The Truth About Victoriana

Support No Longer Quivering

2010-01-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

(Click on each image for more info!)

Female Circumcision in the US

2009-02-06T13:25:00.000-08:00

Like its male counterpart, circumcision of females has two histories. First it is a ritual or customary practice among tribal societies (mostly in Africa) and some Islamic communities. Secondly it is a medical intervention, justified by Victorian (and, in the USA, some twentieth century) doctors in exactly the same way as they rationalised circumcision of boys: to deter masturbation, to treat obscure nervous disorders such as hysteria, neurasthenia and epilepsy, and thereby to promote health.

Cult of Domesticity in Canada

2009-02-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/keys...
"The Cult of Domesticity"
Jennifer Salahub

The period 1840-67 can be characterized as an age of domesticity in the history of Canadian women. This was an era when appearances and material possessions played a major role in establishing a family's social and cultural aspirations. Daughters were educated to be modest and virtuous, and young wives to be industrious and self-sacrificing.

More About the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears

2009-02-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

"Trail Of Tears" www.richheape.com - Rich-Heape Films, Inc. Nearly a quarter of the Cherokee Nation froze or starved to death on the trail to Oklahoma Indian Territory. This video explores America's darkest period: President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma in 1838. Nearly a quarter of the Cherokee National died during the Trail of Tears, arriving in Indian Territory with few elders and even fewer children. Presented by Wes Studi and narrated by James Earl Jones, "Trail of Tears Cherokee Legacy" has already captured an impressive array of awards including a Nammy for best long video. Known worldwide as "The Nammys" - Nama (Native American Music Awards) is an ultimate celebration of music & video honoring the outstanding achievements of today's leading Native American artists.

More About Lord Lytton's Racism and Social Darwinism In India

2009-02-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

The Infamous Ernest Hogan

2009-02-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

Noted on Wikipedia:

Ernest Hogan (born Ernest Reuben Crowders, 1865 - 1909) was the first African American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show (The Oyster Man in 1907) and helped create the musical genre of ragtime.

A native of Bowling Green, Kentucky, as a teenager Hogan worked in traveling minstrel shows as a dancer, musician, and comedian. In 1895 Hogan published several popular songs in a new musical genre, which he named ragtime. These hit songs included "La Pas Ma La" and "All Coons Look Alike to Me". The success of this last song created many derogatory imitations, known as "coon songs" because of their use of racist and stereotypical images of blacks.

While Hogan was considered one of the most talented performers and comedians of his day, his contribution to the racist "coon song" craze haunted him. Before his death, he stated that he "regretted" using the racial slur in his song.

Victorian Racism and the Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles

2009-02-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Chinese population were consistently subject to ...
• low level jobs
• denied education or the ability to receive a higher education
• banned from testifying in court
• victims of race riots

(Please refer to Chinese Massacre of Los Angeles in 1871)

"A Statue for Our Harbor"

1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act: Congress prohibited all immigration of admission of unskilled Chinese laborers for 10 years with a ban against "lunatics, idiots, convicts, persons likely to become public charges." The Act was renewed in 1892 and the ban made "permanent" in 1902.

Victorian Era racism in the USA was a jumble of exclusion, segregated schools, laws and social mores.

Victorian Era Racism in the US

2009-02-06T12:23:00.000-08:00

In the USA, there was the famous (infamous?) Trail of Tears in 1838 occurring with the Native American population.

From Wikipedia:

The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation and movement of Native Americans from their homelands to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the Western United States. The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831.Many Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their destinations, and many died, including, for example, 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee. Thousands of enslaved and free African-Americans (as slaves accompanying their Native American slaveowners and as former runaway slaves that were assisted by, assimilated by, or married to members of the tribes) accompanied the removed nations on the Trail of Tears.
In 1831, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole (sometimes collectively referred to as the Five Civilized Tribes) were living as autonomous nations in what would be called the American Deep South. The process of cultural transformation (proposed by George Washington and Henry Knox) was gaining momentum, especially among the Cherokee and Choctaw. Andrew Jackson was the first U.S. President to implement removal of the Native Americans with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In 1831 the Choctaw were the first to be removed, and they became the model for all other removals. After the Choctaw, the Seminole were removed in 1832, the Creek in 1834, then the Chickasaw in 1837, and finally the Cherokee in 1838.

Victorian Racism

2009-02-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

The Comparative Worth of Different Races from the Heredity Genius (1869), pioneering eugenicist Francis Galton makes several references to the relative superiority of Europeans compared to what he called 'the lower races'. Although Galton was a gifted statistician, he was a significant contributor to the development of racist ideology.

Galton's work appears online HERE.

Gatlon states "the number among the Negroes of those whom we should call half-witted men, is very large" saying Negores are"so childish, stupid, and simpleton-like, as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species".

Prominent Victorians—like George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, Harold Laski, Charles Dickens—supported the idea of racial purity.

Many hold that the Victorians were the proto-type for the Nazis and set the ground work in motion for them to build upon.

With respect to Victorian Era holocausts, Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India in 1876. It would be the same year famine broke out in southern India that claimed 5.5 million lives. Lytton wrote,

"The grim doctrines of Thomas Malthus... still held great sway over the white rajas. Although it was bad manners to openly air such opinions in front of the natives in Calcutta, Malthusian principles, updated by Social Darwinism, were regularly invoked to legitimize Indian famine policy at home in England".

Lytton’s administration pushed the Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 in England prohibiting private relief and charitable donations for starving Indians illegal & threatened imprisonment. In 1878, he pushed the Vernacular Press Act that gave him the power to confiscate the press and paper of a local language newspaper publishing 'seditious material'. There was a public outcry in Calcutta led by the Indian Association.

About the Iroquois

2009-01-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists

Sally Roesch Wagner
1996

Wah-Ta-Waso, Iroquois woman. Photograph by Frank A. Rinehart, 1898. Part of the Rinehart Indian Photographs collection, Haskell Indian Nations University. Source: LJWorld.com - Photogalleries

Among the rights which women held among the Native American tribes:

Children belonged to the mother's tribe, not the father's tribe.
If a marriage proves to be an unhappy one, each person is at liberty to divorce and to marry again. What each person brought into the marriage, each person takes out of the marriage. Women get custody of children.
When a man brought the products of the hunt home and gave it to his wife, it was hers to dispose of as she saw fit. Her decisions were absolute, even to the sale of skins.
A woman retains control of her possessions at all times, even after marriage. They are hers to sell, give away, or bequeath as she sees fit. Her husband, father, brothers, and sons have no claim on her property.
Women ruled the house and stores were held in common.
Rape and wife-battering were almost unknown.
Women had the right to vote.
Treaties had to be ratified by 3/4 of all voters and 3/4 of all mothers.
Women had the power to impeach a chief (they "removed his horns," the deer's antlers he wore which signified his position.)
Women spoke in council meetings and were listened to respectfully.
Women could forbid braves from going to war.

Emphasizing the difference between white Christian culture and Native American traditions, Wagner writes,

"Again, the situation was very different for Indian women, as Alice Fletcher explained: . . . the wife never becomes entirely under the control of her husband. Her kindred have a prior right, and can use that right to separate her from him or to protect her from him, should he maltreat her. The brother who would not rally to the help of his sister would become a by-word among his clan. Not only will he protect her at the risk of his life from insult and injury, but he will seek help for her when she is sick and suffering. . . "

As it appears on the Matilda Joslyn Gage Website

HT to Adele Hebert

That Little Dickens!

2008-08-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

From Channel 4's Victorian Passions website:

"Born in Portsmouth in 1812, the young Charles Dickens should have had a safe and secure childhood on his father's wages as a navy pay clerk. But John Dickens was plagued by money troubles. This culminated in 1824, when he was arrested and imprisoned for debt.

The young Charles, possibly on the very day of his twelfth birthday, was immediately sent to work, sticking labels on pots of shoe blacking in a rat-infested warehouse on the banks of the Thames. He earned a mere 8 or 9 shillings a week, visited his family in prison at weekends, and had, as he later put it, 'to undertake the whole charge of my own existence'."....

In 1857, acting in a play by his friend and novelist, Wilkie Collins, Dickens met and fell in love with an actress, Ellen (or Nelly) Ternan (pictured). She was 18 he was 45. Their meeting was to spark the most extraordinary and explosive mid-life crisis in Dickens and to change both of their lives for ever. In a matter of months, Dickens broke up his marriage of twenty years, quarrelled with many of his friend and began a relationship with Nelly that led to a double existence for the remainder of his life.

The secret lover
Although he never publicly acknowledged her (except briefly in his will), Ellen became the centre of Dickens' emotional life until his death in 1870. We still do not know for certain whether it was a sexual relationship or not, but it is quite possible that they had a child (or even children) together, although any hard evidence of this, and of so much else about their relationship, has been lost or destroyed.

More About Burton and a Visit to a Brothel

2008-08-05T05:12:00.000-07:00

Victorian Passions and Sir Richard Burton: Victorian Sex Explorer

2008-08-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Richard Francis Burton

2008-08-03T16:50:00.000-07:00

Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890)

English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer, diplomat ...

best known exploit ... travelled to Mecca in disguise

unexpurgated translation of The Book of One Thousand Nights & a Night (more commonly called The Arabian Nights abridgement) and the Kama Sutra

Controversy ...

wrote about sex & sexuality = full of details; especially about the details of the sexual lives of those individuals where he travelled
wrote about sexual techniques where he travelled (hinting he participated)
broke sexual & racial taboos of the day
Kama Shastra Society
General Sir Charles James Napier had Burton go undercover to investigate a male brothel frequented by the soldiers
accused of murdering a boy that caught him"urinating like a European" on trip to Mecca (exposing his true identity and putting his own life in jeopardy)

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

The Revival of the Cult of Domesticity

2008-07-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

Just what we all need: another cult... The Bible-based teachings of the great patriarchy movement are not cultic enough for them... They have to prop them up with the ideology of culture, since it has more to do with culture than it does with Christianity.

They can't even come up with anything original. It's all Pre-Civil War retread.

From The Nineteenth Century "Cult of the Lady"

The nineteenth century, most of which historians have designated as the Victorian Age, was an era in which the idealization of women was developed into an art. No longer were women enjoined to simply live out their lives in dutiful labor for their families. Instead, an intricate and complicated ideology promoting the sacredness of hearth and home developed and came into its own during the years between 1830 and 1860. Women's lives for the rest of the nineteenth and on into the twentieth centuries came to be defined by and compared to this idea.

Women's fashions and the "cult of the Lady" reflected this ideology of domesticity. Although only wealthy women could aspire to be truly fashionable, the development of periodical literature which specialized in the "female concerns" of fashion, etiquette, and the home came to disseminate the current mode to an ever increasing and literate audience. Furthermore, these magazines, such as Godey's Ladies Book, presented the domestic ideal to which many aspired but only the upper and middle classes could actually attain.

Sometime during the late 1820's and early 30's, "Home" became the catchword of the day. Home became the haven from the rough world for men and children and was maintained by the smiling demure thing in spreading skirts and with folded hands. In her book on the developing technologies of housework, Ruth Schwartz Cowan remarks that the whole transition into industrialized society had a great impact upon the behavioral, moral, emotional, and political consequences of the ideology of the home. She concludes:

`Home' came to be associated with a particular sex, `women'; with a particular emotional tone, `warmth'... and with a particular form of behavior, `passivity'; while at the very same time, `work' became associated with `men', `hardheartedness', `excitement', `aggression', and `immorality.'...

...Although "cult of domesticity" is generally attributed to the Victorian era, it was no longer quite as prevalent in the years following the Civil War. Social upheaval moderated in varying degrees the adherence to the ideology. Although many women still thought of themselves as ladies, the woman of the "Gilded Age" was no longer tied to the home in the same way her sister of twenty years before was. By the late 1860's, the fashionables gave up their spreading skirts for bustles and the curiass form which delineated the female figure to a degree not seen since the 1810's.

The "cult of domesticity" and the "lady" provided a sense of security for many nineteenth century Americans. In that rapidly changing industrial era, the engendering of a safe haven guarded by a quiet female seemed the epitome of security. The raising of this vision to an ideology uplifted the mundane domestic duties of the housewife to a realization of the beauty of women's seperate sphere. Although in order to live this life a woman needed to be supported by a man, her task of providing a home elevated her social role. Indeed, by her very words, actions, an d dress, she could convey the status of her family. The "cult of domesticity", though it was pervasive in the thirty years before the Civil War, became an integral part of the history of women in America.

READ the full ARTICLE HERE.

Victorian Truth Telling on the BBC

2008-07-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

Channel 4 has a new programme for the fall, and I understand one aired in June. If you live in the UK, you can watch at least one full episode online, but we slugs on the other side of the pond cannot yet get access to all of these British shows yet...

