Back in Time Today
The Victorian era left behind fascinating objects that tell us about life in the 19th century. These artifacts reveal how people lived, loved, and coped with loss during Queen Victoria’s reign.
From unique jewelry to early entertainment devices, each item offers a window into a world that shaped our modern society.
1. Mourning Jewelry Made with Human Hair
Woven strands of human hair transformed grief into wearable art during the Victorian period. After a loved one died, families would carefully collect locks of the deceased’s hair to be braided into intricate patterns for brooches, rings, and lockets.
Queen Victoria herself popularized this practice after Prince Albert’s death in 1861, wearing his hair in a locket for the remaining forty years of her life. The hair was considered the most permanent part of the human body, lasting long after flesh had disappeared.
Some pieces featured elaborate scenes made entirely of hair—flowers, trees, or even gravestone imagery—requiring immense skill to create.
2. The Penny Dreadful
Blood-curdling tales sold for just a penny captivated working-class Victorians every week. These cheaply produced booklets featured sensational stories of vampires, criminals, and monsters that pushed the boundaries of acceptable literature.
Famous characters like Sweeney Todd and Varney the Vampire first appeared in these pulp publications, creating cultural touchstones that survive today. Printed on low-quality paper with dramatic woodcut illustrations, penny dreadfuls were often passed around until they fell apart.
Moral guardians condemned them as corrupting influences on young minds, while publishers churned out ever more shocking content to meet insatiable demand.
3. The Stereoscope
Wooden handheld viewers transported Victorians to exotic worlds through the magic of 3D imagery. By mounting two slightly offset photographs side by side and viewing them through special lenses, the brain merged the images into a single three-dimensional scene.
Families gathered in parlors to virtually visit the pyramids of Egypt or witness the aftermath of the American Civil War. The stereoscope created such convincing depth that viewers often reached out to touch what wasn’t there.
By 1900, millions of these devices filled middle-class homes, creating the first form of immersive media entertainment decades before television or virtual reality.
4. Chatelaines
Jingling with every movement, these decorative belt chains served as the Victorian woman’s tool belt and status symbol. Attached to the waistband, chatelaines held an array of miniature tools suspended from ornate chains—scissors, thimbles, keys, notebooks, and even tiny perfume bottles.
Silver and gold versions signaled wealth, while more modest steel versions equipped housekeepers with essentials for daily tasks. The name comes from the French term for a castle’s key-keeper, reflecting the wearer’s domestic authority.
Beyond practicality, these accessories created a pleasant tinkling sound as women moved, announcing their presence in an era when feminine visibility was strictly controlled.
5. The Magic Lantern
Shadowy figures danced across walls as Victorian families gathered for magical evening entertainment. These early projectors used oil lamps or limelight to cast images from hand-painted glass slides onto walls or screens, creating ghostly moving pictures.
Professional showmen traveled between towns with elaborate setups, projecting phantasmagoria shows that terrified and delighted audiences with moving skeletons and specters. At home, smaller versions allowed families to create their own shows with slides depicting fairy tales or biblical scenes.
Hand-operated mechanisms created motion effects—waves crashing or eyes blinking—making these the direct ancestors of animated films and modern cinema.
6. Victorian Poison Bottles
Running your fingers across a medicine shelf in the dark, you’d immediately know which bottles contained deadly substances. Victorian poison bottles featured tactile warnings—raised bumps, ridges, or distinctive shapes like skulls or coffins—making them instantly recognizable by touch alone.
Most were crafted from cobalt blue glass, though green and black versions existed too. The distinctive color and texture served as crucial safety features in an era when many couldn’t read labels and household lighting was dim.
Pharmacists filled these vessels with everything from arsenic (used in cosmetics) to laudanum (an opium tincture commonly given to children), substances freely available despite their dangers.
7. Spirit Photography
Ghostly figures hover behind living subjects in these haunting Victorian photographs that promised connection with the afterlife. Following the devastating losses of the American Civil War and various epidemics, bereaved families sought comfort in spiritualist practices, including photographic “proof” of spirits.
