Bathrooms
What was a common issue with gas bathtubs during the Victorian period?
People would accidentally boil themselves to death
Victorians were obsessed with their food being white and presentable. What would they use to dye their food to be pure white?
Alum (Today's detergent and bleach)
Led has been known to be poisonous since the roman times. However Victorians insisted using led in their household paint. They would paint every surface in the home using led paint. Why would they do this?
Led is a amazing preservative and would preserve wood and furniture.
15% of all infants would die before the age of one. 50% of children would die before the age of five. Medical historians now know the leading cause of infant/child death. What was it?
The Baby Bottles/Milk.
Victorians saw breast feeding as unclean and baby bottles was seen as the only proper was to feed a baby. The originals Victorian baby bottles could not be cleaned on the inside. Bacteria and even poison that they used to keep milk fresh would build up and become lethal to the baby drinking from it.
How often did Victorian Men and Women Change their clothes on average?
5 times a day!
Obsessed with being clean, the Victorian upper and middle class would need to change every time their skirt dragged in dirt, horse waste, puddles etc.
The first indoor plumbing made way for the first ever toilets. What went wrong with them?
They would explode.
The first attempt at plumbing didn't allow for gas to properly flow into the sewers and it would build up in the pipes and leak back into the homes through the toilet. Next time someone lite a candle it would cause an explosion.
Brand labels were not yet established. Consumers would buy their ingredients in the same kind of packaging. Because items looked identical, what would often be mistaken for flour or sugar?
Insecticide or powdered poison
(these mistakes happened so often that it soon became a way for abused women to purposefully kill their husbands and claim it was an accident)
The Fly Scare occurred when the Victorians connected flies to germs. They observed how flies were drawn to waste and believed flies would bring disease. What was introduced to homes during the fly scare?
Screens on the windows.
Christmas was reinvented as a children's festival during the Victorian period. Toys became a big market item as consumers began to prioritise childhood in the homes. What dangers came with buying children's toys?
Toxic paint and led poisoning
Some Victorian clothing would randomly catch fire and unfortunately this led to people reportedly being engulfed in flames from their clothing. What was the clothing made of that caused this to happen?
Gun Cotton / Flash Cotton (used in dynamite)
Seen as easy to clean, Victorians ignored the fact that it was a highly flammable compound. It is 5 times more flammable than plywood. As the fabric broke down over time it could be ignited by light, heat and would spontaneously combust.
Victorians hated bodily fluids and smells as they were associated with the working class. Separating them in the home was deemed essential.
When baking bread what cheap additives were used to make the bread more dense and filling?
Chalk and Plaster
Green wallpaper became very popular during the Victorian era. With it's rising popularity came an increase in reports of people becoming ill within hours of putting up wallpaper and even some deaths. What was in the wallpaper?
Arsenic
Victorian women religiously followed the advice of Mrs. Beaton. She wrote on how to run a home and raise children. What did she advice pregnant women to drink?
Beer (but stay off the gin!)
Womens hair styles were big and ideally topped with a extravagant hat. They needed to use "hat pins" which was about a foot in length to keep their hat on their head. A women's society also encouraged what use for the hat pins?
Self defence. If a women found herself being attacked - the women's society told women to use their hat pin like a knife to stab their attacker.
Victorian Women began wearing facemasks to help keep their skin flawless and reduce wrinkles. What were the facemasks made of?
Slices of meat
Led cromate was used as a food dye to make foods a bright yellow. Today what is led cromate used for?
To paint school buses yellow.
Prior to the Victorian period advertising was deemed ungentle-men like. But the Victorians began using art, photography and celebrities to create a culture that accepted advertising and follow it religiously. Who were the targets for Victorian advertisers?
Middle class and Upper class women
They used fear tactics to make women feel like a failure of a housewife if they didn't follow magazine and newspaper advice and product recommendations
If milk wasn't available the Victorians began using baby formula. It consisted of two ingredients. What were they?
Water and flour
In the late Victorian Period what fashion change occurred to prevent clothing from getting dirty?
Skirt and coat length went up. To prevent clothing from dragging in the dirt they dared to expose ankles!
What additives did Victorians recommend to put into bathwater?
Alcohol, Ammonia and Borax.
Victorians did not like to waste food. They discovered that adding Borax to spoiled sour milk would make it taste fresh again. While ingesting borax alone could be deadly, what else could flourish in the milk undetected?
Non-pulmonary Tuberculosis
The invention of the mangle made laundry much easier. It allowed wet clothing to be fed through two cylinders and pressed dry. But why was the mangle so dangerous?
The mangle had exposed gears and there were frequent accidents of both adults and children getting their fingers crushed by the cylinders as they fed clothing through. Unfortunately the mangle also had accidents leading to death.
True or false? Boys were dressed as girls until they reached school age.
True.
How did Victorians design their women's underwear to make going to the bathroom easier?
They were crotchless.