[MUSIC PLAYING] During the Victorian era,
there was no radio, television, movies, or video games. But people obviously
still had free time, and they needed
ways to spend it. The Victorians were remarkably
creative in finding ways to spend their free
time, some of which would definitely seem strange
to modern sensibilities. Sure, there were books by the
likes of HG Wells, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte
Bronte to read, but few could survive
on reading alone. So today, we're
going to take a look at how people in the Victorian
era spent their free time. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel, and let us
know in the comments below what other aspects of Victorian life
you would like to hear about. OK. So let's use your
free time to look at how others spent theirs. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today, we tend to see cemeteries
as quiet, somber, and creepy places. But the Victorians saw
them as the choice spot to enjoy a picnic. The trend of picnicking
in cemeteries became so popular, that by
the end of the 19th century, they actually had to
create regulations to prohibit refreshments
on the grounds. The cemetery picnic fad came
about for a few reasons. For one thing, there was a
tragically high mortality rate among women and children
during the Victorian era, meaning cemeteries were a
place for family members to be close to a loved
one that had unexpectedly or recently passed. For another, there was also
a lack of public parks, making cemeteries one of the
few spaces with plenty of lawn to spread out on. In Victorian times,
public cemeteries were designed to
look like gardens, unlike the more solemn
church cemeteries that are almost ubiquitous today. [MUSIC PLAYING] The Victorian obsession
with the afterlife also spilled over into
other areas of their lives. As interest grew in the
study of science and nature, Victorians became
increasingly into taxidermy. Stuffing a dead animal. Yeah, Friday night fun time. Taxidermy had been
invented only a century before the Victorian era,
and early examples usually just left the animals
looking pretty bad. But at the first
World's Fair in London, German taxidermist
Hermann Ploucquet displayed his massive collection
of lifelike, anthropomorphized taxidermy to eager crowds. The various tableaus he
created included a schoolhouse full of rabbits, singing cats,
and ice skating hedgehogs. If you're thinking those sound
like the Victorian equivalent of a Disney movie,
then you'll probably find it interesting to note that
author Lewis Carroll studied Ploucquet's exhibits prior to
publishing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. Ploucquet's taxidermy was one
of the most visited exhibitions at the 1851 World's Fair,
and it was even a favorite of Queen Victoria herself. [MUSIC PLAYING] With loved ones often
perishing unexpectedly, Victorians developed
different ways to keep the memories of
their dearly departed alive. One example of
this was the trend of turning the hair of a
deceased person into jewelry. A husband might have a lock
of his wife's hair, who had passed in childbirth,
turned into a watch fob. Women regularly wore
rings, necklaces, and brooches containing
the hair of a child or close relative
who had passed. The Victorians even collected
locks of hair for scrapbooks. Although turning
hair into jewelry fell out of fashion
by the mid1920s, the Morbid Anatomy
Museum in Brooklyn offered a hair making class
within the last decade. There's even a Victorian
hair museum in Missouri that's open to the public. [MUSIC PLAYING] Victorians were enthralled with
physical and medical anomalies. While freak shows had
existed since the 1600s, the industry grew in
the mid19th century and spawned stars
with outlandish names, like Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced
Boy and Alice Bounds. PT Barnum was perhaps the most
successful at commercializing the freak show. He blew the whole
thing up by crafting elaborate, typically
exaggerated, stories about the stars in his show. Despite the strong
class distinctions of the Victorian era, people
from all walks of life attended freak shows as
a form of entertainment. One of the most famous freak
show stars, General Tom Thumb, even performed for Queen
Victoria and Abraham Lincoln. However, the demand
for these shows drastically declined
after the Victorian era. Journalists broke
countless stories about the mistreatment
of freak show performers, and the public moved on to
other forms of entertainment. [MUSIC PLAYING] Family outings in
the 21st century typically involve
trips to places like the beach or Cedar Point. But for Victorians,
nothing beat a morgue when it came to
sheer entertainment. Spurred on by newspaper accounts
that graphically described unidentified cadavers, and
obsessed with the great beyond, people would rush to
the morgue to view them. The Paris morgue
was particularly popular throughout
the Victorian era, and one of the city's
greatest tourist attractions at the time. The building was
designed to accommodate large groups of people in
order to quickly identify cadavers, which resulted in
hordes of people gathering to view them. When a child's remains
were discovered in Paris with just a bruise on her
hand, over 150,000 people came to view her after the
story was sensationalized by local papers. In some way, this
trend could be seen as an early version of the
true crime entertainment genre, that seemingly
everybody in America is currently
watching on Netflix, or a podcast they're
listening to. The Victorians were the first,
and they were definitely into some dark subject matter. [MUSIC PLAYING] Keeping on the dark theme,
despite the grandeur of the Victorian
era, everyday life was often consumed
by disease and death. Without modern medicine,
a woman could easily perish in childbirth,
and a child could succumb to illnesses
like scarlet fever and rubella. Some children passed
at such a young age that they never even had their
