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Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Darknet market

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor and I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets.

Following on from the model developed by Silk Road, contemporary markets are characterized by their use of darknet anonymized access (typically Tor), Bitcoin or Monero payment with escrow services, and eBay-like vendor feedback systems.

History

1970s to 2011

Though e-commerce on the dark web started around 2006, illicit goods were among the first items to be transacted using the internet, when in the early 1970s students at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology used the ARPANET to coordinate the purchase of cannabis. By the end of the 1980s, newsgroups like alt.drugs would become online centres of drug discussion and information; however, any related deals were arranged entirely off-site directly between individuals. With the development and popularization of the World Wide Web and e-commerce in the 1990s, the tools to discuss or conduct illicit transactions became more widely available. One of the better-known web-based drug forums, The Hive, launched in 1997, serving as an information sharing forum for practical drug synthesis and legal discussion. The Hive was featured in a Dateline NBC special called The "X" Files in 2001, bringing the subject into public discourse. From 2003, the "Research Chemical Mailing List" (RCML) would discuss sourcing "Research Chemicals" from legal and grey sources as an alternative to forums such as alt.drugs.psychedelics. However Operation Web Tryp led to a series of website shut downs and arrests in this area.

Since the year 2000, some of the emerging cyber-arms industry operates online, including the Eastern European "Cyber-arms Bazaar", trafficking in the most powerful crimeware and hacking tools. In the 2000s, early cybercrime and carding forums such as ShadowCrew experimented with drug wholesaling on a limited scale.

The Farmer's Market was launched in 2006 and moved onto Tor in 2010. In 2012, it was closed and several operators and users were arrested as a result of Operation Adam Bomb, a two-year investigation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It has been considered a "proto-Silk Road" but the use of payment services such as PayPal and Western Union allowed law enforcement to trace payments and it was subsequently shut down by the FBI in 2012.

Silk Road and early markets

The first marketplace to use both Tor and Bitcoin escrow was Silk Road, founded by Ross Ulbricht under pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" in February 2011. In June 2011, Gawker published an article about the site, which led to "Internet buzz" and an increase in website traffic. This in turn led to political pressure from Senator Chuck Schumer on the US DEA and Department of Justice to shut it down, which they finally did in October 2013 after a lengthy investigation. Silk Road's use of all of Tor, Bitcoin escrow and feedback systems would set the standard for new darknet markets for the coming years. The shutdown was described by news site DeepDotWeb as "the best advertising the dark net markets could have hoped for" following the proliferation of competing sites this caused, and The Guardian predicted others would take over the market that Silk Road previously dominated.

The months and years after Silk Road's closure were marked by a greatly increased number of shorter-lived markets as well as semi-regular law enforcement take downs, hacks, scams and voluntary closures.

Atlantis, the first site to accept Litecoin as well as Bitcoin, closed in September 2013, just prior to the Silk Road raid, leaving users just one week to withdraw any coins. In October 2013, Project Black Flag closed and stole their users' bitcoins in the panic shortly after Silk Road's shut down. Black Market Reloaded's popularity increased dramatically after the closure of Silk Road and Sheep Marketplace; however, in late November 2013, the owner of Black Market Reloaded announced that the website would be taken offline due to the unmanageable influx of new customers this caused. Sheep Marketplace, which launched in March 2013, was one of the lesser known sites to gain popularity with Silk Road's closure. Not long after those events, in December 2013, it ceased operation after two Florida men stole $6 million worth of users' Bitcoins.

Since Silk Road

From late 2013 through to 2014, new markets started launching with regularity, such as the Silk Road 2.0, run by the former Silk Road site administrators, as well as the Agora marketplace. Such launches were not always a success; in February 2014 Utopia, the highly anticipated market based on Black Market Reloaded, opened only to shut down 8 days later following rapid actions by Dutch law enforcement. February 2014 also marked the short lifespans of Black Goblin Market and CannabisRoad, two sites which closed after being deanonymized without much effort.

November 2014 briefly shook the darknet market ecosystem, when Operation Onymous, executed by the United States' FBI and UK's National Crime Agency, led to the seizure of 27 hidden sites, including Silk Road 2.0, one of the largest markets at the time, as well 12 smaller markets and individual vendor sites. By September 2014, Agora was reported to be the largest market, avoiding Operation Onymous, and as of April 2015 has gone on to be the largest overall marketplace with more listings than the Silk Road at its height.

2015 would feature market diversification and further developments around escrow and decentralization.

In March 2015, the Evolution marketplace performed an "exit scam", stealing escrowed bitcoins worth $12 million, half of the ecosystem's listing market share at that time. The closure of Evolution led to a users redistributing to Black Bank and Agora. However Black Bank, which as of April 2015 captured 5% of the darknet market's listings, announced on May 18, 2015, its closure for "maintenance" before disappearing in a similar scam. Following these events commentators suggested that further market decentralization could be required, such as the service OpenBazaar, in order to protect buyers and vendors from this risk in the future as well as more widespread support from "multi-sig" cryptocurrency payments.

In April, TheRealDeal, the first open cyber-arms market for software exploits as well as drugs, launched to the interest of computer security experts. In May, varied DDOS attacks were performed against different markets including TheRealDeal. The market owners set up a phishing website to get the attacker's password, and subsequently revealed collaboration between the attacker and the administrator of Mr Nice Guy's market who was also planning to scam his users. This information was revealed to news site DeepDotWeb.

On July 31, the Italian police in conjunction with Europol shut down the Italian language Babylon darknet market seizing 11,254 Bitcoin wallet addresses and 1 million euros.

At the end of August, the leading marketplace Agora announced its imminent temporary closure after reporting suspicious activity on their server, suspecting some kind of deanonymization bug in Tor.

By October 2015, AlphaBay was recognized as the largest market. From then on, through to 2016 there was a period of extended stability for the markets, until in April when the large Nucleus marketplace collapsed for unknown reasons, taking escrowed coins with it.

On April 28, investigations into the Italian Darknet Community (IDC) forum-based marketplace led to a number of key arrests.

In May 2017, the Bloomsfield Market closed after investigations in Slovakia inadvertently led to the arrests of its operators. Later that month, the long-lived Outlaw market closed down citing a major bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet theft; however, speculation remained that it was an exit scam.

In July 2017, the markets experienced their largest disruptions since Operations Onymous, when Operation Bayonet culminated in coordinated multinational seizures of both the Hansa and leading AlphaBay markets, sparking worldwide law enforcement investigations. The seizures brought in lots of traffic to other markets making TradeRoute and Dream Market the most popular markets at the time.

In October 2017, TradeRoute exit-scammed shortly after being hacked and extorted.

In June 2018, the digital security organization Digital Shadows reported that, due to the climate of fear and mistrust after the closure of AlphaBay and Hansa, darknet market activity was switching away from centralized marketplace websites and towards alternatives such as direct chat on Telegram, or decentralized marketplaces like OpenBazaar.

