Victorian Era

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Alexa Ray

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Current Cast: @LeVen @Dakota K. @Adira @☆StarryNIGHT☆ @HellHoundWolf @dragonlovinggal
@Cammyjag

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Alright! This is where we'll be plotting guys! Here is a rundown of important historical events that occurred within the Victorian Era, 1837, the year in which Victorian Era formally began, all the way to Queen Victoria's death in 1901. I can't rewrite everything down in time and I'm not exactly sure what EVERY major event is, so I went ahead and linked from a reliable source: BBC History. Let's work out some ideas for a plotline now!

So far, we know the setting is in the United Kingdom, specifically in London, England. We're starting at the beginning of the timeline, during the day with Queen Victoria's ascent to the throne. Brainstorm, bring up ideas; just make sure it's realistic within this time period. no steampunk no matter how much I love it

This is another reliable website that talks about the Victorian Era. It accurately but briefly describes each social class, the income, etc. Here is the different social classes:

Working class - men and women who performed physical labor, paid daily or weekly wages

Middle class - men performed mental or "clean" work, paid monthly or annually

Upper class - did not work, income came from inherited land and investments
 
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*waves hand frantically!*

THIS IS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS!

May I join, please? 8D
 
O___O.... Yes, yes you may. Welcome aboard, Cammy!
 
Well after reading up on events I have a question. Would we be going from a royals household or an average person. All events effected people differently.
 
What do you mean? If you're meaning to ask what the roles of our characters will be, you'll be able to choose from upper, middle, and working class. That was the social hierarchy during Victorian Times. I'll put up a link that accurately, but briefly describes the classes. (:
 
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Hafiz Mohammed Abdul Karim, an Indian Muslim attendant, was one of Queen Victoria's closest confidants despite efforts by royal circles to suppress their relationship before and after her death...
 
Found this when I searched 'Queen Victoria Conspiracies'

"Queen Victoria's grandson Prince Albert Victor, known as Prince Eddy, was second in line to the throne and not very popular. He was said to be bisexual, consorted with prostitutes and allegedly had an affair with a Roman Catholic shopgirl who bore his child. When Jack the Ripper began terrorising London in 1888, Prince Eddy was suspected. But in the 1970s the rumours took off. Dr Thomas Stowell found papers left by Queen Victoria's physician, who had treated Prince Eddy for syphilis. Stowell believed the killer (never named but clearly identified as the prince) went mad and took revenge on women for his illness.

Records show the prince was not in London when three murders were committed... but were they faked?"

BTW, I know you're not accepting any new characters. I'm just being positively social.
 
We need some input people! Some ideas, please! Anything will do no matter how stupid it may seem as long as it relates to this time period and is realistic!
 
What about...a mystery plot where different types of people you wouldn't expect to ever meet DO get together because they each have something to contribute to the mystery. (But then this is a group story so I don't really know how a mystery would work ^^;;).
 
Some history of the Victorian Era that might be conducive to plot development.

Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, only four years after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The anti-slavery movement had campaigned for years to achieve the ban, succeeding with a partial abolition in 1807 and the full ban on slave trade, but not slave ownership, in 1833. It took so long because the anti-slavery morality was pitted against powerful economic interests which claimed their businesses would be destroyed if they were not permitted to exploit slave labor. Eventually, plantation owners in the Caribbean received £20 million in compensation.

In Victoria's time, the Royal Navy patrolled the Atlantic Ocean, stopping any ships that it suspected of trading African slaves to the Americas and freeing any slaves found. The British had set up a Crown Colony in West Africa—Sierra Leone—and transported freed slaves there. Freed slaves from Nova Scotia founded and named the capital of Sierra Leone "Freetown". Many people living at that time argued that the living conditions of workers in English factories seemed worse than those endured by some slaves.

