Victorian Secrets – Sexual Mores and Contradictions in the 19th Century

C.A. Asbrey

 

 

Ask almost anyone about sex in the 19th century and they will tell you that it was a time of heaving bosoms, repressed sexuality, virgin brides, and sexual naivety. What they probably won’t tell you about is the prostitution, the pornography, sex toys, and that your great great (and possibly another great- depending on your age) granny probably wore crotchless knickers, that at least one in ten birth were outside marriage and that around a third of brides walking up the aisle was sexually experienced. They almost certainly wouldn’t bring up the vicar complaining to his parishioners in his sermon in 1873 about “the detestable custom of bathing drawers that are now becoming de rigeur.” The poor man much prefered bathing naked and hated being forced into a bathing costume. You can be pretty sure that Queen Victoria would not be rated as one of the most highly-sexed monarchs of her line either, but a study of her letters and diaries shows a great appreciation of the male form, as well as the act of love. And that is after many of them were burned on her death, leaving us to wonder what was so explosive that it had to be expunged from history. Although her youngest child, Princess Beatrice (who lived until 1944), assiduously burned many of the old queen’s letters and ruthlessly bowdlerized her diaries in the name of propriety, enough slipped through Beatrice’s busy fingers to confirm that Victoria and Albert were mad about sex. The virginal young queen exhibited unmistakable signs of sexual anxiety, as recorded in her diaries and correspondence. But it is also obvious that once Victoria married her Prince Charming, she got the hang of things very quickly and became what the English call a “goer.”

Those kinds of dichotomies were very characteristic of the Victorian era. Just as the early twentieth century saw a transition from the prudery of the previous century, the 19th century carried characteristics of the loucheness of the 18th century. However, there were very definite delinations as to who was allowed to indulge, and with whom.

Respectable women could never dally outside marriage. Lower class women were fair game. Homosexuality was forbidden, unless you were a lesbian, in which case you were seen as erotic and lacking male attention. It was not uncommon for gay women to be raped by male doctors and staff in lunatic asylums in order to ‘convert’ them back to the straight and narrow. We’ll come to children later.

Gynaecological doctor William Acton, whose extreme views cannot be taken as representative, stated in his The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857) that ‘the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feelings of any kind’. This is ironic, considering that the average wealthy woman could expect to attend her doctor roughly twice a month to be heightened to orgasm to ensure that her mental health remained stable. Hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus, and the possession of a womb was seen as something which left women prone to mental disorders of all kinds. Heightening a woman to orgasm was seen as a husbandly duty too. It not only ensured emotional stability, it was also perceived as vital to the process of conception. It is this misguided belief which left pregnant rape victims disbelieved as to how consensual the process was, Amazingly, this backwards mindset still exists in some poorly-educated quarters to the present day. It was the growing use of artificial insemination, which was invented in 1780, along with scientific understanding of human fertilisation, which gradually eroded the superstition.    

Doctors quickly discovered that it was quicker and less tiring to use the new machines being produced to accommodate these vital needs. It didn’t take long before women cut out the middleman and started buying these machines themselves to ostensibly ward of Hysterical Paroxysm by pelvic manipulation. It’s important to understand that these orgasm were required for health and not through base appetites. Ladies never had those. They were animalistic, and base. Fine in the male, but never for the female.

A form of this belief is certainly discernible in the virginal ideal of the ‘Angel in the House’, a term inaugurated by Coventry Patmore in his 1854 poem of that name, which laid out a model of the domestic goddess, who apparently retained her chastity even as wife and mother. In her purity and capacity for ‘sweet ordering’, as the influential Victorian critic and essayist John Ruskin memorably put it, the angel in the house was to sanctify the home as a refuge for her menfolk from the trouble of public life  

