The Victorian era saw the advent
of numerous political reforms, social changes, and the world's
first Industrial Revolution. However, the Victorians had
some other, stranger customs whose common observance
died out long ago. These weird bits of etiquette
range from the mostly harmless, to the straight up appalling. And they paint a
pretty clear picture about how far the
Victorians were willing to go in the name of
what they considered decorum. Today we're going to take
a look at the weirdest bits of Victorian etiquette
you won't believe people actually observed. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History Channel, and let us
know in the comments below what other Victorian-era stories
you would like to hear about. OK, everyone please be
on their best behavior. It's time for some
etiquette lessons. [MUSIC PLAYING] Throughout history,
aphrodisiacs that can make one person
lust after another have been highly
sought after, similarly in demand where
anaphrodisiacs, or substances that would curtail that
same libidinous energy. And in the 19th century,
cornflakes or more specifically, Kellogg's
brand cornflakes were considered a must eat item
for those looking to suppress their natural, well, horniness. What seems like the oddest
marketing choice in history, John Harvey Kellogg
himself described the famously wholesome
breakfast cereal as a healthy, ready to eat,
anti-masturbatory morning meal. With that established
in the public mind, it became good form
for well-bred gentlemen to be seen consuming it. Seriously, we are
not making this up. This bizarre state of
events was premised on the then-popular
understanding that lascivious foods
bred lascivious habits. If I know you, and
I think I do, you're probably eager to find
out which foods they considered the lascivious ones. The answer is basically
anything spicy or excessively rich and flavorful. This includes items like
curry and heavy French sauces, among many, many others. Anyway, Kellogg
probably wasn't the guy to be going to for
advice on these matters. He was the kind of man who
counseled young girls to douse their privates
with carbolic acid in order to burn
off their desire, and cornflakes obviously had
no effect on their libido. Fruit Loops, on the other hand. Voluptuous women with curves
have been popular in many eras, and the Victorian
era was one of them. This preference notwithstanding,
the well-bred and fashion conscious ladies
of the day still made efforts to slim themselves
down where they could. In modern times, if
you want to lose weight most doctors would tell you to
make adjustments to your diet, and level of exercise. In Victorian times,
however, they would just wait to
swallow a giant tapeworm, and wait for it to devour
their fat from the inside out. The procedure, which sounds a
bit like a Lovecraftian ritual, is to put it mildly, utterly
terrifying and gross. It starts by taking a pill
that contains a tapeworm egg. The egg eventually hatches
and the parasite then grows inside of the
host body, ingesting whatever the host eats. This, in theory,
allows the dieter to shed excess pounds
without ever having to worry about their caloric intake. But that's not all. There's more to this
alien face grabber story. The tapeworm larvae
were also believed to help women cultivate
proper table manners, since a woman with a
tapeworm in her gut would never rise
hungry from the table, yet she would continue
losing weight. Weight loss and free
etiquette lessons and all for the low-low price of
implanting a living parasite in your intestines. It sounds like a deal. [MUSIC PLAYING] In Victorian times, as
much as in modern ones, everyone loved a
beautiful smile. But while modern folks
enhance their pearly whites through advanced
dental care, Victorians would simply find a dead
person with nice teeth, and then harvest them
from the cadaver. Why let a good smile
go to waste, right? These second-hand chompers
often looked quite good, but they weren't
without their drawbacks, especially when they came from
questionable donors, which was often the case. Teeth might be taken
from exude bodies, executed prisoners, dentists'
patients, and even sometimes from animals. This meant they were
often rotten, worn down, or caked with syphilis. Young, healthy
teeth could also be acquired by pillaging them
from bodies left behind on battlefields. And we think veterans
care is lacking today. [MUSIC PLAYING] Nobody dreams of being trapped
in a loveless marriage where listless, passionless
sex is the norm. But in Victorian times, they
thought there was more at stake than mere emotional unhappiness. It was actually believe
that any sex that wasn't founded in true
love would produce ugly, spiritless offspring. Those who wanted good
looking, energetic kids were warned not to have
sex that was faintly or drowsy performed. So much for the bar scene. It was also thought
that making love on a flight of stairs
was a bad idea, because, according to the Daily
Mail, of child that was begat upon a
set of stairs is most likely to be born
with a crooked back, and give in no small way
to the fault of staring. So conceive on the
stairs, and your child will have a staring problem. [RINGING] I see what you're saying, but
they are homonyms, people. They mean totally
different things. Those are two different stairs. Once again, we are not
making this stuff up. Anyway, the sum total of
Victorian wisdom on the topic basically states that if you
want good-looking kids who aren't great at
staring contests, you should crush it
on a flat surface. [MUSIC PLAYING] Modern folks try to keep
a youthful appearance with a variety of
cosmetic products. But in Victorian times,
you only really needed one, a piece of raw animal
flesh tied to your face. Yeah, folks back then believe
that the youthful essence of the raw meat would
