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A Day Of Victorian Era Hobbies

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A Day of Victorian Era Hobbies

There’s no denying we’re living in a fast-paced, tech-forward world. While the 21st century has many advantages that the 1800s did not, there are still ways we can enjoy Victorian-era hobbies today.

Whether you’re a Victorian enthusiast, a history buff, or you’re just looking for a unique way to change up your activities and try something new, consider planning a day of Victorian-era hobbies.

From morning to evening, you can enjoy the simple-yet-sophisticated lifestyle of what someone might have done on a typical day in the Victorian era. It’s a great way to spend a day away from technology, do something different with friends and family, or even educate your kids with a bit of interactive history.

Let’s take a look at how you might plan your day filled with Victorian-era hobbies, and how you can enjoy each one.

Morning

In the early Victorian years, breakfast typically consisted of meats, cheeses, and beer. That might sound more like party food by today’s standard. However, over time the scope of breakfast changed to what most people recognize today as “full English,” consisting of things like:

  • Eggs and bacon
  • Bread
  • Fish
  • Porridge

While you might not want to have fish for breakfast, you can absolutely enjoy freshly-fried eggs and thick-cut bacon. If you want to be as authentic as possible, consider making your own bread.

While it’s baking, take a brisk walk around your neighborhood. People in the Victorian era tended to eat more calories than we do today, but they were far more active, walking nearly everywhere.

As you’re enjoying your breakfast, do some reading and relax while you ease into the day. Consider scanning through some classic pieces of Victorian poetry by Bronte or Browning, and plan out your day so you have a basic idea of what needs to be done. In the Victorian era, that may have included preparing any food that would need to be eaten later in the day, so it could start cooking and be finished by dinner time.

Midday

After a hearty breakfast and a morning of relaxation, consider filling your afternoon with as many fun hobbies as possible. You might be surprised to find that you really enjoy some of the “old-fashioned” activities, including Victorian-era arts and crafts.

Many practices are making a comeback nowadays, including things like letter writing with wax seals, embroidery, and flower pressing.

Victorian women, especially, were often extremely busy with “DIY” projects during the day, tackling everything from natural dyeing to shellwork and paper art. If you don’t want to get too crafty, consider sitting down and hand-writing a letter to a friend or family member. It’s a thoughtful gesture, and who wouldn’t want to receive a kind note in the mail in this age of email and texting?

If you’d rather be a bit more active with your midday activities, try something new like clay pigeon shooting. This is a fantastic outdoor activity to enjoy with friends, or even on your own if you’re looking for some solitude.

Clay shooting actually started in the Victorian era, beginning with glass balls filled with feathers. It quickly became a sport of its own and remains popular today. You don’t have to be a shooting expert to enjoy yourself and stay safe. Plus, there are many benefits to target practice, including improved balance and stronger hand-eye coordination. It also serves as a great way to alleviate stress.

Evening

There was no better way to end a long day in the Victorian era than by being surrounded by friends and family.

Some things never change.

You can end your day of Victorian hobbies by hosting a historical dinner party. Serve traditional food and drink, and consider hosting your party outdoors in the garden. 

Obviously, you don’t have to be completely authentic here. Your main goal should be making sure your guests are comfortable and happy. If you plan on hosting outside, keep the following outdoor dinner party do’s and don’ts in mind:

  • Choose a location with enough space
  • Check the weather
  • Embrace a mismatched aesthetic (or go with traditional decor)
  • Have adequate lighting
  • Store and serve your food safely

After the meal, continue the festivities by sharing poetry, art, or music with your guests. If you give people enough notice to plan something of their own to share, you can enjoy a whole evening of Victorian-era entertainment. It’s a unique and fun way to change up the traditional dinner party, and most people are happy to try something new and take a step back in time.

In many ways, our world today is vastly different from what it was in the 1800s. However, there are still so many things we do that are influenced by the Victorian era, and other things that are returning to popularity after hundreds of years. If you want to enjoy a day of Victorian-era hobbies and appreciate the simpler things that led us to where we are now, let these ideas serve as a loose schedule. Whether you spend the day on your own or with people you love, you’ll have fun stepping back into a simpler time in history.

A Brief Overview Of Victorian Schools For Children

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The Victorian era is packed with many histories and mysteries. One of the most historical topics that would spring up from that era was schooling.

What was schooling like for children in the Victorian era?

Believe it or not, Victorian schools are far different than schools today. In fact, let’s just say your own child wouldn’t like being in Victorian schools much. With no technology, no “fun” activities, and enforced punishments to students who defied the rules, Victorian schools differ greatly from the tech-drenched, “fun”-enforced, and lenient-punishment atmosphere of today’s schools.

