware and Place Settings

Serving Dishes and Implements

Many of the individual pieces given to couples at their wedding are serving dishes.

• Salver
• Asparagus tongs
• Sauce boat
• Muffineer
• Epergne

Table Service

• Salt cellar
• Pepper castor
• Breakfast service
• Tea service
• Dinner service
• Dessert service

Flatware and Silverware

• Apostle spoons (appear in some list of gifts to the bride)

Tea Service

• Sugar bowl, sugar sifter, sugar castor
• Five o'clock tea set
• Lemon-squeezer

Vitrine

A vitrine or vitrine case is a display case made of glass. According to the Oxford English Dictionary

OED's earliest evidence for vitrine is from 1880, in the writing of Charlotte Schreiber, translator, businesswoman, and collector.

Lady Helen Stewart received 2 vitrines plus a vitrine table for her 1902 wedding to Lord Stavordale.

Mail

In downtown London, in Holmes' and Watson's day, there were as many as twelve postal deliveries a day, and in Baker Street there were six. There were no Sunday deliveries, however — if one wanted to send a message on the Sabbath, he found it necessary to hire a commissionaire or some other special messenger.

Money

The denominations:

• Penny
• Shilling
• Pound

In "A Case of Identity," Sherlock Holmes says to Miss Mary Sutherland, "I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds." Baring-Gould says that this is a "highly revealing statement on the cost of living in Britain in the 1880's. A single lady could then get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds -- about $300 -- a year."

John Watson appears to have had his practice in the Paddington district:

It is impossible to say in which of Paddington's many streets Watson lived; he could have lived in Eastbourne Terrace, which runs alongside the west wall of Paddington Station, and connects Praed Street with Bishop's Bridge Road. ... It is far more likely that Watson lived across Praed Street, in Spring Street or London Street or even in Norfolk Square, which is separated from Praed Street only by a block of houses. He would thus be near neough to the Station to be known to the staff, which sufficiently removed from the traffic of Praed Street to enjoy a certain amount of quiet. His rent would have been (for a three-storeyed house in, say Spring Street) about £60 [$300] per annum; a four-storeyed house in nearby Norfolk Square would have been about £80 [$400]; both figures exclusive of rates." [quoting Michael Harrison; ellipsis mine, interpolations his]

Resources for understanding Victorian finances

• Inflation Calculator

Newspapers

Newspapers and magazines are on their own page, with places to find them and some of the people in the industry.

Ostrich Plumes and Prince of Wales's Feathers

For much of the late 18th and 19th centuries, white ostrich plumes were central to fashion at court, and at a certain point in the 19th century they became required for women being presented to the monarch and for their sponsors.

Separately, a secondary heraldic emblem of the Prince of Wales has been a specific arrangement of 3 ostrich feathers in a gold coronet since King Edward III (1312–1377). Although they were both called Prince of Wales's feathers, the fashionable plumes worn at court by women and this official part of the Prince of Wales's heraldry have a complex relationship, especially in the 18th century.

In her "'Falling into Feathers': Jews and the Trans-Atlantic Ostrich Feather Trade," Sarah Abrevaya Stein says that the ostrich-feather industry

was shaped by — and in turn influenced — imperial policy and social realities in the Russian and British empires; the complex social and economic constitution of colonial Africa; the growing importance of global, trans-Atlantic, and colonial trade; and the whims and politics of women's fashion. And it was fostered primarily by Jews, who were instrumental in nurturing the popularity and exchange of this commodity over oceans, political boundaries, and cultural and linguistic divides. (774)

