Category: The Victorians

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The Victorians

The Overlooked Fragrance Culture of the Victorians

First – a quick quiz…true or false?

  • Victorians didn’t use a lot of perfume.
  • Perfume was about vanity, nothing else.
  • Perfume was only for the wealthy.
  • Strong perfume was fashionable.
  • Working-class people didn’t care about how they smelled.

All the above statements are false.

So, let me explain a little more.

We often have an extreme idea of the Victorians as staid, stiff-upper lipped gentlemen or dirty street urchins. While these stereotypes existed – and often make for great storytelling – the Victorians enjoyed the pleasures of life more than we tend to think, perfumes included.

The royal precedent

Full immersion bathing was less frequent than today, but Victorians were very concerned with cleanliness. Daily washing of hands, face and body with cloths was common. Scented waters were widely used to freshen the skin and clothing between washes.

Typical fragrances were delicate florals – violet, rose, jasmine – to name a few. Several high-end perfume houses were established during this era – Floris London and Penhaligon’s, for example.

Queen Victoria had a surprisingly important influence on the spread of perfume and personal grooming. Despite the idea we often have of Victorians being prudish and anti-vanity, Victoria enjoyed fragrance and helped normalise perfume use across society, She had a liking for rose, orange blossom, lavender and violet, and a royal warrant could turn a perfume into an overnight success.

Fontaine Limited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The house of Creed – another distinguished perfume house that still exists today – created a bespoke scent for Victoria called ” Fleurs de Bulgarie” with an emphasis on rose. Sadly, this is no longer available today, but where Queen V went, everyone else followed, even if it was only a cheaper version.

Antique decorative perfume bottle with intricate gold filigree and purple glass
An antique ornate perfume bottle labeled ‘Parfum de la Couronne’

The less well-off

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 at only 18 years old. During her reign:

  • mass manufacturing expanded
  • railways transformed distribution
  • department stores grew
  • branded consumer goods became fashionable

Perfume sales benefited enormously from all these factors. Their influence filtered down to the middle classes and working classes and gave a touch of luxury to the less well-heeled. In many ways, Victorian perfume culture was not so different from today’s “affordable luxury” market. Just as modern shoppers treat themselves to a favourite body spray, scented candle or designer-inspired perfume dupe, Victorian consumers often bought small, inexpensive scented items that allowed them to enjoy a hint of elegance without spending a fortune.

Working-class women regularly used scented handkerchiefs, perfumed soap, hair pomade, and sachets to perfume clothing and drawers. On offer for men were hair tonics, pomades and shaving products – often the barber would apply scent after a shave.

Newspapers and magazines promoted affordable fragrances, scented soaps and beauty preparations. This helped create the idea that fragrance was part of a daily routine, not just an aristocratic indulgence.

Modern advertising still uses many of the same ideas. Perfume today is rarely marketed simply due to the smell – it is sold as confidence, attractiveness, sophistication or self-care. Victorian advertisers were already doing something remarkably similar over 150 years ago.

Perfumes and Miasmas

An interesting Victorian belief was that pleasant smells could actually protect health. Before germ theory became fully accepted, many people believed disease spread through “miasmas” – bad air or foul smells.

As a result, pleasant scents were often viewed as healthy or protective. Lavender, herbs such as thyme or rosemary, and floral waters were believed to purify the air.

Victorian industrial street with pedestrians, horse carriages, and factory smoke
A somber industrial-era street bustling with horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians amid smoke and fog

Ironically, while we now understand that disease is caused by germs rather than “bad air,” many people still associate certain scents with cleanliness and wellbeing. Lavender sprays for sleep, eucalyptus oils during winter illnesses and “fresh linen” cleaning products all show that fragrance remains psychologically linked to our health and comfort.

Practicality

Victorian cities could smell dreadful. Besides unregulated industries, factories and smoke pollution, there was also overcrowded housing, horse manure in the streets and poor drainage. Perfume and scented products also had a practical purpose in that it masked unpleasant odours. Not so different from our modern-day deoderants and body sprays.

Lavender, rose, violet, bergamot and lemon verbena were popular. Lavender water was especially common because it was relatively inexpensive, strongly associated with freshness and cleanliness and therefor found everywhere in Victorian England.

This meant scent was associated not only with beauty, but also with:

  • health
  • cleanliness
  • safety

But for the working classes, smelling pleasant had even more significance – it conveyed self-respect, cleanliness, morality and social aspiration.

Scent and Respectability

Victorian society placed enormous importance on appearing “respectable.”

For the working classes, smelling pleasant could help convey:

  • cleanliness
  • self-respect
  • morality
  • femininity
  • social aspiration

A factory girl or servant might not own expensive jewellery, but a dab of scent or scented soap could provide a small feeling of refinement and dignity. This was especially important because the Victorian middle and upper classes often unfairly associated bad smells with moral failings or poverty itself.

Even today, many people describe perfume as emotional armour – something that provides confidence before a difficult day, an important meeting or a social occasion. Victorians may not have used that phrase, but they clearly understood the feeling.

At the other end of the scale, wearing too much perfume or wearing a heady, exotic scent was perceived to be unsuitable, or even immoral. Heavy animalic scents popular in parts of 18th-century Europe became less fashionable, partly because Victorian ideals increasingly linked femininity with freshness, delicacy and purity.

The Victorians were also quite obsessed with purity, morality and the symbolic language of flowers – for more info see https://english-stuff.com/2023/09/15/the-language-of-flowers/

In short….

Victorian-era ornate pitcher and basin with toiletry items
An elegant Victorian-style toiletry set arranged on a wooden dresser

So Victorian life was probably far more fragrant than modern stereotypes suggest. While fine perfumes remained symbols of wealth, Victorian fragrance culture reached far beyond the aristocracy.

For working-class men and women, scent offered practicality, dignity, comfort and a small touch of luxury in often difficult lives. In many ways, our relationship with fragrance today – whether it’s a designer perfume, a favourite shampoo or a comforting room scent – is not quite as different from the Victorians’ as we might imagine.

Which scents instantly make you feel comforted, nostalgic or at home?