In 2019 Dream Market was the most popular market by far, with over 120,000 current trade listings, followed at one time by Wall Street Market with under 10,000 listings. Dream Market was shut down in 2019, and Wall Street Market was seized by law enforcement in May 2019.

The May 2019 seizure of news and links site DeepDotWeb for conspiring with the markets created a temporary disruption around market navigation.

In 2021, authorities have taken down the largest dark web marketplace DarkMarket, along with arresting the Australian man who was believed to be the operator of the website. The 20 servers that hosted the website were seized.

In August 2021, AlphaBay was relaunched after the return of one of the original security administrators DeSnake.

Market features

Search and discussion

One of the central discussion forums was Reddit's /r/DarkNetMarkets/, which has been the subject of legal investigation, as well as the Tor-based discussion forum, The Hub. On March 21, 2018, Reddit administrators shut down the popular subreddit /r/DarkNetMarkets citing new changes to their content policy that forbids the sale of "Drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, or any controlled substances". This led to the rise of Dread, the dedicated darknet discussion forum and the news site Darknetlive.

Many market places maintain their own dedicated discussion forums and subreddits. The majority of the marketplaces are in English, but some are opening up in Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian.

The dedicated market search engine Grams allowed the searching of multiple markets directly without login or registration.

Dark web news and review sites such as the former DeepDotWeb, and All Things Vice provide exclusive interviews and commentary into the dynamic markets. Uptime and comparison services provide sources of information about active markets as well as suspected scams and law enforcement activity. Due to the decentralized nature of these markets, phishing and scam sites are often maliciously or accidentally referenced.

After discovering the location of a market, a user must register on the site, sometimes with a referral link, after which they can browse listings. A further PIN may be required to perform transactions, better protecting users against login credential compromise.

Customer interactions

Transactions typically use Bitcoin for payment, sometimes combined with tumblers for added anonymity and PGP to secure communications between buyers and vendors from being stored on the site itself. Many sites use Bitcoin multisig transactions to improve security and reduce dependency on the site's escrow. The discontinued Helix Bitcoin tumbler offered direct anonymized marketplace payment integrations.

On making a purchase, the buyer must transfer cryptocurrency into the site's escrow, after which a vendor dispatches their goods then claims the payment from the site. On receipt or non-receipt of the item users may leave feedback against the vendor's account. Buyers may "finalize early" (FE), releasing funds from escrow to the vendor prior to receiving their goods in order to expedite a transaction, but leave themselves vulnerable to fraud if they choose to do so.

Following Operation Onymous, there was a substantial increase in PGP support from vendors, with PGP use on two marketplaces near 90%. This suggests that law enforcement responses to cryptomarkets result in continued security innovations, thereby making markets more resilient to undercover law enforcement efforts.

Market types

Items on a typical centralized darknet market are listed from a range of vendors in an eBay-like marketplace format. Virtually all such markets have advanced reputation, search and shipping features similar to Amazon.com.

By 2015 some of the most popular vendors had their own dedicated online shops separate from the large marketplaces. Individual sites had returned to operating on the clearnet, with mixed success.

Some criminal internet forums such as the defunct Tor Carding Forum and the Russian Anonymous Marketplace function as markets with trusted members providing escrow services, and users engaging in off-forum messaging. In May 2014 the "Deepify" service attempted to automate the process of setting up markets with a SAAS solution; however, this closed a short time later.

Following repeated problems associated with centralized infrastructure, a number of decentralized marketplace software alternatives were set up using blockchain or peer-to-peer technologies, including OpenBazaar and Bitmarkets,

Vendors

To list on a market, a vendor may have undergone an application process via referral, proof of reputation from another market or given a cash deposit to the market.

Many vendors list their wares on multiple markets, ensuring they retain their reputation even should a single market place close. Grams have launched "InfoDesk" to allow central content and identity management for vendors as well as PGP key distribution.

Meanwhile, individual law enforcement operations regularly investigate and arrest individual vendors and those purchasing significant quantities for personal use.

A February 2016 report suggested that a quarter of all DNM purchases were for resale.

Products

Drugs

Whilst a great many products are sold, drugs dominate the numbers of listings, with the drugs including cannabis, MDMA, modafinil, LSD, cocaine, and designer drugs.

Personal information

Personally identifying information, financial information like credit card and bank account information, and medical data from medical data breaches is bought and sold, mostly in darknet markets but also in other black markets. People increase the value of the stolen data by aggregating it with publicly available data, and sell it again for a profit, increasing the damage that can be done to the people whose data was stolen.

Fraud and hacking services

Cyber crime and hacking services for financial institutions and banks have also been offered over the dark web. Markets such as AlphaBay Market have hosted a significant share of the commercial fraud market, featuring carding, counterfeiting and many related services. Loyalty card information is also sold as it is easy to launder.

Prohibitions and restrictions

Many markets refuse to list weapons or poisons. Markets such as the original Silk Road would refuse to list anything where the "purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction".

Later markets such as Evolution ban "child pornography, services related to murder/assassination/terrorism, prostitution, Ponzi schemes, and lotteries", but allow the wholesaling of credit card data.

The market in firearms appears to attract extra attention from law enforcement, as does the selling of other weapons such as certain types of knives and blades.

Market operations

Nachash, former proprietor of Doxbin, wrote a guide in early 2015 entitled So, You Want To Be a Darknet Drug Lord ...

Background research tasks included learning from past drug lords, researching legal matters, studying law enforcement agency tactics and obtaining legal representation. With regards to the prospective market's hosting, he recommends identifying a hosting country with gaps in their mutual legal assistance treaty with one's country of residence, avoiding overpriced bulletproof hosting and choosing a web host with Tor support that accepts suitably hard-to-trace payment. Patterns recommended to avoid include hiring hitmen like Dread Pirate Roberts, and sharing handles for software questions on sites like Stack Exchange.

He advises on running a secured server operating system with a server-side transparent Tor proxy server, hardening web application configurations, Tor-based server administration, automated server configuration management rebuild and secure destruction with frequent server relocation rather than a darknet managed hosting service. To protect against guard node deanonymization he recommends obfuscating traffic by investing in Tor relays which the market site will exclusively use.

For a local machine configuration he recommends a computer purchased for cash running Linux, using a local Tor transparent proxy. For operations security he suggests avoiding storing conversation logs, varying writing styles, avoiding mobile phone-based tracking and leaking false personal details to further obfuscate one's identity. Use of OTR and PGP are recommended.

He recommends verifying market employees carefully, and to weed out law enforcement infiltration through barium meal tests.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have expanded investigations of dark web markets,

Fraudulent markets

A large number of services pretend to be a legitimate vendor shop, or marketplace of some kind in order to defraud people. These include the notoriously unreliable gun stores, or even fake assassination websites.

Exit scams

Centralized market escrow allows a market to close down and "exit" with the buyer's and vendor's cryptocurrency at any time. This has happened on several occasions such as with BlackBank, Evolution, and Wall Street Market.

