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1800-1900

Time Traveller's Guide to Victorian
Britain
Everything the curious traveller needs to know about the time of Victoria, Dickens and the lady with the lamp.

The Invention of Christmas
Article by Judith Flanders about how what we think of as a British Christmas was invented or imported during the 19th century.

• Monarchy
  Dynamic timeline that illuminates the lives of the men and women who sat on the English/British throne and the powerful individuals who supported and sometimes fought them.
• Georgian Underworld
  Looks at the great social upheavals of the age and examines why they came about and what they led to.
• The British Slave Trade: A chronology
  From the first British slave trader Sir John Hawkins to the Slavery Abolition Act and US Emancipation Proclamation.
• The Empire Pays Back
  Should the companies and other institutions that profited from the slave trade apologise and pay reparations?
• Hello Culture
  What is culture and how does the past impact the present? Here is a ‘grid’ of 160 entries that allows users to experience the heyday and remnants of Romanticism.
• Nelson’s Navy
  While ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’ might be the stereotype of life at sea in in the 18th and early 19th century, it is far from the reality.
• Children and war
  The history of child warriors extends from the youths of ancient Sparta and the youngsters below decks in Nelson’s navy to the young people engaged in military activity in the 21st century.
• Regency House Party
  Background information on Regency life and culture.
• Regency House Party
  In this extract from her book, Lucy Jago tells how the Regency buck acquired his skills and attainments.
• The Prince Regent and His Circle: In their own words
  The history, the scandals and the gossip of the Prince Regent, his friends and his foes.
• Crime Team: Trouble at mill
  It is May 1807 and neighbours breaking into the cottage in Bramley, on the outskirts of Leeds, find 40-year-old Rebecca Perigo lying dead on the bed...
• Escape to the Legion
  This site about an experiment that challenged young men to endure a month of French Foreign Legion training contains a section on the history of this unique institution.
• Napoleon
  Military genius and passionate lover, revolutionary and emperor, glorious leader or little dictator?
• Time Traveller's Guide to Napoleon's Empire
  All you need to know, from Napoleon's seizure of power in 1799 to his exile in 1815, plus background on the French Revolution.
• War against Napoleon
  The facts and figures about the wars fought between Britain and France during 1793-1815, plus the main players and an outline of the war of ideas.
• Waterloo
  Military historian Gordon Corrigan reviews the 1970 film.
• Britain’s Trains and Railways: A beginner’s guide
  Everything you wanted to know about steam engines, railway companies and  electric locomotives.
• 1798 and After
  The social and political history of Ireland from the 1798 Rebellion to partition in 1921 (Channel 4 Learning).
• The monarchs we never had
  The death of the heir to the throne has had important consequences throughout British history – sometimes immediately, sometimes obvious only in retrospect.
• Crime Team: Dead man at Drumbeg
  In April 1830, a body is found in a Scottish loch, wearing a tartan waistcoat identified as belonging to the Grant clan...
• The Science of Secrecy: Hieroglyphs
  How ancient Egyptian writing was deciphered by Jean-François Champollion.
• The Scots Detective
  This website challenges historical accounts of the Scottish wars of independence, the Reformation, the Act of Union, Scottish exile and the Irish in Scotland (Channel 4 Learning).
• E=mc2
  From Lavoisier and Faraday to Albert Einstein, find out about the great minds behind the equation.
• Queen Victoria's Men
  Annotated picture gallery, featuring Lord Melbourne, Prince Albert, Benjamin Disraeli and John Brown.
• The Real History Show: A Victorian wedding
  What it's like putting together an 1840 wedding today.
• The Invention of Christmas
  Article by Judith Flanders about how what we think of as a British Christmas was invented or imported during the 19th century.
• What the Papers Said
  Newspapers give a contemporary slant to historical events: Chartists, Great Exhibition, Suffragette movement, World War I, Russian Revolution, Treaty of Versailles, General Strike, Cold War, Vietnam War (Channel 4 Learning).
• The Worst Jobs in History: Victorian jobs
  The Industrial Revolution accelerates and people transfer from the country into the cities, where most have rotten jobs. In the country, life isn't any better.
• Victorian Children
  Channel 4 Schools site that answers the question: What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?
• The Search for the Northwest Passage
  From the 15th century, European mariners sought to find a seaway through the ice-bound Arctic to the Orient. This website examines attempts including the fatal Franklin expedition and Amundsen’s success.