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The Victorians

From Penny Lick to Ice-Cream Cone

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/Penny_Lick_Glasses_Author Linda Spashett 

The Penny Lick

We tend to imagine the Victorians were all top hats, stiff collars and serious faces, but it’s a fact that they also had a sweet tooth. By the late 1800s, ice-cream had become the ultimate street food. For just one penny, you could enjoy a refreshing scoop from a colourful street cart on a hot day. Enter the penny lick.

The idea was simple. Vendors would place a blob of ice-cream into a thick little glass with a shallow dip at the top. You’d lick it clean (hence the name), hand the glass back, and off it would go to the next eager customer. Sadly, the Victorians were not so aware of the importance of hygiene or the existence of germs. This, combined with lack of pasteurised milk ( yet to be a legal requirement ) and the prevalence of common diseases like cholera and tuberculosis, meant passing around the same unwashed glass turned out to be a recipe for disaster.

The penny licks were banned in London in 1899 after a medical report linked the re-use of unwashed glassware to the rise of tuberculosis. Along came a much better idea: the edible cone. Not only was it safer, it was also tastier and you got to eat the container as well as the ice-cream.

The Ice-Cream Cone

But who invented the ice-cream cone? As usual, the story is not clear cut. One idea is that Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian immigrant in New York, improvised an ice-cream from a Syrian pastry, called zalabia, in 1904. Another theory credits the invention of the cone to Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant in New York, who created ice-cream containers made from dough, although they were more cup-shaped than actual cones.

By Agnes B. Marshall – Barnebys, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org

Another earlier contender was Agnes Marshall, who ran a cookery school in London and published The Book of Ices in 1885. The publication comprised 170 sweet recipes with ice-cream figuring prominently. A later offering, her Book of Cookery in 1888, made reference to an edible cone and was called a cornet. Although the cornet was actually designed to be eaten using cutlery, Agnes Marshall is also regarded as a pioneer of ice-cream cornets. In 1894 the follow-up to The Book of Ices arrived, namely Fancy Ices – see book cover above.

So next time you’re happily munching on a ice-cream, spare a thought for the Victorians.  Without their dodgy glassware, we might never have had the immense joy of the cone. Are you an ice-cream lover?

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English history The Victorians

The History of Christmas Pudding: A Timeless Tradition

Sweet Christmas

A Christmas pudding is a British emblem of Yuletide. Love it or loathe it, no traditional British Christmas meal is complete without one. Similar to Brussel sprouts, (which tend to be more loathed than loved but also still make an appearance) our Christmas dessert, in my humble opinion, is part and parcel of the Christmas festivities.

Our beloved Christmas pudding has history – it’s been around for longer than you might think.

Who made the first Christmas pudding?

Sadly, we do not know the name of the person who invented our pudding. But we do know that its forerunner, a type of pottage, a mixture of beef, suet, dried fruit and spices existed in England in the Middle Ages. Pottage was the name for a soupy kind of stew, generally eaten by peasants, and comprised of ingredients that were readily available to them – mainly vegetables and pulses. If the nobility chose to eat pottage, then more expensive items such as spices and meat would be included.

Many pottages later, around the end of the Tudor era, our pudding gained a more solid form, and a new name, plum pudding, but beef still figured amongst its ingredients. It was also a possibility that there were actually no plums in the pudding, plum being used to refer to various different fruits. At the same time the humble pottage was also still in existence and no doubt the size of your wallet would decide which version you chose.

A Christmas pudding hanging on a hook to dry. Photographed by DO’Neil.

In the 18th century, pudding cloths arrived, supplanting the animal intestines that had been used before ( yes, better not to think about it…). The mixture would be left in a muslin cloth for some time, followed by a lengthy cooking process. This is when plum pudding began to acquire the spherical shape that we know so well today. It was generally eaten alongside beef, if you were well-heeled enough to afford it, of course.

The golden age of Christmas pudding

Fast-forwarding to the Victorian era, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were known to enjoy lavish meals at Christmas, (see: https://wordpress.com/post/english-stuff.com/1197 ) with plum pudding often on the menu. Charles Dickens also promoted the idea of a Christmas pudding as a special delicacy at the end of A Christmas Carol when Mrs. Cratchit presents a sweet, round pudding, blazing in ignited brandy.

A Christmas pudding being flamed. Author Ed.g2s

Two years after the publication of A Christmas Carol, our dish appeared as an official “Christmas pudding” in Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families, a bestseller in 1845. This was Christmas pudding as we would recognise it – that is, a round sweet pudding, with no beef, but plenty of fruit and spices. The pudding mixture could be moulded to give it a more ornate shape. It was however, still served alongside the meat course.

Vintage Plum Pudding Image. Author : Graphics Fairy

Demise of the Christmas pudding?

During the twentieth century, this sweet dish became exactly that – the dessert we instantly recognise, served with cream, custard or brandy butter. Supermarkets began to stock a convenient packaged version, which only needs to be heated and served.

But times continue to change. Nowadays many older Brits, (but certainly not all), are still attached to Christmas pudding, maybe because it has been part of our lives for so long. However, the younger generation, it seems, are not particularly supportive of the Christmas pud, probably as it usually follows a very rich and heavy first and second course. The Royal Mint in a 2024 survey found that a whopping 59% of the British population said they did not consider the Christmas pudding to be essential to the festivities. What do you think?

Christmas pudding has been with us in various guises for hundred of years. It is still cherished by some. But do you think Christmas pudding will survive in the future? Do you love it or loathe it? Let me know!

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The Victorians

The language of flowers

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Victorian society

The Victorian era had very strict social norms that are alien to the world we live in today. Displays of emotion were frowned upon in public. Women were expected to stay chaste and innocent before marriage and had chaperones to ensure they did not breach social etiquette. Couples in romantic relationships were not given much privacy – they would communicate via handwritten letters or go on walks to be able to spend time alone. However, despite social codes of behaviour and respectability, people were still, well, people, and felt the same range of emotions that we can express freely today.

Floriography

Bearing in mind the restrictions of Victorian etiquette, it might not have been easy to approach your love interest, let alone hold a conversation. So messages in code were sent using flowers. Floriography – the language of flowers – was not limited to romance, flowers were also sent as a gift of gratitude or friendship, but it was commonly used to convey romantic concepts. Floriography peaked in popularity in Britain as well as France and the U.S. during the Victorian era.