It appears that the fashion for wearing plumes in headdresses was imported from France in the last half of the 18th century, before the French revolution, when so much of what people wore signified political allegiance. Miriam Handley refers to an image from 1786 of George, Prince of Wales and "eight well-known aristocratic ladies, seven of whom wear the feather .... The image alludes to Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, III. xvii and uses the feather to imply the sexual relationship between the Prince and the women." (30, n. 4) One link, then, between the Prince of Wales and aristocratic women is the implication that women who wore the feather were "his." The ostrich plume was eventually used in political cartoons and comic theatre in the 18th century to associate the Prince of Wales and fashionable women with complexities in the performance of masculinity, appropriation by women for social status, power and political opposition, and freedom and enslavement. Handley says, "as the image of [a double-gendered] Chevalier suggests, the feather in the late 1770s was seen as the crowning touch to an extravagant head-dress. Plays and caricatures derived much comedy from these head-dresses, which were worn first by Macaronis returning from their European Grand Tours, ... and subsequently by fashionable aristocratic women in the early 1770s." (35)

The "popular women's fashion" of white ostrich plumes spread widely among the fashionable in Europe and North America:

A variety of feathers, including those of the ostrich, adorned the hats and clothes of elite European and American women from at least the second half of the eighteenth century, when Marie Antoinette introduced a minor ostrich feather craze among elite women by wearing towering plumes atop her hats. The thirst for feathers endured among members of the aristocracy throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But ostrich feathers were not widely employed by the fashion world until the 1880s. This was a decade in which women were gaining ever more opportunity and desire to consume .... (778)

Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries

Women wore plumes at the court of Charlotte, Queen Consort of George III. The January 1810 La Belle Assemblée reports that the Duchess of Leeds headdress was a "Caledonian cap of crimson velvet, diamonds, and ostrich feathers." Charles Lamb's 1809 Book Explaining the Ranks and Dignities of British Society. says, "Feathers are not reckoned a necessary part of a court dress; but young ladies very seldom go without them, and they are supposed to be under dressed if they do."

The Lady’s Magazine mentions the headdress worn by the Countess of Carlisle in January 1809: "Head-dress, ruby turban, jewels, and feathers." Every illustration on "Court Dresses, Overview" in Candice Hern's blog Regency World — and they are all tinted fashion plates — shows a woman wearing plumes. Most of the plumes on this page are white, but one plate from March 1806 shows plumes dyed to match the dress, and most of the drawings show a few feathers (perhaps 3) but one plate from July 1820 has a positive efflorescence of plumes in the headdress.

Victorian Era

The three white plumes so like the Prince of Wales's feathers were not universal in early June 1853 at the first Queen's drawing room of the year. Many but not all of the women present did wear white plumes, and not all the plumes were white.

What was first fashionable and then de rigueur at court evolved and then reified by the end of the 19th century. First published in 1893, Lady Colin Campbell's Manners and Rules of Good Society (1911 edition) says that

It was compulsory for both Married and Unmarried Ladies to Wear Plumes. The married lady’s Court plume consisted of three white feathers. An unmarried lady’s of two white feathers. The three white feathers should be mounted as a Prince of Wales plume and worn towards the left hand side of the head. Colored feathers may not be worn. In deep mourning, white feathers must be worn, black feathers are inadmissible.

White veils or lace lappets must be worn with the feathers. The veils should not be longer than 45 inches.

In Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce, Sarah Abrevaya Stein says, "Ostrich feathers were valuable commodities at the beginning of the twentieth century, their value per pound almost equal to that of diamonds." Stein says, "Ostrich feathers could be found wherever there were arbiters of style: a consignment of £20,000 worth of the plumes was even lost" when Titanic sank. (780) When ostrich feathers first became popular in the west, the birds were hunted and killed for their plumage, but by the end of the 19th century they were farmed and the plumes plucked.

The labor force was in some cases highly skilled and specialized:

London acquired the monopoly on European ostrich feather auctions in 1876, just as the feather market — and London's merchant house economy — was expanding. ... At about the same time, London was absorbing roughly 15,000 Eastern European Jewish immigrants: men, women, girls, and boys who furnished a bountiful labor market to the feather trade. ... Due in great part to this influx of immigrants, Jews quickly proved well represented in all tiers of the supply side of Britain's feather industry. Jewish girls and women were the principal unskilled, semiskilled, and skilled workers to staff the hundreds of feather manufactories that dotted London's East End, and Jewish men were well represented among ostrich feather dealers and manufacturers in the British capital, constituting, in 1883, 57 percent and 43 percent of these occupational niches, respectively.

