While the British Empire was at the peak of its power, this did not translate into prosperity for all its citizens. Victorian society was defined by a
The circumstances of your birth determined your entire life: class, gender, family name and religion defined your chances for success both professionally and socially. But no matter where you came from, everyone seems to have something to prove: their worth, their skill, their right for respect and recognition.
Queen Victoria had ascended the throne in 1837 with Britain in the unrivalled position of being the world’s most powerful nation, controlling a fifth of the earth’s surface and the destinies of hundreds of millions of people. Confident, expansive and ambitious, Britain strode the world politically, economically, and militarily.”
Michael Smith
The Industrial Revolution was changing production and labour forever. More and more men, women and children worked in factories and mills under dangerous, often fatal, conditions to generate larger and larger profits for the owners of these facilities. Many moved to cities for the promise of a reliable income, resulting in overcrowding, sanitary problems and urban squalor. For those wealthy enough to afford them, new technological advances made life more comfortable, such as electric lighting, flushing toilets, can openers, the bicycle and the telephone.
Rapid scientific advancements such as evolution and psychology happened against a backdrop of moral and political conservativism, and many decisions were still based on religion, superstition and an unshakable trust in Queen Victoria. The Evangelicals brought an obsession with moral purity and traditional values of marriage.
British values and customs were imposed on lands stretching across the globe from India to Australia, South Africa to Canada. The cultures and customs native to those countries were forcefully suppressed as Britain sat at the centre of a wide web of trade networks and profited from it all.
Victory in the Napoleonic Wars confirmed the superiority of the British navy: “Britannia rules the waves”. The Discovery Service converted this naval expertise into the exploration of the supposedly untouched corners of the earth for the glory of the Empire, with pay good enough to distract many a man from the riskiness of the ventures and the hubris that often defined its leaders.
The Victorian Era was the time of spiritualism and séances, the Gothic novel, and post-mortem portrait photography. It was a time fascinated with the ghosts of the romanticised past, with ruins and with the macabre. No wonder, in a society with high mortality rates and such omnipresent disease.
The Church of England was the dominant religion in Victorian Britain, but new legislation slowly allowed other Christian faiths to gain a foothold once more.
Many religions believe in some kind of intermediate space of judgement that awaits the souls of the dead. A place of purification, transition and transformation.
HMS Asphodel. Anchored 100 feet off shore of unexplored island in 7 fathoms of water. Thick fog and no visibility. Crew report strange sounds coming from the fog bank. Light winds which sound like breathing. Behind the fog, the whole land seems to be alive. And it wants us dead…
Captain’s Log