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Britain: Victorians

Time Traveller's Guide to Victorian
Britain
Everything the curious traveller needs to know about the time of Victoria, Dickens and the lady with the lamp.

The Invention of Christmas
Article by Judith Flanders about how what we think of as a British Christmas was invented or imported during the 19th century.

• 1798 and After
  The social and political history of Ireland from the 1798 Rebellion to partition in 1921 (Channel 4 Learning).
• The Affair: The changing status of women
  A concise rundown of the changes in British law to do with marriage and divorce.
• Britain's Trains and Railways: A beginner's guide
  Everything you wanted to know about steam engines, railway companies and electric locomotives.
• British Association for the Advancement of Science
  The story of the organisation founded in 1831 that is now best known for its annual Festival of Science.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
  Military historian Saul David reviews the 1969 film.
• Class Quiz
  The British are obsessed with class, from the aristocrats to chavs and the underclass, with the middle classes in between, constantly jockeying for position. Here is a quiz to set you thinking about class.
• Crime Team: The baby in the bulrushes
  In 1896, the body of a strangled one-year-old child is found in the bulrushes by the Thames in Reading...
• Crime Team: The cut-throat killer
  It is June 1860, and at a remote house in Somerset, the lifeless body of four-year-old Francis Savile is found in the outside privy...
• Crime Team: The strychnine poisoner
  In 1891, a young woman prostitute in south London is poisoned by strychnine after keeping an appointment with a stranger...
• David Lloyd George
  British prime minister from 1916 to 1922 – the first to come from a humble background – Lloyd George was also a great reformer and a womaniser.
• Death, Deceit & the Nile
  The story of the search for the source of the White Nile in 1857-8 by Sir Richard Burton and John Speke. Includes information on slavery and travel tips to the area.
• The Diets that Time Forgot
  Info on weight-loss diets and fitness regimes popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and 1920s, plus general facts on diet and nutrition.
• Empire
  An extract from Professor Niall Ferguson's revisionist history of Britain and its colonies.
• Forbidden Fruit
  Taboo and titillation, racial pride and prejudice – these mark the story of love and sex between black and white people. This site looks at how people's curiosity of the exotic was poisoned by the violence and brutality of the plantations. The timeline includes key dates along the route to racial harmony.
• Francis Galton: Father of eugenics
  Galton founded eugenics, the science of controlled breeding to increase desirable inherited characteristics.
• H G Wells: Visionary novelist
  Wells forecast 20th-century society so accurately that he has been dubbed 'the man who invented tomorrow'.
• An Indian Affair
  The hidden origins of Britain's relationship with India from the 17th century to the religious zealotry and imperial ideology that was the Raj. This website places the interaction into the context of trade and politics and shows the myriad ways that India has suffused the English lifestyle.
• The Invention of Christmas
  Article by Judith Flanders about how what we think of as a British Christmas was invented or imported during the 19th century.
• London: The greatest city
  Edited transcript of the Channel 4 documentary on the history of Britain's capital, together with many of the computer reconstructions that appeared in it.
• Mary Seacole: The real angel of the Crimea
  The extraordinary life of the Caribbean-born nurse Mary Seacole, who became famous for her pioneering work in caring for British troops during the Crimean War. Why was she so swiftly forgotten after her death?
• Men of Iron
  The 19th-century engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson were commercial rivals, but according to Sally Dugan in this book extract, they maintained a lifelong friendship.
• The monarchs we never had
  The death of the heir to the throne has had important consequences throughout British history – sometimes immediately, sometimes obvious only in retrospect.
• Monarchy
  Dynamic timeline that illuminates the lives of the men and women who sat on the English/British throne and the powerful individuals who supported and sometimes fought them.
• Origination
  Brings together the wealth of web resources that record and celebrate the contributions of immigrant cultures to British history.
• Public and Private Tragedies: Voices of the Indian Mutiny
  Historian William Dalrymple describes the discovery of previously unknown eyewitness accounts of the crisis, and draws startling parallels between the dying Mughal world and our own.
• The Real History Show: A Victorian wedding
  What it's like putting together an 1840 wedding today.
• The Royal Institution
  Brief history of the institution that was founded to foster public debate about science.
• The Science of Secrecy: Le chiffre indéchiffrable
  The story of the 'uncrackable cipher' and its solution by the Victorian polymath Charles Babbage.
• The Scots Detective
  This website challenges historical accounts of the Scottish wars of independence, the Reformation, the Act of Union, Scottish exile and the Irish in Scotland (Channel 4 Learning).
• The Search for the Northwest Passage
  From the 15th century, European mariners sought to find a seaway through the ice-bound Arctic to the Orient. This website examines attempts including the fatal Franklin expedition and Amundsen’s success.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Legendary crime writer
  The creator of the first fictional detective to use forensic science to solve crimes.
• The Tower
  Historical nuggets from some of the curators of the Tower of London.
• Victorian Children
  Channel 4 Schools site that answers the question: What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?
• Victorians Uncovered
  Lifts the skirts of 19th-century respectability to reveal the naked truth beneath: child prostitution; sex and race; birth control; divorce.
• What the Papers Said
  Newspapers give a contemporary slant to historical events: Chartists, Great Exhibition, Suffragette movement, World War I, Russian Revolution, Treaty of Versailles, General Strike, Cold War, Vietnam War (Channel 4 Learning).
• The Worst Jobs in History: Victorian jobs
  The Industrial Revolution accelerates and people transfer from the country into the cities, where most have rotten jobs. In the country, life isn't any better.
• Zulu Dawn
  Anglo-Zulu War expert Ian Knight reviews the 1979 film about the 1879 battle of Isandlwana.

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