photograph taken, at least not while they were alive. For these reasons,
death photography became popular as a way to
hold onto the memory of a loved one taken too soon. In some cases, the
person would be photographed lying
in bed so that they appeared to be sleeping. Some photographers
even went as far as to paint eyes onto
the deceased's eyelids to make them appear awake. In the case of a
young child's passing, the parents often
took a family portrait that included the child
and their living siblings. As it became cheaper and more
accessible to take photographs, and as medical care
improved, the art of postmortem photography
was left behind. Many such photos still
exist and you can find them with an internet search. Though, we advise caution if
you're easily creeped out. [MUSIC PLAYING] As if these Victorians didn't
consume the macabre enough, early in the Victorian
era, spiritualism became a popular
movement for those dealing with the grief of
departed family members. As you might expect, this
led to an increasing number of people claiming
to be mediums, who could help the living
communicate directly with the departed
through seances. Spiritualism was embraced by
the upper class, including prominent members of society,
such as Queen Victoria, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle. During seances, mediums
would go into trances, and even appear to levitate
while communicating with the spirits. Participants would also
witness furniture moving, and hear phantom
rappings, which are the alleged sounds of
ghosts banging on things, and not the spirits of dead
hip hop stars dropping rhymes. Perhaps the most famous
spiritualists at the time were the Fox sisters. When they were adolescents,
Maggie and Katie Fox claimed to contact the
spirit of a man who had died in their home
in upstate New York. After going to live with
their older sister, Leah, the three Foxes all
showed psychic abilities and began touring the
country as mediums. The sisters were
incredibly successful until Maggie publicly confessed
that their seances were a hoax. She demonstrated
to an audience how she could make phantom rappings
with her toes, knuckles, and other joints. She also said that
the atmosphere created during seances caused many
people to experience things that did not actually exist. While Maggie later
recanted her statement, it was a permanent stain on
the spiritualist movement. [MUSIC PLAYING] Victorians were limited in
the types of entertainment available to them. And most of it
was pretty creepy. But they were as eager to
escape the turmoil of daily life as many people today. To help give themselves
that feeling of freedom, many enjoyed dressing in
costume and posing in vignettes for friends and family. Derived from tableau
vivant, or living picture, these vignettes would depict
famous works of art or events in history. If the family had
money, they would pay to have the vignette
professionally photographed. As technology
advanced, vignettes could be recorded
and then played back using a series of slides,
music, and live narration. They were essentially the
precursor to motion pictures. Vignettes gave the
Victorians a place to express their
creative sides, as well as embrace their love of art,
history, and fairy tales. It's kind of like
cosplay before Comic-Con. [MUSIC PLAYING] The Victorians combined their
interest in science and art through the creation
of miniature artworks, known as diatom
arrangements, that were invisible to the unaided eye. Diatoms are microscopic
pieces of algae that can be arranged
on glass slides, in an endless variety of
intricate geometric patterns. Diatom art pieces had
to be magnified in order to be appreciated,
as they could easily fit inside the period at
the end of this sentence. Due to the time and
expertise needed to create these
strange pieces of art, they were generally
only owned by members of the upper class who had
an interest in the naturalist movement. Other variations of
diatom art included microscopic arrangements of
butterfly and insect scales. [MUSIC PLAYING] Despite the very public
way that Victorians dealt with passing on,
they were still Victorians, so they were extremely reserved
about showing emotions. In many cases, especially
in romantic endeavors, Victorians used flowers
as an elaborate way to send messages of affection,
disdain, and even danger. The practice grew so popular
that books were published on the language of
flowers, so people would know the right flower to
send depending on the occasion or message. A red rose signified
romantic desire, while yellow roses were given
or worn as a sign of friendship. Mix up the two and you could
have an awkward situation on your hands. We've all been there. If a man gave a
woman a red rose, she could then respond by
sending back a yellow carnation to indicate she was not
interested in the suitor, or for some reason, straw
to indicate mutual feelings. Flowers also held significant
meaning outside of courtship. For example, rosemary was given
in remembrance of a loved one, while rhododendrons were sent
to warn of impending danger. [MUSIC PLAYING] Wealthy Victorians loved
to bring the natural world into their homes, though perhaps
in less than natural ways. Scrapbooking was a
common hobby for women who spent much of
their times indoors, and some used seaweed as a
focal point in the scrapbook. Apparently, the rich greens
and reds of the seaweed could be quite striking, and
it became a popular trend. It's reported that even Queen
Victoria had her own seaweed scrapbook during childhood. In some cases, seaweed
was displayed on top of a decorative lace doily. But some women went as
far as writing their name in seaweed on the front
page of their scrapbook. Someone might even write a poem
from the seaweed's perspective. If that sounds fun to you, feel
free to leave your own poem in the comments below. So what do you think? What Victorian era
activity sounds fun to you? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History. [MUSIC PLAYING]
