Ever thought, "I bet this hairball would make some really neat jewelry!" Or maybe,
"You know what would tie the room together? Dead animals, but having a picnic." If so, you missed
your time to shine: That was in the Victorian era, when these weird hobbies were all the rage.
Taxidermy is usually the purview of museums and hunters today.
But during Victorian times, many people collected anthropomorphized stuffed animals
arranged in whimsical tableaux. Sounds creepy? It 100 percent is.
These pieces represented the perfect mix of two interests espoused by Victorians: the love
of natural history and whimsical fantasy. Some scenes included things such as taxidermy kittens
having tea, taxidermied kittens serenading a pig… and we did say it was super weird.
As strange as these dioramas look, they required a serious amount of skill and hours of meticulous
work. No artist of anthropomorphic taxidermy better personified the possibilities inherent
in the craft than the German taxidermist Hermann Ploucquet. He worked for the Royal
Museum in Stuttgart, expertly combining his artistic talents with a love of science.
Ploucquet enjoyed widespread commercial success, impressing everyone from Charlotte
Bronte to Queen Victoria, who wrote in her diary that it was "really marvelous."
During Victorian times, cemeteries represented the closest thing many people had to public parks.
In the days before city planning placed a premium on accessible green spaces, final resting places
often fit the bill with their sprawling lawns and beautiful landscaping. Ultimately, that meant they
were not only peaceful places to lay the dead to rest, but they were great for an afternoon picnic.
At the high point of the cemetery picnic movement, visitors flocked to the most
popular and picturesque cemeteries across England. Stateside, New York's Green-Wood
Cemetery was attracting half a million visitors per year by the mid-19th century.
These numbers made it the second most popular destination in the state after Niagara Falls.
Now, if all of this sounds a little morbid, we get it.
But it's important to remember that Victorians viewed death differently than we do today.
It remained an ever-present reality due to widespread disease, from cholera to dysentery
and yellow fever. Dying in childhood or childbirth also proved far too common,
leaving no family untouched. So, regular trips to the cemetery were a matter of course.
After the tragic death of Prince Albert in 1861,
Queen Victoria famously never remarried. The couple had enjoyed a legendary love
story, and so it's no surprise she found it impossible to move on. She often wore
a necklace containing some of Albert's beloved locks, setting the tone for the age.
Jewelry made from human hair wasn't invented in the 19th century. It has a much older story. But
in Victorian times, people took this art form to new heights, crafting locks of hair into intricate
accessories. These included everything from earrings to bracelets to brooches.
The trend began in Europe before making the leap across the Atlantic during the American
Civil War, when hundreds of thousands of families mourned lost loved ones.
But not all of the locks used in hair art came from deceased individuals.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, friends exchanged locks of hair that they added to
their albums and autograph books. And wives transformed their tresses
into practical pieces like watch fobs their husbands wore to work:
"At a time of rising commercialism, sentimental hairwork became a way
both to signal one's sincerity and, paradoxically, to stay in style."
Humans have sought to know and control their futures since ancient times. Over the millennia,
aspects of the occult persisted in European culture, including mirror or crystal gazing,
palmistry, tarot cards, and astrology, according to Alex Owen's "The Darkened Room:
Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England."
Victorians relished doing things with gusto, and this proved no less true regarding the
art of crystal gazing. This entertainment experience involved a series of elaborate
rituals for everything from conducting sessions to cleaning the ball afterward.
Rules also dictated the best time to practice — when the sun was at its "northernmost
declination." Nineteenth-century adherents of fortune-telling via crystal orbs also
came up with detailed histories surrounding the practice, and there's a good reason for that:
For some people, these anecdotes may have bolstered the validity of the practice.
For example, rumors swirled about the origins of a crystal ball owned by the Countess of Blessington,
claiming it originally came from an Egyptian soothsayer.
Some proponents of crystal balls also argued that ancient biblical prophets
such as Ezekiel and Daniel relied on crystals to see into the future.