Throughout the Victorian Era, homosexuality held a vexed position in the culture. Homosexual acts were a capital offence until 1861. Michel Foucault has argued that homosexual and heterosexual identities didn't emerge until the 19th century; before that time terms described practices and not identity. Foucault cites "Westphal's famous article of 1870 on 'contrary sexual sensations'" as the "date of birth" of the categorization of the homosexual (Foucault 1976). The first known use of homosexual in English is not until Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1895 translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a study on sexual practices.

Religious morality changed drastically during the Victorian Era. When Victoria took the throne the Anglican Church was very powerful —running schools and universities, and with high ranking churchmen holding offices in the House of Lords.

The "Crisis of Faith" would hit religion and the citizens' faith like a brick. The Crisis of Faith was brought about in 1859 with Charles Darwin's work On the Origin of Species; his theory was (in the basic form) that the Natural World had become what it was through gradual change over eons. He stated that natural selection and survival of the fittest were the reasons man had survived so long. His theory of evolution based on empirical evidence would call into question Christian beliefs and Victorian values. People whose lives became totally uprooted felt the need to find a new system on which to base their values and morality. Unable to completely lose faith, they combined both their religious beliefs with individual duty—duty to one's God, fellow man, social class, neighbour, the poor and the ill.

The Victorian era became notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines and as chimney sweeps. Child labour, often brought about by economic hardship, played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset: Charles Dickens, for example, worked at the age of 12 in a blacking factory, with his family in a debtors' prison. In 1840 only about 20 percent of the children in London had any schooling. By 1860 about half of the children between 5 and 15 were in school (including Sunday school).

The children of the poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long hours in dangerous jobs for low wages. Agile boys were employed by the chimney sweeps; small children were employed to scramble under machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins; and children were also employed to work in coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and low for adults. Children also worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or sold matches, flowers, and other cheap goods. Some children undertook work as apprentices to respectable trades, such as building, or as domestic servants (there were over 120,000 domestic servants in London in the mid 18th century). Working hours were long: builders might work 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants worked 80 hour weeks. Many young people worked as prostitutes (the majority of prostitutes in London were between 15 and 22 years of age).

An important development during the Victorian era was the improvement of communication links. Stagecoaches, canals, steam ships and most notably the railways all allowed goods, raw materials and people to be moved about, rapidly facilitating trade and industry. Trains became another important factor ordering society, with "railway time" being the standard by which clocks were set throughout Britain. Steam ships such as the SS Great Britain and SS Great Western made international travel more common but also advanced trade, so that in Britain it was not just the luxury goods of earlier times that were imported into the country but essentials and raw materials such as corn and cotton from the United States and meat and wool from Australia.

Popular forms of entertainment varied by social class. Victorian Britain, like the periods before it, was interested in literature (see Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Brontë and her sisters and William Makepeace Thackeray), theatre and the arts (see Aesthetic movement and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood), and music, drama, and opera were widely attended. Michael Balfe was the most popular British grand opera composer of the period, while the most popular musical theatre was a series of fourteen comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan, although there was also musical burlesque and the beginning of Edwardian musical comedy in the 1890s. Drama ranged from low comedy to Shakespeare (see Henry Irving). There were, however, other forms of entertainment. Gentlemen went to dining clubs, like the Beefsteak club or the Savage club. Gambling at cards in establishments popularly called casinos was wildly popular during the period: so much so that evangelical and reform movements specifically targeted such establishments in their efforts to stop gambling, drinking, and prostitution.

Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organisations, clergymen, and single women became increasingly concerned about prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil".

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, social scientist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Marx's work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. He is one of the founders of sociology and social science. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894).
 
I like the child labour idea... a group of kids that work in a factory or some industry banding together for survival. Kind of like a Newsies vibe...
 
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Hmm maybe a group of people employed by the crown to break up a slave trader ring stretching from Sierra Leone to Britain that would allow us to explore other parts of the Empire if we so chose.
 
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Sounds good! Anyone have any idea how we're all going to meet then? (or should that be saved for later when we create our characters)
 
So the idea is that people employed by the crown (wealthy or not) are sent to break up a slave trader ring?
 
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