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Life in Victorian Britain

What was daily life like for people in the Victorian era? From the slums of 19th-century London and life in the workhouse to the court of Queen Victoria and the revolution of the railways, we bring you the facts

In 1945 there were two million more ‘potential’ households than actual homes, in part exacerbated by the wartime damage to housing stock (Coventry, for example, lost one third of its homes in the Blitz). Here, displaced people in east London wait on the street. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Victorian

A history of homelessness

Oxtail stew. (© CICO Books 2017)
Victorian

Top 5 Dickensian recipes

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Left: Historian Lucy Worsley at Kensington Palace, the childhood home of Queen Victoria, ahead of her interview for the History Extra podcast. Right: Queen Victoria sits for a portrait photograph. (Photo by W&D Downey via Getty Images)
Victorian

Lucy Worsley on Queen Victoria: your questions answered

An illustration of Rugby school
Georgian

Schools of hard knocks: Georgian and Victorian public schools

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Intellectuals, dieting businessmen, Indian students and fitness fanatics were among those to exhort the benefits of a meat-free diet in the 19th century, as shown in our illustration. (Illustration by Femke de Jong for BBC History Magazine)
Victorian

Veggie Victorians

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An 1870s illustration of a typical London artisan terraced houses with washhouses, privies and yards leading on to an alley, all dominated by railway viaducts. (Photo by Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Victorian

Victorian London’s East End: what can a foul murder tell us about life in the city?

London & North Western Railway locomotive, 1848. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)
Victorian

8 ways railway travel changed everything for Britain

A portrait of Florence Nightingale
Victorian

Florence Nightingale: nursing by numbers

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Four police officers, members of the Bow Street Horse Patrol, pose for a photograph with a horse.
General Modern

The rise of the Great British ‘bobby’: a brief history of Britain’s police service

Street urchins in Lambeth, London, 19th century
Victorian

Escaping the workhouse: the Victorian war on child poverty

A crowd admiring the artworks at an exhibition by the Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington House, London. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Georgian

A brief history of London tourism since 1800

A poster produced for the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) promoting express rail travel to the Lancashire seaside resort of Blackpool, the world’s first working-class seaside resort. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)
General Modern

The great escape: Britain’s love affair with the seaside holiday

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Victorian surgeon Robert Liston during an operation
Victorian

An appointment at the house of death: the horror of the early Victorian hospital

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Victorian

Eating with Dickens