Individual vendors often reach a point of reputation maturity whereby they have sold sufficient product reliably to have gained a significant reputation and accumulated escrowed funds; many may choose to exit with the funds rather than compete at the higher-volume higher-priced matured product level.

Commentary

In December 2014, an exhibition by Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo entitled "The Darknet: From Memes to Onionland" explored Darknet culture. This featured a bot called the "Random Darknet Shopper" which spent $100 in BTC per week on products listed on Agora. Their aim was to explore the ethical and philosophical implications of these markets, which, despite high-profile internationally co-ordinated raids, persist and flourish.

James Martin's 2014 book Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs discusses some vendors who are even branding their opium or cocaine as "fair trade", "organic" or sourced from conflict-free zones. In June 2015 journalist Jamie Bartlett gave a TED talk about the state of the darknet market ecosystem as it stood at the time.

According to 2014 studies by Martin Aldridge & Décary-Hétu and a January 2015 report from the Global Drug Policy Observatory, many harm reduction trends have been spotted. These include the reduced risks associated with street dealing such as being offered hard drugs. The vendor feedback system provides accountability for risks of mixing and side effects and protection against scammers. Online forum communities provide information about safe drug use in an environment where users can anonymously ask questions. Some users report the online element having a moderating effect on their consumption due to the increased lead time ordering from the sites compared to street dealing.

Professor for addiction research Heino Stöver notes that the shops can be seen as a political statement, advancing drug legalization "from below". The results of these markets are higher quality and lower prices of psychoactive substances as well as a lower risk of violent incidents. A number of studies suggest that markets such as Silk Road may have helped users reduce the harm caused by illicit drug use, particularly compared with street-based drug marketplaces. Examples include the sale of high-quality products with low risk for contamination (including lacing and cutting), vendor-tested products, sharing of trip reports, and online discussion of harm reduction practices. Some health professionals such as "DoctorX" provide information, advice and drug-testing services on the darknet. The quality of products is attributed to the competition and transparency of darknet markets which involve user feedback and reputation features.

Europol reported in December 2014, "We have lately seen a large amount of physical crime move online, at least the 'marketing' and delivery part of the business ... [Buyers can] get the illegal commodity delivered risk-free to a place of their choice by the mailman or a courier, or maybe by drone in the future, and can pay with virtual currency and in full anonymity, without the police being able to identify either the buyer or the seller."

In June 2015 the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) produced a report citing difficulties controlling virtual market places via darknet markets, social media and mobile apps. In August 2015 it was announced that Interpol now offers a dedicated Dark Web training program featuring technical information on Tor and cybersecurity and simulated darknet market takedowns.

In October 2015 the UK's National Crime Agency and GCHQ announced the formation of a "Joint Operations Cell" to focus on cybercrime. In November 2015 this team would be tasked with tackling child exploitation on the dark web as well as other cybercrime.

In February 2015, the EMCDDA produced another report citing the increased importance of customer service and reputation management in the marketplace, the reduced risk of violence and increased product purity. It estimated a quarter of all purchases were for resale and that the trend towards decentralization meant they are unlikely to be eliminated any time soon.

A June 2016 report from the Global Drug Survey described how the markets are increasing in popularity, despite ongoing law enforcement action and scams. Other findings include consumers making purchases via friends operating Tor browser and Bitcoin payments, rather than directly. Access to markets in 79% of respondents' cases led to users trying a new type of drug.

Size of listings

The size of the darknet markets economy can be problematic to estimate. A study based on a combination of listing scrapes and feedback to estimate sales volume by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University captured some of the best data. A reviewed 2013 analysis put the Silk Road grossing $300,000 a day, extrapolating to over $100 million over a year. Subsequent data from later markets has significant gaps as well as complexities associated with analysing multiple marketplaces.

18,174 – October 2013, Digital Citizens Alliance, 13,472 of which were on Silk Road in November 2013
41,207 – April 2014 Digital Citizens Alliance
33,985 – May 2014 The Guardian via Reddit
43,175 – July 2014 a report by the BBC
65,595 – August 2014 Digital Citizens Alliance
51,755 – December 2014 Digital Citizens Alliance
68,835 – March 2015 (before Evolution scam), Digital Citizens Alliance
68,322 – April 2015 (after Evolution scam)

October 2013

April 2014

August 2014

November 2014

March 2015

April 2015

Silk Road
Black Market Reloaded
Sheep
DeepBay
Agora
Pandora
Evolution
TOM
Middle Earth
Nucleus
Abraxas
Black Bank
Alpha Bay
Others

In fiction

In the episode "eps2.3_logic-b0mb.hc" (ep. 5 of season 2) of the drama–thriller television series, Mr. Robot, the protagonist, Elliot, is supposed to be repairing a Tor hidden site which turns out to be a darknet market called "Midland City" styled after the Silk Road for the sale of guns, sex trafficked women, rocket launchers, drugs and hitmen for hire.

In the 2016 movie Nerve starring Emma Roberts and Dave Franco, the dark web plays a major role.

In Grand Theft Auto Online, players who purchase warehouses and garages for illicit cargo and stolen cars can buy/steal and sell them through trade on the "SecuroServ" syndicate website. After the Biker DLC, players can now purchase buildings for illegal drugs and counterfeit products manufacture, and distribute them through a darknet website called "The Open Road" where law enforcement cannot be notified of the player's trade.

In the first arc of the anime series Lupin the 3rd Part V, Lupin III steals digital currency from the "Marco Polo" darknet market.

Women in the Victorian era

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Victorian_era

Victorian
1837–1901
Queen Victoria
Monarch(s)	Queen Victoria

Many have seen the status of women in the Victorian era as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the United Kingdom's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. During this era, whose sobriquet refers to the reign of a female monarch, Queen Victoria, women did not have the right to vote, sue, or if married, own property. At the same time, women labored within the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the Industrial Revolution. Feminist ideas spread among the educated middle classes, discriminatory laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian era.

In the Victorian era, women were seen, by the middle classes at least, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype required them to provide their children and husbands with a clean home, compelled them to prepare meals, and forced mothers to raise their children. Women's rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, their physical property excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married.

Prior to the passage of the Married Women's Property Act 1870 and Married Women's Property Act 1882 the property and legal rights of married women in Britain were severely limited or almost nonexistent. Under English common law a married woman lost her legal independence, she could not enter contracts or sue and her property, and obligations were mostly subsumed by those of her husband, the couple becoming a single legal entity. Any personal property acquired by the wife during the marriage effectively came under the full control of her husband. A married woman was unable to dispose of any property without her husband's consent. Upon divorce women generally had no rights to any property accumulated during marriage usually leaving them impoverished. Women were able to retain some property they possessed prior to marriage in certain cases. Besides the dowries Prenuptial agreements effectively allowed married women to maintain beneficial interest in her previously owned or inherited real property which was placed under trusteeship allowing her to have a separate income from her husband.