From the Channel 4 website about the series "Victorian Passions":

Victorian Passions is a season of four films set to challenge our image of Victorian Britain as a buttoned up, prudish and unsmiling society.

From Queen Victoria's own passionate relationships, to the story of Arthur Munby and his servant lover, these films lift the lid on another side to Victorian life and challenge some of our long-held myths.

About the episode discussing Queen Victoria:

Victoria’s Men presents a seldom-seen side of Queen Victoria, both in childhood and then as a young queen. Through diaries and letters it explores the way her early life shaped the intense and complex relationships she was to have with men throughout her political and private life.

The real picture of Victoria could hardly be further from the dowdy, buttoned-up and forbidding image of the popular imagination. An intensely romantic wife as well as a fierce and effective politician, the programme highlights how Victoria both loved men and needed to be loved by them in return, not only as a queen, but as a woman in her own right. And privately, she revelled in her sexuality.

The potential scandal of some of her relationships set her on a collision course with her Royal court, family and public and at times plunged her monarchy into crisis. But it was one man, Prince Albert, who dominated her life during 21 years of marriage and the 40 years that followed his death.

The Myth of the Victorian Patriarchal Family

2008-07-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

if anyone is interested, I would like to recommend the following ...

The myth of the Victorian patriarchal family, by Eleanor Gordon (a Department of Economic and Social History, University of Glasgow, 4 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK) and Gweneth Nair (Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Paisley, Paisley UK)

It has been available online 22 January 2002

The Abstract on this study is as follows ...

Conventionally, the Victorian middle-class family has been regarded as a social and economic unit usually headed by a married man. The woman's role within this unit has been associated with service and dependency.

However, a study of a middle-class area of Glasgow based upon the census returns of 1851–1891 suggests that the widely held image of the Victorian middle-class family as headed by a paterfamilias may be misplaced. The high incidence of female-headed households and the range of kin, both male and female, which they contained, indicate the diversity of experience among middle-class women, the degree of their social and residential independence, and, thus, the dangers of viewing women's lives through the filter of Victorian domestic ideology.

again ... this whole myth around a woman and her role in the Victorian Era is simply that ... a myth ... it never existed
I can give several examples from my own family and that of my husband's family during the Victorian Era that dispel these myths ... these women were NOT that unusual ...

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Revealing Necklines for Women and Effeminate Clothing for Boys (by today's standards)

2008-07-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

Victorian Necklines

even the gowns of the upper class during the Victorian Era was too revealing! (in my opinion ... you do not have to agree)

Egads ... haven't these folks looked at those gowns!?!?

From Fashion-Era:

All this exposure was restricted to the upper and middle classes. Victorian working class women would never have revealed so much flesh. The décolleté style meant that the shawl became an essential feature of dresses. In the early Victorian years time corsets also lost their shoulder straps and a fashion for producing two bodices, with a closed décolletage for day and a décolleté one for evening.

may be their definition of modesty and mine are two different things

I perceive the gowns in the Victorian Era of the wealthy to be very, very, very revealing!

Effeminate Dress for Boys

there are some that want to crucify some women for wearing slacks today, but in the Victorian Era, little boys were clothed in dresses!

many little boys of the Victorian Era appear feminine by today's standards

out West there were many women that wore slacks simply because it made more sense in doing the work that they did

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Boys Wore Dresses and Had Long Hair

2008-07-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

From "Commonly Held Misconceptions about Historic Costume" from "The Clothesline" website:

Why did they dress little boys like little girls?

Though adult roles were extremely gender specific, small children's clothing was not...

Many images of small boys from the Victorian period and earlier appear feminine by today's standards. Some images show young boys in dresses almost identical to those of girls... Boys' clothing was not dissimilar to women's fashions of the nineteenth century. It was not unusual in the nineteenth century for small girls to wear bloomers, or pants beneath their dresses as well...

Like many other aspects of dress, the visible implicators of masculine and feminine have changed over time. The color schemes we associate with the identification of an infant's gender did not develop until the early to mid twentieth century... Finally, the use of pants for infant and toddler boys could create additional difficulties as fasteners commonly used today (snaps, zippers and velcro) were not available until the twentieth century. In the time before a child was potty trained, dresses would provide cover and access to diapers.

Until recent decades parents were not as concerned with declaring a child's sex... Gender would not need to be advertised to others who most likely knew the parents and the gender of the child already.

Beliefs about the nature of children also supported the idea that children developed personalities and individual traits as they grew, but were not necessarily born with them. Until babies grew into toddlers (2 or 3 years old) gender would not play a role in their lives. This may have been partially due to the high rates of infant mortality. This lack of individuality may have been a form of psychological protection for parents facing the likelihood of losing infant children.

Read the entire "Myths" online article here.

[Note: This blog host has an old photo of her grandfather wearing a dress and with long hair! He grew up to be very masculine: a coal, clay and sulfur miner; and later a welder. No gender ambiguity whatsoever!]

Female Hysteria: Help from the Sears Catalogue

2008-07-25T20:20:00.001-07:00

Female Hysteria

2008-07-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

This was once a common medical diagnosis for women. Mesmer did quite a lot of business with women, some of which approximates what some people call "Therapeutic Touch."

female hysteria is from the Greek idea of a "wandering womb seeking its proper place"

symptoms = faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and a "tendency to cause trouble"

is it any wonder that the reproduction rates declined during this era especially as the medical and marital advice = passionless women as ideal????

most of us are more familiar with this whole phenomenon because of the fainting couch and women having "the vapors" ...

when I first heard of fainting couches as a young girl, I remember thinking, "wow ... that is so cool!" ... I love furniture anyway so when I saw my first fainting couch that just cemented my love for furniture even more ... here was a piece of furniture JUST for women (like men had the triangle-shaped stools & chairs to accomodate the swords they wore at their sides)

this issue is a very touch and potentially VERY embarrassing issue for me to present ... so I will not go into great detail ... if you are interested, I would recommend you researching it yourselves when your children and husband are NOT in the room ...

If you opt to research, remember ... women during this era constantly had to go to the doctor for "women troubles" ... you may want to research this area as well as the above

"Why is this timeframe so looked upon and really REVERED in some Christian circles as the " end all be all" of modesty and enlightenment?"

... I simply cannot fathom that ... to me, rightly or wrongly, it is a very wicked and immodest
time frame

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

The Victorian (Non)Sensibilities of Bill Gothard

2008-07-25T18:52:00.000-07:00

In 1974 Dr. E. Robert Jordan (Chancellor of Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary at the time) did a 22-page comprehensive analysis of Gothard's ministry which gave 15 reasons Why Fundamentalist Baptists Should Not Cooperate With Bill Gothard's Institute In Basic Youth Conflicts.

Gothard seems to move from experience to doctrine, from illustrations to principles resulting in full-blown teachings. There are HUGE problems with this ... but again, it also reflects some of the problems the visible church was having during the Victorian Era.

• Sex Scandals & the Victorian Era

I think you raise a very interesting correlation whether it was intended or not—i.e., the connection between how some present a very low view of women (twisting Scripture in order to do so) and sexual scandal... this, too, was very common during the Victorian Era ...

... there have also been huge sex scandals with Gothard and his brother ... again, very reminiscent of the Victorian Era's need to place everything under rules/regulations (only for those that could afford them & not the rest of us) and sex scandals

this is exactly what was happening during the Victorian Era

• Don't need to be Christian ... another area representative of the Victorian Era ...

The need for Christianity at these seminars was not an imperative. These principles apply to all: Jews, Christians, and Atheists said the St. Paul Dispatch on 26 April 1974.

Many at the time (I dunno about afterward) claimed that he was substituting his laws (i.e., Gothard's rules) for what the Bible said.

• Occult connection? another area reflecting the Victorian Era ...

I have heard some say Gothard's "Pre-Birth Training" borders on the occult. During the Victorian Era, the occult was making a re-appearance again ... even respectable Christian families of the Victorian Era were toying with the occult.

Also, there appears to be a connection between Gothard and Dr. Michael Ballam, a Mormon, whom I have been told is heavily influenced by New Age principles and pop psychology. Some of the stuff that Ballam promoted was occultic themes in "planetary vibration tones" and more . Ballam, apparently, held that Christ was simply a person that could channel power and/or energy in order to do His miracles. The Victorian Era was not that blatant, but basically implied Ballam's stuff via Spiritualism.

• Medicine connection to Victorian Era ...

Most of us are familiar with the Snake Oil man selling his potions out West during the Victorian Era. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz deals with one (even though the movie had the setting in the 1930s). I have been told Gothard qualifies himself for giving out medical advice and undermines medical doctors that could cause life-threatening problems. Apparently in his January, 1996 Basic Care Newsletter Gothard told his followers that Cabbage Patch and Troll dolls in the home prevented birth & once thes offending dolls were removed, the women became PG! This whole thing borders on paganistic superstitution! His whole medical advice borders on mysticism which was very prevalent in the Victorian Era.

The Victorian Era also viewed illness in a very superstitious way with all health issues believed to be brought on by a spiritual cause. This is also reflected in Gothard's preference for natural cures and discouragement of traditional medicine as a first option for illness. Spiritual cause should be considered first. This is reflected in Henry Wright's book. It is nearly identical to the New Age views of people like Louise Hay.

• confusion between true intimacy and marital relationships ...

Just like the Victorian Era, Gothard seems to confuse true intimacy (sharing thoughts, feelings, life experiences, etc.) and marital relationships. In the Victorian Era, the medical advice at the time told women and men they were not to enjoy each others company (in the Biblical sense) in marriage (which was probably why there was a need for so many prostitutes ... ). To Gothard, his view of love is cold and chemical ... which is understandable because it is my understanding that he has never been married. I never get the impression that males/females are to give each other their hearts in a marriage.

• legalistic rules ...

My brief exposure to Gothard definitely left me with the impression that he was similar to those from the Victorian Era with respect to having the need to have legalististic rules & regulations never found in the Bible. When discussing this with my mom's parents who where children of the Victorian Era, they would just shake their heads. If you follow certain rules, everything is okay. There seems to be no need for internal motivation. I remember huge discussions on this after attending that seminar in my family and tons of compare/contrast techniques with that seminar and the Pharisees.

It seems to me that he disputed Scripture's definition of grace as unmerited favor. I would have to go pull out my stuff from the attic to be sure. I can tell you I went away from the seminar thinking he thought it was necessary to follow certain rules/regulations in order to earn favor.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

The Civilizing Force of Women on the Western Frontier

2008-07-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

More About Women on the Western Frontier

Court records indicated many women physically defended themselves against enemies, turned out shiftless abusing alcoholic husbands from the home, led religious movements (i.e., return to Christianity), criticized public officials for wickedness, etc.

Consistently, women were seen as the “civilizers” of a culture.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Pearl S. Buck said:

American men will not be really happy until their women are.

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.

Mighty Western Women: Cathay Williams

2008-07-25T18:30:00.002-07:00

Cathay Williams

In a tiny shotgun cabin
Martha's baby girl was born.
A baby born to slavery
That no one could forewarn.

Cathay Williams was determined
And never was deterred
As she began her life as a house girl
Being seen but never heard.

Then the Civil War broke out
And the Union soldiers came
And taking Cathay with them
Her life would never be the same.

Cathay learned the ways of military life
And became an accomplished cook.
She was sent to General Sheridan
A job she proudly undertook.

Then the Civil War was ended
And Cathay was finally free
And in seeking out her freedom,
She found her place in history.

Her own way she needed to make
And a burden to no one be
So as a Buffalo Soldier she joined up
In the 38th U. S. Infantry.

Cathay Williams became William Cathay
And no one was to know
The secret of her identity
As a soldier she did grow.

The troops moved west to Ft. Cummings
To keep the Apache at bay.
There were one hundred and one enlisted men
And among them was William Cathay.

After two years as a soldier
In the 38th Company A
William went to see the doctor
And her secret came out that day

Discharged as a Buffalo Soldier
Cathay did her very best
As she continued to make her way
In this land they called the West.

Because of her illegal enlistment
Her pension passed her by
But she picked herself up and moved on
And never questioned why.

Life ended for Cathay Williams
At the age of eighty-two
She lived a long independent life
A life that was tried but true.

A salute to Cathay Williams
The hero of this rhyme
A special woman of the west
A legend in her time.