The labor force associated with ostrich plumes was largely "immigrant Jewish women and girls who had experience in the needle trades. Workers suffered poor wages and were often subject to the abuse of their rights by employers." Before the 20th century, this industry was "concentrated in a one-mile radius from the City of London into the East End. In particular, around the Barbican, Aldersgate, London Wall, Jewin Street, Cripplegate, Bartholomew Close, and the Fenchurch Street area."

Post-Edwardian Era

Besides people working in the ostrich-feather industry itself, milliners also needed the skills for working with the plumes. From the immediately post-Edwardian era, this book addresses not the plumes worn at court but attached to the hats of the fashionable:

Prince of Wales feathers ... consist of three small ostrich feathers, one placed high in the center and the other two placed just below, so that the flues of the two lowest feathers will cover the stem of the one at the top. They are frequently referred to as the Prince de Galles. The Prince of Wales tips are used for trimming hats for the mature woman and are quite frequently separated and used to encircle the crown of a wide-brimmed hat for a younger woman. In case they are used in this manner the wire items should be cut off and the back of the feather sewed firmly to the hat. Small feathers that are attached to the side crown of the hat should be sewed on with silk floss matching the feather in color. Sew over the stem but not through it, so that, / after the entire hat is trimmed, each feather may be twisted and turned to its proper position.

The Crash

The market for ostrich plumes rose and fell several times: two years in which the plumes were not fashionable were 1885 and 1913. The fashion for prior years had used plumes and feathers of other birds to "excess," as the 6 January 1886 Pall Mall Gazette put it. The Plumage League was founded in 1885, "a predecessor of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds."

Stein says,

1913 proved a peak year for feather sales, but their popularity was not to endure long: feathers would soon be rejected by consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. This shift in taste was at one aesthetic, political, and economic. It was prompted by several related factors: the success of the antiplumage and bird protection movement; an emerging sense of austerity in women's fashion catalyzed, in part, by the outbreak of the First World War; and the extensive oversupply of ostrich plumes. (802)

Questions about Ostrich Plumes and the Prince of Wales's Feathers

1. At some point, women being presented at court were expected to wear a headdress with 3 white ostrich-feather plumes. When did this occur?
2. At some point, did the court style of the feathered headdress became associated with the Prince of Wales' heraldic badge of the three ostrich-feather plumes?

Paper and Writing Tools

• Writing set
• Paper cutter or knife
• Pen knife
• Paper cases, containers or cabinets
• Ink bottle
• Inkstand
• Pen wiper
• Blotting book
• Paper weight
• Paper clip (given one at a time)

Phonograph, Gramophone, etc.

In "England in 1903, gramophone distinctly meant the Berliner-Gramophon & Typewriter disc machine, while cyclinder [sic] machines were known as phonographs or graphophones." (Baring-Gould II 745, n. 15).

Bram Stoker's Dracula has a phonograph that Dr. Seward speaks into, inscribing his patient notes onto wax cylinders, which Dracula himself throws into the fire.

See also Electrophone.

Photography

• Daguerrotype
• Frames for photographs were common wedding gifts, and in the lists of gifts, reporters are likely to use the term photo as well as photograph frame.
• Many of the photographs of Queen Victoria have completely black or completely white areas because getting the right exposure that would clarify the detail in both the black and the white at the same time must have been very difficult. She wore black, sometimes with small touches of white, forcing even professional photographers like Bassanno to choose to expose one correctly but not the other. And possibly the photographic technology at the time contributed to the difficulty.

Photographers

Important society photographers at the end of the 19th century included

• Lafayette, Ltd., the firm headed by James Stack Lauder and that set up a studio in the garden of Devonshire House in London at the 2 July 1897 fancy-dress ball and photographed the guests, although some guests had photographic portraits taken by other photographers either before or after the ball.
• Alexander Bassanno

Many of these society photographers made and sold cartes de visite and, later, cabinet cards of celebrities, "professional beauties," and so on.

