Top 10 Disturbing Facts About Victorian England

think you know your Victorian history think again welcome to watchmojo.com 10 most disturbing facts about Victorian England the treatment they received was primitive physical exercise for therapy and opium for sedation before we begin we publish new content every day so be sure to subscribe to our Channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos for this video we've added the annals of history and heritage to save you some of the most shocking eye watering and downright disturbing facts about Victorian England insert this till the statins crush and then later you piss the bits out number 10 filthy streets no matter how factually accurate a film or TV show set in the Victorian era claims to be chances are it'll never show his main characters wading through heaps of horse manure but that was the reality for a lot of people with hundreds of thousands of horses in London alone and young children hides a scoop up the dung as best as they could the problem proved perpetually hard to beat as the streets were also covered in mud and litter you can only imagine the smell and the sheer horror that walking from one place to another must have triggered Noma 9 meets face masks people have done and still do some crazy things in the name of beauty and in Victorian times Beauty regimes were not for the faint of heart strange face masks were a typical part of skin care routines aiming to maintain a person's complexion and keep their youthful looks one mask force the users face to sweat throughout the night another claimed to let poisonous gases out but weirdest of all some wearers would willingly strap raw meat to their face even if it didn't restore your youthful skin is certainly turned heads number eight grave diggers graveyards were kind of cramped in Victorian times and because so many people were often buried in one place the most recently buried could be only inches from the ground above the offices Hart Band Baaja frost is all and since they were so easy to get to grave diggers were often tasked with digging up the bodies and pinching possessions even going so far as to break down the coffin and sell it on as firewood grave digging was an accepted fact too with diggers regularly discarding unwanted bones around the burial site they just pilfered they weren't known for being polite clearly number seven wick houses a more infamous fact than others those in the Victorian era without jobs or a place to live could be housed in warehouses there along with orphan children and anyone deemed physically or mentally ill they lived in horrible conditions and were forced to work harsh jumps for long hours and while some film adaptations of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist do make light of the ruthless reality living in these places was definitely not a song-and-dance and despite various Reformation to existing poor laws the houses proved little more than prisons number six surgery the thoughts of having surgery can make a lot of us feel uncomfortable one cat but be thankful for modern medicine because Victorian surgery was hellish in comparison first off there was usually a bunch of students over sink but bringing all kinds of dirt and germs to the operating table as nothing was sterilized but waste of all without the invention of anaesthetic until the mid eighteen hundreds procedures were as quick as possible but seriously painful is it going well he's just in time to see Robocop dr. Hendrix leg and even though major operations sometimes took less than a minute to execute the brutal nature of surgery meant that the chances of making our life were slim number five of the racist English gentleman by day the stereotypical Victorian gentleman seemed an upstanding sorts pursuing worthwhile professions in law medicine and politics but many also gathered for evening groups like the cannibal Club to indulge some outlandish beliefs in the cannibal club's case they didn't actually live up to their name but they did encourage widespread racism based on the idea that some humans had more superior ancient ancestors than others and that they should be lauded in the present they also believed that you could deduce whether someone was a criminal by measuring their skull which says a lot really here here and here number four child labor a child's childhood throughout the 1800s was quite different to what we might expect today wealthy children were predominately raised by a nanny while children in poorer families were typically sent out to work as early as possible even at ages four or five and especially once the Industrial Revolution kicked in fully as such a lot of kids didn't receive much of an education instead spending their time employed in dangerous factories down equally dangerous mines or as chimney sweeps the list goes on the death rate was alarmingly high meaning life expectancy was despairingly low don't take modern life for granted kids now get off your fortnight number three death photography as we've already seen the Victorians are well remembered for the more macabre elements of their society the newfangled art of photography wasn't particularly common back then but they did enjoy a nice family portrait if they could afford it gentlemen jeez only a lot of these snapshots were taken after someone had died and the recently deceased would actually be in the picture looks like death photography proved an essentially gruesome cultural trend wearing dead bodies were posed and made to look like they were still alive with their eyes either propped open or painted on afterwards you're creeped out yet number two female hysteria and it's time before the women's rights movement gathered serious pace during the late 1800s if every Victorian woman acted in a way unexpectedly or showed any form of dissatisfaction they were diagnosed with female hysteria I've been having those distracting thoughts we discussed all week yes doctors argued that the stress of female life caused it and the grounds for diagnosis was so broad that one physician wrote a 75-page list of possible symptoms the treatment was equally as insane female hysteria sufferers could be kept in mental hospitals given a hysterectomy or they might receive a pelvic massage from their doctor supposedly to speed up recovery same time tomorrow I should say moderation in all things mrs. Parsons moderation in all things number one contaminated food clearly Victorian England wasn't the cleanest of times rivers were often thick with sewage which meant filthy drinking water leading lots of people including children to drink beer instead because it was cleaner stay away from the water it is the King returned but contaminated food was an even bigger issue chalk was used to make bread whiter boric acid was added to milk to dull the sour taste and arsenic was found in far more food products than it should have been [Music] traders often added inedible ingredients to make food cheaper to buy and more profitable to sell essentially every meal posed a massive risk it's a wonder anyone survived really do you agree with our picks check out these other great clips from WatchMojo UK and subscribe for more great content

Channel: WatchMojoUK

Views: 421,299

Rating: 4.690805 out of 5

Keywords: Victorian, History, Victorian history, Victorian times, Victorian era, Queen Victoria, British history, British empire, British monarchy, British queen, Industrial Revolution, Life in Victorian, Olden times, Antique, Victorian tradition, Victorian building, Weird, Bizarre, Unusual, Top 10, Watch Mojo, WatchMojo, WMUK

Id: 42-EeSkZ3hU

Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 07 2018