The Victorian era was a time of dramatic change. Industrialization changed everything from transportation to work to our own home life. The first ever railway from London to Birmingham was built, the telephone was invented, and all sorts of other machines changed our way of life, especially in the fields of cooking and medicine. But Victorian England was still anything but clean. Most of the country would fail miserably at anything resembling a modern day health code inspection. The streets were dirty, and in many ways the leaders were even dirtier. Welcome back to Nutty History. Today we explore some dirty secrets of leaders in the Victorian Era. When we look back to the Victorian Era and the aristocrats that made up the ruling class, we often think of prim and proper people, well-dressed, polite and scornful of anything overtly improper. In short, they were prudes. But there was a more adulterous, wild side to these aristocrats, who played the role of refined, controlled lords and women in public, but led much more debauched lives in private. A secret society called "The Souls" was founded in 1885 to help the elite and artistically inclined explore this side of themselves.
The Souls hated the restrictive formalities of Victorian culture and etiquette, the limits that culture placed on the passions, and the separation between men and women. All pretty progressive ideas, really. One of the society's members, author Wilfred Blunt, wrote that: “It was a group of men and women bent on pleasure, but pleasure of a superior kind, avoiding the vulgarities of racing and card-playing which the majority of the rich gave in.
and noble, and seek their excitement in romance and sentiment." There were quite a few high-ranking British politicians who were members of The Souls, including Arthur Balfour, who served as Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905, George Wyndham, the Chief Secretary of Ireland, and George Curzon, the Viceroy of India. Making ends meet was common among The Souls, and women often bore children out of wedlock – a big no-no in Victorian society at the time.
However, there were still rules within The Souls . A married woman giving birth to her lover's child could easily be covered up, but if she was single it was a problem. Scandal erupted in the early 1890s after it emerged that two unmarried members of The Souls, Harry Cust, a British MP, and Nina Welby-Gregory , an author and daughter of a prominent politician, Sir William Welby -Gregory, would have a child. Harry was in love with another woman, but was pressured by Arthur Balfour, the future Prime Minister, to marry Nina. Word got out of the ordeal, and a public morality campaign was launched against Harry to expel him from Parliament. It was ultimately unsuccessful. Cust continued his womanizing ways, and is said to have been the grandfather of Margaret Thatcher through a secret affair with a maid, although this fact is still up for dispute. One of the biggest scandals of the Victorian era, if true, revolves around Queen Victoria herself, and whether or not the queen for whom the era is named was actually a legitimate queen in the first place.
Victoria became heir and eventually queen through the bloodline of her father, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent. However, some, including the historian AN Wilson, in his book, "The Victorians," have cast doubt on who the queen's father actually was. One of the most important pieces of evidence that Queen Victoria may have been illegitimate has to do with a genetic disease called hemophilia. Hemophilia, a disease that impairs the body's ability to clot blood, can be passed to offspring from either the father or the mother. It was not present in any of Victoria's ancestors, but it was found in many of her own descendants, leading Wilson and others to speculate that Victoria's mother, a German princess who became the Duchess of Kent through her marriage to prince edward, a case.
One of the leading candidates for who could have been the real baby daddy is a guy named John Conroy. Conroy was a British army officer who rose through the ranks and eventually became comptroller to Victoria's mother, and comptroller was a fancy word for a guy in charge of financial decisions. His presence eventually became unwelcome, and when Victoria came of age and became queen, she quickly expelled him from the royal court. Did the new queen simply not like the man? Or was it something more… personal? This is a controversial claim.
Critics argue that hemophilia can also arise spontaneously in children of older fathers, and Queen Victoria's supposed father, Prince Edward, was 51 when she was born. AN Wilson, the historian who made the most public claims about the alleged relationship, himself later walked back his theory and said he did see physical similarities between Queen Victoria and her grandfather on Prince Edward's side, King George III. Henry John Temple, AKA Lord Palmerston, was one of Britain's most influential politicians, and perhaps Britain's most prolific ladies' man. He served two terms as Prime Minister, the first from 1855-1858 and the second less than a year later, from 1859-1865. He was known for his decisive and shrewd foreign policy decisions, and perhaps the most influential of these was his insistence on taking Sevastopol during the Crimean War
, a move that would give the Russians the Black Sea and its valuable trade routes for the next 150 cut off. year, and a move very much related to current events in the region today. Lord Palmerston was also quite decisive in the bedroom. He certainly got along and, quite late in his 50s, married a woman named Emily Lamb, a widow of a guy named, deep breath, Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Clavering-Cowper, who in 1837 kicked.
