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Victorian Era

62 replies

Nooriginalusername23 · 13/01/2023 14:39

If you could go back to the Victorian era for just 24 hours, what would you do? I would love to walk through east end London when Jack the Ripper was on his killing spree. Would love to feel what the atmosphere was like and life in general was like back then.

what would you do for the day if you could go back in time?

OP posts:
Alcemeg · 13/01/2023 17:05

You would like to step back in time and experience the thrill of being a potential victim of Jack the Ripper??! 😁 each to their own, I guess...

I'd like to anticipate the motor car and design roads a bit better 😊

EmmaEmerald · 13/01/2023 17:14

I didn't know we had a history club!

hmm...I'd like to see Spring Heeled Jack, or at least be a fly on the wall for the people who claim to have seen him. I'd like to attend a seance.

Probably numerous English ghosts I'd like to see.

I'd like to ride a luxury train like the Orient Express.

jack the ripper makes me shudder - but for some reason, the Ratcliffe Highway murders interest me. Not enough to want to hang around for 24 hours though!

upinaballoon · 18/01/2023 21:28

One strand of my forbears lived in the area where I still live so I would like to just go and spend the 24 hours with them.
I would like to look at great, great, great grandmother Elizabeth in our local town, the day she went to register the deaths of her brother-in-law, from bronchitis, and her grand-daughter, from cholera, early 1860s, I think. I want to see what she was wearing. I want to know if her husband drove her up there, or a farm servant. She was a farmer's wife, so not poverty-stricken I guess, but she signed with a cross, so hadn't had much, if any, formal schooling. I would love to see what this area looked like then and how many horses and carts there were in town. I would like to go home with her for tea and ask sooo many questions.

TaRaDeBumDeAy · 18/01/2023 22:02

I'd definitely go and hang around Whitechapel too. Dorset Street and Petticoat Lane and all the alleys. I'd go and have a walk down leman Street and see the original police station.

I'd also go and see all the old massive houses like on Harley Street, and carriages.

And selfridges. If it was open then.

DollsHouseDreams · 18/01/2023 23:12

What a great question!

This is the sort of concept that occurs to me, that I am very keen to ponder over with DH but it bemuses him... Smile

I already know what I would want to do. I live in a Victorian house and I would absolutely love to see the original Victorian family - see what they wore, what they did, what the decor was like, what the house looked and felt like originally. I'd like to wander all around our local area and see people going by, the fashions, the local Victorian shops and buildings in the village.

After that, I agree with Victorian London - it would be fascinating! But it's the tiny domestic details that really fascinate me on a very small level, down to toiletries and condiments and hair brushes and children's Christmas toys... what did they get for Christmas? What did Christmas look like in our house then? Amazing.

MrsMoastyToasty · 18/01/2023 23:20

I would visit my great grandmother and her new baby (my grandad) born in 1900. He was the last of her children born during Queen Victoria's reign, the rest were born as Edwardians.

tobee · 18/01/2023 23:56

I think I'd like to be a wealthy young man about town for a day. I should imagine women were largely quite confined. I'd need a pal to take me about. Maybe wake up in a country house for breakfast but then take a train to London, go to Covent Garden, go to lunch, something or the other in the afternoon, wander about the city perhaps ? Go to the river to see how different it looked with the docks, warehouses and ships. Go to the theatre or a music hall (or both). Maybe do something disreputable in the late evening around the East End? Then finish up going to a ship to sail somewhere to start a life in the colonies.

Like a pp I'm interested in the minutiae but can't imagine how i'd take enough in in 24 hours.

Also fascinated by Ratcliffe Highway. Especially the going out of the maid (?) to get late night oysters as a working class snack!

Aphrathestorm · 19/01/2023 00:04

I take a load of penicillin with me, sell it to rich people and make a killing.

tobee · 19/01/2023 00:09

Ah! But would it still be a killing in 2023? 🤔

HarrietSchulenberg · 19/01/2023 00:21

I'd like to see the field that was here before my house, or maybe watch it being built. I could maybe meet up with my great grandma, who lived nearby, and we could stroll through town together.

tobee · 19/01/2023 01:32

Does asked Dh and he was similar to me and then we both thought maybe pop in to The Old Bailey and watched someone on trial for the life for arsenic poisoning.

tobee · 19/01/2023 01:37

*on trial for their life

007DoubleOSeven · 19/01/2023 01:41

I would go check out all my great great grandparents and see where they lived and what they were like.