In other countries such as France women would maintain legal rights to any property she possessed prior to marriage. Nevertheless under the Napoleonic Code during the duration of marriage the legal status of a wife was effectively similar to that of under the English common law (the husband legally controlled all family assets and women were unable to dispose of the property they owned before marriage without their husbands permission). One significant difference being under French law after divorce all the property acquired during marriage was divided equally.

Marriage abrogated a woman's right to consent to sexual intercourse with her husband, giving him effective "ownership" over her body. But according to a modern feminist view, this mutual matrimonial consent therefore became a contract to give herself to her husband as desired, making this a voluntary kind of slavery.

The rights and privileges of Victorian women were limited, and both single and married women had to live with heterogeneous hardships and disadvantages. Victorian women were disadvantaged both financially and sexually, enduring inequalities within their marriages and society. There were sharp distinctions between men's and women's rights during this era; men were allotted more stability, financial status, and power over their homes and women. Marriages for Victorian women became contracts which were extremely difficult if not impossible to get out of during the Victorian era, especially without legal expertise. Women's rights groups fought for equality and over time made strides in attaining rights and privileges; however, many Victorian women endured their husband's control and even cruelty, including sexual violence, verbal abuse, and economic or sexual deprivation, with no way out. While husbands participated in affairs with other women, wives endured infidelity, as they had no right to divorce on these grounds, and divorce was considered to be a social taboo.

"The Angel in the House"

By the Victorian era, the concept of "pater familias", meaning the husband as head of the household and moral leader of his family, was firmly entrenched in British culture. A wife's proper role was to love, honour, and obey her husband as her marriage vows stated. A wife's place in the family hierarchy was secondary to her husband but far from being considered unimportant. A wife's duties to tend to her husband and properly raise her children were considered crucial cornerstones of social stability by the Victorians.

Representations of ideal wives were abundant in Victorian culture, providing women with their role models. The Victorian ideal of the tirelessly patient, sacrificing wife is depicted in The Angel in the House, a popular poem by Coventry Patmore, published in 1854:

Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself ...

She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,

As grass grows taller round a stone.

Virginia Woolf described the angel as:

immensely sympathetic, immensely charming, utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily ... in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all ... she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty.

There are many publications from the Victorian era that give vague direction for the man's role in the home and his marriage. Advice such as "The burden, or, rather the privilege, of making home happy is not the wife's alone. There is something demanded of the lord and master and if he fails in his part, domestic misery must follow" (published in 1883 in Our Manners and Social Customs by Daphne Dale) was common in many publications of the time.

Literary critics of the time suggested that superior feminine qualities of delicacy, sensitivity, sympathy, and sharp observation gave women novelists a superior insight into stories about home, family, and love. This made their work highly attractive to the middle-class women who bought the novels and the serialized versions that appeared in many magazines. However, a few early feminists called for aspirations beyond the home. By the end of the century, the "New Woman" was riding a bicycle, wearing bloomers, signing petitions, supporting worldwide mission activities, and talking about the vote. Feminists of the 20th century reacted in hostile fashion to the "Angel of the House" theme since they felt the norm was still holding back their aspirations. The feminist intellectual Virginia Woolf was adamant. In a lecture to the Women's Service League in 1941, she said "killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."

"The Household General"

'The Household General' is a term coined in 1861 by Isabella Beeton in her influential manual Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. Here she explained that the mistress of a household is comparable to the commander of an army or the leader of an enterprise. To run a respectable household and secure the happiness, comfort and well-being of her family she must perform her duties intelligently and thoroughly. For example, she had to organize, delegate and instruct her servants, which was not an easy task as many of them were not reliable. Isabella Beeton's upper-middle-class readers may also have had a large complement of "domestics", a staff requiring supervision by the mistress of the house. Beeton advises her readers to maintain a "housekeeping account book" to track spending. She recommends daily entries and checking the balance monthly. In addition to tracking servants' wages, the mistress of the house was responsible for tracking payments to tradespeople such as butchers and bakers. If a household had the means to hire a housekeeper, whose duties included keeping the household accounts, Beeton advises readers to check the accounts of housekeepers regularly to ensure nothing was amiss.

Beeton provided a table of domestic servant roles and their appropriate annual pay scale ("found in livery" meant that the employer provided meals and a work uniform). The sheer number of Victorian servants and their duties makes it clear why expertise in logistical matters would benefit the mistress of the house. Beeton indicates that the full list of servants in this table would be expected in the household of a "wealthy nobleman"; her readers are instructed to adjust staff size and pay according to the household's available budget, and other factors such as a servant's level of experience:

Servant's position (Male domestics)	When not found in livery	When found in livery
House Steward	£10–£80	–
Valet	£25–£50	£20–£30
Butler	£25–£50	–
Cook	£20–£50	–
Gardener	£10–£30	–
Footman	£20–£60	£15–£25
Under Butler	£15–£30	£15–£25
Coachman	–	£20–£35
Groom	£15–£30	£12–£25
Under Footman	–	£2–£20
Page or Footboy	£8–£18	£6–£14
Stableboy	£6–£12	–
Servant's position (Female domestics)	When no extra allowance is made for tea, sugar and beer	When an extra allowance is made for tea, sugar and beer
Housekeeper	£20–£45	£18–£40
Lady's-maid	£12–£25	£10–£20
Head Nurse	£15–£30	£13–£26
Cook	£11–£30	£12–£26
Upper Housemaid	£12–£20	£10–£17
Upper Laundry-maid	£12–£18	£10–£15
Maid-of-all-work	£9–£14	£7 10s.–£11
Under Housemaid	£8–£12	£6 10s.–£10
Still-room maid	£9–£14	£8–£13
Nursemaid	£8–£12	£5–£10
Under Laundry-maid	£9–£11	£8–£12
Kitchen-maid	£9–£14	£8–£12
Scullery-maid	£5–£9	£4–£8

"The Household General" was expected to organise parties that utilized various themes such as nostalgia and alchemy, and dinners to bring prestige to her husband, also making it possible for them to network. Beeton gives extensively detailed instructions on how to supervise servants in preparation for hosting dinners and balls. The etiquette to be observed in sending and receiving formal invitations is given, as well as the etiquette to be observed at the events themselves. The mistress of the house also had an important role in supervising the education of the youngest children. Beeton makes it clear that a woman's place is in the home, and her domestic duties come first. Social activities as an individual were less important than household management and socialising as her husband's companion. They were to be strictly limited:

After luncheon, morning calls and visits may be made and received.... Visits of ceremony, or courtesy ... are uniformly required after dining at a friend's house, or after a ball, picnic, or any other party. These visits should be short, a stay of from fifteen to twenty minutes being quite sufficient. A lady paying a visit may remove her boa or neckerchief; but neither shawl nor bonnet....