Of course, primary sources don't back up these claims. Nevertheless, these teachings
appealed to a Christian society paradoxically fascinated with spiritualism and the occult.
Victorians cultivated a deep love of flowers, but their enthusiasm went
beyond simple admiration. They developed an intricate signaling code that used flowers
to communicate everything from chivalry to unrequited love and even potential danger.
When a bouquet arrived in the 19th century,
people grabbed their flower arranging dictionaries for a little decoding fun.
Flower meanings could prove quite intricate, and they weren't always pleasant or sweet.
For example, an arrangement of oleanders communicated a warning of swift vengeance
to follow. And groupings of hydrangeas, oleanders, delphiniums, and basil came with nasty
passive-aggressive messages about the receiver's heartlessness, arrogance, and disagreeability.
Of course, the language of flowers wasn't all bad. Some arrangements conveyed positive
or even passionate statements. For example, white heather, hollyhocks,
and lupins congratulated the receiver as witty and ambitious while bestowing good fortune.
To understand the meaning of such gifts,
Victorians cultivated the ability to recognize flower species on sight,
pouring over the reference books used for deciphering. That said, some flowers came
with enigmatic meanings potentially interpreted in multiple ways, according to the dictionaries
of the day. Consider it the 19th century equivalent of "plausible deniability."
While Queen Victoria reigned over Great Britain,
spiritualism dominated many peoples' religious beliefs.
Key to this belief system were séances, where guests focused on communicating with the dead.
As spiritualism gained popularity during the 19th century, some historians believe upwards of
11 million people identified as spiritualists. And just about every famous person attended at
least one ghostly gathering, from Frederick Douglass to Queen Victoria to Mark Twain.
The Guardian notes that the movement proved rife with hucksters. Its founders,
14-year-old Margaret Fox, and her sister 11-year-old Kate — of Rochester,
New York — claimed they spoke to the dead through tapping. They soon attracted celebs like James
Fenimore Cooper, William Lloyd Garrison, and Horace Greeley to their supernatural circles.
That said, the sisters eventually admitted they made the whole thing up.
But this didn't deter the most loyal members of the spiritualist movement from their new faith.
Celebs like the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
remained whole-heartedly convinced that communicating with ghosts was not only possible
but an important aspect of the human condition.
Some adherents even touted the belief system as the "scientific religion,"
and what started in New York as the so-called "Rochester rappings" found
their equivalent in Great Britain as people enthusiastically reached out to the dead.
"When the sun was new and the old gods walked,
I call forth for the goddess, I call to the speakers for the dead."
Many Victorians were fascinated by the natural world, and that fascination led
to the creation of some stunningly beautiful seaweed scrapbooks. The Public Domain Review
says that they collected specimens from the beach and pasted them onto sheets of construction paper,
creating elaborate designs or even spelling out words.
Despite the bizarre materials used to craft these keepsakes,
some compositions looked surprisingly elegant. Seaweed albums represented a trendy extension of
the very popular art of pressing and saving wildflowers between the pages of books.
As the hobby grew in popularity, just about everyone got involved.
Even Queen Victoria reportedly kept a seaweed scrapbook when she was young.
Soon, books supported this diversion, including A. B. Harvey's "Sea Mosses: A Collector's Guide
and an Introduction to the Study of Marine Algae." And scrapbooker Eliza A. Jordson wrote
a detailed essay on how to properly preserve what Victorians considered an "ocean flower."
Victorians collected various materials from the natural world, indulging in amateur scientific
pursuits, as reported by North Carolina State University's library archives.
Their activities involved everything from nature sketches to collecting fossils,
stones, birds' eggs, butterflies, beetles, and more. In other words,
visiting a trend-setting Victorian home could look like a hot mess of
natural wonders most parents would never let their kids bring in the house today.
Science remained an ever-present fascination as grand developments in the field happened
at a breakneck speed, instilling in Victorians an insatiable thirst for natural history. Not
only was this reflected in their interior décor, but it also shaped popular literature and media.