© July 1999, Linda Kirkpatrick
Visit with Linda Kirkpatrick

Mighty Western Women: Sarah Winnemucca

2008-07-25T18:30:00.001-07:00

• Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891) ... granddaughter of a Paiute chief sent to learn the ways of the whites at a convent school in San Jose ... she addressed Congress to get a bill passed honoring her people’s rights on their own land

From the National Women's Hall of Fame website:

Born the daughter of Chief Winnemucca of the Paiutes, a tribe in Nevada and California, Sarah Winnemucca lost family members in the Paiute War of 1860. She tried to operate as a peacemaker, using her language skills learned in convent school to work as an interpreter in an Army camp. She went with her tribe to the Malheur reservation in 1872, and when the Bannock War broke out in 1878 she offered her services to the Army. She volunteered to enter Bannock territory when she learned that her father and other tribesmen had been taken hostage by the Bannocks. She freed her father and other captives and served as an army scout in the war against the Bannocks. She spoke out, describing the plight of her people, exiled from their homelands, and the treachery of dishonest Indian agents. She drew much attention, and was able to speak with President Rutherford Hayes and Interior Secretary Carl Schurz; promises to return her tribe to the Malheur Reservation were never honored. She wrote Life Among the Piutes[sic]: Their Wrongs and Claims, published in 1883. Despite passage of Congressional legislation enabling the return of the Paiute land, the legislation was never enacted.

Additional Resources:

Seagraves, Ann. High Spirited Women of the West. Lakeport, California: Wesanne Publications, 1992.

Luchetti & Olwell. Women of the West. Berkely, California: Antelope Island Press, 1982.

Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883.

Mighty Western Women: Nellie Cashman

2008-07-25T18:23:00.001-07:00

• Nellie Cashman (1845-1925) ... saved E. B. Gage, superintendent of the Grand Central Mining Company, who was to be kidnapped and lynched by outsmarting a group of lawless men

From the Desert USA website:

Described by her bioghapher, "Pretty as a Victorian cameo and, when necessary, tougher than two-penny nails," the extraordinary Nellie Cashman wandered frontier mining camps of the 1800s seeking gold, silver and a way to help others. Throughout the West, she was variously known as Frontier Angel, Saint of the Sourdoughs, Miner's Angel, Angel of the Cassair and The Angel of Tombstone...

Before long, Nellie joined a group of 200 Nevada miners headed to the Cassiar gold strike at Dease Lake in northern British Columbia. Here, too, she operated a boarding house for miners and gained notoriety for organizing a rescue caravan to a mining camp where a scurvy epidemic had broken out. Together with 6 men and pack animals loaded with 1,500 pounds of supplies, she completed the 77-day journey through as much as 10 feet of snow and arrived in time to nurse almost 100 sick miners back to health....

She was also active raising money for the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the Miner's Hospital and amateur theatricals staged in Tombstone. She was famous for taking up collections to help those who had been injured or fallen on hard times, especially miners. Always the pragmatist, Nellie found the members of Tombstone's red-light district sympathetic and charitable to her causes, and relied on their generosity to help others in need.

Nellie's community services in Tombstone continued to expand. She served as an officer of her church to hear the impromptu confessions of 2 of the 5 men who were to be hanged for the Bisbee Massacre of December 1883. The following year, when a group of miners attempted to lynch mine owner E.B. Gage during a labor dispute, Nellie drove her buggy into the mob and rescued Gage, spiriting him away to Benson, Arizona...

There is even more to her history....

Mighty Western Women: Esther Hobart Slack Morris

2008-07-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

• Esther Hobart Slack Morris (1814-1902) ... she held a tea party in Wyoming presenting issues & concerns to men regarding women voting

From the Wyoming State Archives:

Mrs. Morris has been widely acclaimed as an influential figure in the events that established women’s suffrage in Wyoming. However, her role in promoting suffrage legislation in the territory has been disputed. The record shows that in 1869, during the territory’s first legislative session, William H. Bright introduced a women’s suffrage bill. Although the legislation was received with some humor, it did pass and was signed into law by Governor John A. Campbell, thus according the young territory immediate fame as the first government to grant women the right to vote in all public elections.

Shortly after the legislative session, in February 1870, Wyoming achieved another “first” when three women were appointed to serve as justices of the peace. Esther Morris was selected to complete the term of the South Pass City justice, who had resigned. She is the only one of the three appointees known to have served, thereby winning accord as the first woman to hold a judicial position. Mrs. Morris served 8½ months and handled 26 cases in a manner that was considered a credit to her position. In later years, following first separation from then death of her husband, Ms. Morris lived with her sons. She appeared at a number of women’s rights gatherings and political affairs, though she was apparently not comfortable with making speeches. She died in 1902 in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Mrs. Morris eventually became a symbol for the women’s rights movement, and stories of her independent attitudes and support of women’s issues have been circulated. As for the question of who was the main force behind the Women’s Suffrage Act in Wyoming, the verifiable record favors William H. Bright, who introduced the bill. A story that Mrs. Morris had obtained a promise from Bright, also a South Pass City resident, at a tea party to introduce the suffrage bill surfaced decades after the fact and has been commonly repeated. Though this story and any direct involvement by Mrs. Morris in the drafting and introduction of the suffrage bill cannot be substantiated, Esther Morris is commonly regarded as one of the heroines of the women’s suffrage movement. Her name became synonymous with equal rights, fame which led to her being chosen as Wyoming’s representative in Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Her statue was presented in ceremonies at the Capitol in 1960.

Mighty Western Women: Sacagawea

2008-07-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

• Sacagewea (1789-1812) ... led Lewis and Clark’s expedition to find the Pacific Ocean carrying her two month old child on her back ... her common law husband was a piece of work!

From Lewis and Clark Trail .com:

SACAGAWEA the only Native American woman who served as an interpreter and guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 and 1806.

As a child, she had been taken by members of the Hidatsa Tribe and lived among them. Later she was sold to a French-Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau.
While the Expedition wintered in the Hidatsa- Mandan Village (1804-1805), they hired Charbonneau as an interpreter for the trip west. Sacajawea, one of Charbonneau wives, and her baby accompanied the Expedition.

Frontier Women Voted! The Apple Orchard Convention

2008-07-25T18:02:00.001-07:00

Apple Orchard Convention: 13 June 1884

• 759 registered women voters in Seattle convened
• decided on their platform
• next election they voted en masse
• they demanded the laws be enforced & houses of prostitution closed down
• they forcefully came against liquor, gambling & prostitution (the major areas of revenue for Seattle)

read ... Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt, University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho, 2003 ISBN 0-89301-262-9

From "Frontier Women in Washington":

To understand the Western experience, you must realize that the wife of a homesteading family was truly a renaissance woman. She was venerated by both the profane and the profound as the Madonna of the frontier (please do not confuse her with the pop singer). Even if Joe Blow really believed he was escaping problems with women back on the Missouri or the Mississippi, he soon missed his water when he realized how dry the local matrimonial well was. Even some of the most bigoted Democrats wound up taking an Indian squaw as their klootchman, a Chinook Jargon word for today's chauvinistic terms such as the old lady, or maybe the main squeeze. When proper young white women such as the Mercer Girls showed up years later, the klootchman was sometimes pitched back to the newly formed Swinomish reservation. If she was lucky, her husband built a shanty behind the main house where she could baby-sit her progeny. By the time that Washington territory became a state in 1889, many white men had married Indian women in tribal ceremonies. A new state law legitimized such marriages but it also required that the couples remarry in a U.S. civil ceremony, or else the spouse had to be sent away.

The pioneer wife, such as Wilhelminia "Minnie" von Pressentin or Georgetta Savage had to prepare for their families living in remote wilderness for many months of every year. Georgetta must have been frightened nearly to death when she had to load her babies and all their bedding and furniture onto flimsy looking cedar canoes and then be rowed up the Skagit river in pouring rain. Her initial reward was to fall into the drink. Minnie discovered a sewing machine for sale in Mount Vernon before heading upriver to meet her husband, Karl, so she bought it on the spot and it was one of her most valued possessions.

Educated and politically aware women, such as Georgiana Batey and Eliza Van Fleet, must have cheered when the Washington territorial legislature ignored the suffrage restrictions in most states and granted women the right to vote on Nov. 23, 1883. The men learned, too late, how well women could organize, because the 759 registered women voters in Seattle convened an "Apple Orchard Convention" on June 13, 1884, and ran a reform ticket for the city council. They voted en masse and their reform ticket of "sober, honest and efficient" candidates all won.

Comparing the Frontier Victorians with the Fragile Femmes

2008-07-25T17:55:00.001-07:00

Victorian Healthcare

1st: Only the "rich" could afford to go to the doctor

2nd: Many considered doctor appointments a point of prestige

3rd: From the various accounts I have read, husbands did not care

To me ... rightly or wrongly ... these visits to the doctor were ... uh, er, uhm ... a type of promiscuous behavior that was condoned by society (rightly or wrongly I consider the treatment at the time promiscuous behavior) [Based on how society viewed things then]

It would seem that there really is a correlation between physical/emotional/sexual abuse and poverty...

(no matter what culture, time frame, or society)

being poor promotes stress ... fear ... worries ... major problems

some folks respond to issues associated with poverty or perceived poverty with abuse

depending on the degree of poverty ... or the perceived notion of being poor (called "relative poverty") ... and a person's ability to handle stress has (in my mind) a direct correlation to the degree of abuse

I also think it relates to "culture" ... poor women in the cities would frequently physically fight back (cuz it generally meant their lives)

Frontier Women

Victorian women in our West could hold their own ... remember, Annie Oakley was not that unusual ... many women had to hunt to provide for their families ... Annie Oakley was only unusual to the extent that she made her living by trick shooting, her connection with Buffalo Bill, and her ability to promote herself in the marketplace

Men thought twice about being abusive to frontier women ... also, many American men truly held their wives in very high esteem and treated them how they would wish to be treated (i.e., Western men tended to not listen to the goofy rules from England or the East ... they were not in to prestige and status like those in the East)

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Mighty Western Women: Libbie Custer

2008-07-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

• Libbie Custer, wife of the famous general ... talented writer who chronicled her frontier adventures in books making her a wealthy woman

From Wikipedia:

After her husband’s column was wiped out at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876, many in the press, Army, and government criticized Custer for blundering into a massacre. President Ulysses S. Grant publicly blamed Custer for the disaster. Fearing that her husband was to be made a scapegoat by history, Libbie launched a one woman campaign to rehabilitate her husband's image. She began writing articles and making speaking engagements praising the glory of her martyred husband. Her three books, Boots and Saddles, (1885), Following the Guidon (1890); and Tenting on the Plains, (1893) were brilliant pieces of propaganda aimed at glorifying her dead husband’s memory. Though generally considered to be largely factually accurate, they were clearly slanted in Custer's favor.

Her efforts were largely successful. The image of a steely Custer leading his men against overwhelming odds only to be wiped out while defending their position to the last man became as much a part of American lore as the Alamo. It would not be until the late 20th century, more than a half century after her death, that many historians began to take a second look at Custer’s actions leading up to the battle and found much to criticize.

Mighty Western Women: "Trudy" Barcelo Santa Fe

2008-07-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

Gertrudis Barcelo Santa Fe "Gambling Queen" kept her maiden name, owned her own casino, & helped the United States win the Mexican-American War.

From Biography.com:

Barcelo's wealthy parents saw that she received an education, and in the early 1820s the family moved to a small village just south of Albuquerque, which at the time was part of Mexico. As a result of her upbringing and education, Barcelo grew to be an unusually independent and financially astute woman. When she married at age 23, she—contrary to custom—retained her own property, her right to make contracts, and her maiden name. She and her husband moved to the Santa Fe area in 1825 and established a highly profitable game-of-chance operation near a mining camp. Several years later Barcelo bought her own casino in Santa Fe. The opulent casino soon became a favourite with Santa Fe's fashionable society, with Barcelo, who became known as “La Tules,” presiding as one of the dealers. As Santa Fe was a trade hub, Barcelo further increased her wealth and status through shrewd trade deals and investments.

Mighty Western Women: Bridget "Biddy" Mason

2008-07-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

• Bridget "Biddy" Mason (1818-1891) a former Mississippi slave who gained her freedom for self & children in the 1850s; landowner, entrepreneur, and philanthropist in California; established the 1st black church in Los Angeles & engineered a series of shrewd real estate deals bringing her & her family wealth; made enough money to set up several homes for the homeless, sick, and old

From Wikipedia:

Bridget ("Biddy") Mason (born August 15, 1818 in Hancock County, Georgia - died Janu ary 15, 1891 in Los Angeles, California) was an African American nurse, and a California real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Mason worked in Los Angeles as a nurse and midwife. Saving carefully, she was one of the first African Americans to purchase land in the city. As a businesswoman she amassed a small fortune of nearly $300,000, which she shared generously with charities. She was instrumental in founding a traveler's aid center, an elementary school for black children, and was a founding member of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the city's first and oldest black church.

Mighty Western Women: Charlie Parkhurst

2008-07-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

“Charlie” Parkhurst drove a stagecoach for twenty years: "The Finest Stagecoach driver in the West."

From Wikipedia:

Parkhurst retired from driving some years later in Watsonville, California. Charles Darkey Parkurst is listed in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on October 17, 1868 under the official poll list, making Parkhurst the first woman to vote in the United States...

