London by gaslight, sad orphans with faces caked in coal dust asking for “more”, morphine-addicted detectives in deerstalker hats looking for White Chapel rippers, and who can forget old Queen Vic?
Can we just do this about every historically notable era? Why should Ancient Rome get all the love?
I guess there’s a new version with a black Jack the Ripper coming to HBO.
Ehhh maybe not.
Might have been black. There’s a theory the serial killer might have been a woman.
That thread is a mess. They don’t even distinguish between Rome the kingdom, the early and late republic and the empire. It’s just all lumped together. 1000 years of history all muddled up.
Here is a very enjoyable romp through Victoriana, with the ever silly Matt Berry and the highly talented Susan Wokoma…
Angre Otozza and Du3k, my favourite actors!
Got his start in Nollywood.
Well for one, I’d much rather live in ancient Rome than victorian england… That place was a HELLHOLE for the common man by comparison. You put me in a time machine and tell me I have to live in the era of my choosing, Victorian England will never make the list. Maybe unless I’m a gent, at which point it’d be heartbreaking to see the conditions among the commoners and kinda ruin the fun of being moneyed. But that still pretty much applies, I suppose, just with much better science, healthcare, workers rights, sanitation, etc.
This guy called Fred Dibnah popped up on youtube.
He had a victorian occupation: steeple jack. and a love for the era and steam engines and whatnot. Lots of videos of him on there, its prime viewing.
DO YER LIKE THAT?
I was born in 74. I know this guy. He is cool. 
Only one war during Victorian times, the Crimean 1854-1856. Rome, by contrast, was 1000 years of slaughter.
As tough as Victorian life was, I’m pretty sure life expectancy, medical knowledge, sanitation, education, even human rights were still far beyond even the most prosperous time for the Roman Empire/Republic. We mythologize Ancient Rome because they were so ahead of their contemporary peers (no one wants to be a Visigoth), but most commoners in Rome (if you weren’t a slave) could barely scrape by and a simple thing like a bad appendix would be the end of you. The late 19th century was still extremely primitive compared to our present, but at least you could get an appendectomy along with other primitive surgeries or treatments that wouldn’t be available in Ancient times, enjoy contemporary literature like Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens or the satiric works of Oscar Wilde, travel around Europe in relative safety if you could afford it, have slightly better hygiene thanks to a (again, very primitive) sewer system and knowledge of how to avoid infection (even if germs were still not fully understood), and perhaps even attend university… again if you were lucky and prosperous enough. Victorian life for the commoner was probably pretty shit overall, but I’m sure Ancient Rome … aside from watching some gladiator games… had to be worse, once you peel away its romanticized legend.
Plus the Boers and Zulus.
Try living in Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s around the famine times, there’s no nostalgia for that era whatsoever. They just left people die on the streets and in their homes while exporting food under armed guard. British government half destroyed our country and people. 1 million dead , 1 million emigrated, conveniently written out of the history of the UK. Then you might ‘emigrate’ to the rest of the UK as a British citizen and still be heavily discriminated against. There was plenty of unrest in Ireland but they didn’t have the resources to put up a proper armed insurrection as the British army and navy was at the peak of it’s powers Ah yeah the Victorians a great bunch of lads.
The one caveat is that were some very interesting social movements during Victorian times that did kickstart the modern era though. Not enough to get rid of the landed classes though in the UK now, still mostly the same families there for hundreds of years.
That’s a good point. I’d rather live in 1890s London than most eras of Ancient Rome, but would still choose Ancient Rome (except maybe the time of the Justinianic Plague) over famine era Ireland.
His garden was a lot of a man cave, literally as he had his own working coal mine.
A miner and a steeplejack. I was fascinated to see how he fixed the ladders to the chimney walls.