This brief overview will cover the following, when it comes to Victorian schools:

  • Background
  • How rich students and poor students attended school
  • What the school “uniforms” looked like
  • What school is like, AND
  • How teachers handled punishments

A Little Background

“The Victorian era was when schools were taken seriously as institutions,” says Rose McKelvey, a history writer at State of writing and Essay Roo. “In fact, schools in the Victorian era were available to all children, regardless of one’s family’s financial situation. A law passed in 1870 required all children in Britain between the ages of 5 and 10 to attend school. However, this law was contested in 1893, when the leaving age was changed to 11 years old, since children of working parents were convinced to join the workforce instead of going to school.”

The Rich And The Poor

While very few children actually attended school, there were two different realities: the rich and the poor.

Children from rich families received homeschooling. In homeschooling, children would be taught by a governess, or a female teacher. The only notable thing here is that while boys at age 10 would go on to public schools, the girls would continue to be homeschooled.

As for the poor, children would sometimes attend church for school, despite these “schools” having limited educational resources. However, a law passed in 1880 had all children – rich or poor – attend school.

School Attire

School attire in the Victorian era left very little room for students to express themselves. The most common uniform colors were dark colors like black and brown, and dull colors like grey and white.

The girls would wear a dark knee-length wool dress, along with a white apron (tied at the back of the dress), thick black stockings, and black shoes (or boots). Boys, on the other hand, wore shirts, trousers (or shorts), and ankle boots (along with long socks), with the addition of a jacket with a waistcoat (or jumper) underneath.

What Was School Like?

In essence, schools in the Victorian era looked something like this:

  • Schools lasted until 5 PM.
  • Children sat silently in rows, as the teacher wrote lessons on the blackboard. As the teacher wrote, so did the students at their desks.
  • The main subjects taught were Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic (Math).
  • Distractions and looking out the window were discouraged.
  • Certain subjects like needlework were taught to girls. Meanwhile, other subjects like woodwork were taught to boys.
  • Students would use the following to study and learn:
    • A slate and chalk (along with a cloth to wipe their slate clean)
    • A quill pen (with an ink well) and parchment
  • Equipment in classrooms were often scarce. A classroom was often lucky to have a map of the world or an abacus for reference.

School Punishments

“Unlike today’s standards, where punishments these days are more lenient and less harsh, Victorian school punishments were more severe physically and mentally,” says Chelsea Niall, an education blogger at Boom Essays and Paper Fellows. “One of the most common forms of punishment was the use of a cane. A teacher’s cane was typically long and thin. They would use this stick to strike children on the hand for either misbehaving, being tardy to class, or for telling lies. There was also a leather strap used to beat children, or the infamous dunce’s hat which is worn by misbehaving students. Or, children were subject to writing lines, where students wrote the same sentence or phrase over and over however the teacher saw fit.”

Conclusion

As you can see, Victorian schools were worlds away from the schools that we see today. In this overview, it’s clear that Victorian schools had different values and methods, when it comes to teaching children, thus cementing themselves into a part of Victorian history.

Christina Lee is a writer and editor at Dissertation help and Write my paper. She is also a contributing writer for OX Essays. As an education blogger, she writes articles about tutoring, histories of various time periods in education, and teacher spotlights.

The Evolution Of Victorian Era Hair Care

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These days, it feels as though there’s always so much to do to keep your hair in top condition. You need to use the right shampoos and conditioners, the right protective treatments for heat styling, and more. That’s not even mentioning dying and cutting hair too.

Back in the Victorian era though, women were putting just as much effort into their hair, if not more. Over nearly 70 years of Victoria’s reign, there were a lot of changes to hair care and a lot of it is different to how you’d look after your hair today. Let’s take a look at what they did to stay fashionable.

The Longer, The Better

While styles did change over the years, it was seen that the longer your hair was, the better. You’ve probably seen photographs of women with long wavy hair, sometimes even touching the ground. There were even a group of sisters, named the Seven Sutherland Sisters, who were famed for their long hair. In fact, they has around 37 feet of hair between them.

They were a musical act in the 1880’s, wearing their hair down as they performed. They even sold their own range of hair care products, showing that celebrity endorsements were a thing even then. However, the bob came into style in the 1920’s, and they were considered very old fashioned then.

While the Sutherland Sisters wore their hair down on stage, it wasn’t the common thing to do. Little girls would wear their hair down, but women aged 16 and up were expected to put their hair up in up dos. ‘When women were photographed with their hair down, that was often to express intimacy within the photograph’ says journalist Lleyton Ware, from Brit Student and Write My X.

Caring For Victorian Hair

As women were growing their hair long, they of course had to take care of it. There were some modern solutions, such as giving hair trims in order to remove split ends. There were other methods though, that you’ll be glad were kept in the past.