Flowers and their special meanings allowed individuals to express their feelings discreetly in a world of propriety where direct expression of emotion was frowned upon in public.

Floral dictionaries

A Floral Dictionary from 1877
Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Coincidentally, this was also an era when there was a burgeoning interest in botany, and new publications described the different characteristics of flowers and plants in detail. Floriography was around long before the Victorian age and attributing specific meanings to flowers had been seen before in other periods and cultures – in Japan, Ottoman Turkey and the Hebrew Bible, for example.

But back to the Victorian era. In this period, florists saw their businesses boom, alongside the creation of floral dictionaries, like the one shown above. One of the most famous was The Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway, published in 1884, and shown below. This book is actually still on sale on the Amazon website today.

There were several dictionaries of this type by the beginning of the 1900s, so often the flowers were a symbol for more than one concept. An anemone, for example, could mean hopeless love, or anticipation. A combination of flowers could convey a more complex message, and the arrangement of the flowers was also significant. The intended message could be changed by just a small variation in the bouquet. It all seems intriguing and kind of fun. No wonder the floral dictionaries were flying off the shelves.

By Kate Greenaway – Projekt Gutenberg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35627080

Floral Meanings

The flowers were grown in English gardens so were generally seasonal – roses, daffodils, chrysanthemums and delphiniums were popular. Roses expressed the idea of love but its colour added nuance to its significance. Daffodils could mean prosperity, loyalty or new beginnings. Chrysanthemums expressed friendship, and delphiniums dignity and rebirth. Sweet pea flowers were often chosen to show gratitude for hospitality. Confused? It’s not hard to see why flower dictionaries were popular – the interpretation of a Victorian bouquet was possibly not a simple task. The images below convey more ideas the flower sender might wish to express.

A Victorian postcard showing flower language. Source unknown.
https://www.flowersforeveryone.com.au/images/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/flower_ephemera_language_3.jpg

It was also meaningful where the recipient placed or wore the flowers after their delivery. To quote J.B. Meadow:

A woman also had to be pretty precise about where she wore flowers. Say, for instance, a suitor had sent her a tussie-mussie (a.k.a. nosegay). If she pinned it to the ‘cleavage of bosom’, that would be bad news for him, since that signified friendship. Ah, but if she pinned it over her heart, ‘That was an unambiguous declaration of love’.

The colours of the chosen flowers were also imbued with meaning.

Red – passion, devotion

Yellow – affection, fondness

Blue – loyalty, truth, dignity

White – purity, innocence

Pink – appreciation, elegance

Orange- enthusiasm, good wishes

Decline of Floriography

In the 1900s, as society gradually began to relax its strict rules of social etiquette and with advances in technology which improved communication, the need for flower messages began to disappear. With the start of World War One, the laborious process of cultivating the flowers was abandoned as other priorities came to the fore.

Some of the strongest associations with flowers have stayed with us until today – red roses still signify passion, poppies are a symbol of those lost at war, and lilies represent purity.

And a gift of flowers is still a beautiful present which generally conveys some type of sentiment from the sender – love, sympathy, congratulations, friendship. Maybe next time you send or receive flowers, spare a thought for the Victorians and their floral dictionaries.

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English history The Victorians

A Victorian education

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Schooldays….the best days of your life?

Why and when was school invented?

Throughout the 1800’s there was a push towards literacy and education for everyone, leading to the Elementary Education Act of 1870. Times were changing, with industrialisation and scientific innovation leading the way. People were leaving the old, rural lifestyle behind them, flocking to the cities in droves, in search of better lives. This upheaval also meant that people needed more education or training in order to find better paid jobs.

Prior to the 1870’s, education had always been at best, patchy and certainly not widely available to all and sundry. There were some independent voluntary schools, usually managed by the Church or a charity, with the emphasis on religious education. The first of these was set up in 597 and known as the King’s School, Canterbury, and still exists today. Part of the impressive modern school campus is shown below.

Sdnegel, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Public schools – not open to the public

The official educational establishments that existed were known as public schools, as opposed to private tuition, both systems only available to the wealthy. In time these schools would evolve into institutions that were and still are exclusive to the public at large – for example, today, public schools for the very wealthy include Eton, Westminster or Rugby. So confusingly, a public school in England is not for the public at all, in fact it is a highly expensive private school.

Of course, it should be noted that before the mid 1800’s education at school was for boys only. If girls received any type of academic education at all, it would be at home via a nanny or a governess. Today, of course, the vast majority of British boys and girls go to state schools, that is, those funded by the government.

Ragged Schools

The type of education a child would receive (or not) depended, of course, on their family’s place in society.

In the 1840’s voluntary schools which came to be known as Ragged Schools began to appear in the poorest areas of the country, and provided food, shelter and the rudiments of an education. These were for children at the opposite extreme from the public school students, minors who were extremely poor or destitute and often excluded from Sunday or voluntary schools because of their behaviour and/or appearance.

A drawing of a ragged school in London, courtesy of https://www.victorianlondon.org

These schools were maintained by philanthropists, notably Charles Dickens amongst others, and staffed by volunteers, and newspapers spread the word about their existence. Not everyone liked the idea – common opinions were the schools were a waste of time, the children were too stupid or lazy to learn, or they would just learn how to become better criminals. Take your pick.

But there was a genuine feeling in Victorian society that the poor should be helped and the ragged schools established themselves, proving that the not only the well-heeled had a desire for education. In poor inner city ragged schools there could be between 50 to 70 children in a class. It is estimated there were about 350 schools of this type by the time the Elementary Education Act was passed in 1870.

The beginnings of education for all

Even so, many of the working class were unable to read and write. Child labour was also normal, with kids of school age working in factories for a pittance.

With the implementation of the Education Act in 1870 school boards were created and could use ratepayers’ funds to improve or set up schools, universal education finally becoming a government concern. The boards also laid down the priorities of education. By 1876 it became mandatory for all children between 5 and 10 years of age to attend school, considerably lower than the leaving age nowadays.

Yet again there was opposition; some of the upper classes opposed the idea of educating the working classes for fear it would cause a revolution, while a section of the lower classes feared their children would be indoctrinated by propaganda. The Church, who still provided voluntary schooling and Sunday schools, also did not want to lose its influence on young people. Sometimes the parents needed the small amount of money that their children earned at work and therefore prevented them from going to school.