Speaking of menfolk, the average 19th century man could expect to enjoy sex outside marriage an average of twice a week. London alone had over 9,000 prostitutes in 1857, and that doesn’t count those on low pay who dabbled as gifted amateurs, or those poor souls blackmailed into bed to keep a job or to pay the rent. Visiting a prostitute was not seen as grounds for divorce for a woman. Very little was. Syphilis was common across women and children in all social classes. As well as causing infertility, syphilis can induce miscarriages and stillbirths. Some children born to syphilitic mothers will never show any signs of infection. Others die in infancy or develop serious health complications. Today, routine antenatal screening in Britain catches most cases of syphilis among pregnant women. In the 19th century these domestic tragedies were often dealt with quietly. But occasionally they exploded into scandal, as in the very public breakdown in 1886 of the marriage of Gertrude Blood and Lord Colin Campbell. Unbeknown to Gertrude or her parents, Lord Colin was being treated for syphilis and knowingly infected her. The case became a cause célèbre as curious readers pored over salacious newspaper reports of the Campbell’s dysfunctional marriage. With the establishment of the divorce courts in 1858 women like Gertrude could theoretically extricate themselves from abusive marriages. But, whereas husbands needed only to prove adultery, wives needed additionally to prove either cruelty, desertion or bestiality. Able to demonstrate only cruelty through the wilful communication of syphilis, Gertrude had to settle for a judicial separation.

Women in Gertrude’s predicament contended with husbands who were protected by the medical and legal establishment. If a husband infected his wife with syphilis or gonorrhoea, a doctor went to great lengths, usually at the behest of the husband, to conceal the cause of her illness. She would know that she was ill, but she wouldn’t necessarily know that she had VD. Doctors who withheld information from women claimed that they were bound by patient confidentiality – a doctor couldn’t tell a wife that she was suffering from syphilis because doing so would reveal that her husband also had syphilis. A degree of pragmatic paternalism informed these decisions: doctors believed that they knew best and prioritised expediency. After all, a woman who discovered that she was infected with VD might cause a fuss and make her husband’s life difficult. And since the husband was usually the one paying the doctor’s fee, his interests took priority.

Homosexuality was taboo in men. They could however, indulge other proclivities. While vibrators were seen as vital to health in women, men could use pornography and sex toys for pleasure. And they sure did. It was generally accepted that such excesses should be kept out of the marital bed and worked out on loose women.

Almost as soon as photography was invented it was used to take pornographic pictures, which were distributed freely and even featured in extensive collections compiled by many. In 1874, the Pimlico studio of Henry Hayler – within spitting distance of Tate Britain – was found to be loaded with 130,248 obscene photographs and 5,000 magic lantern slides, which gives some idea of the extent of its appeal.

Masturbation is another peculiar 19th century obsession. While women were being medically aroused it was seen as a terrible vice for men and children. All kinds of terrible consequences were supposed to befall those who indulged; blindness, weakness, infirmity and mental depravity.  Whole movements grew up around the idea that it was a terrible and unnatural thing to do.

John Harvey Kellogg was the man who brought the world Corn Flakes. He invented them—and the concept of breakfast cereal itself—after a failed attempt to make bread out of corn. Why try to make bread out of corn, you ask? Why, because regular bread inflamed the humours and made people masturbate, of course!

Kellogg ran a sanitarium in Michigan in the late 19th century, or several decades before medicine, let alone psychology, became scientific. Kellogg was appalled by the masturbation epidemic he saw wrecking the health of everyone around him, so he helpfully suggested a few tips for curbing “the solitary vice”:

• A spare diet, low in calories and free of meat
• Vigorous exercise
• Frequent yogurt enemas
• Circumcision for boys and girls alike
• Electrified cages around the genitals that administer electric shocks when children try to touch themselves

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson wrote the Alice in Wonderland adventures under his pen name, Lewis Carroll. By all accounts, he was everything a respectable Victorian gentleman could hope to be. He was a writer, mathematician, and a member of the Anglican clergy. He wrote the Alice books for this girl, Alice Liddell. Apparently her parents had no problem with her posing alone for him in poses which cause deep discomfort today. 

It is worth noting that the relationship between the Liddells and Dodgson suffered a sudden break in June 1863. There was no record of why the rift occurred, since the Liddells never openly spoke of it, and the single page in Dodgson’s diary recording 27–29 June 1863 (which seems to cover the period in which it began) was missing. It has been speculated by biographers  that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained break with the family in June 1863. Alice Liddell’s biographer, Anne Clark, writes that Alice’s descendants were under the impression that Dodgson wanted to marry her, but that “Alice’s parents expected a much better match for her.” Clark argues that in Victorian England such arrangements were not as improbable as they might seem; John Ruskin, for example, fell in love with a 12-year-old girl while Dodgson’s younger brother sought to marry a 14-year-old, but postponed the wedding for six years. A note which was alleged to be the missing diary page, and which claimed that the reason for the break was a relationship between Dodgson and the Liddell’s governess has been debunked as written by Dodgson’s great-nephew in an attempt to rehabilitate the artist against growing concern,