Carte de Visite

Most popular between the early 1850s and the 1870s, the carte de visite was patented in 1854 but begun to be used in 1851. They were the size of a "formal visiting card[,] about 4½ x 2½ inches (11.4 x 6.3 cm) and had a photograph ("an albumen print from a collodion negative") pasted onto the card. They quickly spread world wide. They were popular put into albums for display.

People collected images of celebrities and traded their own images with friends and colleagues.

They were replaced in the 1870s by tintypes and cabinet cards.

Cabinet Card

Cabinet cards replaced cartes de visite, were larger (4¹⁄₄ by 6¹⁄₂ inches) and at the beginning were mostly used in landscape mode. Their larger size were better for displaying in cabinets. In the U.S. photographer Matthew Brady called his photographs of the Civil War in this format Imperial Carte-de-Visite. They lasted until the 1920s and saw several important changes in photographic technologies.

Some cabinet card images from the 1890s have the appearance of a black-and-white photograph in contrast to the distinctive sepia toning notable in the albumen print process. These photographs have a neutral image tone and were most likely produced on a matte collodion, gelatin or gelatin bromide paper.

The larger format made undesirable elements in photographs more obvious, and so photographers began at this time to hire artists to retouch the negatives to improve how the subjects of the photographs looked.

The decline of cabinet cards is really due to the desire for more candid shots and the introduction of the Kodak Box Brownie, which made getting pictures much easier for amateur photographers.

Also see Visits and Calls, below.

Police Business

Francis Galton gave a paper "to the British Association … on Finger-prints and the Detection of Crime in India. Galton's method was examined by a committee appointed by Asquith in 1894. … Finger-prints as a means of detecting criminals were first used by Sir William Herschel of the I.C.S. in the district of Hooghli, in Bengal. They were recognized as superior to Bertillon's anthropometry, and were recommended for all India in a report of 1896." (Baring-Gould II 425, n. 9, quoting Vernon Rendall). Fingerprinting was adopted by Scotland Yard ikn 1901 (Baring-Gould II 425, n. 9).

Retailers

• Edouard Henry Dreyfous
• Worth, of Paris

Edouard Henry Dreyfous

A "retailer of fine antique furniture and objets d’art with establishments in London (Mayfair), Paris and New York[, Dreyfous] was active in the late 19th century, from 1880, through early in the 20th century." Born in France, "Dreyfous called London his home and sold fine furnishings and objets d'art." He held a Royal Warrant (in the early 20th century at least), and his "main clientele were some of the richest, most affluent and influential people from around the world, including Royalty," like Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary.

Three gifts identified as having come from Dreyfous were given to Lady Helen Stewart at her 1902 marriage to Lord Stavordale, a green leather blotter apparently bought from Dreyfous as well as 2 trays.

Sequins and Spangles

Sequins have holes in the center and spangles at the top; paillettes are large and flat.

Sequins themselves have a long history and were probably mass-produced by the end of the 19th century. The silver ones like the ones used in the Duchess of Devonshire's costume in 1897 were useful in garments worn only once because they would have tarnished, turning black and dull.

Sequins in one form or another have been used to decorate clothing, especially for the elite, for millennia (dating back to the Egyptians, discovered during and popularized by the opening of King Tutenkhamen's tomb in 1922).

Telephone and Telegraph

"The telegram rate to France of twopence a word was introduced in 1889 and continued until 1920, when it changed to twopence halfpenny; the rate to Switzerland at the time was threepence a word (it dropped to twopence halfpenny in 1909 but reverted to threepence in 1926)." (Baring-Gould II 658, n. 6, quoting Kaser).

In 1892 the Louth and North Lincolnshire Advertiser says,

It is now possible to cable to New York and obtain an answer back in four minutes.

