Clockwork Stories

Though Victoria shared her name with the reigning monarch, the similarities ended there. She very much doubted the ruler would condone—or even contemplate—an outfit such as the one she wore. The ornate gild of the mirror in her chambers framed a woman brimming with inner confidence, unashamed to express her sexuality where others chastised her loose morals, preferring to toe societal norms in dress and values. Cupping the...

“Hello, Miss.” The boy was persistent, if nothing else, he had tried to stop me three times this week. “My Master is looking for a nurse to sell something for him,” he pestered. “What precisely does he want to sell?” I enquired. “Don’t rightly know, Miss, he won’t explain what it does. But he is a proper Gentleman, a Doctor, foreign one though. German I thinks,” the urchin explained. I would have no truck with it and cont...

Steam was King! Steam was clean, the cheap power to the masses. From the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, steam drove everything. And in that time, inventions were all powered by steam.Big and small, steam was there, the driving force of all industry. And along with steam came the fashions of the time, heavy calico shirts, and dresses, corsets, and trusses for the bodies, hobnail boots, a...