When Parkhurst died in 1879, the neighbors came to the cabin to lay out the body for burial, and they discovered that the renowned stagecoach driver was a woman. Rheumatism and cancer of the tongue were listed as causes of death, but the examining doctor, called in by the astounded neighbors, definitely established that Charlie had been a mother; a trunk in the house contained a baby's dress.

More Voting Freedoms for Women

2008-07-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

USA Vote for Women

It would seem that in the United States the Americans did not succomb to popular man-made notions ..

• New Jersey
Under the Articles of Confederation (following War of Independence) ... the only voting requirement was that one had to have £50 (~USD250) worth of cash or property ... election laws referred to voters as "he or she"; 1790=law made specifically to include women; 1807 law made to exclude women cuz they made themselves objectional to professional politicians; 1844 constitution banned women from voting

• Wyoming Territory
1869; women vote; 1890 Wyoming admitted to Union;
1st to let women vote

• Utah Territory
1870; women vote; 1887, the United States Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act; 1895, Utah adopted a constitution restoring women’s vote

• Colorado
1st state where men voted to give women the right to vote

anybody wanna add to this list?

It would seem that during the Victorian Era the further West folks went the more freedom all had ... including women ... and the West was known for its morality (overall) being higher than in the east (See: Louis L'Amour)

There are some who don't believe women should be voting today. And if they do then they should only vote for who their husband tells them to. In my experience, these tend to be the same folks who want us to return to "Victorian Days."

this is bizarre ...

women are citizens in this culture ...

our ancestors thought it would be a good thing for women to vote ...

so sad ...

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Not an Easy Life for Women on the American Frontier

2008-07-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hardships of Covered Wagon Journey Across Plains Recalled By Pioneer

(Written by Mary Frances Patton Welch, a 90 year old Ashland pioneer ... article tells of the family 1862 journey across the plains with her grandfather, captain of the emigrant train of 100 persons and of their perils and adventures enroute).

Our family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. John Parham, who were my grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. William Patton who were my parents, my little sister Ettie and myself. Sister Annie was born on the way, near American Falls on the Snake River in Idaho. Mother thought she would get through the trip before the stork arrived, but as there was a doctor in our emigrant train, she and baby were taken care of. When the baby was only three days old we had a fight with Indians.

Women out west treated MUCH differently ...

[We] had to pass through a canyon where the women drove and the men fought all the way through.

The younger generation does not realize the hardships the pioneers had ... We children had to walk two miles to school and two miles back each day. There were wild cattle, rattlesnakes, ringsnakes, and once in a while we heard a panther scream. There was plenty of game such as wild hogs, turkeys, quail, plenty of fish in the streams so our meat did not cost anything ... We girls helped to drive the cattle. We had no saddles, only surcingles and blankets for our horses. We were several weeks on the trip. ... In some places they had to cut down small trees and tie them to the back of the wagons to use for brakes.

We milked some of the cows, put the cream in a chum and by the end of a day's travel we would have several pounds of butter-the motion of the wagon churned it. Our bread was baked in a dutch oven.

Voting in Colonial America?

2008-07-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Lydia Chapin Taft (1712-1778), the widow Josiah Taft, was the first woman voter in colonial America?

Her vote was important with respect to the French and Indian War.

Her first vote was at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, on 30 October 1756 appropriating funds for the regiments battling in the French & Indian War. She voted again 1758 (reduce her highway rates) and in 1765 (change her school district).

Those Dreadful Women Homesteaders

2008-07-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

1862 Homestead Act:
freehold title to 160 acres of undeveloped land outside of the original 13 colonies.

New law required three steps:

• file an application
• improve the land
• file for deed of title

Eligibility: Anyone, including freed slaves, who had never taken up arms against the U.S. Government could file an application and improvements to a local land office

signed by Abraham Lincoln 20 May 1862

Result:

• 1.6 million homesteads granted
• 270 million acres were privatized between 1862 and 1964

Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading (except for Alaska where it ended in 1986.)

Women took advantage of this opportunity, too.

Tillie Olson (1885-1918) aka Matilda Olson; Private Secretary at O'Connor and Goldberg Shoe Store in Chicago; Homesteader in Devil's Lake in North Dakota

The Chrisman sisters near Goheen settlement on Lieban Creek, Custer County, Nebraska, 1886

Julia Stockton stands in front of her tar-paper homesteading shack in this photo taken in the early 1900s.

Famous Disgruntled Youths? Things Were Better Out West!

2008-07-24T04:54:00.000-07:00

Jack the Ripper

there are some theories that Jack's spree is related to some of the stuff I have talked about ...

interesting that you have made the connection between Jack and mega-controlling parents ... there is one theory that Jack the Ripper was one of Queen Victoria's sons

Horatio Alger, Jr

one major theory at this point in time that most folks do not realize is the Unitarian author that wrote the Horatio Alger's stories was a pedophile ...

this is not well known because book sales would have slumped off incredibly ... but even these stories had to have a thin veneer of respectability to them

(I have used 2-3 of these stories to point out certain issues to my own children ... like being melodramatic or histrionic is not the way to go! ... I tend not to enjoy drama queens & kings ... anyway, the guy that wrote Horatio Alger did around 119 books ... there are only 4-5 plot lines for all of them ... so, if you have read 1-2 and most definitely 3-4 you will know the plots for all the rest of the stories)

Annie Oakley (a stark contrast!)

from what I have seen, US crime rates were similar ... except out west ... the reason for that is because most women were shooting game to feed their families (Annie Oakley was only exceptional in a couple of areas ... she worked for the wild west show and did trick shooting) ... women out west tended NOT to put up with such nonsense ... more often than not a man would have been too scared to try to physically abuse most women because she could handle herself (thank you very much) ... in fact, out west the gals received the right to vote and hold public office long before the rest of us

Have you read Louis L'Amour stories? (A good place to start)

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Working Women and Children in the Victorian Era

2008-07-20T19:26:00.001-07:00

Victorian society was highly stratified. The rich lived in sumptuous comfort. Prosperity was in the hands of only a few ... wealth viewed as visible sign of virtue ... increasingly the wealthy were viewed as 'decadent aristocrats’

the higher up the social ladder the more confining women’s clothes became (which deformed their internal organs causing “the vapors”, fainting, etc.) ...

working class women did not wear corsets unless there was a very special occasion

working class = the individuals that actually PRODUCED the wealth = malnutrition, dangerous working conditions

Child Labour

1830 = 560 cotton mills in Lancashire employed 110,000+ workers ...which 35,000 were children (some as young as 6 yrs old)

children received 10 times less than adults

made sense to employ children & not adults

"scavengers" = young children crawled beneath machinery while they operated to
pick up loose cotton ... many caught in machinery & died ... those that survived
permanently stooped in adultood

Average working day = 14 hours ... many worked much longer

attitude of other classes regarding working class = laisser faire

poor told it was their fault they were poor & that God wanted them poor

Terrible poverty means there is no shortage of beggars. It would probably not be off the mark to say the Victorians tended to worship at the altar of success and money.

There is a huge gap between the classes. Mrs Isabella Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management reveals many servants are required to prepare a meal.

Social reformer Charles Booth (1840-1916) took 18 years to write up his findings in a survey called The Life and Labour of the People in London which was finally published in 1903.

He divided his work into several sections: high-paid labour, regular standard earners, small regular earners, intermittent earners, casual earners, 'the lowest class’

• regular standard earners = largest group, benefit most, have fewer children, combination of more money and fewer children mean they have more leisure time

The Types of Poor:
Deserving poor = sparingly receive very little charity = work houses also called poor houses (which split up families)

Poor = most desperate and numerous class; approx. 1/4 of urban population; some unemployed; some criminals; live a precarious existence

Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1851-62) gives tons of examples of begging, hawking all manner of goods or even collecting and selling dog droppings

1889, Charles Booth says,
“Their life is the life of savages.”

1901 York (England) = 27% of the people are in deep poverty and living in squalid, even deadly slum conditions

[Source: Quaker philanthropist and chocolate manufacturer Seebohm Rowntree (1871-1954), in his book Poverty: A study of town life]

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Urban Versus Rural Poverty

2008-07-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

Urban poverty is bad ... rural poverty is worse ... importing cheap wheat & wool destroys traditional agriculture in the 1880s ... those living in the country are FORCED to migrate to the city ... by 1901 men working on farms drops by 1/3

Farms in southern England ... they join work gangs led by a task-master
women give children opium so they will not make noise as they work in the fields

The working class was continually shut out of the political process ... education opportunity = slim

Those of children and children's children's of European immigrants look with suspicion on those that say ...

• do not get a college education when it is in your grasp
• do not vote
• voting is a choice of the "lesser of two evils"

... some may not know why they resist these notions so strongly ... but I would suggest a portion of it stems from this timeframe

there is NO DESIRE to make a return to a living standard worse than the serfs under folks that wear a cloak of Christianity

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Death and Burial in the Victorian Age: Social Darwinism

2008-07-20T17:32:00.001-07:00

Life Expectancy: Golden Age of Funerals

You may realistically ask, "What does life expectancy in the Victorian Era have to do with morality?"

Simple ...
life expectancy = directly related to wealth ... poor die young ... rich lived longer

Remember ... the majority of the rich perceive ...

• it is the fault of the person for being in the working class or poor

• it is wrong for any to be discontent with their condition in life (i.e., working class or poor) because this is where God put them (heaven forbid it would be man! with all his man-made rules and regulations)

• it is a VERY foreign concept for rich Christians to help others around them ... they tend to enjoy the adulation the working class and poor give them and their entourage (i.e., servants, employees, middle class friends, etc.)

Today, many middle class Americans constantly give to others that are starving. As individuals, small groups, and churches, we collect money, have food drives, and more.

This was not really happening to the degree it is today during the Victorian Era. Too many swallowed Herbert Spencer's myth of the survival of the fittest (i.e., sociological darwinism) ...

So what if the wealthy wore a cloak of Christianity while they imported wheat and cotton crops from other nations that put their people out of work (to the tune of only 1/3 of the farmers surviving this in England)?

Common Rationalizations (i.e., excuses) used when applying SOCIAL DARWINISM ...

• it is simply the rules of the economic market ... supply & demand!

• Business is business!

• Since when does Christianity apply to business? You cannot apply the Golden Rule to economics! You apply it to everyone and anything else, but NOT business!

• Of course it is okay to take over other businesses and cause owners to suffer! That's just plain business! (he/she wasn't a good business person anyway, they couldn't do ___________, etc.)

• Who cares how many unemployed may result from the decision to import those things that local farmers used to grow!? It makes more economic sense to go after a buck!

(these are only a few examples, there are TONS of them that were operating during the Victorian Age and, sad to say, these same types of excuses are still used to cloak social darwinism under the thin veneer of "Christianity" and operate today

Statistics

average life expectancy = 40 years

Mid-Victorian Era life expectancy = Liverpool = 15!!!!

3 out of every 20 babies die before their first birthday

1899 upper class Liverpool = 136 newborns out of 1000 would die before the age of 1

Working class = 274 infant deaths per 1000 births

Impoverished slums = 509 infant deaths per 1000 births

Alexander Finlaison reported = 1/2 of all children of farmers, laborers, artisans, & servants died before 5th birthday compared to 1 in 11 children of the land owning gentry

children suffer = influenza outbreaks, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, and typhoid

poor sanitary conditions (no piped water, lack of immunizations, etc.) contribute to death rate

All have bad breath because of poor dentistry
(modern research indicates poor dental hygiene has a direct correlation to earlier death rates)

Women ...

• died younger (childbirth, inferior food consumption, tended to nurse sick which led to own sickness, etc.)

• Societal expectations of rich women = delicate, not “ladylike” to exercise or have an appetite

•custom = best food given to boys / men (females suffered)... amazingly, this contradicted the notion of the rich that women were weaker ... obviously, weaker vessels needed to have the best food and not the men ... but folks are never consistent & may never be logical (now or then)

Lower classes ... debilitated by the age of forty due long hours, poor nutrition (frequently malnutrition), and premature full-time employment = early death cause

1840 London’s Whitechapel District = (average rates)
Upper class =45 years
Tradesmen = 27 years
Laborers & servants = 22 years

[Source: Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1988.
Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1996]

Coffins are a Familiar Sight

Cholera = pandemic in Europe in 1831-33, 1848-49, 1853-54, 65-67
( London, 53 000 died in one year)

Chicago = malaria rampant cuz built on marsh land

some funerals are lavish and extreme ... professional mourners ('mutes') mournfully walk in the funeral procession

... because there are so many deaths, rituals complete with more rules and regulations pop up ...

Morning stages ... each has own rules... servants and family observe

• Stage 1
deep mourning (full mourning) ... curtains drawn, clocks stopped, mirrors covered, guards hired to protect body from grave robbers

• Stage 2
half-mourning ... usually begins after body buried

Images associated with death appear ...

draped urns, broken columns, weeping willows appear on tombstones, portraits and embroidered samplers

Again, the Victorian Era has a great deal to answer for ...

