Victorian

From the platforms at Wapping or Rotherhithe you can see the tunnel fleetingly illuminated as the trains approach; it looks so incredibly Victorian that you expect to see Jack the Ripper loitering between the arches.

One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city's effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.

In some cases, teachers reported being aware of pupils living in "Victorian conditions", of youngsters coming to school with no socks or coat and of more families depending on food banks.

I'm not proposing a return to Victorian working conditions, or anything like that, but there are two areas where things need changing.

While masturbation was never favored in Judeo-Christian tradition, Victorian morality, along with the Great Awakening and other religious revivals in America, created a perfect storm for people to really get obsessed with it.

Unhappily, however, all that remains of Cherhill's claim to an old manor house is a rather cold ungabled building, blue-slated in hard ruled lines, and a porch which might have been transplanted from a late Victorian house.

“I’m asking you your intentions, damn it!” said Wimsey, “and if that’s not Victorian enough, I don’t know what is.”

The Labor Church did not last; but the reaction did; and the last I heard of its founder was that he was helping the movement against Victorian prudery in a very practical way as a Nudist photographer, […]

Even the legalization and vastly increased approval of same-sex marriage has a Victorian aspect. The early same-sex marriage advocates Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch argued that marriage would domesticate homosexuals.

What a perfect Victorian you are, Charles. I should like to keep you in a glass case.

It was not until the late 1800s when older members of New York society, aghast at the invasion of vulgar "new money," devised a daunting system of social rules – not to mention silverware – meant to repel anyone of humble origins who dared to sit down at one of their twelve-course dinners. It was the Victorians who gave us such useful implements as the strawberry knife.

The arrival of the railway turned this isolated fishing village into a popular seaside destination for Victorians who came to breathe fresh sea air, clear their lungs or take the waters.

The commercial resurgence brought about by the area's changing tastes is reflected in midtown's conglomeration of refurbished Victorians, apartments, specialty shops, offices, corner groceries, restaurants, single-family homes, and bed and breakfast inns.

Up to 26 properties are believed lost in Victorian bushfires.