Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde: “The Ape Within”

Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde is a chilling allegory of the duality of human nature that rang true for many Victorians when it was published. It is the tale of a doctor who experiments in a lab with his dark side; he creates a concoction that turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde, his hideously deformed alter ego, who performs the monstrous crimes that Dr. Jeckyll can only fantasize about. According to Professor Harrington’s lecture, the story was extraordinarily popular when it was published, and it reflected the uneasy sentiment of the late Victorian era. It falls under the category of the late Victorian Gothic revival tradition, according to Professor Harrington, which was characterized by a preoccupation with “monstrous crime” and “evil genius,” horror and terror portrayed through “spooky” settings and situations, the use of embedded narratives, and, crucially, a focus on the dark inner psyche of mankind and a connection with evolutionist/degenerationist themes.

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde contains all of these, capitalizing on the preoccupations and fears of Victorian England. Interestingly many of these fears stemmed from newly emerging ideas and understandings of human evolution and man’s place in nature, or what might loosely be termed “Darwinian” concepts. The fact was becoming clearer and clearer that man was not much different, evolutionarily speaking, than a gorilla, and this was intensely frightening for many people (it still is very frightening to some people, even today). The anxiety that the only thing separating man from beast is the “thin veil of civilization” was played upon in Stevenson’s work, in which Hyde represents the simian, beastly creature lurking beneath the surface of every self-respecting Victorian man and woman. To me, Jeckyll’s mad and reckless experimentation with science represents the fears that people had about science taking things too far; the worry that if science had proven that men were no more than mere beasts already, what other evil and monstrous things could it uncover? This fear and distrust of modernization, technology, and scientific innovation is reflected throughout the ambivalent end of the Victorian era.

Tropical Medicine: Justification for Imperialism

Paul’s lecture on Victorian-era tropical medicine and its connection to imperialism was really interesting to me. I find it fascinating that tropical medicine was both formed out of necessity because of imperialism, and came to be a justification for the very existence of the empire as the field was developed.

Life for British imperialists living in colonies was very difficult. Acclimatization was slow for most and impossible for some; colonies came to be known as “the white man’s grave” because of the vast numbers of people dropping dead from tropical diseases. Living in an imperial colony was a risky venture, and there was a generally accepted high mortality rate among colonists. Malaria, in particular, was responsible for many of the deaths, and two British scientists, Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross, began studying the unforgiving disease. According to Paul’s lecture, Manson’s approach was laboratory research-based; he founded the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1898, and focused his efforts on labs in the UK. Ross, however, took more of a hands-on approach, preferring to do his work “on the ground,” with labor-intensive measures to eliminate malaria in India. Paul noted that this marked the beginning of the divide between medicine and public health, with Mason’s approach representing medicine, and Ross’s representing public health.

The use of tropical medicine specifically, and science in general, as a justification or explanation for imperialism is really quite interesting, and parallels can be drawn with more modern movements of imperialism that have taken place in the name of democratization. English natural philosophers felt that it was their duty to spread scientific enlightenment to the third world; Christianity, which had once been the main excuse for imperialism, was largely replaced by the seemingly more legitimate excuses of scientific knowledge, medicine, and modernization.

Darwin's Personification of Natural Selection

In his landmark work On the Origin of Species, Darwin introduces his concept of natural selection as the driving force behind evolution. Although it was published as a mere abstract for his much longer and more detailed manuscript, Origins does provide a vast array of evidence supporting natural selection. Professor Durant talked a lot about the reception of Origins by the public, and in particular, the wider impact it had on people’s understanding of theology. However, he also noted that Darwin took great pains to avoid controversy by never explicitly referring to “God” anywhere in the book, and by keeping quiet his thoughts on how natural selection and evolution apply to the human race. People read much more into Origins than Darwin had anticipated, and the larger implications for religion and the role of the human race were hotly debated, despite his avoidance of these issues.

In reading Chapter IV of Origins, however, I was struck by Darwin’s personification of the force of natural selection throughout. He constantly uses action verbs to describe the work of nature, and he even refers to a being “Nature,” with a capital “n.” Indeed, in comparing the act of natural selection to that of artificial selection performed by humans, Darwin is, whether consciously or not, giving this being “Nature” human-like qualities and agency. For example, Darwin states, “Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her…” Perhaps this was merely a device of Victorian writing, to refer to inanimate things as “she,” but to me, it seems as if Darwin is attempting, by giving natural selection animate qualities, to leave room for people to interpret this driving evolutionary force as God, if they so choose, as if he is apologizing for the inevitable religious implications of his theory.