"Mother! I call it 'the roll and coast!'" "It's cute… but it isn't science, darling."
A growing number of women became enamored with the natural world during this period,
including Beatrix Potter. Although she gained fame for her stories about Peter Rabbit,
Potter's natural history illustrations prove impressive. No subject proved too humble
for her to immortalize in ink and watercolor, including lizards, mushrooms, bats, and rabbits.
The internet contains plenty of hype about the bizarre Victorian fascination with postmortem
photography. Like other macabre aspects of Victorian culture, photographing the dead
was firmly rooted in the fact that mortality stalked Victorian families wherever they went.
Without basic sanitation, an understanding of bacteria and viruses,
and modern medical advances, people fell victim to many ailments considered minor today.
"Sugar and treacle is an excellent cure for a cough. Mixed, of course, with beer,
rum, and vinegar." "Open up!"
"Get it down ya, girl!"
What's more, death proved an equal opportunist,
targeting the young and the old, the poor and the rich.
Even Prince Albert fell victim to an early death. The Prince Consort's passing ushered
in 40 years of mourning on Queen Victoria's part. National Geographic says that ultimately
rendered Victorian culture inextricable from extended and elaborate displays of mourning.
Victorians also had a strange fascination with "memento mori," which reminded the casual
observer that nobody could escape the ravages of mortality. With the advent of photography,
no better "memento mori" existed than post-mortem portraiture.
Whole families might pose with a deceased loved one, and photographers went to great lengths, in
many cases, to make corpses look lifelike. What's more, widespread diseases like tuberculosis,
which gave the incurable pale complexions with stunning red lips and cheeks, meant some
of the most "beautiful" pictures captured of family members existed alongside death.
In 1829, the famous British botanist Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward saved a moth pupa in a sealed glass
jar. Realizing he was onto something, he started growing emerald-hued foliage in glass cases, too.
Soon, the pursuit caught on among other science-minded Victorians. To commemorate Ward,
people referred to these glass containers as Wardian cases: Today, we call them terrariums.
Keeping plants indoors might not seem that strange today,
but the reasons behind these glass cases is… disturbing,
and provides an invaluable glimpse into what life in a Victorian-era city was really like.
Ward had attempted numerous times to grow ferns while living in London,
but the smoke and pollution of the city killed his precious plants. Fortunately,
glassed-in enclosures brought success. As more Victorians joined him in "fern
fever," the variety of plants expanded, as did the scale of the containers.
Soon, terrariums encompassed whole rooms. Gardeners became increasingly experimental,
opting for exotic specimens such as rubber and tea plants. To preserve the plants during their
journey overseas to Great Britain, they even traveled the ocean in Wardian cases,
underscoring how effective Ward's invention proved.
Weekend entertainment for many Victorians came with a visit to the
"freak show," says History Today. Spectators flocked to see bearded women,
conjoined twins, and people with various medical conditions.
Perhaps the most well-known among them was Joseph Merrick, the so-called "Elephant Man."
But he was far from alone. For example, Krao, a young girl from Siam, with hypertrichosis — or,
excessive hair growth — went on display in the 1880s as the "Missing Link."
People flocked to these events, transforming the people they came
to see into unenviable celebrities. As Kim Kelly, also known as Greta the Lobster Girl,
a modern woman with ectrodactyly — or "lobster claw syndrome" — notes:
"Up until the 1940s and especially during its Victorian heyday,
the sideshow — or 'freak show' — was one of the only sources of gainful employment
available to people like me who had unusual or extreme physical or cognitive disabilities."
That said, income came at the expense of their humanity as they faced public
ridicule every time they went on display.
Victorians coined the term "freak" in the 1840s, short for the phrase "freak of nature."
Like all things Victorian, these displays eventually became entangled with science as
amateur natural philosophers attempted to understand the conditions people in these
shows faced. Some physicians also explored how best to help those like Merrick, but for many,
gawking at these people was simply entertainment.
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