Although Emily was a widow when she remarried, she and Palmerston were said to have been seeing each other for some time, and some of the children she had with…let's just call him Cowper…became said they came from Palmerston. As prime minister, Palmerston helped pass the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which made divorce legal for the first time, a fitting cause for a man who, although he had not obtained a divorce himself, did ' had a series of affairs. subsequently gaining a reputation that led the London Times newspaper to call him "Lord Cupid".
Some might say that the name Prince Albert has a nice sound. Literally. Queen Victoria's husband is rumored to have a piercing where the sun don't shine on his "member" of parliament. Apparently the point of the piercing was to hide his "member" to avoid the unsightly bulge that was considered unfashionable in the Victorian Era. Others speculated that it was to correct a condition called Peyronie's disease, which causes pain when a man gets excited…you get the picture, and the piercing could have been an attempt to correct it. However, Prince Albert's ring remains in the realm of rumours. But that didn't stop the style from taking its name. Go into a tattoo and piercing shop and ask for a Prince Albert, and you'll either be told to leave or be told to prepare yourself. Good luck with that! Despite their public personas of piety and courtly restraint, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – who happened to be first cousins – had a decidedly more intimate relationship behind closed doors. One of those doors was the door to their bedroom at their summer home on the Isle of Wight, where the royal couple reportedly had a mechanical lock on the door that enabled them to lock it from the bed so they could , well you know …
. Her love for her cousin was very evident in how she wrote about him in her diary. One entry reads: “I have NEVER, EVER spent an evening like this!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert… his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness that I could never hope to feel!” While the Queen's relationship with her husband was by all accounts one of mutual love and respect, the same cannot be said of Victoria's relationship with her nine children. She has been described by some historians as a horrible mother who was super controlling and viewed her children less as individuals and more as extensions of herself. The Queen apparently did not allow her youngest daughter, Beatrice, to marry, but instead wished that Beatrice would live with her as her companion until old age . However, it didn't work out the way Victoria wanted. Beatrice became secretly engaged, and when the Queen found out, she did not speak to her daughter for six months, only mending the relationship after Beatrice promised to live with her after the marriage. Another of Queen Victoria's children would eventually become her successor, King Edward VII.
However, the Queen's relationship with "Bertie", as he was nicknamed, was a rather toxic one. She blamed the death of her beloved husband on Bertie, who as a child and young adult, and indeed most of his adult life, rebelled against the strictness with which he was raised. Victoria called her son "backward" and "lazy" and made rude comments such as: "I never can or will look at him without a shudder". The queen's contempt for her son led her to exclude him from any involvement in government during her 60-year reign. So, with not much to do, mummy issues and lots of money to play with, Bertie became a life of pleasure. He became a kind of social playboy in France. He helped make Cannes the upper-crust resort town it is today. He was the first guest invited to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
He frequented cabaret shows in Paris where Moulin Rouge was born. And he had many, many relationships. Historians have linked him to at least 55 women. While the young prince was able to keep many of them secret, one managed to make headlines. Sir Charles Mordaunt, a prominent British MP, accused Bertie in a divorce application after finding him with his wife, Lady Mordaunt. Divorce, remember, only recently became legal thanks to Lord Cupid. Bertie was able to erase the scandal quite easily – his charisma was enough to help the public forget about his less-than-traditional love life . Lady Mordaunt ended up being the one most hurt by the whole ordeal. In the divorce proceedings , her lawyers justified her adultery as an act of "hysteria"; that catch-all word that was so widely – and incorrectly – used to describe women's behavior at the time. Lady Mordaunt spent the rest of her life in seclusion, and her family eventually moved her to an insane asylum, where she remained until her death.
What other dirty secrets of leaders in the Victorian era do you know? Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to like and subscribe for more Nutty History!.