The Charles Darwin Correspondence Project

On July 20th, we visited Cambridge University, and had a brief introduction to the Darwin Correspondence Project at the Cambridge University Library. The Darwin Correspondence project was founded in 1974, with the goal of finding and publishing transcripts of all letters to and from Charles Darwin during his life. There are many challenges in undertaking such an ambitious project. Not only did the researchers have to track down every letter that Darwin had written, but they also had to attempt to put all the correspondence in chronological order, which was a challenge because many of the letters did not bear dates, but merely denotations such as “Sunday afternoon.” After collecting all the letters and piecing together the chronological puzzle, researchers faced the daunting task of deciphering the handwriting of the letters and transcribing them. Darwin had infamously illegible handwriting, but as the experts at Cambridge told us, with enough practice, reading it becomes much easier. According to the project’s website, they have located around 14,500 letters exchanged by Darwin with over 2,000 people around the world. The letters are being published in hardcopy, as well as online, chronologically by year.

The website states, “Darwin's correspondence provides us with an invaluable source of information, not only about his own intellectual development and social network, but about Victorian science and society in general.” It is true that his letters and private notes, of which the University has many, provide much insight into his ideas and scientific work, as well as his social relationships. I find his correspondence with Alfred Russel Wallace to be particularly interesting; because of the somewhat awkward and uncomfortable situation Darwin found himself in after Wallace sent him his ideas on natural selection, it is really fascinating to read the letters between the two men. There is a sense of self-conscious politeness in many of the letters from Darwin to Wallace, and he seems to choose his words delicately.

One question that arose in my mind as we listened to the archivists tell us about the project is the issue of privacy. Professor Durant posed a similar question later on, noting that many of the letters between Darwin and Huxley were quite intimate, as the two were close friends. The woman compared these letters to an email-type exchange, and I pondered how I would feel if my own emails were published in 200 years. I wonder whether Darwin ever thought that his most private letters and notes would be available to the masses as they are now, just a click away on a website.

The Divergence of Mental Illness in the Late 19th Century

The late 19th century saw a rapid decline of the state of asylums in Great Britain. The image of the grand, impressive asylum was now one of decaying grandeur. I find this backwards progress to be very intriguing and baffling, because the field of mental medicine had come so far in the previous few decades. However, a few factors of the time led to the downward spiral of psychiatry, including asylum overcrowding, the emergence of a Darwinian perspective on mental illness, and increasing pessimism and ambivalence toward the progress and modernity of the era.

The idea that humans are descended from beasts took its toll on the practice of psychiatry at the time. Madness was now thought to be inherited and incurable, a manifestation of the “beast within” rising to the surface of a person’s character. Interestingly, mental illness diagnoses diverged along class lines at the time, with low-class criminals being characterized as “degenerate,” and the wealthier insane classified by the less-harsh term “neurotic.”

The explanation of degeneracy is easily understood in a cultural context; Max Nordau wrote in 1892 about how the rapid modernization of Victorian England brought with it an ugly underbelly of crime and insanity. There was a movement towards studying the physiognomy of criminals, in an attempt to discern some underlying physical characteristic that demonstrated the degeneration of an individual.

On the other side of the class divide, the diagnosis of “bad nerves” became much more common with the development of the field of neurology. The wealthy and upper-class could avoid a stay in an asylum if they were merely “neurotic.” This “epidemic of bad nerves,” as Professor Harrington called it in class, can also be clearly attributed to modernization and the new culture of hurry, worry, and technology. It is very interesting to me that psychologists and neurologists at the time seemed to have understood the cultural roots of these diseases, but characterized them in such different ways for the different classes.

The SS Great Britain

On Thursday, July 17th, we visited the SS Great Britian in Bristol. The SS Great Britain is widely considered to be the first modern ship, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel with an iron hull and a steam engine-powered propeller. At the museum next to the Great Britain, one of the displays in particular was fascinating to me, because it related to a question that I posed in class about the relationship between the military and engineering in the Victorian era. I was interested in this relationship because today, most, if not all, technological and engineering innovation originates in the military, whereas most of the innovations of the Victorian time we have learned about have come from the private sector. Professor Durant noted that Brunel did work closely with the navy on the development of the ship, but the fact that the ship considered to be the first real modern ship was developed in the private sector rather than the navy is still intriguing to me. The display at the museum described how during the Crimean War, the government was short of vessels to transport troops and supplies, and it began chartering passenger vessels. In 1854, the SS Great Britain was enlisted, and carried 44,000 British, French, and Turkish troops over the course of its service in the Crimean War.