For example, in the 1860’s it was common to boil bran in soft water, rub some white soap into the water, and then rub the mixture into the scalp with the corner of a towel. Women were often recommended to use egg yolk on their scalps too, to protect them.

Hair washing was recommended monthly, with ingredients such as borax, olive oil, and water. After you’d washed your hair, you needed to dry it out as water was thought to allow ‘disagreeable odors’ to arise from the hair. To dry it, you could brush powdered starch through it to remove that water.

With crimped and curled hair, it was important to set them so they wouldn’t come out on hot days. To do this, women would use a mixture of egg yolk and pomade to do so. It’s interesting to note that women’s bonnets were recommended to have oiled silk linings, to protect the bonnet from hair treatments.

Victorian Hair Styles Through The Decades

As the Victorian era was so long, hair styles evolved for women. Here’s a run down of what was popular at the time.

Usually, up dos were used as they were for ‘respectable’ women. The shape of the hair was important, as it would be taken into account with the rest of a woman’s silhouette. If a woman needed more volume, she would add false pieces made from human hair to create the look she needed.

‘Sometimes these hair pieces were known as “rats”, and were created from hair from the woman’s hairbrush’ says writer Samina Coffey, from 1 Day 2 Write and Origin Writings. ‘They would be packed into the hair, to add that volume.’

Hair was usually twisted into intricate styles, and the styles themselves changed over time. The sides of the hair were sometimes curled too. Over time barley curls, or ringlets, came into fashion. Up dos had padded sides, in order to match the width of the skirts that were fashionable.

As you can see, while a lot of Victorian hair care was very different to modern styles, there’s still some aspects that are relevant today. After all, who doesn’t love the idea of having long, wavy locks?

George J. Newton is a content writer, and business development manager for Academic Brits and Thesis writing service. He contributes to sites such as Buy coursework, too. His wife is his biggest supporter when it comes to his writing.

Victorian Hosting & Home Etiquette Still in Use Today

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When most people think of the Victorian era, proper etiquette and manners are some of the first things that come to mind. Many of the etiquette standards set in that era are still in use today and hold cultural relevance.

Of course, some things have changed. But, it’s interesting to see the influence the Victorian era had on the things we consider normal today, especially when it comes to hosting and basic etiquette.

So, what are some of the lessons that have stood the test of time? Everything from how you greet and treat your guests to how your home is decorated has a deeper background than you might realize.

With that in mind, let’s dive into this interesting section of history.

The Host With the Most

Entertaining guests and hosting dinner parties are standard practices today. Whether you’re getting your extended family together for a meal or inviting friends over for something more upscale, certain things make for a good host/hostess, including:

  • Making sure everyone is comfortable
  • Being prepared
  • Making your home visitor-friendly
  • Helping everyone find what they need and get around
  • Making everyone feel welcome
  • Taking care of everyone’s dishes and offering refills for individual glasses

Invitations are still the norm in many cases, too. That’s something that goes well beyond the Victorian era, but one thing that has changed is the casual nature of invites. In the Victorian age, invitations had to be formal, or they weren’t taken seriously. Today, it seems like creating an online event is enough to get more people to attend your event. Setting a date and time and explaining what to expect in your invitation is proper etiquette and can get more people to attend your event. But, it’s interesting to see how the formalities have changed.

If you’re a guest at a party, there are also things expected of you – many of which stem from the 1800s, including:

  • Letting your host know how long you’ll be staying
  • Bringing a gift
  • Conforming to “house rules”
  • Lending a hand
  • Being grateful

When it comes to how to be a good host or guest, many of your actions will reflect on proper etiquette. So, how has that changed since the Victorian age? What has stayed the same?

Mind Your Manners

It’s easy to assume people had better manners in the 1800s, but so many of the etiquette rules put in place during that era are still used today. Some of those rules, especially when it comes to attending events, include:

  • Not coming by unannounced
  • Dressing for the occasion
  • Being your best self in front of others
  • Striking up conversations

That said, some basic etiquette rules have changed dramatically over the years. It’s rare to see a gentleman “bowing” to a lady in the street these days. According to the 1875 publication the Manual of Social and Business Forms, this type of bowing was acceptable. But, it also might cause rumors and gossip to start.

Interestingly enough, that same manual takes a somewhat criticizing tone when it comes to small talk, suggesting that “no topic of absorbing interest may be admitted to polite conversation” for fear that it might cause discussion. Imagine if that rule still rang true today! No one would have to worry about heated political debates at their next dinner party. Perhaps it’s a rule that should come back around!

Hosting and Houseplants

When you’re hosting a get-together, you want your house to be clean, decluttered, and accessible for everyone. Most people also put a bit of extra effort into making it feel “homey” and decorated the way they like.