It is sad and scary to hear that some of you ladies are saying some folks want to return to a Victorian Era-like timeframe ... it sounds like they have made it into some kind of idealized "Christian" society ... it most definitely was not ...

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Substance Abuse in the Victorian Era

2008-07-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

Interestingly, in the Middle Ages, the Church denounced everything and anything “eastern” as the “devil’s work” which meant drug addiction was extremely rare. Monks coming back from the Crusades found new uses in how to use drugs in helping the sick, but it would seem that was as far as it went.

The Victorian Era, however, had major problems with rampant drug abuse and alcoholism. Drugs like heroin, chloral, and laudanum were available and widely prescribed. The rapidly expanding British Empire brought drugs used from other lands into the country and, as a result, to the USA.

Common Drugs

Laudanum — a mixture of alcohol and opium derivatives ... common item included in the medicine kits of many proper Victorian families

Alcohol was easily produced and distributed ... these beverages were used to alleviate a host of ailments ... epilepsy, gout, kidney stones, colic, fever, headaches

The high use of barbiturates and depressants may indicate difficulties coping with the rigid social order.

OPIUM

1839: Opium Deaths
Opium and its preparations are responsible for more premature deaths than any other chemical agent. Opiates account for 186 of 543 poisonings, including no fewer than 72 among children.

18 March 1839: First Opium War
Lin Tse-Hsu, imperial Chinese commissioner in charge of suppressing the opium traffic, orders all foreign traders to surrender their opium. In response, the British send expeditionary warships to the coast of China, beginning The First Opium War.

1840: New England Imports Opium
New Englanders bring 24,000 pounds of opium into USA. US Customs promptly put a duty fee on the import

1856: Second Opium War
Britain & France win. Opium production increases.

HEROIN

.[source: http://drugs.uta.edu/drugs.html] ...

Heroin was a brand name coined for the bonding of morphine, opium's active ingredient, with acetic anhydride, a common industrial acid. The name was supposed to refer to the heroic, fearless and painless, sensation users felt after using it. It was discovered by a British chemist in 1874, and first mass produced by German pharmaceutical Bayer in 1898.

Drug abuse and drug problems were blamed on foreigners.

Be sure to check out ...
This site is dedicated to an investigation of the uses and abuses of drugs and alcohol within Victorian society. In particular, it investigates the role of drug and alcohol use in the production of art and literature and how drug and alcohol use gets represented in the literature and art of the period.

Famous Victorian Drug Addicts

• Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829–1862) = British model, poet, artist = addicted to laudanum ... 1st PG stillborn due to addiction ... 2nd PG Siddal overdosed ... Rossetti found her unconscious and dying in bed ... some say she left a suicide note that the doctor told Rossetti to burn
• poet & painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) addicted to chloral hydrate

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) = lifelong addict (started in childhood to treat spinal tuberculosis) ... had miscarriage because of abuse

• Samuel Coleridge (1875-1912) ... addicted to laudanum most of life ... the Royal Institute commissioned Coleridge to give a series of lectures in London... his use of opium caused him to cancel scheduled appearances

• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) suffered raging laudanum-induced hallucinations

• John Keats (1795-1821) suffered from cocaine, heroin, alcohol addiction

• Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) some say the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland came from his substance abuse hallucinations

• laudanum addict = novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

• laudanum addict = novelist Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)

• Charles Tennyson (brother of Alfred Tennyson) was an opium addict (his poem Silkworms and Spiders alludes to his addiction)

• some say Oscar Wilde abused opium as depicted in the decadent life-style in The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) suffered from opium and alcohol addiction

• Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) ... misprescribed laudanum for sleep problems ... it caused anxiety & hallucinations ... because she experienced an increase of hallucinations, she was prescribed more laudanum & chloral hydrate which increased the problem leading to her eventual commitment to an asylum

• The Average Joesphine ... laudanum prescribed for menstrual cramp relief and vague aches ... spoon fed to infants

• 1883: J. B. Mattison (American doctor) suggested 30%-40% of American doctors were addicted

[Source: Morphine-Addicted Doctors, The English Opium-Eater, & Embattled Medical Authority by Barry Milligan of Wright State University, 2005, Cambridge Journal, Cambridge University Press)

~ From the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

The Self-Righeous Victorians

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Martin Luther's (1483-1546) statement ...

‘Sin doesn’t harm us as much as our own righteousness.’

The Victorian Era seems to embody self-righteousness ... they made up all these crazy rules & regulations

It was a cookie-cutter type of Christianity that was in many respects becoming irrelevant to the world around them and society at large

I keep hearing Christ's words in my head that he that would be first shall be last

REAL Christianity ... however ... is never irrelevant (at least in my opinion)

~ says Lady Victorian Historian

Class Structure and Working Women in the Victorian Period: Not Christian At All!

2008-07-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

Class Structure

Arthur J Munby (1829-1910) who worked for the Ecclesiastical Commission (& also taught Latin at the Working Women's College) revealed in his 69 volume diary that he cannot acknowledge Hannah Cullwick, a working class woman that he loves, in public. Hannah also had a 17 volume diary and her letters to Munby

What did he write in his diary?

“'I love her, then, because she is not like her own class after all, but like mine.”

After 18 years of courtship, they married in secret. They remained secretly married for 36 years. Munby knew Swinburne, Ruskin, Rossetti, Sala, Darwin, Thackeray, Dickens, Lord Salisbury, Herbert Henry Asquith (the future prime minister), the artist Ruskin, and more. The poet Browning praised his poems. He had to keep wife Hannah, a maid of all work, a secret. Even when in the privacy of their home, they went through all kinds of grief to keep their relationship secret from others. When others were present, Hannah would take her room in the basement. Munby told his wife to call him Arthur, but she only did so once because she felt so uncomfortable doing so.

20th March 1859 diary entry:

Breakfasted with Litchfield. Ormsby being there also. Talk chiefly of the comparative morality of this generation and the last, and of the advantage c r otherwise of repressing street vice: as to which on the whole I side against the puritans, & am in favour of the unmolested street walker - provided she be sober, well dressed, & not too importunate.'

paradoxically ... some women improved themselves by becoming prostitutes ... how? ... in order to be a “suitable companion” for a “gentleman” some learned how to read and took lessons ... Munby recorded one such situation in his diary ... Munby knew Sarah Tanner for about 4-5 years ... one day he met her and asked why she became a prostitute ... he recorded ...

She had got tired of service, wanted to see life and become independent; & so she had become a prostitute, of her own accord & without being seduced. She saw no harm in it enjoyed it very much, thought it might raise her & perhaps be profitable

He met her much later and recorded this in his diary ...

She was stouter & healthier than ever, well dressed, not professionally as a lady, but quietly and well, like a respectable upper servant. (…)How is this? I said again. Well, I've left the streets & settled down,' she said quietly. Married?' l asked. Oh no! But I'd been on the streets three years, and saved up (…) and so I thought I'd leave, and I've taken a coffeehouse with my earnings - the Hampshire Coffeehouse over Waterloo Bridge. (..) Now here is a handsome young woman of twenty-six, who, having begun life as a servant of all work, and then spent three years in voluntary prostitution amongst men of a class much above her own, retires with a little competance, and invests the earnings of her infamous trade in a respectable coffeehouse, where she settles down in homely usefulness and virtuous comfort.'

Munby visited the coffee house 5 days later & found it “respectable” ... a local policeman agreed saying he didn’t think bad women were there at all

Lord Acton believed that most ex-prostitutes returned to respectable lives ... many owned their own businesses or made “good” marriages

Munby also recorded the life of Collier girls (collier=someone who works in a coal mine), female envelope makers, flither-lasses (gathered mussles for fishing bait)

Munby noted some flither-lasses would use rope to scale down cliff sides to get inaccessible parts of the beach ... the would load up their heavy baskets and climb back up the steep cliffs ... such work required strength and agility

Working Class Women

some working class women would prepare animal hooves for the glue factory

many women suffered disfigurements as a result of their employment ... but had to continue working in order to provide for their families

milkmaids worked 14-15 hours a day ... it was not the romantic life you see pictured in children’s books

female circus performers / workers

For more on Victorian Era working women see ...

HILEY, Michael, Victorian Working Women: Portraits from Life (London: Gordon Fraser, 1979)

MUNBY, Arthur J and CULLWICK, Hannah. Working Women in Victorian Britain, 1850 - 1910: the Diaries and Letters of Arthur J Munby (1828-1910) and Hannah Cull wick (1833-1909) from Trinity College, Cambridge (Marlborough: Adam Matthew Publications, 1993)

~ From the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Micro-Management Parenting and Lizzie Borden

2008-07-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

Hyper Reactionary Offspring Response to Victorian Era Parental Micro-Management Styles

who hasn't heard the jump rope rhyme ...

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.

Lizzie was a real person.

Lizzie Borden (1860-1927) was very active in church, taught Sunday School, member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and more.

She was from a wealthy, "proper" Victorian family.

From all reports, it would appear her father & stepmother were VERY controlling & allowed very little (if any) freedom to the children in making life choices

Interestingly, she was acquitted of the hatchet murders of father & stepmother on 4 August 1892 (Lizzie allegedly commited these murders when was a grown woman of 32) ...

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Era: The Golden Age of Poisoning

2008-07-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

Many consider the Victorian Era as the
Golden Age of Poisoning.

Poisoning was an easy form of murder to get away with because it could be done in secrecy. Moreover, the proof necessary to convict someone in a court of law tended to rely on circumstantial evidence.

It was a popular homicide weapon because ...

• poison was readily available to the common person
• there was a new incentive called life insurance
• it produced little evidence — no marks, blood, or noise
• it could be done in secrecy
• evidence for poisoning was circumstantial in court of law

Some say poisoning was a common female defense against abusive husbands. During this era, approximately forty women were tried for poisoning their husbands. Then, as now, folks new this number was very underreported. As a result, Parliament restricted poison sales in 1851.

Poison most often used = arsenic

• arsenic use in rat poison & used in most homes
• women used arsenic for cosmetic purposes
• no one asked questions when a woman got arsenic from a shop in town
poison examples:

• Belle Gunness = long line of disappearing (rich) suitors found buried all over her farm = used arsenic with great gusto

• Madeleine Smith, an aristocratic young Glasgow woman, accused of poisoning lover with arsenic

• Thomas Young

• Donald Harvey = killed with cyanide

• Dr Harvey Crippen ... Even though this case was shortly after the Victorian era, it still had a Victorian committing the murder. He was married to Cora Turner but having an affair with his secretary, Ethel Le Neve. Cora disappeared. His mistress moved in with him and began to wear his wife's jewelry and clothing. Raised suspicion. Police began to investigate. Crippen panicked & moved to Canada. He almost got away with murder.

The Golden Age of Poisoning during the Victorian Era was the reason why toxicology as a field of medicine developed. As a science, toxicology became increasingly important ...

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Christian Women's Temperance Movement

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The Victorian Era had an unrealistic and idealized vision of a family which led to and/or exacerbated a great many social ills. Opium use by females was considered “genteel” and “feminine” while public intoxication was deeply frowned upon.

[Note: As I documented earlier, the Victorians were well aware of the many problems associated with opium usage.]

Some went so far as to sterilize those that habitually consumed alcohol. In an 1897 Medico-Legal Society gathering, a Brooklyn doctor recommended women "be desexualized ... whether maid or matron” if they failed to respond to treatment.

[This practice was continued in the eugenics movement which emphasized the sterilization of “the unfit” & was picked up on by the Nazis approx. 33 years later in the 1930s]

The Women's Christian Temperance Movement was a Christian-based group. President Francis Willard, in 1874, began to push for prohibition. Earlier Temperance societies wanted to "temper" those using alcohol to socially accepted levels of alcohol consumption.

Problem: The more Christian women began to get involved in the issue, the more they realized how much women were being physically abused by their alcohol induced spouses leaving scares on their bodies and more.

1888: Dr. Lucy Hall studied 204 women under her care at the Reformatory Prison in Sherborn, Massachusetts. The majority began drinking before the age of 21 & over 1/3 of the married women had scars on their heads as a result of beatings from their drunken husbands.

Francis Willard, a brilliant strategist, pushed for prohibition. It is no coincidence that the 19th Amendment (prohibition) and the 20th Amendment (women's vote) passed within a year of each other. Her group was a major force behind prohibition, banning prostitution, and recreational drugs.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Why Idealize the Victorian Era?

2008-07-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

... they only reason why folks could possibly put the Victorian Era on a pedestal is because ...