The Battle of the Gauges

In class and in the readings for July 16th, we learned about Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his Great Western Railway, which is the route we actually took on our trip to Bristol. I was very interested in the so-called “Battle of the Gauges” that took place among the railroad companies during the mid-19th century. This conflict arose from the fact that during the railroad expansion between 1820-1850, different railroad companies were building tracks of different gauges, or sizes. The trains that ran on these tracks had to have wheels that fit the gauge of the track, so that passengers often had to switch trains mid-journey to ride on a differently gauged track. Eventually two gauges emerged as the most widely used in Great Britain: Brunel’s 7’ gauge, or wide gauge, and Stephenson’s 4’ 8.5”, or narrow gauge. The need for a standard-sized gauge was becoming apparent, and a debate raged over which gauge would win out as the standard. Brunel’s wide gauge allowed for larger and more comfortable coaches, and faster and smoother trains, but it was also much more expensive. Stephenson’s narrow gauge had strong precedents and was more widely used than the wide gauge, and it was also cheaper to build and operate than the wide gauge. In the end, Brunel died young, and the advantages of the narrow gauge won out over those of the wide gauge; 4’ 8.5” was adopted as a national, and later international, railroad standard.

There are interesting parallels between this historical anecdote and the advent of Bazalgette’s sewage system in London, which Professor Durant mentioned in class. Bazalgette famously calculated quite accurately what size sewage pipes would be necessary for a reasonable estimate of population growth in England; he doubled that number and that was the measurement he used for the sewage pipes. If he had not taken the initiative and doubled his calculation, the sewage pipes would have had to been replaced in the 1960’s, but Bazalgette’s sewage pipes are still used to this day in London because of his leap of faith. Had the wide gauge railway won out in the Battle of the Gauges, trains today would be able to do amazing things. They would be immeasureably more efficient, faster, and more comfortable. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of the London sewage system, cost efficiency won out over foresight, and we will most likely be stuck with narrow gauge railways for the foreseeable future.

Bethlem Royal Hospital

Statue adorning the entrance to Bethlem at it's Southwark location

I really enjoyed our class excursion to Bethlem Royal Hospital. The lecture given by the archivist illustrated in a tangible way many of the points made in both the Showalter and Duffin readings. He spoke about the changing class structure of asylums in England during the Victorian era—he noted that after Bethlem’s move to Southwark in 1815, and particularly by the mid-19th century, Bethlem began to admit only a “better class of patient.” With the advent of the network of county asylums, to which the pauper-lunatics were shuttled off, Bethlem was able to begin to escape its reputation as “Bedlam.” As Showalter describes in his “Domesticating Insanity,” the term “madhouse” was phased out and replaced with kinder, gentler terms, such as “retreat,” or “asylum.”

Additionally, the archivist mentioned the concept of “moral management” that became the standard method of treatment in Bethlem during the time. In a shift away from restraint-based treatment methods, asylums began to use “moral” treatments that attempted to address the emotional and mental side of illness. Both Duffin and Showalter discuss moral management, with Showalter describing it as a system that enforced good habits and taught self-control, rather than merely controlling the physical symptoms of insanity. Our archivist also noted that the architecture of the hospital at its current location is set up in home-style villas. This could be considered a type of “moral architecture” of a more modern kind than what was practiced in the Victorian era. Moral architecture, as an extension of moral management, attempts to expose patients to benevolent influences, according to Showalter.

One thing I found fascinating about the Showalter reading was the description of the Lunatics Ball. Showalter writes, “Seen at such a close range and in holiday settings, madness was no longer a gross and unmistakable inversion of appropriate conduct, but a collection of slightly disquieting gestures and postures.” This sentiment is similar to what our archivist (I’m terribly sorry I can’t recall his name) said to us after we read the cases in the archives—that the mental illnesses of these patients were usually not the defining factor of in their lives, and that often times they went on to lead perfectly normal lives after their stay in Bethlem.

A case book from Bedlam in 1889

Sir James Young Simpson: Champion of Women's Health

Simpson's ledger, detailing his first time using chloroform during a birth

James Young Simpson was a 19th century Scottish obstetrician who pioneered the use of chloroform as an anesthesia after experimenting with its properties on his dinner guests. He is an important figure in the history of medicine in Edinburgh; he attended the University of Edinburgh and held his infamous chloroform party, at which all of the guests wound up passed out under the table after sniffing the stuff, in his house on Queen Street. The progressive and dynamic environment of Edinburgh had an obvious effect on Simpson’s character and style of practicing medicine.

