The STRANGE Things Victorians Did

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The Victorians liked to think of themselves as the pinnacle of progress: railways shrieked across the countryside, gas lamps flickered over polished streets, and the Great Exhibition gleamed with machines promising a brighter future. But behind the rhetoric of reason and refinement lay arsenic wallpaper, laudanum-soothed babies, corsets that crushed organs, and séances in gaslit parlors. They whitened their skin with mercury, sweetened their candies with lead, and dined on chalky bread while congratulating themselves on civilization.

In this episode, we descend into the strange rituals and everyday absurdities of Victorian life — from mourning jewelry made of human hair to taxidermy pets posed for tea parties. It’s a story of poison, superstition, and discomfort, all disguised as refinement. Progress, it turns out, was not always what it seemed.

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