I am currently researching, like a maniac, anything relating to the
Victorian era (1837 -1901), for a Victorian romance I plan writing, and I must confess, there is a lot of disturbing crap behind all that opulence. As a preliminary conclusion, being a woman, or a servant or even worse, a woman servant..kinda sucked. Excuse my lack of civility, but all that reverential nonsense, that seems so charming in nowadays literature or movies, is a thin crust that covers a lot of putrid truths which plagued that particular moment in time. I have posted below a few examples, so well captured by the commercial adds of that era. WTF!!!!Mothers were actually giving their kids opium to ease their colics.
Yes, the girl in black is dead
And to completely creep you out, I must mention the post-mortem photos, that Victorians used to take of their departed loved ones. They had a special mechanism that would support the corpse of the loved one, in various positions so that they could be present at the last family photo.