Definitely check out victorian London- and the countryside too as thar would have been so different.

Finally, I'd top it off by earwigging on the Queen.

theblackradiator · 19/01/2023 01:58

love this thread I'm a huge history geek and the victorian era is my favourite. I'm very interested in how the working class people lived my ancestors were all working class many working in the victorian cotton mills up north. I'd love to see how 24 hours in their daily lives panned out, what they ate for meals,just how they managed daily life particularly the women. I still live in the same region now as my Victorian ancestors and I love to hear their voices and see how our regional accent has changed over the past 150 years as can hear the difference in accent now between the older and younger generations nowadays. I'd also love to show them some modern tech can you imagine how amazed they'd be by a smartphone and being able to film and see themselves on it.

junipermarten · 19/01/2023 02:09

Oh I love the Victorian era. My son is learning about it at school just now, it was my favourite topic at school.

I would go back and spend time with my ancestors who I've been researching in my family tree. And ask my great-grandmother who my grandfather's father is as I've been trying to find out for so long!

EileenAdler · 19/01/2023 02:44

How wonderful. To visit places I know well before they were over build over and “developed”. At the time of the Whitechapel murders the area south of the river was largely market gardens, providing produce for the London markets. That’s why Fred Abberline lived there, it was such a contrast to the east end and the crowded and squalor of the docks. Just imagine that. I’d take my iPhone and record endless video and take a million pictures.

EileenAdler · 19/01/2023 02:47

Built over , sorry

theblackradiator · 19/01/2023 11:40

yes I'd also photograph and video everything. id ask my Victorian ancestors to tell me about their lives and video record it. I love to watch the old archive videos on YouTube of people who lived during the late Victorian era speaking about their lives its mostly middle to upper class people though and never working class, mind you the work class didn't live as long to reach the video era. I've always found the working class much more interesting.

TaRaDeBumDeAy · 19/01/2023 13:31

I'd 'invent' something from the future, something that will continue to keep the money rolling in, and get rich. Not sure what though, yet.

CPL593H · 19/01/2023 13:36

I'd go back to a farm in Shropshire in 1893 and see my darling grandfather as a baby. Also have a look at the older relatives I never met.

Alcemeg · 19/01/2023 18:56

theblackradiator · 19/01/2023 11:40

yes I'd also photograph and video everything. id ask my Victorian ancestors to tell me about their lives and video record it. I love to watch the old archive videos on YouTube of people who lived during the late Victorian era speaking about their lives its mostly middle to upper class people though and never working class, mind you the work class didn't live as long to reach the video era. I've always found the working class much more interesting.

Have you seen all the colorised old movies on YouTube, like this channel?

Little snippets of children on a beach and so on. Gobsmackingly breathtakingly fascinating 😍

Knittingnanny2 · 19/01/2023 19:04

I want to spend a day in the farm cottages my ancestors lived in, in a tiny Wiltshire village. I’ve done a family tree back to early 1800’s for one branch but there are a few anomalies and uncertainties I want to sort out. Plus I would love to experience the realities of life for poor “ ag labs” and their wives plus the large number of children they had in a tiny home. And find out the sadness they went through due to losing children at very young ages.
I love social history
I was lucky enough about 20 years ago to travel up to this village and meet a local historian who showed me inside a similar cottage.

SylviasMotherSaid · 19/01/2023 19:06

I think I would go to a music hall Diary of a Nobody era type thing

Aphrathestorm · 19/01/2023 19:17

tobee · 19/01/2023 00:09

Ah! But would it still be a killing in 2023? 🤔

I'd use it to buy a bit of land/a house in central London. That would certainly be worth ££££ now.

CharlotteStreetW1 · 19/01/2023 19:17

I used to work near Gray's Inn Square. One morning I went into work really early and walked through to the Square. It was still quite dark and snowing heavily. I fully expected the artful dodger to step out. Incredibly atmospheric.

Whilst the Inn is older than Victorian, I recently found out that Dickens lived round there at one point so I qasn't ar off the mark.

It's worth a visit.