Telephone

1878 January 14: Alexander Graham Bell himself demonstrated the telephone for Queen Victoria:

After dinner,’ she told her journal on 14 January 1878, ‘we went to the Council Room & saw the Telephone. A Professor Bell explained the whole process, which is most extraordinary. It had been put in communication with Osborne Cottage, & we talked with Sir Thomas & Mary Biddulph, also heard some singing quite plainly. But it is rather faint, & one must hold the tube close to one’s ear.’ The nervous inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, did not impress her, however. ‘The man, who was very pompous, kept calling Arthur Lord Connaught! [her son the Duke of Connaught] which amused us very much.’ A telephone line from Cowes to the post room at Osborne was installed in 1885.

1892: Similar to the way in which a telephone was used in one of Gilbert and Sullivan's productions, the Royal Society used a telephone in 1892, at one of their "conversaziones," which is what they called it when women were taking part:

The ladies' conversazione was held at the Royal Society on Wednesday, the 15th, when the President and Lady Kelvin received a large and distinguished company, including the Earl of Ducie, Lord Cottesloe, Sir John Conroy, Prof. and Mrs. Sidgwick, the Master of Pembroke, Mr. Bryce, M.P., Sir Bernhard Samuelson, M.P., and Lord Basing. A great attraction was the Telephonic Company's installation, by which the sounds of "Salammbo" were conveyed from the Paris Opera.

Electrophone

1896 May 11, Monday:

An electrophone has been installed at Marlborough House, whereby the Prince of Wales and family on Monday listened to the Drury Lane opera and selections from other pieces in various London theatres.

Typewriter

Typewriter Manufacturers

• Berliner-Gramophon & Typewriter
• Remington

Writers and Their Typewriters

W. B. Yeats

Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" on a typewriter? In these comments, a typewriter is a person, not a machine:

• letter WBY to Lady Gregory, 10 April 1902, from 18 Woburn Bldgs: "I am working at my novel — dictating to a typewriter. I dictated 2000 words in an hour and ten minutes yesterday — and go on again tomorrow. This dictation is really a discovery" (Wade 370).
• letter WBY to Lady Gregory, 3 April 1905, from 8 Cavendish Row, Dublin: "You will be sorry to hear that I have just dictated a rough draft of a new Grania second act to Moore's typewriter" (Wade 368).

Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes

• "I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the 'e's' slurred and the 'r's' tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well" (in "A Case of Identity," Baring-Gould I 414).
• "'And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr. Windibank,' Homes continued. 'I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the "e's" slurred and the "r's" tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well.'" (Baring-Gould I 414) [September 1891]
• G. Lestrade sends Holmes a typescript of a statement dictated to the police, "taken down, just as he made it, by our shorthand man. We had three copies typewritten, one of which I enclose" (in "The Cardboard Box," January 1893, in Baring-Gould II 204).
• Laura Lyons in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 "The Hound of the Baskervilles" has "a typewriting business," and when Watson visits her, she is "sitting before a Remington typewriter" (Baring-Gould II 74).

"'In … the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (November-December, 1947) there appears a review of an article in the Police Journal, the title of which is "Identification of Typewriting," reputedly by one George McLean,' Mr. Archibald Hart wrote in 'The Effects of Trades Upon Hands.' 'Is it not apparent that some hoarder of the only existent copies of all of Holmes' brochures is now releasing them one by one under false authorships? 'McLean' urges us to note the peculiarities of each typed character, the vertical and horizontal alignment, the side impressions of each character, and the shortening of the serifs in P, D, B, and H, and the diacritic in the letter T.'" (Baring-Gould I 415, n. 28).

Teddy Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to use a typewriter.

Victorian Fiction with Typewriters

From a discussion on the Victoria listserv, January 2021; my thanks to the contributors to the thread "Victorian Fiction about Typewriters or Typed Letters."

