26Victorian Chatelaine
Many Victorian women used to wear utility belts in which they kept all their handy tools. It was called a chatelaine and was the women’s equivalent of a Swiss army knife.
27. During Victorian times, ice cream was sold in small quantities called a 'penny lick,' wherein a small amount of ice cream was placed onto a licking glass. The customer would then lick clean the glass and return it. It was banned due to concerns about spreading diseases, particularly cholera and tuberculosis, as the glass was not washed between customers.
28. During the Victorian Era, photographs required nearly half a minute of exposure. Therefore mothers who wanted a portrait of their children, had to disguise themselves as chairs, couches, and curtains to hold them still.
29. One of the most popular street foods sold during the Victorian English winters were baked potatoes, which were used both as food and as hand warmers. London street vendors alone sold 10 tons of potatoes every day from cans and small metal boxes on four legs which were fueled by charcoal.
30. Victorian era saw many innovative water contraptions which were designed to cure all kinds of ailments and this fad even had its own alt-medicine magazines like the “Water-Cure Journal.” One such innovation was the rocking bathtub, which could be sloshed back and forth to recreate the feeling of the ocean in one’s home.
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31Mrs. Beeton's Household Book
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management was published in 1861. It is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain. It recommends boiling pasta for an hour and 45 minutes and states that potatoes are "suspicious; a great many are narcotic, and many are deleterious."
32. During the Victorian Era, doctors often prescribed men to grow beards to keep themselves healthy and filter out the coal-heavy London air. This solution though may have actually made their problems worse by trapping pollutants in their beards.
33. During the Victorian Era, "female hysteria" was a catchall term for many feelings of malaise, including when a woman was horny. Doctors "treated" the ailment by masturbating the women until they reached "hysterical paroxysm," or as we call it today, an orgasm.
34. As moustaches flourished during the Victorian era, men found it hard to sip tea without staining their moustaches. Special moustache cups were thus invented and it spread to markets all over the Europe. It had a special ledge inside it, which protected a tea drinker’s mustache from getting dunked in the tea.
35. During Victorian times, death portraiture became increasingly popular in England. Families used to take one last photo with their dead children before they were buried. Due the long exposure time that the early photographic equipment required, the dead were often seen more sharply than the slightly blurred living, because of their lack of movement.