However, it was also clear that an educated workforce would enhance Britain’s competitive status at large. By 1902, school boards were abolished in favour of local education authorities, which were responsible for education within their designated area, and the basis for our modern education system was created.

Let’s look at the mainstream schools during this time.

Miss Bowls’s class in an unidentified girls’ school Date: circa 1905 Source: postcard

What was taught?

Lessons were fairly basic and monotonous, with a huge focus on reading, writing and arithmetic. The pupils would copy what the teacher had written on the blackboard and a lot of attention was given to copperplate handwriting and learning by heart. Numeracy was also essential and usually involved the children chanting times tables until they all did it perfectly. There was no creativity and teaching through fun activities and games were an alien concept far off in the future.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

However, depending on the school and the teacher, other things were taught. Religion was almost always included and sometimes history and geography. There were object lessons where a picture, model or artefact would be observed by the pupils.

If it was a mixed gender school, sometimes pupils were separated by gender into different classes – the boys might do woodwork or gardening, and the girls cooking or embroidery.

The classrooms

The classroom was generally called the schoolroom. The windows were situated high up to avoid distractions and as a result, it was often airless and stuffy. If there were more than one classroom, they were divided only by a curtain. As you can see in the photo below, the desks were bolted to the floor and the classroom often had tiers so all the children could see the blackboard, and the teacher, in turn, could see them.

The children wrote on slates which were rubbed out and re-used. The older students might have used ink pens that dipped into ink wells to produce their written work.

A Victorian classroom with high windows and tiered desks.
Photo courtesy of edufirst.ng

The teachers

There were far more female teachers than males – the pay was low and therefore the profession did not attract many men. Schoolmistresses tended to be unmarried females, who gave up the job when they gained a husband.

The better establishments had teachers who had received certification in various subjects. The poorer schools could not afford to be so choosy. These teachers probably learnt their profession from day one at school.

Boy in dunce cap sitting on dunce stool. Origin unknown (but probably not Victorian.)

The teachers were generally very strict and expected all the children, even the youngest, to pay attention at all times. Poor work, speaking out of turn, answering back or any misdeeds from the pupils meant they could receive blows from either the teacher or a cane.

There was practically no understanding of slow learners, and pupils who did not keep up with the class could be made to sit or stand on a dunce’s stool wearing a dunce’s hat for up to an hour, Conformity was the name of the game, and the left-handed were forced to use their right hand for writing tasks.

With time, society has gained more knowledge about the learning process and our schools today have moved on in several aspects. New technology and not least, the recent coronavirus pandemic have introduced different ways of teaching – online, or encouraging more self-study for example. Nevertheless, the Victorians were responsible for the foundation of our modern educational system.

Some questions for you:

Do you think schooling helped children in Victorian times?

Do you think our contemporary schools help students to face the working world today ?

Are/Were schooldays the best days of your life?

Categories
The Victorians

A Victorian Christmas dinner

Victorian Christmas Dinner. Photo by https://365project.org/yorkshirekiwi/365/2020-11-27#:~

Christmas origins

Christmas as an event has been around for a long long time, admittedly in various guises. There is a consensus that the pagan midwinter festivals such as Yule, or the Winter Solstice, were amalgamated with Christmas as the Church imposed liturgical days in the calendar. The word Christmas comes directly from Christ’s mass, and actually existed as Christenmass in Middle English, until the “en” syllable was lost.

Victorian era

There is little doubt that Christmas as we know it today is largely down to the Victorians, who began to treat Christmas as a family celebration feast with time off work. Increased prosperity allowed the middle classes to include special cuisine, present giving and decorations in their homes during the holiday period. You can find more info on how the Victorians influenced our modern day Christmas festivities here.

Christmas dinner

Christmas is synoymous with food. Abundant food, and the possibility of indigestion, to say the least. The pagan celebrations were indulgent feasts to brighten the darkest days of winter. Renamed Christmas, it became an amalgamation of the old customs and a religious event – although days off work and Christmas cards and trees were still to become a part of the holiday.

Rowdy behaviour has always been a part of Christmas too. In the 1600’s, Oliver Cromwell, as head of the Puritan government, banned the celebration of Christmas in England as a frivolous event which produced frowned-upon excesses. Although the ban was policed, it was not entirely successful and Christmas not only survived, but was reinstated in 1660 at the end of the Puritan reign. If we fast forward to the end of the Victorian period, Christmas had become a family and culinary event which has highly influenced the way we celebrate it today.

Menu card from Queen Victoria, Christmas Day 1899. Courtesy of The Royal Archives.

Royal influence

As you would expect, Queen Victoria and her family had a sumptuous Christmas menu, seen above in the example from 1899, with a wide variety of culinary offerings.

Starters and Appetisers

Consommé, sole fillets á la Vassant (answers on a postcard if anyone knows what à la Vassant means) fried whitebait, chicken cutlets

Main Dishes

Turkey with chipolatas, roast beef, spare pork ribs

Desserts

Asparagus, Hollandaise sauce (interestingly, the Victorians sometimes ate salad ingredients after the main course ) mince pies, plum pudding, orange jelly

Buffet

Beef joint, boar’s head, game pie, Woodcock pie, roast fowl, brawn and tongue. The Victorians were of course, much less squeamish than we are nowadays about animal heads and offal.

So the rich lacked for nothing, no surprise there.

The Middle Classes

The middle class grew enormously in the Victorian era due to an array of new industries, improved transport and better wages. The domestic goddess of the age was Mrs Beeton, who with her Book of Household Management guided middle class housewives towards success in culinary delights and entertaininment of visitors at home.

Roast turkey was first documented in 1541 in Britain (as a meal for the clergy, no less) but it was not until Queen Victoria’s reign that turkey became the meat of choice at Christmas dinner. Traditionally, before this point, roast meat for those who could afford it at Christmas would have been roast goose, beef or pheasant. But Mrs Beeton famously commented:

” A noble dish is a turkey, roast or boiled. A Christmas dinner with the middle classes of this empire, would scarcely be a Christmas dinner without its turkey “

Poultry: Roast Fowls, Roast Goose, Roast Turkey with Savoury Balls, Roast Duck, and Boiled Chicken from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Digitally enhanced from our own 1923 edition. Image by rawpixel.com

Turkey also had the advantage of being a large bird, meaning more people could be invited to the Christmas dinner. In the illustration above we can see other poultry dishes which may have been offered in place of, or as well as turkey or beef in line with household income.