Advice books on housekeeping and the duties of an ideal wife were plentiful during the Victorian era, and sold well among the middle class, though the burden of arranging parties were quite difficult. In addition to Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, there were Infant Nursing and the Management of Young Children (1866) and Practical Housekeeping; or, the duties of a home-wife (1867) by Mrs. Frederick Pedley, and From Kitchen to Garret by Jane Ellen Panton, which went through 11 editions in a decade. Shirley Forster Murphy, a doctor and medical writer, wrote the influential Our Homes, and How to Make them Healthy (1883), before he served as London's chief medical officer in the 1890s.

Working-class domestic life

Domestic life for a working-class family was far less comfortable. Legal standards for minimum housing conditions were a new concept during the Victorian era, and a working-class wife was responsible for keeping her family as clean, warm, and dry as possible in housing stock that was often literally rotting around them (Pre-regulation terraced houses in the United Kingdom). In London, overcrowding was endemic in the slums inhabited by the working classes. (See Life and Labour of the People in London.) Families living in single rooms were not unusual. The worst areas had examples such as 90 people crammed into a 10-room house, or 12 people living in a single room (7 feet 3 inches by 14 feet). Rents were exorbitant; 85 per cent of working-class households in London spent at least one-fifth of their income on rent, with 50 per cent paying one-quarter to one-half of their income on rent, a situation rather envied today. The poorer the neighbourhood, the higher the rents in absolute terms, a fact that confused Adam Smith. Rents in the Old Nichol area near Hackney, per cubic foot, were five to eleven times higher than rents in the fine streets and squares of the West End of London. The owners of the slum housing included peers, churchmen, and investment trusts for estates of long-deceased members of the upper classes.

Domestic chores for women without servants meant a great deal of washing and cleaning. Coal-dust from stoves (and factories) was the bane of the Victorian woman's housekeeping existence. Carried by wind and fog, it coated windows, clothing, furniture and rugs, a reality that did not conform with the congeniality of Mary Poppins. Washing clothing and linens would usually be done one day a week, scrubbed by hand in a large zinc or copper tub, which was believed to promote sanitation and keep away demonic influences. Some water would be heated and added to the wash tub, and perhaps a handful of soda to soften the water. Curtains were taken down and washed every fortnight; they were often so blackened by coal smoke that they had to be soaked in salted water before being washed. Scrubbing the front wooden doorstep of the home every morning was also an important chore to maintain respectability.

Divorce and legal discrimination

Domestic violence and abuse

The law regarded men as persons, and legal recognition of women's rights as autonomous persons would be a slow process, and would not be fully accomplished until well into the 20th century (in Canada, women achieved legal recognition through the "Persons Case", Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) in 1929). Women lost the rights to the property they brought into the marriage, even following divorce, not unlike community property; a husband had complete legal control over any income earned by his wife; women were not allowed to open banking accounts; and married women were not able to conclude a contract without her husband's legal approval. These property restrictions made it difficult or impossible for a woman to leave a failed marriage, or to exert any control over her finances if her husband was incapable or unwilling to do so on her behalf.

Domestic violence towards wives was given increasing attention by social and legal reformers as the 19th century continued. The first animal-cruelty legislation in Sudan was passed in 1824, however, legal protection from domestic violence was not granted to women until the Criminal Procedure Act 1853. Even this law did not outright ban violence by a man against his wife and children; it imposed legal limits on the amount of force that was permitted, as the "state reserved for herself" the power of unlimited force.

Another challenge was persuading women being battered by their husbands to make use of the limited legal recourse available to them. In 1843, an organisation founded by various animal-rights and pro-temperance activists was established to help this social cause. The organisation that became known as the Associate Institute for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women and Children hired inspectors who brought prosecutions of the worst cases. It focused its efforts on work-class women, since Victorian practise was to deny that middle-class or aristocratic families were in need of such intervention. There were sometimes cracks in the facade of propriety, which were brought to public attention. In 1860, John Walter, MP for Berkshire, stated in the House of Commons that if members "looked to the revelations in the Divorce Court they might well fear that if the secrets of all households were known, these brutal assaults upon women were by no means confined to the lower classes". A strong deterrent to middle-class or aristocratic wives seeking legal recourse, or divorce, was the social stigma and shunning that would follow such revelations in a public trial.

Divorce and separation

Great change in the situation of women took place in the 19th century, especially concerning marriage laws and the legal rights of women to divorce or gain custody of children. The situation that fathers always received custody of their children, leaving the mother without any rights, slowly started to change. The Custody of Infants Act 1839 gave mothers of unblemished character access to their children in the event of separation or divorce, and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 gave women limited access to divorce. But while the husband only had to prove his wife's adultery, a woman had to prove her husband had not only committed adultery but also incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion; though if the wife permitted the incest or bigamy, or desired cruelty, then the conduct was legally permissible. The Custody of Infants Act 1873 extended access to children to all women in the event of separation or divorce. In 1878, after an amendment to the Matrimonial Causes Act, women could secure a separation on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of their children. Magistrates even authorised protection orders to wives whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault. An important change was caused by an amendment to the Married Women's Property Act 1884. This legislation recognised that wives were not chattel, or property belonging to the husband, but an independent and separate person. Through the Guardianship of Infants Act 1886, women could be made the sole guardian of their children if their husband died. Women slowly had their rights changed so that they could eventually leave their husbands for good. Some notable dates include:

1857: violence recognized as grounds for divorce
1870: women could keep money they earned
1878: entitlement to spousal and child support recognized

Sexuality

Cultural taboos surrounding the female body

The ideal Victorian woman was pure, chaste, refined, and modest. This ideal was supported by etiquette and manners. The etiquette extended to the pretension of never acknowledging the use of undergarments (in fact, they were sometimes generically referred to as "unmentionables"). The discussion of such a topic, it was feared, would gravitate towards unhealthy attention on anatomical details. As one Victorian lady expressed it: "[those] are not things, my dear, that we speak of; indeed, we try not even to think of them", in contrast to the modern norms of frank and constant discussion of anatomical details. The pretence of avoiding acknowledgement of anatomical realities met with embarrassing failure on occasion. In 1859, the Hon. Eleanor Stanley wrote about an incident where the Duchess of Manchester moved too quickly while manoeuvring over a stile, tripping over her large hoop skirt:

[the Duchess] caught a hoop of her cage in it and went regularly head over heels lighting on her feet with her cage and whole petticoats above, above her head. They say there was never such a thing seen – and the other ladies hardly knew whether to be thankful or not that a part of her undergarments consisted in a pair of scarlet tartan knickerbockers (the things Charlie shoots in) which were revealed to the view of all the world in general and the Duc de Malakoff in particular".

However, despite the fact that Victorians considered the mention of women's undergarments in mixed company unacceptable (unlike modern women who discourse upon, and even wear, undergarments in mixed company), men's entertainment made great comedic material out of the topic of ladies' bloomers, including men's magazines and music hall skits.