infiltrate their own bodies through the skin. And there were
numerous applications. For example, wrinkles
that resulted from the use of harsh,
freckle-eliminating methods like steeping one's
skin in carbolic acid could be counteracted
by sleeping with raw steak on one's face,
or by smearing any animal fat on the skin. Sheep's fat, veal, or lard. Mm, mm, sexy. Well-bred ladies
of the era always aimed to have snow
white complexions, since tans were a sign
that one labored outside, like a peasant. If it took a sacrificial lamb,
or any other sacrificial farm animal, to maintain
that whiteness, it was considered a
small price to pay. [MUSIC PLAYING] Mourning has long
been associated with wearing the color black. But for fashion conscious
women in Victorian times, it was also associated
with shearing off a lock of your
dead husband's hair to wear as a piece of jewelry. The initial stages of
mourning actually called for nothing but heavy
black veils and shrouds. But one could
eventually graduate into wearing
sentimental keepsakes. It was so popular that hair
jewelry eventually transitioned into an everyday accessory. Wreaths made from the
hair of a dead person were considered
objects of mourning, whereas wreaths made from
the hair of multiple people were thought of more
like sentimental family trees, like a Leather
Face family Christmas. This tradition, which many
still find romantic and fairly poignant, has echoes in
the contemporary trend of having oneself tattooed
with ink that has been mixed with the ashes of a loved one. [MUSIC PLAYING] While many believe that
so-called respectable women in the Victorian era eschewed
the use of cosmetics, the truth is actually
more complex. In fact, those women were
merely cutting corners by discreetly ingesting
their beauty regiments. In fact, in the
late 19th century it wasn't uncommon to see
advertisements in US newspapers for all sorts of
ingestible beauty products. According to
National Geographic, this included tins of
wafers that, if eaten, promise to removed
freckles, pimples, and other facial marks. These products contained
poisonous arsenic, but the companies
never tried to hide it. In fact, the words
arsenic complexion wafers were typically printed
right on the packaging. Eating the arsenic
wafer did give one a fashionable, if
deadly, pallor. But the long term
effects included things like skin discoloration,
rotten teeth, and hair loss. The bottom line is that
while vampire chic is always a cool look, killing
yourself for it may not be the
healthiest approach. [MUSIC PLAYING] During the Victorian
era, breastfeeding was generally left to
wet nurses, at least in wealthy upper
class households. While the well-bred
biological mother was also known to participate
from time to time, it was never without the
discreet and proper aid of a nipple shield. During the 18th
and 19th centuries, these devices were
typically made from materials like ivory,
wood, or most commonly, silver. The dangers of lead poisoning
were known at the time. But products containing
lead were still manufactured and
sold with assurances that they were in no way
dangerous to the infant. Predictably, many
of the infants who were exposed to these products
developed lead poisoning. Advertisements
for nipple shields could be bizarre and whimsical. Take for example the phrasing
from an 1892 advertising, which claims that their shields
were, easy to wear, holding on like limpets. It further promised
that sore nipples heal, whilst reposing
in the bath of milk secreted within the shields. Basically, they were promising
a milk bath or sore nips. [MUSIC PLAYING] In the Victorian
era single women were strongly discouraged from
indulging in any behavior that might lead to being
kissed, or handled by a man in basically any way. That doesn't really sound
like much fun for the ladies, but for what it's worth,
the gentleman also had to observe strict
behavioral rules. For example,
imagine a man wanted to admire his companion's
lovely necklace. In no case whatsoever
was he allowed to inspect it while she
wore it around her neck. A gentleman would ask the lady
to first remove the necklace, and hand it to him for
inspection instead. This allowed the two to
maintain enough distance and avoid, let's say, awkward
social misunderstandings. [MUSIC PLAYING] Modern folks think of dating
in terms of making matches, but to the Victorians
it was more important that a couple clashes, at
least in an aesthetic sense. When it came to one's paramour,
one of the most important considerations was to
make sure your hair, eye, and complexion were different
in a complimentary way. So for example, a
person who had red hair and a flushed complexion
was considered to have an excitable and
hot tempered personality. They would be encouraged
to marry someone with a different
temperament, such as someone with jet black or brown hair. Two redheads marrying would be
a recipe for disaster, at least According to this theory. [MUSIC PLAYING] While it seems old
fashioned to us, the Victorian custom
of swooning in response to bad news, moral
scandal, or just about anything else
that was deemed too unseemly to be handled was
arguably way ahead of its time. 100 years later,
gaggles of teen girls would be doing the exact
same thing over rock stars like Elvis Presley, the
Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. That being said, some
theorists think that there's a little more to it than that. They believe that for the
Victorians, passing out wasn't about being
overwhelmed as it was about expressing oneself in
a socially acceptable fashion. In that time and place,
some women felt passing out was their only real
option for letting others know what was on their mind. So what do you think? What piece of Victorian
etiquette would you use? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