• The Science of Secrecy: Le chiffre indéchiffrable
  The story of the 'uncrackable cipher' and its solution by the Victorian polymath Charles Babbage.
• Mary Seacole: The real angel of the Crimea
  The extraordinary life of the Caribbean-born nurse Mary Seacole, who became famous for her pioneering work in caring for British troops during the Crimean War. Why was she so swiftly forgotten after her death?
• Upstairs Downstairs Love
  Author of Love & Dirt, Diane Atkinson, describes the forbidden love between a Victorian barrister and his maid servant.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
  Military historian Saul David reviews the 1969 film.
• Public and Private Tragedies: Voices of the Indian Mutiny
  Historian William Dalrymple describes the discovery of previously unknown eyewitness accounts of the crisis, and draws startling parallels between the dying Mughal world and our own.
• Death, Deceit & the Nile
  The story of the search for the source of the White Nile in 1857-8 by Sir Richard Burton and John Speke. Includes information on slavery and travel tips to the area.
• The Genius of Charles Darwin
  Short biography of Darwin, extracts from his work and details of his relationship with Alfred Russel Wallace.
• Men of Iron
  The 19th-century engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson were commercial rivals, but according to Sally Dugan in this book extract, they maintained a lifelong friendship.
• Crime Team: The cut-throat killer
  It is June 1860, and at a remote house in Somerset, the lifeless body of four-year-old Francis Savile is found in the outside privy...
• Bodies of Evidence
  Investigation of forensic archaeology and the scientific methods of unravelling the mysteries of the past. Plus more than two dozen case studies, including mummies, left-handedness and Lenin's body.
• Tit for tat
  Acts of vengeance and their consequences – including such ‘triggers’ as the murder of Genghis Khan’s envoys in 1218, the murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972 and the storming of the Golden Temple of Amritsar in 1984, as well as other examples of retribution from Japan, Czechoslovakia and Korea.
• Francis Galton: Father of eugenics
  Galton founded eugenics, the science of controlled breeding to increase desirable inherited characteristics.
• Cities and disaster
  An examination of the calamities that befell seven cities: London (1666), Lisbon (1755), Chicago (1871), San Francisco (1906), Tokyo/Yokohama (1923), Florence (1966), New Orleans (2005).
• Howard Goodall’s Great Dates
  Goodall shows that great pieces of music are not freak accidents of genius but the direct products of their time, place, culture and politics (Channel 4 Learning).
• Zulu Dawn
  Anglo-Zulu War expert Ian Knight reviews the 1979 film about the 1879 battle of Isandlwana.
• Howard Goodall’s Big Bangs
  Goodall examines five momentous turning points in musical history and asks what they mean for us today (Channel 4 Learning).
• Krakatoa
  The story of the volcanic eruption of 1883, the most violent in history, responsible for the deaths of 36,000 people, many from the 40-metre-high tsunamis created by the eruption.
• Victorians Uncovered
  Lifts the skirts of 19th-century respectability to reveal the naked truth beneath: child prostitution; sex and race; birth control; divorce.
• Toulouse Lautrec: The full story
  A quasi-biography of the artist, given as a series of interesting facts.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Legendary crime writer
  The creator of the first fictional detective to use forensic science to solve crimes.
• The Real Helen Keller
  The legendary campaigner for the disabled rejected her teachers' methods, became a political radical and wrote books inspired by a Christian mystic.
• Vincent: The full story
  Follow the turbulent road taken by Vincent van Gogh, revealing the truth behind iconic works such as Sunflowers, his enduring relationship with his brother Theo, and his suicide.
• The Diets that Time Forgot
  Info on weight-loss diets and fitness regimes popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and 1920s, plus general facts on diet and nutrition.
• The Airships
  The story of the largest and most romantic aircraft ever conceived – from the flight of the first Zeppelin in 1900 to the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 and beyond – and its role in intercontinental air travel, exploration and warfare.
• Crime Team: The strychnine poisoner
  In 1891, a young woman prostitute in south London is poisoned by strychnine after keeping an appointment with a stranger...
• H G Wells: Visionary novelist
  Wells forecast 20th-century society so accurately that he has been dubbed 'the man who invented tomorrow'.
• Crime Team: The baby in the bulrushes
  In 1896, the body of a strangled one-year-old child is found in the bulrushes by the Thames in Reading...

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