• they don't know any better
• poor education
• do not know history
• have an agenda

~ says Lady Victorian Historian

Substance Abuse Noted in Camp Songs of the Civil War

2008-07-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

The following music CD contains a collection of songs & melodies well known to the troops on both sides of the War Between the States & is played on authentic instruments of the period

Southern Soldier © 1997
Favorite Camp Songs of the Civil War by the
2nd South Carolina String Band

old mailing address for them:
2nd South Carolina String Band / Kershaw's Minstrel Band
1820 Old Harrisburg Road,
Gettysburg, PA 17325

The jacket inside the CD cover states the tune, Rock the Cradle, Julie...

Pvt. James Dinkins, of Co.C, 18th Mississippi, described the march of McLaw's Division—which included Kershaw's South Carolina Brigade—toward Sharpsburg in September of 1862. Dinkins recalled, "The men moved along at a lively gait. As night came on, we sang all kinds of plantation songs, 'Rock the Cradle, Julie', 'Sallie, Get Your Hoecake Done', 'I'm Gwying Down the Newburg Road', and so on. The men ... moved along the road. The woods rang with their melodies." It was this vivid scene which inspired us to produce this album. The melody, the familiar 'Soldier's Joy', has been traced back to traditional Scottish fiddle tunes.

Part of Rock the Cradle, Julie lyrics state ...

Its 25¢ for the morphine,
Its 15¢ for the beer,
Its 25¢ for the morphine,
Lord drink me away from here!

Both sides would have been very familiar with this tune and sung it. Drugs were sold to get high within the camps of the soldiers ... both north and south

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Substance Abuse Noted in the Literature of the Victorian Era

2008-07-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Substance abuse & addiction mentioned in tons of books of the time ... too many to mention

• The ground breaking work of the autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822) by Thomas de Quincey was published in 1821 in the London Magazine ... dealt with his laudanum addiction as a result of a falling out with poets Wordsworth & Coleridge

• speculation: Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous poem, "The Lotus Eaters" where he praises "slumber" over "toil" refers to the "exotic" consumption of hashish by Arabs (probably VERY accurate ... I am being charitable here)

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict

• Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim deals with the ready availability of opium in India & its power to addict and corrupt. Kim’s father “came across the woman who smoked opium and learned the taste from her, and died as poor whites died in India” (Kim, 1) ... Kim, Chapter 3 has a wicked priest plotting to rob Kim’s Lama while he is under the influence of opium

• Wilkie Collins’s 1868 novel The Moonstone a nightcap is laced with laudanum

• Dickens’s unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) ... central character, John Jasper, is an opium addict who lives a seedy double life

Alcoholism reared its ugly little head in the “classics”

• 1885 ... Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ... Stevenson ... began to examine by alluding to drug and alcohol addiction, homosexuality, prostitution ... Jekyll buys a house once belonging to a "celebrated surgeon" and, "his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical" turns the former dissecting rooms into a laboratory for self-experimentation (chapter 5)

• substance abuse is reflected in the writings of the Brontë sisters who reacted to their brother Branwell's alcoholism

• Thomas Hardy's novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, deals with an alcoholic family

In 1925, the League of Nations passed strict regulations on international heroin trade

As shocking as this may seem, there are some today that convincingly argue drug addiction and substance abuse was more prevalent during the Victorian Age than today.

~ From the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

List of References About Medicine, Disease and Substance Abuse in the Victorian Era

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Berridge, Virginia and Griffith Edwards. Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth Century England. London: Allen Lane, 1981.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. 1868. London: Oxford UP, 1982.

Hayter, Althea. “Wilkie Collins”. Opium and the Romantic Imagination. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968.

Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. 1901. Ware: Wordsworth, 1994

Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1988.

Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Traux, Rhoda. Joseph Lister. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944.

Reed, John R. Victorian Conventions. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975.

Booth, Martin. Opium. London: St. Martin’s Press, 1966.

Curtis, Robert H. Triumph Over Pain, New York: David McKay Company, 1972.

Doyle, Christine. “Health and Well-being.” The Daily Telegraph. March 28. 2000: 26

Corey, Melinda and Ochoer, George. The Encyclopedia of the Victorian World. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1996.

Power, Sir D’Arcy. British Masters of Medicine. Baltimore, MD: William Wood and Company, 1936. .

Peterson, M. Jeanne. The Medical Profession in Mid-Victorian London. Los Angelos: University of California Press. .

Dunglison, Robley. History of Medicine. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1872. .

More Good Books on Victorian History and the Myth of the Victorian Patriarchal Family

2008-07-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Victorian Era Prostitution in the US: Part III of III

2008-07-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

PART III: Legislation

Great Britain

Offences Against The Person Act 1861
This bill was the first in a series of bills over 25 years. It raised the age of consent & penalties for sexual offences against women and minors.

Eliza Armstrong Case

In 1885, William Stead (1849-1912), editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, brought this whole issue front & center in a series of articles entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon during the Victorian Era. He was prosecuted and imprisoned for kidnapping after he published a series of articles proving he could buy a 13 year old chimney sweep’s daughter for £5 by her own mother. His conviction was based on his failure to get “permission” to purchase the girl. Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army helped Stead purchase the girl. She was purchased by former prostitute Rebecca Jarrett and brought to a brothel lightly-drugged & placed under the care of the Salvation Army and sent to France.

[Note: Steadwell came over to help in Chicago at the Purity Conferences.]

Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885
“An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes”

it …
• made the age of consent from 13 to 16 years of age;
• made it a criminal offence to procure girls for prostitution by administering drugs, intimidation or fraud;
• punished householders who would permit under-age sex on their premises;
• made it a criminal offence to abduct a girl under 18 for purposes of carnal knowledge;
• gave magistrates the power to issue search warrants to find missing females;
• gave power to the court to remove a girl from her legal guardians if they condoned her seduction;
• provided for summary proceedings to be taken against brothels;
• raised the age of felonious assaults to 13 & misdemeanor assault between 13 & 16 as well as imbecile women & girls

For the first time children under the age of 12 were allowed to testify

United States

US Immigration Commission
The US Immigration Commission became involved. They circulated dispatches warning of the dangers of white slavery & gave an idea of how some females were kidnapped off of the street. They issued a rogue gallery of sorts of panderers (those that sold females) which included the notorious men: William Simes, Harry Frank, Richard Dorsey, Louis Fleming, Clarance Gentry, Frank Arnell, Thomas England Jr, Andrew Lietke (aka Andy Ryan).

Mann Act White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910
The Mann Act White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (named after lawmaker James Robert Mann) prohibited white slavery & transportation of females for “immoral purposes”. The first person prosecuted was Jack Johnson who encouraged Belle Schreiber to leave a brothel and travel with him. He spent a year in jail and later married the girl. University of Chicago professor sociologist William I. Thomas was arrested under the act when caught in the company of one Mrs Granger, the wife of an army officer with the American forces in France. (He was later acquitted.) In 1944 comic Charlie Chaplin was prosecuted under the Mann Act for involvement with actress Joan Barry. (He was later acquitted). Other famous individuals prosecuted under this act were Chuck Berry, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Charles Manson.

Literature
Besides the dispatches the US Immigration Commission released, there were books. In 1858, William Sanger did the groundbreaking book The History of Prostitution. In 1911, The Social Evil in Chicago was released by the 30 members of the Chicago Vice Commission. Teddy Roosevelt recognized the work the document represented and said it was a “contribution to the cause of morality and decency.” Roe authored The Girl Who Disappeared.

Flyers were also prevalent. One entitled Have you a girl to spare? said “Sixty Thousand White Slaves die each year. The Vice Resorts cannot run without this number is replaced annually. Are you willing to give your daughter to keep up this terrible business?”

The mother of the future actress, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, passed out flyers in Hartford, Connecticut. Some said …

DANGER! MOTHERS BEWARE! 60,000 INNOCENT GIRLS WANTED TO TAKE THE PLACE OF 60,000 WHITE SLAVES WHO DIE THIS YEAR IN THE U.S.

***

Vice Commissions
Many modeled their vice commissions after Chicago. The Cincinnati Vigilance Society, for example. Minneapolis, Lancaster (PA), among others also appeared on the scene. The American Vigilance Association was formed from the wealthiest men in the USA and included former Harvard University president, ministers, cardinals, etc.

In 1913 the Illinois State legislature founded the Senate Vice Committee. Every Chicago department store had to answer questions like …

How many women were employed?
How much were they paid?
What were the company’s profits?
Would it be a hardship on the company to raise women’s salaries?
Would they support a minimum wage legislation?

[Note: These questions were asked because a correlation was found between women being underpaid for employment and prostitution in order to make ends meet for their families.]

On 3 April 1912, Roe gave a 61 page report to Rockefeller on NYC.

“Until the public conscience has been aroused, it is my opinion that it is quite impossible to obtain indictments or convictions of procurers of girls in New York City. The hypocrisy of the double standard of morals is also very evident here. The cases which have been set forth are such cases that would result in convictions in almost any other city in America.”

Silent Movies & Theatrical Productions
Many films were being cranked out … The House of Bondage, The Inside of the White Slave Traffic, The Exposé of the White Slave Traffic, A Victim of Sin, The Traffic in Souls, etc.

Theatrical productions included The Black Traffic in White Girls and Why Girls go Wrong played in Defiance, Ohio. Chicago had its Little Lost Sister and it sold out in Detroit, MI.

• I cannot remember the title of the History Channel’s documentary, but it showed where the women were kept underground in Oregon while they were awaiting to be sent aboard ships for unknown parts overseas. Where the girls were kept was quite ingenius. There was no way to escape. All was underground.

(An aside … The imprisoned girls to be sent overseas was down the hall from where folks paid to use drugs. The drug abusers would rent slatted beds with no mattresses very expensively for a certain number of hours so they could get high.)

Again, the Victorian Era has a great deal to answer for.

In Britain, they began to recognize this phenomenon for what it truly was … evil … around the mid-1800s. Like the elimination of slavery, the UK led the way. The USA would continue its “dirty little secret” for a wee bit longer.

Due to excessive rules and regulations that the visible Church had fallen victim to, many Victorians did not want to deal with this issue … it just wasn’t proper to talk about! Those that did were Jezebels or worse.

A phenomenal book regarding this is called Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Era Prostitution in the US: Part II of III

2008-07-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

PART II: Preacher Intervention

The situation in Chicago’s Levee District was horrendous. Something needed to be done. The fall of 1901 saw Chicago hosting the National Purity Congress.

Some attendees were …

Moody Bible Institute, Cook County Juvenile Court, Jane Addams’ Hull House, the Anti-Saloon League, Graham Taylor’s Chicago Commons, the Pacific Garden Mission (they led Chicago White Stockings player, Billy Sunday, to the Lord), and more. There were delegates from nearly all 50 states, England, Holland, France, Canada, and India.

The three day congress was held at the First Methodist Church (Clark & Washington Streets, Chicago, IL). The conference was a success in spite of Mrs. Steadwell’s (wife of Northwestern Purity Association president) purse being snatched by two men.

Enter: Reverend Ernest Albert Bell.

Bell wanted to be a missionary in India and establish an Oxford-type university there. He wrote letters to Andrew Carnegie and Stanley McCormick asking for assistance, but to no avail. In 1897 as Bell was leaving Chicago Theological Seminary, he was propositioned by a young woman. From that night on, Bell’s goals changed. His friends bought him a bordello in the heart of Chicago’s Levee District and Beaulah Home … a rescue mission … was established. (I truly enjoy the irony of Bell buying a bordello to rescue prostitutes!) Bell’s saints were ready for their crusade.

Some were scandalized that Bell would actually work out of a former Bordello … yet, others could see the wisdom in this decision.

We have struck a blow for Jesus!
~ English evangelist Gypsy Smith

In Chicago our God lurks everywhere.
In the elevated train’s husky roar …
in the humid mists of summer by the lake.
~ Father Andrew Greeley

Bell understood politics and knew he had to make some sort of intervention within the internal political workings of the city. Somehow he had to deal with organized crime who paid off the police, mayor, and other officials handsomely. Actually, Minna & Ada Everleigh would have been thrilled with this as they paid these gangsters money every month (all types of businesses … what we would consider legitimate & illegitimate … paid these bullies off each month for the priviledge of working … otherwise buildings just might be set on fire, a “mysterious” robbery would occur, folks would be beaten up, etc.).

Victor Lawson, the Chicago Daily News publisher, contributed to Bell’s work along with others.

Bell began to speak out on the results German scientists recently discovered on the bacterium causing syphilis and its devastating consequences. This did not sit well with those in the visible Church. They did not want those things discussed. Yet, Bell knew these women were … ultimately … the ones that would be hurt. They needed to make informed decisions.

Bell caused even more uproar within the visible Church when he began to address the White Slavery issue. Too many Christians still wanted to ignore it. So, Bell carried on and began to have nightly open-air meetings outside the Levee District’s cathouses.

Bell also began to address those legitimate business owners that claimed to be Christian. They were not paying women a livable wage. As a result, they were selling themselves in order to provide for their families.

Enter: Lawyer Clifford Griffith Roe.

