Victorian England

The Victorian Era is from 1837 to 1901. This collection takes a small sample set of films from any era that take place in the Victorian Era. The cinematic Victorian era will usually have elements of a monochromatic palette, set against thick fog and dark streets. The aesthetic is of the world's premier empire, the hegemon of the day, and it happened to correspond with the maturing industrial revolution. So a lot of the aesthetic is of unregulated industrial effects everywhere that grew quicker than they could be addressed. Too many people with not enough infrastructure.

Child labor wasn't actually unprotected throughout the era — the first Factory Act passed in 1833, before Victoria even took the throne, and more followed in 1844, 1847, 1874, and 1878, each one raising the minimum age and cutting hours a little further. But it only covered textile mills and mines, enforcement was weak, and huge swaths of child labor — domestic service, chimney sweeping, street trades, anything done in the home or a small workshop — stayed basically unregulated for most of the century. Poor Laws and workhouses filled in the rest. There were entire neighborhoods of the poor that were basically unpoliced — the St Giles rookery was a literal no-go area for police for the better part of a hundred years, and parts of Whitechapel were still difficult enough to police in 1888 that Jack the Ripper had room to work. The famous London fog was actually industrial pollution — coal smoke mixed into the natural mist, thick enough to earn its own name, the "pea-souper."