In recent years, there has been a boom in houseplant popularity when it comes to home decor. The COVID-19 pandemic caused another rise in plant-palooza as people were spending more time at home and got into new hobbies and endeavors. There are actually many benefits to bringing nature indoors. It helps to reduce stress, improve air quality, and boost your mood. Plants are also a great way to make people feel more comfortable and welcome in your home.

But, plant fever is nothing new. It was going strong in the Victorian era, with certain exotic plants seen as prized possessions – many only fit for royalty. If you live in a small home or apartment today and you have plenty of plants, know that once upon a time that would’ve been a prominent status symbol!

Whether it’s decorating, hosting, or simple etiquette and manner lessons, the changes and similarities between today and the Victorian era are interesting to look at. So much of what was done in the past is still relevant today. Even though some of those old rules have fallen away, they have undoubtedly influenced our culture, society, and the way we interact with each other.

How The Victorian Era Changed The Way We Look At Our Pets Today

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It’s hard to imagine a world without pets. Dogs are considered to be man’s best friend. Cats are cute and cuddly companions. Even more unconventional pets like mice, lizards, and Guinea pigs have become major parts of American homes.

But, it wasn’t always that way.

While owning animals for different purposes has been practiced for centuries, the Victorian era changed the way we look at pets. Up until the 19th century, it wasn’t common to have an animal in the home with no real purpose other than companionship. People certainly weren’t researching how to care for kittens or spending money on dog toys the way they do today.

So, what is the history of pets, and how did that change during the Victorian era? If you’re a pet owner today, you can probably thank the 19th century for changing the way we look at our furry friends. Let’s dig deeper into those changes, and why they matter so much in terms of the dog or cat you might have by your side while you’re reading this.

The Early History of Pets

Research has shown that humans have likely kept animals as some form of entertainment for centuries. It’s believed that dogs were the first domesticated animals, as research has been published showing wolves were domesticated in Europe 16,000 years ago, and in Asia about 14,000 years ago.

These animals weren’t really considered “pets.” Rather, they were more like property, kept around for entertainment purposes or to do a specific job. That didn’t mean those animals weren’t enjoyed by their owners, but it was a far cry from the companionship and praise of household pets we’re used to today.

The real rise of pet domestication in the U.S. began in the early 1700s with the catching and taming of wild animals – including squirrels! Most squirrels were trapped by children who caught them in their nests and attempted to domesticate them. The trapping and taming of wild animals didn’t stop there and carried on into the Victorian era, though it combined with a view on pets that was starting to become a bit more exclusive.

What Changed in the Victorian Era?

As the Victorian era rolled in, pets were already well-established for some people. It was their purpose, however, that started to change. It was during the 19th century that it started to become more acceptable for animals to be companions. That included letting them into the home and allowing them to be a part of the family. Many people started to see pets as a way to add moral value to a family and build character for children.

During the Victorian era, people became more interested in a domestic lifestyle, and having a pet seemed to naturally fit. Pets were especially encouraged for young boys, as they were thought to develop a sense of responsibility.

But, the pets of this era were slightly different than the cat curled up next to you or the dog at your feet right now. Poor and working-class families essentially had to trap their own pets. Many of them captured wild birds to keep in cages or rabbits to keep in hutches. Middle- and upper-class families popularized pedigree dog breeding. It was seen as a sign of status and wealth, and something that is still practiced today.

With the rise of pet popularity in the Victorian era, people became interested in keeping more unusual or exotic animals. There were even manuals on how to care for such wild pets, including:

  • Squirrels
  • Monkeys
  • Badgers
  • Owls
  • Ravens

While the types of pets people have may have changed, pet owners of today owe a lot to this era for changing the narrative of what domesticated animals can be.

Today’s Pets are Parts of the Family

Today, 67% of households in the U.S. have some type of pet. Many of those furry (and sometimes not so furry!) friends are considered to be part of the family. The pet industry is booming, reaching $99 billion in 2020. Needless to say, we’ve come a long way in how pets are perceived and what they’re used for. The 21st century has even seen a rise in animal rights, with several notable court cases featuring animals as plaintiffs.

There are still “working animals,” of course. Working dogs are extremely common in farming, police work, search and rescue, and even for therapeutic purposes. But, many pets are simply constant companions within a household. People now take the time to pet-proof their homes and provide things like:

  • A bed
  • Toys
  • Food and water bowls
  • A litter box/training pads
  • Training treats

People care for their pets so much today that many even take out pet insurance to help cover veterinary bills. In centuries past, the medical care of domesticated animals was rarely a concern. Today, pet insurance can cover everything from diagnostic testing to emergency care.

It shouldn’t be surprising to see how far the role of the household pet has come throughout history. Centuries ago, people couldn’t stay away from the idea of domesticating animals. While the purposes have changed, the desire for companionship hasn’t, and we owe a lot of how pets are viewed and treated today to some of the changes that took place in the Victorian era.