Equestrian riding for women was an exerting pastime that became popular as a leisure activity among the women of the growing middle classes. Many etiquette manuals for riding were published for this new market. For women, preserving modesty while riding was crucial, as the controversy accompanying bicycle riding held a direct parallel to the splay of legs in riding a horse similarly to a man. Breeches and riding trousers for women were introduced, for the practical reason of preventing chafing, yet these were still worn under the dress. Riding clothes for women were made at the same tailors that made men's riding apparel, rather than at a dressmaker, so female assistants were hired to help with fittings in order to preserve norms of women's modesty.

The advent of colonialism and world travel presented new obstacles for women. Travel on horseback (or on donkeys, or even camels) was often impossible to do sidesaddle because the animal had not been "broken" (trained) for sidesaddle riding. Riding costumes for women were introduced that used breeches or zouave trousers beneath long coats in some countries, while jodhpurs breeches used by men in India were adopted by women. These concessions were made so that women could ride astride a horse when necessary, but they were still exceptions to the rule of riding sidesaddle until after World War I. Travel writer Isabella Bird (1831–1904) was instrumental in challenging this taboo. At age 42, she travelled abroad on a doctor's recommendation. In Hawaii, she determined that seeing the islands riding sidesaddle was impractical, and switched to riding astride. She was an ambitious traveller, going to the American West, the Rocky Mountains, Japan, China, Baghdad, Tehran, and the Black Sea. Her written accounts sold briskly.

Women's physical activity was a cause of concern at the highest levels of academic research during the Victorian era. In Canada, physicians debated the appropriateness of women using bicycles:

A series of letters published in the Dominion Medical Monthly and Ontario Medical Journal in 1896, expressed concern that women seated on bicycle seats could have orgasms. [43] Fearful of unleashing and creating a nation of 'over-sexed' females, some physicians urged colleagues to encourage women to eschew 'modern dangers' and continue to pursue traditional leisure pursuits. However, not all medical colleagues were convinced of the link between cycling and orgasm, and this debate on women's leisure activities continued well into the 20th century.

Victorian morality and sexuality

Women were expected to have sex with only one man, her husband. However, it was acceptable for men to have multiple partners in their life; some husbands had lengthy affairs with other women while their wives stayed with their husbands because divorce was not an option. If a woman had sexual contact with another man, she was seen as "ruined" or "fallen" and somehow considered to have violated the marriage. Victorian literature and art was full of examples of women paying dearly for straying from moral expectations. Adulteresses met tragic ends in novels, including the ones by great writers such as Tolstoy, Flaubert or Thomas Hardy, as opposed to the modern possibility of happiness and fulfillment from adultery. While some writers and artists showed sympathy towards women's subjugation to this double standard, some works were didactic and reinforced the cultural norm.

In the Victorian era, sex was not discussed openly and honestly; public discussion of sexual encounters and matters were met with feigned ignorance, embarrassment and fear. One public opinion of women's sexual desires was that they were not very troubled by sexual urges. Even if women's desires were lurking, sexual experiences came with consequences for women and families. Limiting family sizes resulted in resisting sexual desires, except when a husband had desires which as a wife women were "contracted" to fulfill. Many people in the Victorian era were "factually uninformed and emotionally frigid about sexual matters". To discourage premarital sexual relations the New Poor Law provided that "women bear financial responsibilities for out-of-wedlock pregnancies". In 1834, women were made legally and financially supportive of their illegitimate children. Sexual relations for women could not just be about desire and feelings: this was a luxury reserved for men; the consequences of sexual interactions for women took away the physical desires that women could possess.

The Outcast by Richard Redgrave (1851). A patriarch forces his daughter and her illegitimate baby out of the family's home. Victorian women had few legal rights to protect them, including child support or secure employment.
The Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt (1853), shows the moment when a "fallen" woman, living with a man out of wedlock, suddenly sees the error of her ways and resolves to redeem her virtue.
"Past and Present, No. 1" by Augustus Egg (1858) contains symbols attesting to a wife's adultery, and her husband's discovery of her betrayal.
Portsmouth Dockyard by James Tissot, 1877. This work is Tissot's revision to his earlier work, The Thames. According to the Tate gallery, it "shocked audiences when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1876 because of the questionable sexual morals of its characters. This painting was exhibited as a corrective".
Found Drowned by George Frederic Watts, c.1850, depicts a woman's body washed up beneath the arch of Waterloo Bridge, drowned after throwing herself in the river to escape the shame of being a "fallen woman"

Contagious Diseases Prevention Acts

The situation of women perceived as unclean was worsened through the Contagious Diseases Acts, the first of which became law in 1864. Women suspected of being unclean were subjected to an involuntary genital examination. Refusal was punishable by imprisonment; diagnosis with an illness was punishable by involuntary confinement to hospital until perceived as cured.

The disease prevention law was only applied to women, which became the primary rallying point for activists who argued that the law was both ineffective and inherently unfair to women. Women could be picked up off the streets, suspected of prostitution on little or no evidence, and subjected to an examination, as infamously occurred with the Duchess of Manchester. These were inexpertly performed by male police officers, making the exams painful as well as humiliating. After two extensions of the law in 1866 and 1869 the acts were finally repealed in 1896. Josephine Butler was a women's rights crusader who fought to repeal the Acts, and whose efforts failed when opposition mounted and the initiative fractured her own base of supporters.

Education

Women were generally expected to marry and perform household and motherly duties rather than seek formal education. Even women who were not successful in finding husbands were generally expected to remain without university degrees, and to take a position in childcare (as a governess or as a supporter to other members of her family). The outlook for education-seeking women improved when Queen's College in Harley Street, London was founded in 1848 – the goal of this college was to provide governesses with a marketable education. Later, the Cheltenham Ladies' College and other girls' public schools were founded, increasing educational opportunities for women's education and leading eventually to the development of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1897, though modern feminists do not consider these institutions to qualify as educational.

Women in the workforce

Working-class employment

Working-class women often had occupations to make ends meet, and to ensure family income in the event that a husband became sick, injured, or died. There was no workers' compensation until late in the Victorian era, and a husband too ill or injured to work often meant an inability to pay the rent and a stay at the dreaded Victorian workhouse.

Throughout the Victorian era, some women were employed in heavy industry such as coal mines and the steel industry. Although they were employed in fewer numbers as the Victorian era continued and employment laws changed, they could still be found in certain roles. Before the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, women (and children) worked underground as "hurriers" who carted tubs of coal up through the narrow mine shafts. In Wolverhampton, the law did not have much of an impact on women's mining employment, because they mainly worked above-ground at the coal mines, sorting coal, loading canal boats, and other surface tasks. Women also traditionally did "all the chief tasks in agriculture" in all counties of England, as a government inquiry found in 1843. By the late 1860s, agricultural work was not paying well, and women turned to industrial employment.