• Allen, Grant. Miss Cayley's Adventures.
  • “The Adventure of the Urbane Old Gentlemen” (16.91, August 1898): 201–212.
  • “The Adventure of the Unprofessional Detective” (17.98, February 1899): 191–201.
  • “The Adventure of the Cross-Eyed Q.C.” (16.96, December 1898): 688–698.
• Allen, Grant. The Type-Writer Girl. (1897)
• Bangs, John Kendrick. The Enchanted Typewriter. (Harper & Brothers, 1899)
• Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Shuttle. (1906
• Cape, Bernard. "Poor Lucy Rivers" (1906 collection, periodical publication earlier)
• Doyle, Arthur Conan. "The Adventure of A Case of Identity."
• Gallon, Tom. The Girl Behind the Keys. Hutchinson & Co. (1903.
• Gissing, George. The Odd Women
• Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Secondary Sources on Typewriters

• Gardey, Delphine (2001). Le dactylographe et l’expéditionnaire: Histoire des employés de bureau, 1890–1930. Histoire et Société: Modernités. Ed by Louis Bergeron and Patrice Bourdelais. Paris: Berlin, 2001.
• Keep, Christopher. “The Introduction of the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer, 1874.″ BRANCH (http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=christopher-keep-the-introduction-of-the-sholes-glidden-type-writer-1874).
• Price, Leah, and Pamela Thurschwell, eds. Literary Secretaries / Secretarial Culture. Routledge, 2005.
• Thurschwell, Pamela. Chapter on typewriters. Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Wanggren, Lena. "Typewriters and Typists: Secretarial Agency at the Fin de Siècle," Chapter 3 in her Gender, Technology and the New Woman (Edinburgh University Press).
• Young, Arlene. “The Rise of the Victorian Working Lady: The New-Style Nurse and the Typewriter, 1840-1900″ BRANCH (http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=arlene-young-the-rise-of-the-victorian-working-lady-the-new-style-nurse-and-the-typewriter-1840-1900)

Visiting and Calls

Calling Cards

From Victoriana.com Study Center, "Fashions in Calling Cards (for Gentlemen) from Harper's Bazaar (C.1868)":

"Visiting cards for the coming season are of unglazed card board, large and almost square. Tinted cards, especially buff, are fashionable. The lettering is in old English text, or in script. The expense of fifty cards is $3.50.

One corner of the card is turned down to denote the object of the visit. In different cities a different signification is attached to these broken cards. We give the custom of New York society. On the left hand upper corner the word Visite is engraved on the reverse side. This corner is turned downed, displaying the word on the front of the card to signify that an ordinary call is made. On the right hand corner is Felicitation, to be used when making a visit of congratulation on some happy event, such as a marriage, or the birth of a child. On the left lower side is Conge, or Good-by. The remaining corner is marked Condolence." (http://www.victoriana.com/library/ccard.html)

E-bay had some silver cases, with chain handle, for carrying visiting cards.

Visiting and Calls

Also see Cartes de Visite in Photography.

Judge Brack's early calls on the Tesmans in Hedda Gabler are daring and aggressive. According to Sally Mitchell, "morning calls" occurred between 3:00 and 5:00 P.M. "Morning," used in an expression like morning dress or morning coat, meant something like "daytime," the opposite of evening. Unless the calls were to acknowledge some event like a wedding, when they were likely to be no more than fifteen minutes, calls typically ran twenty minutes to half an hour. Judge Brack arrives early in the morning, as early as 7:30, even after a death in the family, which seems clearly indecent.

Food was not likely to be served.

??? says it is proper to make morning calls no earlier than 11:00 A.M., though for many morning calls properly began at noon.

Mrs. Beeton discusses calls, as well.

Daniel Poole says,

If you were not well acquainted with the callee, you made your call between three and four o'clock. If you were somewhat better acquainted, between four and five, and a good friend received you between five and six. ... Certainly, no one but a great intimate would presume to actually call in the real morning, i.e., before one o'clock. (68-69)

Works Cited

• Simons, Larry. "More on Bathing Machines." Posting to Savoynet 22 December 2002.
• Speranza, J. L. "Something between a Large Bathing-machine." Posting to Savoynet 22 December 2002.