The less well-off

Of course, there were many families who were struggling financially, just like today. The poor may have celebrated Christmas but in a much more frugal fashion. They might have been able to save something from their meagre wages for a festive treat, such as rabbit, but for those on the lowest pay scale, for example, agricultural workers, it generally would have been impossible to save anything.

With this in mind, Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol , published in 1843. It told the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, who reformed his miserly behaviour and became a kind, generous soul, giving presents and treating other people well at Christmas. Dickens’ tale was popular and did in fact encourage the richer Victorians to donate money and gifts to servants, workers and the needy at Christmas.

This tradition of helping those less well off had always existed at Christmas, but was popularised and cemented during this time. These gifts were usually money and were given in boxes on, yes, you guessed it, Boxing Day, which was a day on which people were not required to work. The newly invented railways also offered cheap fares during Christmas, which allowed workers to see their families more easily during this family- oriented season.

Those in the workhouse, who were desperately poor, were generally given some type of Christmas dinner, despite the fact that the Poor Laws had ruled against this. It would seem that the guardians of the workhouse were more humane than the government (parallels with today anyone ?)

These Christmas dinners contained contain some type of meat, which was a treat in itself for the inmates, and some of the workhouses even managed to provide Christmas pudding, (known then as plum pudding) as a dessert.

Vintage Christmas Plum Pudding, courtesy of thegraphicsfairy.com

So many of the elements of our modern day Christmas celebrations have been handed down to us from the Victorian generation – the idea that is a family gathering, the turkey, the lavish food on offer, Boxing Day….

Sadly, there are also plenty of reminders that others are not so fortunate.

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The Victorians

Victorian pets and animals

From work to home

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1e/59/1e/1e591e02d4d58dff188565eb3d92e940.jpg Courtesy of the Library of Virginia

It was in the Victorian era that the idea of domestic animals as pets, purely for companionship and/or entertainment, began to take root. In the past, animals such as horses and dogs were considered as working animals, with their skills used as a contribution to the family household. The animals were destined, amongst other things, as hunting dogs, sheepdogs, and guard dogs, cats caught mice and other vermin, and horses were a means of transport. In the 1880’s dogs were also used to collect money for charitable organisations, and were licensed to move around trains and railway stations.

This does not mean that people did not love or look after their animals, but these creatures were expected to earn their keep.

Photo by David Jakab on Pexels.com
Horses are still used today in ceremonial parades, and for crowd control by the police.

Queen Victoria’s pets

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, relationships between animals and humans began to change. A great example of this was Queen Victoria and her family, who were closely monitored and copied by the British public who could afford to do so.

Victoria appears to have been a great animal lover with various species of dogs, a donkey, goats and a number of pet parrots forming part of the royal household throughout her reign. It would seem that the queen was not enamoured of cats, although she was gifted a kitten shortly before her coronation.Not only did she accept the feline, but also sent two five pound notes to its previous owner as a way of thanks. Victoria’s love for these creatures and their status as family members to be cossetted and petted undoubtedly influenced the fate of many other animals owned by well-heeled families.

Her Majesty’s Favourite Pets, painted by Landseer in 1838, shows the spaniel Dash, Lory the parrot, the greyhound Nero and deerhound Hector.[1]

Cats and dogs

During Victoria’s reign, dogs were by far the most popular animals, and Victoria herself had several canine pets during her monarchy.

Both the aristocracy and the newly wealthy middle class were eager to emulate the Royal Household and dogs were placed into the heart of a family with no strings attached, as opposed to having a function within the house. In addition, dogs were seen as a status symbol and there were were many sentimental stories and anecdotes about canine feats.

Every dog has its day

Dogs also became a fashion item.

Young lady with a King Charles spaniel Image: Library of Congress #LC-DIG-ggbain-06537

Any Victorian lady who aspired to be fashionable and show off their status would have their lapdog in tow and these dogs would accompany their mistresses everywhere. Lapdogs, as the name indicates, were small enough to sit in a lady’s lap and were the only type of dogs to be allowed in a parlour at visiting time. The poor dogs were often deprived of exercise, and sometimes even dressed in miniature gowns and bonnets to be caressed and tickled. Many veterinarians of the era were concerned that this was no way to treat a dog.

Photographs were costly at the time. However, many dog owners were photographed with their furry friends, confirmimg the high importance of their dogs in their lives.

The first modern dog show was held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1859. It was a low key event which focused on working country dogs. But the world of dog shows was to grow rapidly, focusing on all types of breeds and competitions began to be held throughout the country. Although Mr Cruft had always been involved in the dog trading business, it was in 1891 that the Cruft`s Dog Show as we know it today was born.

Dogs were now being bred purely for aesthetic reasons and these shows developed a public preference for pedigree dogs over mongrels although all types of dogs were included ; a reflection of Victorian hierarchy in society. . There were still dogs for every taste and budget, and these exhibitions contributed to dog ownership becoming widespread as people’s lot improved economically and the expense of a dog became more affordable.

Two small Maltese dogs and trophy cups. Image: Library of Congress #LC-USZ62-55845

Care for dogs

The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals) was founded in 1824, the first animal welfare organisation in the world, and still active today. The NSPCC ( National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children ) was established in 1895. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that.

But back to the matter in hand, it was recognised that animals should be treated with care and kindness.

Dash with Princess Victoria, by Sir George Hayter, 1833

When Queen Victoria’s beloved dog Dash died in 1840, she had a marble image of the dog placed over his grave.

The first pet cemetary in Western Europe appeared in Hyde Park in 1881, where about 1,000 animas were buried. It was closed in the 1910’s and is no longer open to the public. The epitaphs on the gravestones reflected fidelity and obedience – both highly valued traits by the Victorians. The pet cemetary was controversial – at the time society was not too comfortable with the religious connotations of giving animals a Christian burial, also bearing in mind that a lot of people were still destined for a pauper’s grave.