Simpson's own collection of books on women's diseases

He is famous for his hard work and brilliance in gynecology and obstetrics; while many doctors at the time shied away from “women’s issues,” Simpson was an advocate for women’s health and safety, especially during childbirth. He pioneered the use of chloroform during childbirth, despite often harsh criticism from opponents of the practice. An interesting conflict in medicine at the time was the divergence between a doctor’s duty to protect human life and his obligation to ease a patient’s suffering. Pernick’s “The Calculus of Suffering” outlines the conflicting opinions of doctors on how much pain, if any, should be alleviated during surgeries (and other procedures, such as childbirth). Other issues, like religion, played a role in the debate, with many arguing that the Bible tells us that women are meant to suffer the pain of childbirth to pay for Eve’s original sin. Allegedly, Simpson responded to these claims by noting that God put Adam to sleep before removing his rib, and thus he must approve of the use of anesthetics. Simpson’s discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform had an enormous impact on the medical community, and the use of chloroform in childbirth and surgery became widespread, particularly after Queen Victoria used it during the birth of a child.

The Dark Side of Anatomy

Greyfriar's Cemetery, Edinburgh

The grave robbing that took place in the United Kingdom during the 19th century has fascinated me ever since I took an English class on portrayals of crime in Victorian literature. It was really exciting to get to visit Edinburgh, the site of the most infamous bodysnatching scandal of the time. What I loved about Edinburgh was the complexity of its history; despite being arguably the most important and renowned medical city in the 18th and 19th century, its past is shrouded in darkness and murder. The very medieval feel of the city, complete with multiple castles and dark alleyways, lends itself to the shadowy history surrounding the Burke and Hare saga.


I was surprised when we got to the top of Arthur’s Seat when Professor Harrington told us that there were at one point 16 coffins set up there to commemorate Burke and Hare’s murder victims. Even at the top of a gorgeous and sunny mountain overlooking the city, we could not escape the legacy of the infamous murders, performed in the name of science. The theme of Edinburgh’s darker side is also seen in the work of Robert Louis Stevenson. His short story “The Body Snatcher” is a chilling fictional account of doctors and students involved in the theft and sale of bodies for the sake of anatomical research, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde is a horrifying exploration of the dark side of the human psyche.

Metal grate in Greyfriars Cemetery used to protect the fresh grave from robbers.

Crossness Sewage Pump: Highly Underappreciated

Joseph Bazalgette’s invention of the sewage system in London was undoubtedly the most important event for public health in the Victorian era. What surprises me, after learning the history of its creation and seeing the Crossness pumping station up close, is how little the average person probably thinks about something that has had such a huge effect on their life. This conflict between how important the sewage system is to modern life and how rarely most people ever give thought to it is reflected strikingly at the Crossness pumping station.

Bazalgette’s sewage system vastly improved the quality of life in London in the 19th century. It was the death knell for hygiene-related diseases like cholera, it led to the convergence of germ theory and the emergence of the new field of epidemiology, and it ensured the viability of urban living. It affected the lives of Londoners in even more direct ways, transforming the Thames altogether, from a stinking, muddy cesspool, to a clean, enclosed river.

The Crossness pumping station was a really eye-opening experience. Despite the huge historical significance of this place and the sheer grandeur and beauty of the engine room, it is essentially an overlooked landmark. It is certainly not a popular tourist attraction, and most Londoners probably have never even heard of it. The display area is dingy and small, with a few photographs and posters of information. This is not at all to deride the efforts of the hardworking Crossness volunteers; on the contrary, the state of the station reflects the divide between the enthusiasts who put countless hours in to restoring engines and leading tour groups, and the millions of Londoners who have no idea of the significance of this sewage station to their own lives. I was glad to hear that the station received a grant to renovate and create a proper museum. Hopefully this will allow the hard work that the volunteers have put in to be experienced by a much wider audience.

Homeostasis in Medicine, Biology, and Engineering

One theme that has come up a few times this past week is that of homeostasis. Professor Durant mentioned as a side note in class that homeostasis as a concept in physiology was not widely understood during the Victorian era. Nineteenth century physicians realized the basics behind the concept (namely, that a body became ill when its balance was offset in some way), and this view is reflected in the widespread use of treatments that consider the four Galenic humours crucial to the health of the patient. When a patient had a fever, he was bled, to reset the balance of the blood humour. While the treatment was technically ineffective in nearly all cases, it shows that physicians were thinking along the right track in terms of mechanisms of the body.

We have seen examples of better understanding of the concept of homeostasis in areas other than physiology. Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection is a perfect example of this. They came to realize that species are gradually “selected” for traits that allow them to survive and reproduce. If any species strays too far from the “set point” of qualities necessary for survival, it will not be able to compete and will eventually die out.

