30 Facts, Customs, And Traditions Of The Victorians: The Weirdest People In Human History

By | December 1, 2020

Modesty Panels

The Victorian era was a time of contrarian ideals: They covered themselves completely but fetishized the female figure, they were obsessed with cleanliness but practically lived in a sewer, and they prized marriage and family above all things but sold their wives at auction. It's possible that the Victorians couldn't see the forest for the trees, but maybe they were just a generation full of weirdos.

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Victorians liked their women modest, or maybe they were so sex-obsessed that any exposed flesh would drive them insane. Either way, one way the people of Victorian England kept their gals as pure as the driven snow was with a "modesty panel," a simple slab of wood nailed or propped up close to a desk or other structure that revealed a woman's ankles and kept adventurous creeps from looking up their skirts.

Beefy Skin

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(Timeline)


Victorian ladies and even skincare-minded gentlemen kept their faces pillowy soft with face masks, but not the mud and seaweed treatments of today. Victorians used raw beef or veal to stamp out acne, rosacea, and dry skin.