'Victorian Values', My Bottom!

As if to illuminate what false memories nostalgia can engender Doug told me about a fellow paramedic who was born into the Victorian era and went into service. He was very into servility and the tugging of the old forelock. He worked for 'landed gentry', started off as a footman and rose to the dizzy heights of Butler. (How the humble had risen. I wonder if he suffered from vertigo.) He described the initiation of each new female employee into the household. She would be forced to permit the male employees of the household to..um..'have their wicked way with her'. She had to succumb to their demands. These girls were very young and to be dismissed and sent home in disgrace would have been mortifying.

Stories such as this blow the myth of superior Victorian morality out of the water.