Pedophillia as we recognise it today, was everywhere in the 19th century. The era seemed to breed a certain type of neurasthenic man who had a well-developed and intellectually complicated disdain for overt physicality and who found himself drawn to pre-teens. It was relatively accepted as long as it stayed somewhere around the bounds of courtly love. It might even result in marriage. The Scottish actor Alistair Sim (1900-1976) carried this tradition into the early twentieth century when he met his wife when she was 12 and he was 26. It was still accepted that she and her mother accompany Sim on tour until they married in 1940 as soon as she was of legal age. Nowadays such a relationship would ruin him forever,

If the child was poor all bets were off. They were sold, used and abused, Josephine Butler was related to the the British Prime Minister Earl Grey. In 1864 she began a campaign to assist impoverished women and young girls who had been forced into sex work. Butler was fearless and a revolutionary voice for the poor and dispossessed. She was an outstanding orator, and attracted large audiences to hear her explain why the laws needed to be changed. Many people were shocked by the idea of a woman speaking in public about sexual matters. She even pursued legal action against the King of Belgium for buying a young girl and holding her against her will. In a sensational trial which ended on the 5^th May 1885 the famous madam of a network of high class brothels in London that catered for ‘unusual sexual desires’, including paedophilia, named many high profile men. Inspector Minahan said at the trial that Mrs Jeffries had told him that she sent ‘young girls to Paris, Berlin and Brussels.’ Her driver stated that she ‘used to supply the King of the Belgians and get £800 a month.’ Dyer’s publication, The Sentinel, printed names of her clients which included the Prince of Wales, Lords and MPs. Therefore, her clients were known to be from the highest echelons of society.

Mrs Jeffries was interviewed for the articles and the following is a quote which may well be her:

“In my house,” said a most respectable lady, who keeps a villa in the west of London, “you can enjoy the screams of the girl with the certainty that no one else hears them but yourself…Here is a room where you can be perfectly secure. The house stands in its own grounds. The walls are thick, there is a double carpet on the floor. The only window which fronts upon the back garden is doubly secured, first with shutters and then with heavy curtains. You lock the door and then you can do as you please. The girl may scream blue murder, but not a sound will be heard. The servants will be far away in the other end of the house. I only will be about seeing that all is snug.” “But,” remarked her visitor, “if you hear the cries of the child, you may yourself interfere, especially if, as may easily happen, I badly hurt and in fact all but kill the girl” “You will not kill her,” she answered, “you have too much sense to kill the girl. Anything short of that, you can do as you please. As for me interfering, do you think I do not know my business?”

Journalism and activism really brought about change. Newspapers like the Maiden Tribute and people like W.T. Stead (who actually bought a child and ran stories about it) brought the issue to public attention.

The attitude of some MPs towards the victims of this industry is illustrated by a quote from George Cavendish-Bentinck MP, ‘I myself am quite ready to supply you with 100 maids at £25 each, but they will all know very well what they are about.…it is nonsense to say it is rape; it is merely the delivery as per contract of the asset virginity in return for cash down.’ 

There was a public outcry; parliament was inundated with petitions and there was an enormous rally in Hyde Park. The news also travelled around the world, newspapers as far afield as America and Australia reported on London scandal. The focus on nobility enraged and inspired the lower classes to lobby their MPs. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill became a class issue, enabling the middle and working classes to ignore their own issues with abuse. MPs had little choice but to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which they did on the 14^th August 1885.

The Maiden Tribute articles succeeded in their aim of raising the age of consent for girls. After this successful result Stead was jailed under the new law for the abduction of Eliza Armstrong, whom he bought to prove to the public what was going on  Upon his release he founded the ‘National Vigilance Association’ campaigning for higher moral standards in society,but Josephine Butler disagreed with their methods stating that there was ‘a tendency to let the pressure fall almost exclusively on women because it is more difficult, ‘they say, to get at men.’

Mrs Jeffries was prosecuted again in 1887 for running a disorderly house, represented by Forrest Fulton MP, but this time she was given a custodial sentence. Stead wrote at the time, ‘We wonder what the Kings, Princes, Peers and officers, who found the old lady so convenient for the gratification of their pleasures, think of her now…so far as she deserves to be there, much more do they to share cells by her side.”