Wild animals

The Victorian age was a time of travel, discovery and exploration. This meant there were opportunities in Victorian Britain to see exotic animals too. Regent’s Park Zoo opened in 1828 and there was another short-lived zoo, the Surrey Zoological Gardens, in today’s Southwark, which opened in 1832 to around 1856, housing the menagerie of Edward Cross.

This collection of animals included lions, tigers, a rhinoceros, giraffes, monkeys, elephants, camels, zebras, llamas and an aviary with exotic birds such as ostriches and pelicans. Queen Victoria and her family were also frequent visitors to the St. Regent’s Park Zoo which has survived until the present day – now known as London Zoo.

Group of Animals lately received at the Gardens of the Zoological Society, Regent’s Park. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 6 July 1861. (Public Domain)

The Victorians may not have shared contemporary thinking on zoos and over-cosseted lapdogs, but they did set us firmly on the road to keeping house pets and enjoying their companionship for its own sake. Dogs and cats and whatever other pets you may have) were, are and will continue to be man’s best friend.

Categories
The Victorians

How safe were Victorian homes?

Victorian style room, early 1900’s – source wikipedia/commons (family member of JGKlein)

The Victorian era

The Victorian period ushered in a period of great change and upheaval. The Industrial Revolution meant there was a great population shift to cities, and it was a time of great innovation and prosperity for those who had opportunities.

Nonetheless, it hardly needs to be said that the poor were never far from danger – malnutriton, filthy surroundings, and dangerous jobs just for a start. But it is also fair to say that some level of danger hovered in several areas of life, not just for the poor (who undoubtedly suffered the most), but for all members of society. These dangers also contributed to the high level of infant mortality during this period.

Dangerous additives

It’s difficult to imagine a kitchen without all our contemporary domestic appliances – but that’s exactly what a Victorian kitchen was like. Fridges would not be in common use for the wealthy until the following Edwardian era, and despite the Victorian claim of prizing cleanliness, there were no health and safety regulations or standards. As you might imagine, food poisoning was quite common, and was usually referred to as a bilious attack.

A substance known as boracic acid, which today is a component of insectides, was used by Victorian milk sellers to “purify” milk that had gone off, removing the sour taste and smell. As you may well imagine, consuming boracic acid is not the best of ideas. Not only can it cause vomiting and diarrhoea, but even worse, it masked the presence of bovine tuberculosis, an infectious disease that thrived in unpasteurised milk – remember mass produced pasteurised milk was still in the future – and this caused deformity and death. The estimation of deaths of Victorian children from this disease stands at approximately half a million.

Health and safety standards were sadly lacking in Victorian times.
Photo by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels.com

Another food staple, bread, was also adulterated with alum, an aluminium based compund, used today in detergent. It’s already not sounding like a great idea, is it ? Alum was a bulking agent used to make bread whiter and heavier, and therefore more appealing. However, it led to health deficiencies and more importantly, caused bowel issues such as constipation or diarrhoea, the latter frequently fatal for children.

Feeding bottles

A boy with a Victorian feeding bottle.
Source http://www.babybottle-museum.co.uk/murder-bottles/

Feeding bottles for young children have been around for thousands of years, made from animal horns or pewter or even leather. The Victorian version was made of glass or earthenware, with a rubber tube inside fitted with a teat. The bottles were cleverly marketed with names such as “Little Cherub” or “Princess” and were a great hit with mothers.

Nevertheless, the bottle was highly dangerous. The tubing was difficult to clean and the general thinking was that it only needed cleaning once in a while. The tube, in conjunction with warm milk, created a very effective place to breed bacteria. Doctors condemned the feeding bottles, which began to be known as killers or murder bottles in medical circles, but sadly, many women were unaware of this and still bought them. Little wonder that infant mortality was so high.

Wallpaper

A modern reproduction of Victorian wallpaper https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/51/56/dQ87cG.jpg

Much as it may surprise us today, the Victorians were happy for arsenic to be used in small doses in their medicine, their clothing, their face powder, their wallpaper and even their food…..and poisonous stuffs such as caustic soda or carbolic acid were often sold in the same packaging as other harmless foodstuffs, paving the way for fatal errors.

But back to wallpaper. Home design having recently become a thing for the Victorian middle classes, one of the most popular colours to be used in the home was Scheele’s Green (named after Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who invented green arsenic pigment in 1775.) You can guess where this is heading, can’t you?

And indeed, people were affected by the arsenic in the green dye that flaked off the wallpaper. Heat and/or moisture could provoke a toxic atmosphere making the whole family ill, or worse. Around the 1860’s doctors began to realise that these so-called mystery illnesses were due to the toxic fumes from the arsenic in wallpaper, although health experts were ridiculed for suggesting such a thing, not least by the companies who actually manufactured wallpaper. Eventually the use of arsenic began to be regulated by the government around the 1880’s.

The use of lead

Victorian toy blocks
https://cdn.imgbin.com/11/22/6/imgbin-victorian-era-wood-block-toy-block-wood-E2EeRdp8HzQzBs9dX4AWqF1ir.jpg

Lead piping was used to transport water so drinking water could be tainted by lead it had picked up from the piping. As if that wasn’t enough, lead was used in paint to stop it from flaking. Furniture, cots and children’s toys would all be painted using this deadly substance. We all know young children tend to put their toys in their mouths, and in this way, they could poison themselves simply by playing.

Gas lights

Abstract smoke background – image by Brigitte, free Pixabay photos

If you had only ever known light sourced from fire and candles, the introduction of gas lights during the Victorian era must have been unbelievable. Being able to control the number of hours of light in a day was a whole new ball game. The Victorian passion for ornate decoration meant that a huge range of stunning lamps were manufactured, and many of these have survived to date.

But the drawbacks existed. There were two types of gas available – gas from coal which was highly flammable and which ran the risk of intoxication from carbon monoxide fumes. Natural gas could give off large flames, which was extremely hazardous next to the flowing drapes and curtains in favour at the time. Furthermore, due to the lack of regulations, workmanship could be shoddy with pipes fracturing, flames. fires and explosions. The impure gas could give off sulphuric acid, not only causing foul smells but also causing suffocation.