On 25 May 1907 Roe, Chicago’s youngest assistant state’s attorney, received a message from Captain Edward McCann of the Harrison Street police station who told him they had a girl at the station that claimed she was sold as a white slave.

There is not a life that this social evil
does not menance. There is not a daughter,
or a sister, who may not be in danger.
~ Clifford Roe

Mona Marshall had worked at the ribbon counter at Marshall Field’s Department Store. She was given something to drink one evening by a man called Harry Balding that tasted bitter. The next night she woke up in a strange place and was surrounded by people she did not know. Her story got worse (I shall not repeat it here).

Roe soon joined the good Reverend Bell to fight.

9 October 1906: National Purity Conference

Bell’s work, with the help of attorney Roe prosecuting cases, was making headway.

This conference was held in the brand new Abraham Lincoln Center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for his uncle, the minister. Delegates attended from all over.

Mayor Dunne gave the welcoming address.

More and more were taking notice of what was happening.

The visible church in the Victorian Era seemed to be reduced to many rules and regulations. Yes, there were many Christians during this time frame doing good things on an individual and small group level, but … overall … it would seem most had reduced Christianity to a bunch of dos and don’ts while wallowing in moralistic romanticism (e.g., the Pollyanna series, wealthy & priviledged Elsie Dinsmore being “traumatized” because ink spilled on her penmanship exercise or because her father asked her to play the piano on Sunday while her poorer peers did not have enough to eat Sunday or any other day and having her female servants work on a Sunday waiting on her, maudlin poetry, etc.).

Bell and others confronted the evil.

He shamed so-called “Christian” businessmen and pointed out how they were not paying females (girls & women) a livable wage … so much so that they thought they had to supplement their income by any means possible … or die.

… The Third part of the Victorian Era prostition saga would cover Legislation

Buy Sin in the Second City!

~ From the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Era Prostitution in the US: Intro and Part I of III

2008-07-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

About the Victorian Era Sin in Chicago

The preachers in the Chicago area demanded that employers give women a decent living working wage so they would not be forced to resort to prostitution in order to provide for their families

this is a hard one to do … I do NOT want to shock anyone …

I think it will need to be in three parts …

1: Sisters Minna & Ada Everleigh
2: Preacher Intervention
3: Legislation

PART I: Sisters Minna & Ada Everleigh

Chicago’s Everleigh Club is the most famous brothel in USA history. It was located in the notorious Levee district (Chicago, IL).

Sisters Minna (1866-1948) & Ada (1864-1960) Everleigh ran the “club”. They hosted senators, foreign dignitaries, literary icons, actors (big surprise there!), business moguls, and on and on. Prince Henry of Prussia, Theodore Dreiser, Diamond Jim Brady, and other celebrities of reknown went to the Everleigh Club. The department store heir, Marshall Field Jr., was even shot there.

The Everleigh “butterflies” were expected to be well read and were even tutored in Balzac. Other requirements …

… look good in an evening gown
… be polite
… be there of their own free will (they wanted nothing to do with parents selling their children, white slavers, etc.)

… be at least 18 years old

… visit their doctor (that they kept on retainer) at least 1x/month

… no drugs/alcohol

The early history of the sisters is wrapped up in the War Between the States. The fortune of their family reflected what was happening financially to families all across the south.

Harold Woodward wrote, “a grim reality of poverty & decay … Once-fertile fields were covered with scrub oaks and stunted pines, the landscape dotted with decayed fences, half-starved cattle, ramshackle houses and the remnants of crumbling mansions.”

The sisters’ grandparents died. Their dad had to stop practicing law and farm the land. Agricultural prices were low. Taxes & interest were high. Income was scarce. Their father’s brother had stolen most of the family money secretly and moved to Missouri.

Their mother and little sister died when Ada was 12 & Minna was 10. Baby brother George was given to an aunt to raise. The sisters began to detach themselves from life. The family moved to Madison County (VA) where their neighbors were former Virginia governor & confederate general (with 5 children). Visits to his mansion reminded them of everything they lost.

Lula, another sister, died and the family moved from Virginia to Warrensburg, Missouri, where their father had relatives. They grew up believing daddy was the only man that mattered … why marry?

Minna & Ada did marry, but needed to flee for their lives because of physical abuse.

The sisters concluded from their experiences that men were greedy, brutal, spend thrifts, and not to be trusted. A niece, Evelyn Diment, would later write to Irving Wallace in 1989 about her great aunts,

“They were struggling because they were at the end of the Civil War and there were very few ways to make money. Their plantation was lost because they couldn’t pay taxes. They began as prostitutes and they became madams. Their father put them in the business, and then these women made a marvelous success out of it … Southern families have a way of keeping things very quiet. And if anyone knew anything, they kept their mouth shut.”

The sisters provided for their family in the only way they knew how. They changed their last name. Their grandmother signed all correspondence with “Everly Yours” and the name of their new club was established: Everleigh.

Everleigh Club Admission: $10
Bottle of Champagne : $12
Dinner: $50

At a time when the average wage per week was $6, those visiting the Everleigh Club found they were spending anywhere from $200-$1500 per visit. If a patron only spent $50, they were asked not to return.

Was it right? …. NO
Do I approve of it? … NO
Can I understand it? … YES!

The business management skills and acumen of the sisters is undebatable.

Yes, they did much better than other “wayward” women of the Victorian era whether they were located in Chicago, Philly, NYC, Washington DC, major European cities, etc.

Even though their “business” prospered beyond what they dreamed, they do represent an important aspect of the Victorian Era.

Read Sin in the Second City!

~ From the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Victorian Women Worked Long and Hard

2008-07-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

Employment

Many men & women saw their jobs taken over by the factory system ... so they moved out of the country to the cities to continue to work. There was a steady stream of migration from the country to the towns and cities.

1820-1870: northeast USA transitioned from agrarian to industrial culture ... this shift from mercantile centers to manufacturing centers prepared the way for urban life

Census Data

1790 = 5% of all Americans lived in urban center

1860 = 15% Americans in cities (35 urban areas had populations over 25,000)

Wealthy Women
...As one might expect did not work, except for mistresses of wealthy men. I dunno where the myth got started that women did not work for gainful employment ... Reality is we would have worked ... and worked LONG and HARD ...

Female Occupations
authors, journalists, inventors, teachers, domestic service, mill work, factories, foul smelling breweries, dressmaking / needlework / shirt-makers / underclothing trades (which took 2nd place to men in these trades); milliners, hatters, glovers, hosiers, straw bonnet makers, collar-makers, tailors, patten-makers and shoe-makers, boot-makers, lapidaries, embroiderers, lace-makers and lace-joiners, gaiter-makers, furriers, curriers, feather-workers, running pawn shops and other shops, etc.

Girl Apprentices
Girls were apprenticed out (if you ever have the opportunity to read the Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series, you will see the Victorian Miss Marple continuing to teach young girls how to work so they can provide for themselves in the world); girl apprentices could be in workshops or by individuals in modest homes or by the extremely wealthy.

Long Hours and Hard Labour

Working hours were long and pay was low for women like it was for men. In 1862 a female journalist warned ... ‘All who are wise will avoid this profession, because such numbers crowd into it, that the competition drives the payment down to a point below that at which life can be sustained.’ [See: Boucherett, J., (1862) On the Choice of a Business] During an 1834 tailors' strike ... women flooded in to meet the demand.

I'll come back later and address how preachers in the Chicago area demanded that employers give women a decent working wage so they would not have to resort to prostitution in order to provide for their families.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Serious Victorian Era Diseases (ranging from problematic, epidemic and pandemic)

2008-07-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

With an increase of population, there followed an increase in disease ... there were many diseases and the ability to treat them was either nonexistent or only treated the disease slightly ... the following are a few examples ...

Cholera

Caused by human waste in drinking water
Symptoms: nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, overwhelming thirst, cramps
Death often followed within 24 hours of the first symptom
June 1832 ... 4000 people die of Cholera in New York City
1848 ... around 2,000 people a week die in a cholera epidemic (England)

Click on the photo~

Consumption

Tuberculosis of the lungs
Can also cause tumors filled with baterium
Symptoms - weakness, fatigue, wasting away, blood in the lungs
Killed hundreds of thousands of English in the 19th century and into the 20th century
Quarantine requried: very contagious
Very difficult to treat, very virulent
If it could be afforded, sent to a sanatorium/sanitarium

Typhus

Spread by body lice and dirty conditions
Symptoms: delirium, headaches, rash, high fever
Very difficult to treat bacteria
In America, a typhus epidemic killed the son of Franklin Pierce in Concord, New Hampshire in 1843 and struck in Philadelphia in 1837. Several epidemics occurred in Baltimore, Memphis and Washington DC between 1865 and 1873. Typhus fever was also a significant killer during the US Civil War, although typhoid fever was the more prevalent cause of US Civil War "camp fever".
Typhoid is not to be confused with typhus.

Unrelated to Typhoid Fever caused by food contaminated with the Salmonella bacterium which is much easier to treat. But that story is no picnic either and a story for another day.

~ embellished from the notes from Lady Victorian Historian

Population Statistics in England in the Victorian Era

2008-07-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Population Increase

When Queen Victoria
1st on throne: 2 million (England)

Victoria's death: 6.5 million (England)

Dramatic transition from land ownership to city living... There were some good things happening, but there was also a huge cost to human dignity.

In 1800, Some research indicates that approx. 1/3 of the working class brides were pregnant when they married. With this increase in population, many were finding it difficult to find ways to earn $$$.

Civic Involvement

England = Reform Bill of 1832 extended voting to middle classes; parliament representation more fair. It was a time of massive unemployment, desperate poverty, and rioting, and the legislation of England & USA reflect these trends.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England

2008-07-20T12:19:00.001-07:00

The Darkened Room:
Women, Power, and Spiritualism
in Late Victorian England

a book by Alex Owen

From the University of Chicago Press Website:

344 p., 11 halftones. 6 x 9 1989

Paper $19.00spep ISBN: 978-0-226-64205-5 (ISBN-10: 0-226-64205-4) Spring 2004

A highly original study that examines the central role played by women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian era, The Darkened Room is more than a meditation on women mediums—it's an exploration of the era's gender relations.

The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead, offered female mediums a new independence, authority, and potential to undermine conventional class and gender relations in the home and in society.

Using previously unexamined sources and an innovative approach, Alex Owen invokes the Victorian world of darkened séance rooms, theatrical apparitions, and moving episodes of happiness lost and regained. She charts the struggles between spiritualists and the medical and legal establishments over the issue of female mediumship, and provides new insights into the gendered dynamics of Victorian society.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The book, the spirits, and the historians
1. Power and Gender: The Spiritalist Context
2. Victorian Spiritualism and the Spiritualist Woman
3. Star Mediumship: Light and Shadows
4. At Home with the Theobald Family
5. Women Healers in the Spiritualist World
6. Medicine, Mediumship and Mania
7. Louisa Lowe's Story
8. Spiritualism and the Subversion of Femininity
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Subjects:

HISTORY: British History
HISTORY OF SCIENCE
WOMEN'S STUDIES

Link to the Amazon.com Review Webpage here

Rejection of Christianity in the Victorian Era

2008-07-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

From Lady Victorian Historian

Christianity Rejected (in reality)

Christianity was being reduced to a bunch of rules and regulations. More often than not Christianity was stiffness and exclusiveness. The society attempted to maintain a moral facade, but underneath Utilitarianism reigned heartlessly.

Darwin became popular, not because he had new ideas (evolution had been around since ancient Greece if not before), but because folks wanted it. The Industrial Revolution was atheistic at its core. It ran rough shod over individuals, children, families, married couples, etc. Survival of the fittest (see Herbert Spencer) was used for business practices whereas in the early part of the Victorian Era at least a nod was given to the Golden Rule by businesses.

There was more than a hint at infanticide with respect to the poor. Remember many of the Nazi generals were children of the Victorian Era ... they were only putting into practice what had been espoused earlier. (Train up a child in the way ...)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson gives a vivid example of how bereft of morals the Victorian Era had become internally.

Spiritualism, on the other hand, was growing at a breakneck speed.

Is it any wonder that God would be defied? and a love of decadence would be apparent?

Many today have confused the Victorian Era as mainstream Christianity when that could be nothing further form the truth

It would be the Victorian Era that would produce domineering anarchists, socialists, and communists.

In many respects it was an empty era promoting hopelessness and, later, destruction.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

"Trafficking in Women the White Slave Trade"

2008-07-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

From the Book Listing on ebay.com

Fighting the Traffic
in Young Girls
or, War on the White Slave Trade

Edited by Ernest A Bell

Gordon Press, 1975. Reprint of the G S Ball 1910 edition. Fine unused hardback in red leatherette with gilt lettering. Published without a jacket. B/W photos. 481 pages. ISBN 0879682523.

