Victorian Ladies’ Outerwear

I’ve already talked about what men of the 1860s wore over their clothing in cold or inclement weather, but what did the ladies wear?

Women’s outerwear consisted of capes, cloaks and coats, as well as shawls and scarves.

Capes were cut full to drape over the dress. They could be as short as hip length or extend [...]

Gypsy Troupes, Part II: A Royal’s Entertainment

One of the strongest influencers of Victorian trends and fashion was Eugenie, the Empress of France. What does a French empress have to do with popularizing Gypsy entertainment? Quite a bit.
The Spanish Eugenie was a lesser member of Spanish royalty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A9nie_de_Montijo), which afforded her time to spend with her adoring father [...]

Modern Innovation

“Built to reduce pedestrian traffic jams, its construction in the ’seventies was considered as a miracle of engineering.”
The 1870s, of course.
The Tower Pedestrian Subway under the Thames, built by Peter W. Barlow and James Henry Greathead took only about a year to complete. This wasn’t the first subway tunnel, that was the Thames Tunnel at [...]

Victorian Birth Control

One of the most popular forms of birth control during the Victorian Period is still popular today—the condom—originally invented to protect men from the transfer of syphilis from prostitutes.
By the early 19th century they were being used by the upper-classes of England and France as contraceptives and were available as early as the middle [...]

Louisa May Alcott

Another real-life heroine I based my fictional heroine, Cassidy Stuart, on in my novel, Under the Guns, was Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. Although my fictional character didn’t aspire to be a writer, like Alcott, she was raised in a middle-class family in the North and longed to break the conventions of the [...]

How Victorians crossed a river before there was a bridge: Part IV (Windup)

I try to limit my research to acquiring enough information to make a scene come alive, but the process always works its magic and I discover I have learned a whole lot more. While researching cable ferries I gained insight into why communities were so keen to have one. Bridge engineering might have advanced rapidly [...]