Most of these dangers within the home were present for all the members of the family, but it was children who suffered the most. Infant mortality was extremely high in Victorian England, reaching as much as 33% in some areas of London in 1849. Not only was this due to the toxic quality of the air in industrialised areas. lack of medical knowledge and health and safety regulations, but also the hidden dangers within the home itself.

The pandemic may have taught us that we can’t take life for granted- still, how lucky we are today to live in an age with both safety regulations and greater medical knowledge.

Categories
The Victorians

Mrs Beeton – domestic genius or plagiarist?

Title page of ‘Household Management’ Wellcome L0042710.jpg (Source – Wikimedia Commons)

Victorian household management

In previous posts we’ve seen some of the immense industrial and social changes that took place during the Victorian era , and the effect on what people ate. (https://english-stuff.com/2020/11/07/what-did-victorians-eat/.

Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management  was a respected source of authority on culinary and domestic matters and a hugely influential force on shaping the burgeoning middle class. The book is still on sale today– check it out on Amazon or in other bookstores. You can even download it to your Kindle.

Maull & Polyblank – National Portrait Gallery; cropped from w:File:Isabella Mary Beeton.jpg Source –  Wikimedia Commons

Isabella Beeton

So here she is, the lady herself. You may have imagined the writer of a the Victorian domestic bible to be a middle aged or older lady, rigourously dressed in black. But Isabella was only 25 years old when Household Mangement was published in 1861. And shockingly, 3 years later, she was dead.

Isabella packed a lot into her short but intense life. Born in London in 1836, she was sent to live with relatives in Cumberland in north west England after her father died, at just four years old. When Isabella’s mother married again a few years later, the family moved to Surrey including Isabella, her two sisters and a further thirteen half siblings. As one of the elder children, Isabella was called upon to take care of the rest and this undoubtedly gave her valuable lessons in how to run a large household.

Portrait of Samuel Orchart Beeton by Julian Portch – National Portrait Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org

At the age of 20, Isabella married Samuel Beeton, a publisher, who encouraged her to contribute to The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine –  a publication focused on cuisine, fashion and fiction, to keep nice middle class ladies occupied at home. Isabella began work at the publication as a translator of French short stories (having learnt both French and German at a boarding school in Germany) but soon became the editor of a supplement which was, in effect, the cookery and household section.

The collation of these 24 supplements were to become the renowned Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management . Isabella copied recipes from other books or requested that readers write in with their favourite recipes, which were copied and/or edited by the Beetons without naming any of their sources. Unthinkable by contemporary standards, but these were different times. Isabella did test runs with the recipes at home to ensure their reliability before they were printed. The only contribution actually from Isabella herself was a recipe for soup that she distributed to the needy in 1858 and 1859.

Page 547 of Household Management   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mrs_Beeton_(547).jpg

The culinary delights you can see here on page 547 of Household Mangement shows a selection of starters – namely :

1. Toulouse Pastry  2. Fillets of Beef  3. Beef Galantine 4. Zéphires of Duck 5. Mutton Cutlets in Aspic 6. Sauté of  Veal 7. Chartreuese of Pheasant 8. Curried Veal 9. Chicken Médaillons 10.Veal Stew

These meals may  sound strange to us now, but all in all the recipes in the book are a pretty clear reflection of a what a well-heeled Victorian family generally ate. And in case you were wondering (because I did too), galantine is a French word for de-boned stuffed meat, a zéphire is a mousse, and a chartreuse is a dish that includes vegetables such as carrots and cabbage and sometimes meat, wrapped in salad or leaves and presented in a dome. Let’s move on before you ask me anything I can’t answer….

Title Page of Sept 1861 Issue of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
Source ;https://ciaffi.wordpress.com/Wikimedia Commons

Household Mangement

Isabella’s book was not just a cookery book. Managing a wealthy middlle class Victorian household was practically the same as running a small business, albeit a non-profitable one. The recipes were the main part of the book although other domestic issues such as finance management, supervising servants, entertaining visitors, child care, fashion and decoration were also included. The Domestic Magazine was compiled into her famous book, which was a major publishing event when it was launched on 1st October 1861.

Popularity

Sixty thousand copies of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management  were sold in just the first twelve months after its publication. The Oxford English Dictionary stated that the words Mrs Beeton were “a term for an authority on all things domestic and culinary”.  By 1868, almost two million copies had been sold. But why was it so popular ?

In Victorian England, crowds of people were flocking to the cities in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, in search of a more financially stable lifestyle. As the middle class increased in size, women were often left to deal with the business of managing the household affairs while their husbands were out all day at work. The book was aimed at giving women control over domestic matters and keeping them centred on the home. It is only fair to say that up to this point in history, women had had very little say in anything. This was probably the next best thing to a career, owing to the fact that female presence in the workplace was still an event waiting to happen.

Household management was undoubtedly a book that could guide its readers through the pitfalls of being left in charge of their staff, children and homes. It also struck a note with those who wished to be thrifty and cut costs. We should also remember that in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, the differing lifestyle imposed by the flow of people from rural areas to the cities meant that many young women had received little or no training in how to run a household. And that families often had numerous children.

A later addition to Isabella’s work. Note the publisher is Ward, Lock & Co, who bought the rights to Household Management after Isabella’s death.  Photo in public domain.

Isabella was atypical of her generation. Despite writing a book that focused on what was considered to be women’s work in the home, she went to the publisher’s office every day. It was also very unusual for a book to be published with a female writer’s name – it is highly likely this was due to her connections in the publishing world. She even edited her husband’s magazine for two years.

But sadly, in 1865, at the age of just 28, she died a day after giving birth to her third child, probably from puerperal fever, a bacterial infection contracted after giving birth. Antibiotics had yet to be invented and the level of hygiene during the delivery of a baby in the 1800’s was certainly not up to our modern standards. How lucky we are today. How ironic that Isabella should die giving birth, when she was dedicated to improving family life.

Her legacy

A few editions of Household Management after Isabellas’s death included an obituary, but the publishing house – no longer Samuel Beeton as he had sold the rights to the book to cover his debts – preferred to omit any reference to Isabella’s death, and the bestselling book continued to be revised and extended, giving the impression that Mrs Beeton was personally writing every word. The first edition had 44 chapters, by 1906 it had 74 chapters and over 2,000 pages.