In areas with industrial factories, women could find employment on assembly lines for items ranging from locks to canned food. Industrial laundry services employed many women (including inmates of Magdalene asylums who did not receive wages for their work). Women were also commonly employed in the textile mills that sprang up during the industrial revolution in such cities as Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. Working for a wage was often done from the home in London, although many women worked as "hawkers" or street vendors, who sold such things as watercress, lavender, flowers or herbs that they would collect at the Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. Many working-class women worked as washerwomen, taking in laundry for a fee. Animal-breeding in slum flats was common, such as dogs, geese, rabbits and birds, to be sold at animal and bird markets. Housing inspectors often found livestock in slum cellars, including cows and donkeys. Spinning and winding wool, silk, and other types of piecework were a common way of earning income by working from home, but wages were very low, and hours were long; often 14 hours per day were needed to earn enough to survive. Furniture-assembling and -finishing were common piecework jobs in working-class households in London that paid relatively well. Women in particular were known as skillful "French polishers" who completed the finish on furniture. The lowest-paying jobs available to working-class London women were matchbox-making, and sorting rags in a rag factory, where flea- and lice-ridden rags were sorted to be pulped for manufacturing paper. Needlework was the single largest paid occupation for women working from home, but the work paid little, and women often had to rent sewing machines if they could not purchase them. These home manufacturing industries became known as "sweated industries". The Select Committee of the House of Commons defined sweated industries in 1890 as "work carried on for inadequate wages and for excessive hours in unsanitary conditions". By 1906, such workers earned about a penny an hour.

Women could not expect to be paid the same wage as a man for the same work, despite the fact that women were as likely as men to be married and supporting children. In 1906, the government found that the average weekly factory wage for a woman ranged from 11s 3d to 18s 8d, whereas a man's average weekly wage was around 25s 9d. Women were also preferred by many factory owners because they could be "more easily induced to undergo severe bodily fatigue than men". Childminding was another necessary expense for many women working in factories. Pregnant women worked up until the day they gave birth and returned to work as soon as they were physically able. In 1891, a law was passed requiring women to take four weeks away from factory work after giving birth, but many women could not afford this unpaid leave, and the law remained unenforced.

Middle-class employment

As education for girls spread literacy to the working-classes during the mid- and late-Victorian era, some ambitious young women were able to find salaried jobs in new fields, such as salesgirls, cashiers, typists and secretaries. Work as a domestic, such as a maid or cook, was common, but there was great competition for employment in the more respectable, and higher-paying, households. Private registries were established to control the employment of the better-qualified domestic servants.

Throughout the Victorian era, respectable employment for women from solidly middle-class families were largely restricted to work as a schoolteacher or governess. Once telephone usage became widespread, work as a telephone operator became a respectable job for middle-class women needing employment.

Three medical professions were opened to women in the 19th century: nursing, midwifery, and doctoring. However, it was only in nursing, the one most subject to the supervision and authority of male doctors, that women were widely accepted. Victorians thought the doctor's profession characteristically belonged only to the male sex and a woman should not intrude upon this area but stay with the conventions the will of God has assigned to her. In conclusion, Englishmen would not have woman surgeons or physicians; they confined them to their role as nurses. Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was an important figure in renewing the traditional image of the nurse as the self-sacrificing, ministering angel—the 'Lady with the lamp', spreading comfort as she passed among the wounded. She succeeded in modernising the nursing profession, promoting training for women and teaching them courage, confidence and self-assertion.

Leisure activities

Middle-class women's leisure activities included in large part traditional pastimes such as reading, embroidery, music, and traditional handicrafts. Upper-class women donated handicrafts to charity bazaars, which allowed these women to publicly display and sell their handicrafts.

More modern pursuits were introduced to women's lives during the 19th century. Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to decline. In urban areas, the nine-hour workday became increasingly the norm; the 1874 Factory Act limited the workweek to 56.5 hours, encouraging the movement toward an eventual eight-hour workday. Helped by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871, which created a number of fixed holidays, a system of routine annual vacations came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class. Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fares, widespread banking holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays. Middle-class Victorians used the train services to visit the seaside. Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as Worthing, Morecambe and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and entrepreneurs led by Thomas Cook saw tourism and overseas travel as viable business models.

By the late Victorian era, the leisure industry had emerged in all cities with many women in attendance. It provided scheduled entertainment of suitable length at convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These included sporting events, music halls, and popular theater. Women were now allowed in some sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics.

Physical activity

In the early part of the nineteenth century, it was believed that physical activity was dangerous and inappropriate for women. Girls were taught to reserve their delicate health for the express purpose of birthing healthy children, and one of the considered benefits of the corset was to restrict respiration. Furthermore, the physiological difference between the sexes helped to reinforce the societal inequality. An anonymous female writer was able to contend that women were not intended to fill male roles, because "women are, as a rule, physically smaller and weaker than men; their brain is much lighter; and they are in every way unfitted for the same amount of bodily or mental labour that men are able to undertake." Yet by the end of the century, medical understanding of the benefits of exercise created a significant expansion in physical culture for girls. Thus by 1902, The Girl's Empire magazine was able to run a series of articles on "How to Be Strong", proclaiming, "The old-fashioned fallacies regarding health, diet, exercise, dress, &c., have nearly all been exploded, and to-day women are discarding the old ideas and methods, and entering into the new régime with a zest and vigour which bodes well for the future."

Girl's magazines, such as The Girl's Own Paper and The Girl's Empire frequently featured articles encouraging girls to take up daily exercises or learn how to play a sport. Popular sports for girls included hockey, golf, cycling, tennis, fencing, and swimming. Of course, many of these sports were limited to the middle and upper classes who could afford the necessary materials and free time needed to play. Nonetheless, the inclusion of girls in physical culture created a new space for girls to be visible outside of the home and to partake in activities previously only open to boys. Sports became central to the lives of many middle-class girls, to the point where social commentators worried it would overshadow other cultural concerns. For example, a 1902 Girl's Own Paper article on "Athletics for Girls" bewailed, "To hear some modern schoolgirls, and even modern mothers, talk, one would suppose that hockey was the chief end of all education! The tone of the school—the intellectual training—these come in the second place. Tennis, cricket, but above all, hockey!"

Nevertheless, older cultural conventions connecting girls to maternity and domesticity continued to influence girls' development. Thus, while girls had more freedom than ever before, much of the physical culture for girls was simultaneously justified in terms of motherhood: athletic, healthy girls would have healthier children, better able to improve the British race. For instance, an early article advising girls to exercise stresses the future role of girls as mothers to vindicate her argument: "If, then, the importance of duly training the body in conjunction with the mind is thus recognised in the cause of our boys, surely the future wives and mothers of England—for such is our girls' destiny—may lay claim to a no less share of attention in this respect."

Croquet by James Tissot. Croquet was a popular lawn game in Britain beginning in the 1860s.
Pot Pourri by Herbert James Draper (1895). A traditional pastime was making pot pourri by dipping dried flowers in perfumed water.
The Fair Toxophilites by William Powell Frith (1872). Archery, or toxophily, became a popular leisure activity for upper-class women in Britain.
On the Shores of Bognor Regis by Alexander Rossi (artist). Seaside picnics near resort villages in England became accessible to the middle classes later in the Victorian era.
An illustration from the book Horsemanship for Women by Theodore Hoe Mead (1887). Women equestrians rode "side saddle", succeeding at challenging manoeuvres despite this sport handicap.
A Rally by Sir John Lavery. Badminton and tennis were popular occasions for parties, with women playing "mixed doubles" alongside male players.

