Stephen Fry's Victorian Secrets

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Buy Now for £19.99

About this listen

On the surface, the Victorian age is one of propriety, industry, prudishness and piety. But scratch the surface and you’ll find scandal, sadism, sex, madness, malice and murder.

Presented by Stephen Fry, this series delves deep into a period of time we think we know, to discover an altogether darker reality. The stories we’re told offer a different perspective on an era which underwent massive social change. As education, trade, technology and culture blossomed, why was there an undercurrent of the ‘forbidden’ festering beneath Victorian society?

Across 12 episodes, Stephen presents a series of true accounts of the dangerous low life and debauched high life of Victorian Britain.

This is an Audible Original Podcast. Free for members. You can download all 12 episodes to your Library now.

Stephen FryJohn WoolfNick BakerAudible Originals

Europe

Great Britain

Europe Great Britain

We meet a Victorian woman who had more victims than Jack the Ripper, who killed people who were her nearest and supposedly dearest. She took out insurances on her close relatives, then she killed them, and then she moved on and started anew, elsewhere.

In March 1849 former slave Henry Brown, travelled from Virginia to find his freedom in Philadelphia. His method of travel? A box, around three feet long and two feet wide sent via private mail.

Oscar Jennings believed that one in four medical men were addicted to morphine in the 1890s. A lot of opium addiction was a result of the medical profession and their prescriptions.

Infants who were considered to be damaged at birth might be subjected to special ‘treatments’ such as the ‘Animal Bath’. These treatments included the slaughter of hares, where the still warm animal was wrapped around the deformity, the aim being that the strength of the wild animal would somehow transfer to the child.

There was a growing fear of being buried alive. Tales of moanings from graveyards, the insides of coffin lids being scratched and dented by the demented undead…even births of children in coffins haunted the Victorians.

The beard question was an important one for Victorian men. The pro-bread movement believed that beards could help prevent colds by filtering out the germs from the air, or could be draped over the head in the summer to be used as a parasol.

Critic reviews

★★★★☆ (The Times)

"Scandalous bedtime storyteller Stephen Fry's new podcast bursts the image of the Victorians as prudish and pious... Debauchery, told with delicious relish." (The Guardian)

"Fantastic...[from] the ever eloquent Stephen Fry." (BBC Radio 4)

Audible Sessions with Stephen Fry

Behind the scenes with the presenter of Victorian Secrets

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Every chapter in this book left me wide-awake but questioning what happened back in the 1820s book was astounding and actually kept me awake to hear the end of the chapter my best purchase so far