Some critics of Household Management say that it reinforced the gender stereotypes that women have fought against for so long, plus many of the recipes were little more than plagiarism. But we have to understand the Beeton phenomenon within its historical context. Her book allowed women to feel that they had some authority over what happened in their homes in an era when they had practically no control over anything else.

The book also empowered women with a wealth of information on domestic matters, and Isabella herself never claimed that the recipes were her own. Besides, she tested out the recipes and developed an easy-to-read format with the ingredients listed first and the method step by step, along with the cost and the estimated cooking time, similar to what we expect to see in a cookery book today. In contrast to earlier, more highbrow cookbooks, it made the art of cuisine accessible, at a time when people had turned their backs on a rural way of life and the culinary skills they might have acquired in the countryside.

Household management  is a clear reflection of Victorian values such as thrift, tidiness and cleanliness.  Whilst many of the recipes would not appeal to us today, and some of her domestic advice would be out of step with the times,  thanks to Isabella’s book we have a vivid insight into the way the Victorian middle classes lived at home, providing valuable information for sociologists and historians. Isabella was a key figure in shaping this middle-class identity and was without a doubt, a strong woman who gave other women both aspirations and empowerment in their lives, the Victorian forerunner of a life coach. The first ever domestic goddess.

Beeton recipes on video

I can’t help but feel that Isabella would love the fact that recipes from her book are still used today and she surely would have embraced our communications technology as a means to reach her audience. On youtube you can find quite a few dishes from Household Management still being cooked and shown today. As a finale to this post I have chosen this scone recipe.

Hope you enjoy the video and let me know your comments!  https://youtu.be/mPiW1unz1_g

Categories
The Victorians

A Victorian Christmas

A Merry Christmas (1903) from The Miriam And Ira D. Wallach Division Of Art, Prints and Photographs: Digitally enhanced by rawpixel. (Image in public domain).

Christmas past

Christmas has been celebrated in many guises during history, melded from a pagan rite and a liturgical feast to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. So how did it morph into the activities and festivities that we associate with a contemporary Christmas?

In short, we owe a lot of our modern day secular Yuletide traditions to the Victorians. At the start of the Victorian period, Christmas was not a recognised event as such, but by the end of the nineteenth century, it had evolved into a significant occasion with a strong resemblance to the way we celebrate it today.

Illustrated London News, Public domain, via Wikimedia

Christmas trees

Tree worship goes as far back as the pagan era, and bringing greenery into the house for decoration seems logical when faced with a long, dark winter. But it was Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, who made Christmas trees popular when he installed one in Windsor Castle for the royal family’s festivities in the 1841. Once the royal household were pictured in the press with a decorated Christmas tree, the tradition quickly spread throughout Britain.

Victorian Christmas toys. https://pixy.org/src/105/1054784.jpg (creativecommons.org)

Christmas presents

The old custom of giving gifts on New Year’s Day gradually moved to 25th December as Christmas grew in importance during the Victorian age. Due to the industrial revolution, the wealth of the middle classes increased and they were allowed time off work to make the most of Christmas and Boxing Day holidays. Gifts which were originally small items hung from the branches of the Christmas tree – nuts, fruit or handicrafts- became bigger, more costly presents, which had to be left under the Christmas tree, due to their size. Needless to say, children from poorer families would still receive a stocking with fruit and/or nuts, whilst rich families could afford expensive handmade toys for their offspring.

Boxing Day was the day when the working class would open their boxes of donations or presents from their employers and for servants in large houses in particular, it would be their chance to relax a little from their household duties.

Image courtesy of zazzle.com

Father Christmas

The Father Chrismas we know these days is very much an invention of the Victorian age. The concept of Christmas personified has been around since the Middle Ages, in various incarnations as Old Christmas, Captain Christmas or Prince Christmas. But Captain Christmas et al were more concerned with feasting, drinking and partying than sliding down chimneys with toys for the kids. As the Victorian Christmas gradually became more child focused, and with the arrival of the Santa Claus story from the United States in the 1880’s, the idea of Father Christmas morphed with Santa and they became synonymous with each other, benevolent bringers of gifts for well-behaved children.

And this new Father Christmas was not always portrayed in his typically red outfit at first. His outfit could be green -see illustration above – blue, white or brown. In 1931 a Coca-Cola marketing campaign firmly established the tradition that Father Christmas/Santa Claus unequivocally dresses in red. The oldest letter that exists from a child writing to Father Christmas with requests for presents dates back to 1895.

The world’s first commercially produced Christmas card, designed by John Callcott Horsley for Henry Cole in 1843. https://commons.wikimedia.org (Image in public domain).

Christmas cards

The very first English Christmas card was actually a decorated manuscript sent to James I of England in 1611. Ornate scripts being beyond the reach of most people, the tradition of sending Christmas cards did not resurface until 1843. Henry Cole was a savvy guy who was involved in the creation of the Penny Post, the newly reformed postal service in 1840. Together with John Callcott Horsley, he invented the first series of commercially produced Christmas cards. This first Christmas card, pictured above, caused some controversy as the youngest member of the family is shown drinking wine, but the seeds of a new industry had been planted and Christmas cards became a profitable business.

https://victorianchristmasparty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Charles_Green01.jpg

Christmas dinner

My last post centred around what Victorians ate, and the huge difference between the financially stable and the less well off. Find it here:

Christmas, of course, was no different. Monied families could look forward to a lavish meal of several courses, the main course consisting generally of roasted meat, maybe beef, goose or turkey. Other delights included quail, oysters and truffles, Those who were not so lucky either ate something more humble, such as rabbit, or simply did not partipate in Christmas festivities. Many families lived in poverty, and Charles Dickens’s tale of Scrooge, “A Christmas Carol”, encouraged the wealthy to give gifts or donations to the poor at Christmas – a tradition which already existed but was made popular to a certain extent during Victorian times. Newspapers printed appeals for the poor and charitable organisations arranged Christmas dinners for some of those in need.

Christmas 2020

So what we can see is that a typical twenty- first century Christmas is basically a product of the Victorian era, brought about by industrialisation and greater buying power for the middle classes. Yet in 2020, the year of COVID-19, many of us are going to have a different Chistmas experience.

Will it change the way we live Christmas in the future, I wonder ?

Feel free to add your comments and let me know.