Enterprising photographers like William Mumler created these images using double exposures or manipulated negatives. The typical spirit photo showed a translucent figure—often a deceased loved one—standing behind or beside the living subject.
Even after Mumler was exposed as a fraud in a highly publicized 1869 trial, demand for these supernatural portraits remained strong, revealing how deeply Victorians yearned to bridge the gap between life and death.
8. The Zoetrope
Spinning cylinders brought drawings to life in Victorian parlors through these mesmerizing animation devices. The zoetrope featured a series of sequential images placed inside a rotating drum with vertical slits; when spun, viewers peering through the slits saw the illusion of movement.
Children marveled as horses galloped endlessly or acrobats performed perpetual flips in these early animation machines. Unlike today’s digital entertainment, the mechanical nature of the zoetrope made the process visible and understandable.
Manufactured versions became affordable for middle-class families by the 1860s, popularizing the concept of persistence of vision—the same principle that would eventually make cinema possible.
9. Wax Anatomical Models
Eerily lifelike figures with removable parts revealed the body’s inner workings to Victorian medical students. Created by skilled artisans, these anatomical models featured glass eyes, real hair, and skin textures so realistic viewers often mistook them for preserved corpses.
The famous “Anatomical Venus” models displayed beautiful women in peaceful repose whose torsos opened to reveal colored wax organs that could be removed layer by layer. Public museums exhibited these figures, allowing ordinary citizens to glimpse medical knowledge previously restricted to professionals.
Female models frequently outnumbered male ones, reflecting Victorian fascination with women’s bodies while actual female medical students were still largely excluded from dissection rooms.
10. The Ornate Writing Desk
Secret compartments and specialized slots transformed letter-writing into an art form for status-conscious Victorians. These portable writing boxes featured fold-out surfaces covered in leather or felt, revealing elaborate interiors with designated spaces for pens, ink, sealing wax, and stationery.
Crafted from mahogany, rosewood, or walnut with brass fittings, quality writing desks signaled refinement in an era when correspondence reflected one’s character and education. Some contained hidden drawers accessed by pressing concealed buttons or sliding panels—perfect for storing private letters or valuables.
For Victorian women with limited freedom, these desks represented personal space where they could express themselves through the dozens of letters they might write weekly.
11. Automaton Toys
Mechanical marvels performed impossibly human actions through hidden clockwork mechanisms that fascinated Victorian audiences. These wind-up figures—often depicting musicians, writers, or dancers—contained complex gear systems that could produce surprisingly lifelike movements.
The famous “Writer” automaton by Pierre Jaquet-Droz could be programmed to write custom messages of up to 40 characters using a real quill pen and ink. Wealthy families displayed these technological wonders at gatherings, where guests would watch spellbound as mechanical birds sang or dolls played musical instruments.
Behind their entertaining facades, automatons represented serious engineering achievements that influenced the development of early computing machines.
12. Cameo Brooches
Delicate faces emerged from contrasting layers of shell or stone in these carved Victorian status symbols. Skilled artisans removed material to reveal raised profiles—typically depicting Greek goddesses, Roman emperors, or idealized women—against darker backgrounds.
Shell cameos from the Mediterranean were most common, but wealthy collectors sought rarer hardstone versions carved from agate, onyx, or sardonyx. Queen Victoria’s love for cameos made them essential accessories for fashionable women, who wore them at the throat or pinned to bodices.
Beyond beauty, cameos conveyed classical education and artistic taste at a time when ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics represented the height of cultural refinement.
13. Victorian Calling Cards & Trays
Tiny rectangular cards orchestrated social interactions with surprising complexity in Victorian society. When visiting someone’s home, callers would present their card to the servant, who placed it on a decorative tray in the entrance hall for the homeowner to review.
Specific card corner folds communicated different messages: a folded upper right corner meant the visitor had come in person, while other folds indicated condolences or congratulations. Silver or porcelain card trays displayed in the entrance hall showed a family’s connections and popularity.
Elaborate cards might feature gilded edges, embossed details, or even miniature paintings—all conveying the owner’s taste and social standing through a piece of paper just 2.5 by 3.5 inches.