The new Royal Courts of Justice in London, opened in 1882 and photographed here between 1897 and 1899.
The Queen's Empire. Volume 3. Cassell & Co. London|Wikimedia
Architectural models are an effective way of showing the public what new major buildings will look like.
William Henry Hudson loved the humble rook.
imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co KG / Alamy
A group of determined women founded the RSPB, but they had great support behind the scenes by a little-known Argentinean naturalist.
Men and boys, many dressed as women, attacking a turnpike gate in protest at charges at tollgates on public roads in west Wales. The Illustrated London News, 1843.
World History Archive/Alamy
The Rebecca riots saw Welsh farmers disguised as women destroy tollgates as a way of challenging what they believed was an oppressive taxation system.
Bonnie Kittle|Unsplash
People have invested emotionally in animals for thousands of years, but their financial situation directly impacts their ability to properly care for for their pets.
Zadie Smith has dipped her toe into the world of historical fiction with The Fraud.
DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy/Penguine
This well-researched book brings to life the odd case of Sir Roger Tichborne and those around him.
A couple outside a police station on the river flats at Morgan, South Australia, c 1890.
State Library of South Australia
Police matrons in the 1800s opened the door for women to join the police force, yet most of us have never heard of them.
Illustration of explorer Isabella Bird’s first walk through Perak (Malaysia), from her book ‘The Golden Chersonese and the way thither’.
Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons
In the 19th century, several English women wrote accounts of their world travels. While considered by some as second-rate travellers, they were just as restless as their male contemporaries.
January is named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, and the Victorians understood this has long been a season of looking backward as much as forward, and not just in search of lessons.
(Shutterstock)
The 1859 book ‘Self-Help’ by Scottish journalist and physician Samuel Smiles was written in bite-sized pieces reminiscent of today’s wellness and lifestyle New Year tips.
‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ didn’t begin life as a song, but being set to music helped it find fame.
starryvoyage/iStock via Getty Images Plus
‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is now a treasured Christmas classic, but it didn’t start life that way – not in the UK, at least.
Rossetti Beata Beatrix.
The journal of a Pre-Raphaelite writer might help explain today’s turn to spiritualism.
Spirit photograph by William Hope, taken around 1920.
(National Media Museum Collection/Flickr)
Today viewers may be preoccupied by the methods used by spirit photographers, but spirit photographs had a notable impact on the bereaved who commissioned the portraits.
Hugh Jackman in The Prestige.
TCD/Prod.DB / Alamy Stock Photo
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction when it comes to the magicians of the Victorian era.
Spirit photograph from 1901.
(Library of Congress/John K. Hallowell; S.W. Fallis, photographer)
The afterlife envisioned by spiritualism appealed to women who rejected the idea that their unbaptized children could be damned to hell.
Surfers Against Sewage protest effluent discharge into coastal waters.
Ciaran McCrickard/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo
Victorian-era engineering is struggling under decades of underinvestment.
A man of his time: Colonel Vivian Majendie – the first recognised bomb disposal expert in Britain.
Spy Magazine (1882) via Wikimedia Commons
Colonel Majendie was also a pioneer in forensic investigations.
The Jewish Museum’s Purim Ball at the Park Avenue Armory in 2015 in New York City.
Andrew Toth/Getty Images
In the 19th century, Purim became an occasion to hold fancy dress parties, the proceeds from which were given to charities. These parties helped American Jews gain a standing among the elite.
Electrophone listening salon in the London headquarters, Pelicon House on Gerrard Street (approximately 1903).
George R. Sims (1847-1922)
How 19th-century audiences could experience the sound of live theatre in their living rooms.
Dotheboys Hall, from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Illustration by ‘Phiz’ (Hablot K. Browne).
Image scan and text Jacqueline Banerjee, Associate Editor, Victorian Web
Dickens’s novels highlighted the poverty of education for the working classes. The all-important Education Act was finally passed in the year of his death.
A legend, even in his own lifetime: stamps to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth.
Royal Mail/PA Archive/PA Images
Almost as soon as Dickens died in 1870, writers and illustrators began to take liberties with his life and career.
Revered no more: the statue of Bristol slave-trader Edward Colston is torn down.
Ben Birchall/PA Wire/PA Images
The statue was part of a push in the Victorian era to create mercantile heroes. Colston’s slaving activities were conveniently glossed over.