Think the Victorians were prudes? Their filthiest jokes will shock you

The words ‘Victorian Britain’ might evoke images of men with waxed moustaches and women in high-necked dresses, sitting upright in houses drawn back from the London smog. Indeed, ‘Victorian’ has become shorthand for prudishness, referring to the long reign of Queen Victoria: a period associated with notions of strict social etiquette, restraint and rigid ideas about respectability.

But this view irons out a lot of the period’s complexities. Beneath a visage of stiff morality was a culture that delighted in wordplay, physical comedy and, in private, jokes that were startlingly explicit. So what, precisely, did these people find funny?

As historian Dr Bob Nicholson explains on the HistoryExtra podcast: “It’s really hard to define the sense of humour of millions of people over a generation, just as it would be now. But when I look at Victorian comedy, I guess there are certain recurring patterns or themes that they really liked.”

The Victorian sense of humour

The Victorian-era was defined by transformation on a vast scale, powered by world-leading industrialisation, urbanisation and expanding literacy.

The population of England and Wales more than doubled during the 19th century, and cities like Manchester and London grew at rapid pace. Now, newspapers, penny weeklies and comic magazines such as Punch could reach a new, mass readership. Music halls became hugely popular too, offering working and lower-middle class audiences a place to enjoy an evening of singing and comedy.

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It was both in print and the spoken word that the Victorian sense of humour really managed to flourish.

“The first thing you’ll see when you look at their jokes is that they love puns,” Nicholson says. “They absolutely love wordplay, to a degree that I think we would look at now and think: these are some pretty laboured, torturous puns.”

The increasingly literate Victorians delighted in verbal dexterity, double entendres and clever linguistic turns of phrase. Here, Nicholson says, we can see that Victorian humour ran “from incredibly erudite and witty bits of satire through to the most base form of slapstick – somebody slipping on a banana skin. So, I would say their sense of humour was pretty much as broad and varied as ours is.”

Physical comedy was the most accessible, requiring no literacy at all, making it especially appealing for large, mixed audiences.

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Word puzzles and wordplay

One particularly Victorian form of humour was essentially a riddle disguised as a punchline. Conundrums had earlier roots in 18th-century parlour games but flourished in the 19th century.

“These types of pun jokes were really popular,” Nicholson explains. “They were treated almost like puzzles rather than jokes. In fact, they were known as conundrum jokes in the nineteenth century.

“You would often have a pause between the setup and the punchline where people were invited to try to solve the riddle,” Nicholson says. “That doesn’t necessarily make for the best rhythm of joke-telling, but it can be very satisfying when you figure it out. The Victorians really enjoyed doing that.”

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“They even had conundrum competitions on very large scales,” Nicholson notes. “People in the town would submit their jokes, they would be read out on stage, and then judged by a committee of local gentlemen who would decide on the best pun, which would win a prize.”

A private appetite for indecent jokes

While Victorian public comedy was fairly harmless, more private humour could be shockingly blunt – and rude.

The enduring stereotype of prudery comes largely from what was printed in the mainstream. Victorian Britain had strict obscenity laws. The 1857 Obscene Publications Act, for example, gave authorities new powers to seize and destroy material deemed immoral.

But censorship didn’t eliminate people’s appetite for more risqué comedy.

Nicholson points to an underground publication called The Pearl, “a pornographic magazine circulated in private among gentlemen.” Its limericks and anecdotes were explicit in ways that directly contradict many modern assumptions about Victorian social delicacy.

“There are some incredibly rude Victorian limericks,” says Nicholson.

One such example that Nicholson gives, among others, is:

“There was a young lady of Hitchin
Who was scratching her **** in the kitchen.
Her father said, “Rose, It’s the crabs I suppose.”
“You’re right, Pa, the buggers are itchin’.”

“The reason I share these is that they seem so un-Victorian,” he says. “The idea of them using that kind of language, joking about those kinds of things – about lice, sexually transmitted diseases – it seems so unfamiliar to how we imagine the Victorians.

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“But those jokes were circulating. They were there and have survived in these fragments. They are not the kind of material you would hear in a mainstream musical or read in a magazine or newspaper,” Nicholson notes. “We have this image of the Victorians as being much more respectable and not interested in bodily humour, in part because that material was edited out for public consumption.”

As for Queen Victoria, even her own sense of humour was surprising.

What made Queen Victoria laugh?

Victoria is often attributed with saying “we are not amused”. While it’s unlikely she actually said it, the sentiment of the phrase has stuck to her reputation. But the reality, Nicholson reveals, was very different.

“What did Victoria laugh at? The answer is: loads of things,” Nicholson says.

Her diaries contain frequent references to things that amused her at dinner parties and court events and, as Nicholson explains, “she is constantly talking about funny things said at the dinner table.”

Victoria kept extensive journals throughout her life, leaving historians a detailed record of her private reactions and amusements. From what Nicholson can gather, she enjoyed physical comedy: “Somebody falling over, a man sitting on his hat, somebody trapping their fingers in a door. The old classics.”

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Nicholson also recounts an anecdote from a dinner conversation with a partially deaf admiral describing how he intended to recover a sunken ship. Mishearing the queen’s polite inquiry about his sister, he explained how he would “have her turned over, take a good look at her bottom and scrape all the barnacles off.”

Victoria was helpless with laughter, while the admiral remained oblivious.

“The image we have of her as incredibly serious does not resemble the version you see in private,” Nicholson notes.

After the death of Prince Albert in 1861, it was Victoria’s prolonged public mourning that reshaped her image. For decades she wore black and withdrew from many public appearances. That visible grief hardened into our defining image of Victoria. And her seclusion contributed to a wider association between the monarchy and solemnity during the later 19th century.

“In public she had to project the power, authority, and dignity of a sovereign,” Nicholson says.

Despite that veneer, Nicholson says that it’s important to remember precisely what the Victorians, including the queen herself, were amused by.

Bob Nicholson was speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.