"A complete and detailed account . . . of the methods by which the procurers and panders lure innocent young girls away from home and sell them to keepers of dives." Chapters by Edwin W Sims, William A Coote and others.

Contents

History of the white slave trade
Suppression of the traffic
The trade today
Menace of the trade
A slave's own story
Story of Estelle Ramon
Our sister of the street
More about the traffic by Ophelia Amigh
The traffic in girls by Charles Crittenton
Warfare against the traffic
The Boston hypocrisy
Auctioneer of souls
The trade in New York
How we took up the fight
The nations and the trade
The yellow trade
How snakes charm canaries
Procuresses;
Wanted: Mothers and fathers
Chicago's slave market
The regulation of vice
The black plagues
The public health
Diseases
Recruiting grounds
Means of protecting our girls
Laws for the suppression of the trade
A pastor's part
Story of the Midnight Mission
Helen Chambers
Destruction of the vice districts in LA
Conditions in London
For God's sake, do something.

Books About the History of Victorian and Antebellum Prostitution

2008-07-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Edholm, C (1893), Traffic in Girls and Florence Crittenton Missions. Chicago: The Women's Temperance Publishing Association.

Edlin, J. (1986), Report by Michael Harnack. The Times, December 27.

Ennew, J. (1986). The Sexual Exploitation of Children. Cambridge: Polity Press.

deMause, L (1982). Foundations of Psychohistory, New York: Creative Roots, Inc.

Rush, F. (1980). The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Sims, E. (1910), For God's Sake So Something: Trafficking in Young Girls or War on the White Slave Trade. Copyright held by G. S. Ball.

Terrot, C. (1960), Traffic in Innocents: The Shocking Story of White Slavery in England, New York E. P. Dutton & Co,. Inc.

Intro to Victorian/Antebellum Prostitution in England and the U.S.

2008-07-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

From Lady Victorian Historian

British Prostitution Legal

There were not enough volunteer prostitutes. This lended an even darker side to the Victorian era (1830-1901). Young girls from rural areas were frequently kidnapped to supply this demand. Many underage girls were forced into this lifestyle (and ... yes ... even in the USA ... especially after the War Between the States). In England 1861 the age of consent was 12, and only went up to 16 in 1885.

See "The Best Kept Secret: Sexual abuse of Children" by F. Rush © 1980

In 1893 C. Edholm wrote about the problem of torture for The Women's Temperance Publishing Association. (Quoting from Edholm is too graphic for my taste)

In 1885 Pall Mall Gazette's editor & journalist W.T. Stead wrote a series of articles under the broad heading of Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon exposing child prostitution rings.

Venereal Disease was a major problem which was why there was such a demand for virgins. In 1864 England passed the Contagious Diseases Act which allowed for prostitutes to be arrested if they were found to have VD. In 1886 this act was replaced by the Criminal Law Amendment Act protecting children, making sodomy illegal in Britain, and making prostitution illegal.

Let me think through how I can write about how this was a BIG problem in the USA after the War Between the States ...

From what I have uncovered prostitution became illegal in the U.S. in 1917 to stop tempting WWI sailors

... so, for the USA, prostitution was legal during the Victorian Era

~ From the notes of LadyVictorian Historian

Alcoholism & Other Ills

2008-07-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

From Lady Victorian Historian

The Salvation Army's founder William Booth (1829-1912) wrote a book about the immorality of the Victorian Era entitled "In Darkest England and the Way Out". It became a best seller after its 1890 release and set the foundation for how the Army could combat these issues. Basically, Booth said that the so-called Christian developed countries were no better off than those citizens of underdeveloped countries.

Booth did not live in a mansion or have servants. He and his wife and children worked hard to DO something and took a pro-active stance.

In his book he wrote ...

I have no intention to depart in the smallest degree from the main principles on which I have acted in the past. My only hope for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, either in this world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by the power of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ. But in providing for the relief of temporal misery I reckon that I am only making it easy where it is now difficult, and possible where it is now all but impossible, for men and women to find their way to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Note: Salvation Army founded in 1865

One of its stated objectives ...

The advancement of the Christian religion as promulgated in the religious doctrines... which are professed, believed and taught by the Army and, pursuant thereto, the advancement of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind as a whole.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Random and Non Random Thoughts: A Victorian Discussion

2008-07-20T10:21:00.001-07:00

A friend sent me some writings that she'd accumulated from various places of various discussions of things Victorian that she found in the blogosphere. The following has been taken from their discussions, when and from where I know not. Some of it is well documented and some of it is just a discussion of family history.

I don't know where these things came from because the links were not active in the document that I was sent, though some of the entries are referenced. For the privacy of those who posted, I removed their names, just because I don't know the original source. (Nothing like finding out you were commenting on a blog that you'd never seen before!) I've left some of the data raw -- so you might find spelling errors and the like.

They clearly appear to be Christians discussing the glorified nostalgia of the Victorian period that occurs within some Evangelical Christian groups. I, too, love the artwork, but as is described in these discussions, my family's experience (including my grandfather's family who immigrated the U.S. from London in the 1880s to find employment mining coal in the hills of Pennsylvania), their experience of the period was vastly different from velvet and lace. They were desperately poor in the U.S., but I am told that this is nothing compared to the terrible poverty they experienced in London.

Blog Host Note: There are some comments that mention drug addiction. If they are discussing the streets of London, I believe that people tend to exaggerate the famed “opium dens” that did exist, but they were not as popular as some sensational writers would have you believe. [One of my husband’s many fields of study includes forensic investigation of drug abuse, and this is his informed opinion based on that data.] There were also many heroin addicts that followed the War Between the States as a consequence of treatment of their brutal injuries, so there were quite a few heroin addicts in the U.S.

Each new person speaking is noted by a rose or bud or bloom.

I have asked this several times in several different places, and never have I gotten a satisfactory answer:

Why is this time frame so looked upon and really REVERED in some Christian circles as the end all be all of modesty and enlightenment?

Frankly, I have no idea why

My grandparents were from the Victorian Era. They held there were many aspects of it that was extremely wicked. Too often things were reduced to certain rules/regulations (as if any of those things could change one's mind and, then, their hearts ) It had a kind of cookie cutter existence to it.

My grandparents held that the era of the Great Depression was much more Christian in outlook and day-to-day life. Rightly or wrongly, I think folks want to point to such-and-such a time and say, See... that is how we should be living Yet, those folks in that timeframe point to other eras The Victorians, for example, lamented for the good ole days as well ...

Those susceptible to perfectionistic tendencies do not realize that each age has its problems and forget that God had them born NOW with all its marvelous technology to use for His glory and His people. It kinda reminds me of folks in the mid 1500s to mid 1600s wanting to secure a Utopia ... it's kinda like trying to sneak past the angels guarding the Garden of Eden ... trying to get to Point Z without striving or starting from Point A ...

I thank the Lord each day for indoor plumbing, cars, my computer, excellent medicines, quality food, etc. ... He chose to have us born NOW ... not then. (Thank You, Lord Jesus ) ... to conquer the issues of today. Frankly, I think any push to return to the Victorian Era is doomed for failure (not to mention goofy)

Sorry ... I'm sure I didn't answer in the politically correct fashion within the circles of conservatism

I think, or at least for me and my limited education, Hollywood paints a certain image. We adhere that this 'image' is truth and most of the time, it's not. It might be partially true. For example, the ladies always look so gorgeous in their ball gowns and the men in their dress of that era, the manners, the social gatherings (dance, almost always a party atmosphere or discussions, or card games, etc., etc. ) We wish for the same, and forget they didn't have running water, a bath might be had once a month, lice was a problem...ewwwwwwww, I think I'll stay here in this era.

Also many think that they would have lived
this life of ease ...
Not so ...
Most of those stories are about the wealthy ...
Not about us average Joes.

Those wealthy folks the movies present could not live the way they did unless they exploited those that had just come over from foreign lands ... They mocked and belittled others that were not of their class ... Then, there were the robber barons that really exploited the middle class ... When folks were hurt while working on the railroads or mining, they were left to themselves ... the employers (who said they were Christian) refused to practice the Golden Rule by taking care of the women left without husbands and their children ... they saw it as an easy way of having more domestic help ...

It was not unusual for every member of the family to be working outside the home (actually, that was never unusual for America since the colonial days) ... in the cities they were working in not-so-pleasant working conditions in the factories ... the hours were long and hard ... and it was very dangerous

[I can't think of the name of the factory in the east where it caught fire and all those women were burned alive ... can anyone else? I'd ask my ma, but I don't wanna depress her]

It was SOOOO bad that many were very frightened that anarchists, Marxists, and communists would come in and take over ... and they were RIGHT to be frightened ... in many respects it was becoming a close call

The Victorian Era has a great deal to answer for ...

One of the things I like about the era, though, was Albert ... her husband ... he was SOOOO concerned about how Christianity had been reduced to a bunch of rules and regulations that he brought the Christmas tree into everyone's home ... Why? ... to cause folks to remember Christ is ever green ... He is with us ... He is the center and the reason for Christmas

Some Links to More Info:

The Triangle Factory Fire
and
Leap for Life, Leap for Death

Very sad pictures in this next link, along with more of the story:
About the Union Narrative

There are many more links about it.

I think that many folks mix the Edwardian and Victorian Era's in fashion but the fact is that no matter what the era there has always been debauchery and immodesty going on right from the beginning of time.

I think that folks get mixed up in the romance of it rather than the reality of it. Having been a reenactor for nearly 30 years I can relate...there is a romance in almost all the eras really, you just have to be willing to turn a blind eye to the rest.

I think too that most women, especially, are romanced by the gallant and bravado of gentlemen and how a lady would have been treated. The beautiful clothing, the lovely parties. However, the wealthy were a very small minority.

The fact is that most of them were peasants like me. The had to cook their own meals, make their clothes, grow and raise their foods, do their own laundry and probably bathed more often than the elite (playing in cricks and streams and ponds). The elite had lots of perfumes to hide their odor as well as a higher rate of head and body lice because they didn't do their hair very often as those do's were hard and often spendy. They wore tighter clothing to show off as much shape as society would allow and covered what did show with powders and such. Lets not overlook the laudanum that most women (and often men) would carry with them for their nerves.

So what you really had was a group of people that were stinky, sticky, greasy, lice ridden folks that were high most of the time.

That's so romantic (Isn't )!

And so there again....just what is the fascination? Why are so many groups advocating a return to this?????

I think the glorification of the Victorian Era is done out of ignorance (in some situations the ignorance may be wilful ... in other situations it may just be lack of education & being led astray for the agenda of others)

Victorian Woes

2008-07-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

From Lady Victorian Historian

Queen Victoria
Life Span: 1819-1901
Reigned: 1837-1901

Edward VII
Life Span: 1841-1910
Reigned: 1901-1910

Unemployment
The skilled and unskilled were all looking for work. Wages were so low they were barely above subsistence level.

Child Labor
Moms and dads were working hard to get food on the table, have clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads. Children had to work. Hours were long, jobs were dangerous, and the environment was difficult at best ... and ALL for a VERY low wage.

Housing Shortages
Folks needed to live close to where they worked. Housing become scarce simply due to the number of people AND it was very expensive. Slum housing was prevalent. [Read: The Victorian Underworld by Kellow Chesney.] That's why folks of my grandparents' generation were confused as to why folks were complaining about government housing in the Detroit metro-area. To them this housing was FANTASTIC which only goes to illustrate how bad things had become.

Overcrowding & Poor Sanitary Conditions
Many families opted to live in the same apartment together in order to save $$$$ and to survive. Many families did not have separate living accommodations. On 24 September 1849, Morning Chronicle journalist Henry Mayhew described a London street had drains and sewers emptying into it. Stagnant pools were there which he decided as having ‘the colour of strong green tea’ and THIS was the only water they those living on that street had to drink. The big cities in the USA were no different. Mayhew reported, As we gazed in horror at it, we saw drains and sewers emptying their filthy contents into it; we saw a whole tier of doorless privies in the open road, common to men and women built over it; we heard bucket after bucket of filth splash into it.

Homeless Children
Orphanages were overcrowded. There were simply not enough places to keep homeless children. Subsequently, they lived on the streets surviving by any means they could.

... and these are just a FEW of the moral problems from the Victorian Era

How did some of the smug folks deal with it intellectually?

The problem of poverty was the fault of the poor because they spent money on gambling, drinking, and drugs ... that may have been true for a certain percentage of individuals ... but most definitely NOT for all ... otherwise the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories would not have been so popular ... folks needed to know they at least had a chance

God put those individuals in that place ... they had no right to get out of it ... they needed to accept those things ... they were in sin because they were not content

Check out the 1848 hymn by Cecil Frances Alexander ...

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high and lowly,
And order’d their estate

ALL of these things are indicative of immorality.

~ notes from Lady Victorian Historian

Zoot

2007-07-07T12:57:00.000-07:00