The Alexandra Limp and Other Affectations of Posture

In the 1860s, when Queen Alexandra, then the Princess of Wales, suffered a painful attack of rheumatism in her knee which, in time, resulted in a permanent limp, high society women London, keen as ever to stay on trend with the day’s fashion, began to sycophantically imitate it. It became ridiculously popular and was known as the Alexandra Limp, although it was ‘widely derided’ by, well, by anyone with any sense probably. John Stephen Farmer called it “an erstwhile fit of semi-imbecility” by “a crowd of limping petticoated toadies”.

Be that as it may, the fad was followed by a similar curiosity of posture in the USA, namely, The Grecian Bend, which saw women apparently go about their business whilst bent oddly at the waist. Albert Jones Bellows describes in a sighting in Boston:“She waddled a few rods past the store, and then turned round, smiling, or rather smirking, complacently on her ‘crowd of admirers,’ with an expression of face which seemed to say, … ‘All my torture is repaid by the admiration I excite.’”

[Sources: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (p.25) | Futility Closet  | Telegraph | Wikipedia]

Victorian Dress Lifter

Basically tool kits masquerading as jewelry, “chatelaines” allowed Victorian women to keep quotidian essentials at the ready, in the graceful style the era demanded. Consisting of functional pendants attached to a clip, these accessories were worn at the waist. 

The above artifact would be hung on the chatelaine alongside other day-to-day necessities such as make-up, pencils, needles, and perfume. Women relied on these little tongs to hoist up their skirt hems when crossing dirty streets.

[Source: Country Living | See Also]

Hysteria under Hypnosis

A series of photographs from the 1870s of a woman apparently “suffering” from female hysteria, that is, “a tendency to cause trouble,” whilst under hypnosis.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Lady Revivers

As aforementioned, Victorian women were, for one of a number of possible reasons, frequently afflicted by fainting fits. Whilst indoors this might be easy enough to remedy, however, a sudden fit whilst out and about might prove more perilous. Thus, Police constables of the era were equipped with small vials of smelling salts in small containers adorned with a crown - called Lady Revivers - to revive women in the streets.

[Sources: BBC | See Also: io9]

Fainting Rooms

Victorian women being, as they were, prone to frequent fainting fits, it was an inspired idea to designate a specific room in one’s home for the very purpose of overcoming them.

One theory posits that the prevalence of fainting rooms within the Victorian home stems from the tightness of corsets, which would restrict blood flow and cause women to faint, however, as women are depicted throughout the 19^th century engaging in vigorous activities whilst thus attired, it is more likely that the fainting rooms were a response to the all too frequent diagnosis of ‘female hysteria’ attributed to any woman displaying signs of a general ‘tendency to cause trouble.’

Fainting rooms would provide privacy whilst the “afflicted” sought treatment in the form of a highly intimate pelvic massage – a treatment performed by a doctor that could take hours, might be required on a weekly basis, and is possibly the reason the model in the above photograph is smiling… Throughout, the “patient” would lie on a specially designed fainting couch, the feature furniture in fainting rooms, which was not dissimilar to a chaise longue, having one end of the back raised and an arm at only one side so as to provide easy access to the reclining position. 

[Sources: Image | Fainting Room | Fainting Chair | Female Hysteria]

The Horsey Horseless

The advent of motorised vehicles in the late 19th century had the unfortunate side-effect of terrifying their predecessors - horses. As horse drawn carriages and these new-fangled automobiles whizzed past one another on busy streets, the horses would be so startled by the speed and noise of the machines that their owners would threaten to shoot the drivers there and then!

Enter Uriah Smith. An inventor from Michigan, in 1899 Smith proposed a solution in the form of the Horsey Horseless carriage; a motorised vehicle with a wooden horses head attached to the front, so it somewhat resembled a typical horse and carriage. He reasoned that, upon witnessing this monstrosity, “The live horse would be thinking of another horse and before he could discover his error and see that he had been fooled, the strange carriage would be passed.”

It is not know whether any Horsey Horseless carriages were ever actually made.

[Sources: A Touch of Knowledge | Time]

The Great Stink

The Great Stink was a time in the summer of 1858 during which the smell of untreated human waste was very strong in central London. At the time house waste was permitted to be carried to the Thames via the sewers, so human waste was dumped into the Thames and then potentially pumped back to the same households for drinking, cooking and bathing.

Furthermore, there were over 200,000 cesspits in London. Emptying one cesspit cost a shilling - a cost the average Londoner could ill afford - thus, most cesspits added to the airborne stench. The introduction of flush toilets also contributed to the problem as they dramatically increased the volume of water and waste that was poured into the cesspits. These often overflowed into street drains designed originally to cope with rainwater, but now also used to carry outfalls from factories, slaughterhouses and other activities, contaminating the city before emptying into the River Thames.

The summer of 1858 was unusually hot. The Thames and many of its urban tributaries were overflowing with sewage; the warm weather encouraged bacteria to thrive and the resulting smell was so overwhelming that it affected the work of the House of Commons (countermeasures included draping curtains soaked in chloride of lime, while members considered relocating upstream to Hampton Court) and the law courts (plans were made to evacuate to Oxford and St Albans).

Heavy rain finally ended the heat and humidity of summer and the immediate crisis ended. However, a House of Commons select committee was appointed to report on the Stink and recommend how to end the problem.

[Image Source]

(Source: Wikipedia)

Victorian Pictogram Puzzle

Pictograms were a popular form of entertainment in the Victorian era and some came with an especial incentive to solve them - like the promise of an ‘Earthly paradise’ or the chance to win £30,000.

The above poster was designed by Thomas Bish, who pioneered new ways of advertising lottery tickets before the lottery was abolished by parliament in 1826. It reads:

“Catch Fortune when you can.  As every man would rather get money than not, the attention of all is called to the New Lottery, in which, by a small risk, they may get an independent fortune. They should hasten to the nearest lottery office, and then, by purchasing even a share, they may secure what they desire, and which cannot fail to make the mare go, and place them (if money be their deity) in an earthly paradise.”

And the address at the bottom is for BISH, 4 Cornhill and 9 Charing Cross, London.

[Secret Lives of Objects]