What Victorian Gents Wore – Part III

Coats

Most Victorian gentlemen owned four different types of coat to fit every occasion. These consisted of the business coat, frock coat, dress coat and overcoat. The business suit, otherwise known as the sack suit, would be considered leisure wear for a gentleman, but farmers, laborers or cowboys would wear sack suits for dress occasions, such [...]

Telltale Embroidery

Telltale Embroidery
Embroidery experienced a revival (along with anything else Elizabethan) during Victoria’s reign. Authors writing about characters in the 19th Century, therefore, can utilize embroidery detail in their characters’ costumes to help set the backdrop for whether the fashions are current or older.
A delightfully presented article supplies a number of good [...]

How Victorians crossed a river before there was a bridge: Part III

So, how did 19th century cable ferries work? I haven’t taken any engineering courses, but based on my research this is how I see them operating–
The simplest cable ferry was pulled back and forth across slow moving rivers where keeping a ferry under control wasn’t too difficult. A long cable was attached to one end [...]

Hurdy-Gurdy Girls

An author new to my must-read list, Alice Valdal, has an interesting newsletter. Her May issue covers the topic of Hurdy-Gurdy girls. I’d heard the term before, but I never knew how they got the name, or really, what they did. Could this have been the beginning of the phrase “sex sells”?

What Victorian Gents Wore – Part II

Victorian Menswear

Trousers of the mid-nineteenth century

Men’s trousers of the mid-nineteenth century weren’t much different from men’s pants today, with the exception of zippers. Pants were full in the leg, baggy in the seat, and touched the tops of the feet. They were cut snugly at the waist, so braces (suspenders) weren’t needed to keep them [...]

How Victorians crossed a river before there was a bridge: Part II

“Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”
– Thomas Stonewall Jackson
For the past week, I’ve devoted any spare time to browsing the collection of historical materials available online from the Glenbow Archives in Alberta. As a writer, I rely on archives as a source of accurate [...]

Birth control in the Victorian Era

When we think of the Victorian period, we probably don’t consider birth control. Surely this was not a part of Victorian life, right? Wrong. It became increasingly important as we moved from an agricultural society, where the children were a blessing, to a technological society, where children were more of a burden. [...]

What Victorian Gents Wore – Part I

Victorian Menswear

Shirts & Undergarments of the mid-nineteenth century

What men wore in the mid-nineteenth century wasn’t that much different from what men wear today.

Shirts were cut full in both the body and sleeves. All shirts were loose fitting with collars. Dress shirts buttoned down the front, while work and non-dress shirts were pullovers. A placket with [...]