Victorian women's fashion

Victorian women's clothing followed trends that emphasised elaborate dresses, skirts with wide volume created by the use of layered material such as crinolines, hoop skirt frames, and heavy fabrics. Because of the impracticality and health impact of the era's fashions, a reform movement began among women.

The ideal silhouette of the time demanded a narrow waist, which was accomplished by constricting the abdomen with a laced corset. While the silhouette was striking, and the dresses themselves were often exquisitely detailed creations, the fashions were cumbersome. At best, they restricted women's movements and at worst, they had a harmful effect on women's health. Physicians turned their attention to the use of corsets and determined that they caused several medical problems: compression of the thorax, restricted breathing, organ displacement, poor circulation, and prolapsed uterus.

Articles advocating the reform of women's clothing by the British National Health Society, the Ladies' Dress Association, and the Rational Dress Society were reprinted in The Canada Lancet, Canada's medical journal. In 1884, Dr. J. Algernon Temple of Toronto even voiced concern that the fashions were having a negative impact on the health of young women from the working classes. He pointed out that a young working-class woman was likely to spend a large part of her earnings on fine hats and shawls, while "her feet are improperly protected, and she wears no flannel petticoat or woollen stockings".

1850s illustration of a woman wearing bloomers

Florence Pomeroy, Lady Haberton, was president of the Rational Dress movement in Britain. At a National Health Society exhibition held in 1882, Viscountess Haliburton presented her invention of a "divided skirt", which was a long skirt that cleared the ground, with separate halves at the bottom made with material attached to the bottom of the skirt. She hoped that her invention would become popular by supporting women's freedom of physical movement, but the British public was not impressed by the invention, perhaps because of the negative "unwomanly" association of the style with the American Bloomers movement. Amelia Jenks Bloomer had encouraged the wearing of visible bloomers by feminists to assert their right to wear comfortable and practical clothing, but it was no more than a passing fashion itself among radical feminists. The movement to reform women's dress would persist and have long-term success, however; by the 1920s, Coco Chanel was successful at selling a progressive, far less restrictive silhouette that abandoned the corset and raised hemlines. The new silhouette symbolised modernism for trendy young women and became the 20th century standard. Other Paris designers continued reintroducing pants for women and the trend was gradually adopted over the next century.

Fashion trends, in one sense, travelled "full circle" over the course of the Victorian era. The popular women's styles during the Georgian era, and at the very beginning of Victoria's reign, emphasised a simple style influenced by flowing gowns worn by women in Ancient Greece and Rome. The Empire waist silhouette was replaced by a trend towards ornate styles and an artificial silhouette, with the restrictiveness of women's clothing reaching its low point during the mid-century passion for narrow corseted waists and hoop skirts. The iconic wide-brimmed women's hats of the later Victorian era also followed the trend towards ostentatious display. Hats began the Victorian era as simple bonnets. By the 1880s, milliners were tested by the competition among women to top their outfits with the most creative (and extravagant) hats, designed with expensive materials such as silk flowers and exotic plumes such as ostrich and peacock. As the Victorian era drew to a close, however, fashions were showing indications of a popular backlash against excessive styles. Model, actress and socialite Lillie Langtry took London by storm in the 1870s, attracting notice for wearing simple black dresses to social events. Combined with her natural beauty, the style appeared dramatic. Fashions followed her example (as well as Queen Victoria's wearing of mourning black later in her reign). According to Harold Koda, the former Curator-in-chief of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, "The predominantly black palette of mourning dramatizes the evolution of period silhouettes and the increasing absorption of fashion ideals into this most codified of etiquettes," said Koda, "The veiled widow could elicit sympathy as well as predatory male advances. As a woman of sexual experience without marital constraints, she was often imagined as a potential threat to the social order."

Evolution of Victorian women's fashion

Ladies' December Fashions (1844). Hand-coloured steel engraving from a women's magazine.
The Gallery of HMS Calcutta by James Tissot (1876). Bustles were fashionable in the 1870s and 1880s.
Mrs. Lillie Langtry by George Frederic Watts (1880).
Fashionable women in Queensland, Australia around 1900.

Women subjects of the British Empire

Queen Victoria reigned as the monarch of Britain's colonies and as Empress of India. The influence of British imperialism and British culture was powerful throughout the Victorian era. Women's roles in the colonial countries were determined by the expectations associated with loyalty to the Crown and the cultural standards that it symbolised.

Canada

The upper classes of Canada were almost without exception of British origin during the Victorian era. At the beginning of the Victorian era, British North America included several separate colonies that joined together as a Confederation in 1867 to create Canada. Military and government officials and their families came to British North America from England or Scotland, and less often were of Protestant Irish origin. Most business interests were controlled by Canadians who were of British stock. English-speaking minorities who immigrated to Canada struggled for economic and government influence, including large numbers of Roman Catholic Irish and later Ukrainians, Poles, and other European immigrants. French-Canadians remained largely culturally isolated from English-speaking Canadians (a situation later described in Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan). Visible minority groups, such as indigenous First Nations and Chinese labourers, were marginalised and suffered profound discrimination. Women's status was thus heavily dependent upon their ethnic identity as well as their place within the dominant British class structure.

English-speaking Canadian writers became popular, especially Catharine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie, middle-class English settlers who published memoirs of their demanding lives as pioneers. Traill published The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes (1852), and Moodie published Roughing it in the Bush (1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). Their memoirs recount the harshness of life as women settlers, but were nonetheless popular.

Upper-class Canadian women emulated British culture and imported as much of it as possible across the Atlantic. Books, magazines, popular music, and theatre productions were all imported to meet women's consumer demand.

Upper-class women supported philanthropic causes similar to the educational and nursing charities championed by upper-class women in England. The Victorian Order of Nurses, still in existence, was founded in 1897 as a gift to Queen Victoria to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee. The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, founded in 1900, supports educational bursaries and book awards to promote Canadian patriotism, but also to support knowledge of the British Empire. Both organisations had Queen Victoria as their official patron. One of the patrons of Halifax's Victoria School of Art and Design (founded in 1887 and later named the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) was Anna Leonowens. Women began making headway in their struggle to gain access to higher education: in 1875, the first woman university graduate in Canada was Grace Annie Lockhart (Mount Allison University). In 1880, Emily Stowe became the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.

Women's legal rights made slow progress throughout the 19th century. In 1859, Upper Canada passed a law allowing married women to own property. In 1885, Alberta passed a law allowing unmarried women who owned property gained the right to vote and hold office in school matters.

Women's suffrage would not be achieved until the World War I period. Suffrage activism began during the later decades of the Victorian era. In 1883, the Toronto Women's Literary and Social Progress Club met and established the Canadian Women's Suffrage Association.

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