Professor Durant noted that Wallace explained the phenomenon of natural selection using the metaphor of a steam engine governor. A steam engine governor, just like the one we saw on the Prince Albert engine at the Crossness sewage pumping station, consists of a spinning bobbin that regulates the speed of the engine using centrifugal force; if it is going too fast, the weights move farther from the center to balance and restore the set point speed. Homeostasis is an important theme in many scientific disciplines, and it is interesting that it seems to have been a relatively novel concept to Victorian scientists.



The green rotating device is the governor for the Prince Albert steam engine at Crossness.

Bloodletting As Symbolism

Victorian doctors practiced what has come to be known as “heroic medicine,” which refers to extremely aggressive and often ineffective treatment methods popular at the time. These include things like amputations, bloodletting, and sweating. Although these treatments could be extremely painful and difficult to recover from, they were the only options at the time and were very rarely effective. The impression I got from many of these treatments was that they provided more of a symbolic comfort from a condition, rather than an actual treatment of the condition. This is the case especially in bloodletting, as performed in the Galenic tradition of the four humours.

It is easy to see the symbolism in many of the Victorian treatments from a historical perspective, but I am sure that at the time, the doctors believed they were making a difference, and the patient believed they were getting better. The very idea of the four humours, which has existed in societies dating back to the ancient Greek, seems to have symbolic, rather than practical, application. 19th century bloodletting followed the Galenic tradition and, assuming fever was caused by too much blood in the system, called for methods of “cupping” and bleeding to drain off some of the excess blood. This act seems to me more of a symbolic act of letting out the sickness through a break in the skin, than an actual cure. It is similar, in my mind, to the ancient act of trepanning, where a hole would be drilled in the skull of a patient in order to let the demons out of their mind.

Last semester, I took an English class called Crime and Horror in the Victorian Era, and the professor described “horror” as the sensation that one gets when one realizes that the boundary of the skin is breakable. “Horror” is the goosebumps that you get on your skin when you see a graphic or bloody image of a mutilated corpse, or when you look at your arm and realize you’ve been cut and see blood there. This fascination with horror, according to my professor, was reflected in the literature of the time, and, I would argue, the medical treatment of bloodletting as well.

The "Amateur" Scientists

One thing that I find very fascinating about the Victorian era of science is how accessible it was to the layman. As opposed to today, where the practice of true science is reserved for those who have endured years of schooling and hold many degrees from prominent institutions, in the 19th century, anyone with a passion and some spare time could be a "scientist" and produce important and significant work. This obviously only extends so far; the lowest classes who worked 18-hour days could not afford to spend their time digging fossils at the shore. However, much of the important work of the time came from what we would consider “amateur” scientists, and the line dividing the hobbyist from the professional was much less distinct than it is today.

In class, Professor Durant lectured on geology as one example of the accessibility of science during the 19th century. Nowhere was this clearer than in the Museum of Natural History, where we saw actual fossils exhumed by Mary Anning, the quintessential “amateur” scientist. Hearing about her accomplishments and contributions to paleontology is nothing compared to actually seeing the enormous fossils she discovered in Lyme Regis. It is amazing to think that this young woman, who dug fossils to support herself and her family, was actually partially responsible for the discovery of extinction!

A plesiosaur fossil exhumed by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis. Oh, and Mike.

Another “Cinderella story” of sorts is the tale of Alfred Russel Wallace. With only a limited secondary school education, Wallace eventually produced one of the most important contributions to the growing field of evolutionary science. He was not trained as a scientist at all, and yet his work in such remote places as the South Pacific, South America, and Africa led to his discovery of the natural selection process in evolution. While his legacy has been overshadowed by the wealthier and properly educated Charles Darwin, Wallace is a prime example of the openness of scientific study during the Victorian Era.

Some of Wallace's butterfly collection

The Changing Role of Religion

Professor Durant listed the “big ideas” of the Victorian era during our first session together. One of these big ideas was providence, or the preoccupation with religion, and the notion that we live under the care and governance of God. This concept has been evident throughout our studies this week, especially in medicine. However, the impression I got from the readings and excursions this week was that the presence of religion in medicine and science was not a given in the Victorian era; rather, that the influence of religion was waning, and a new era of reliance on natural history and science was being born.

This is not to say that religion did not play a large role in medicine and science. On our medical walking tour of London with Sue, we saw Guy’s Hospital. Sue told us that without a recommendation from a church, a patient would not be admitted to the hospital. The Royal Free Hospital was set up as a dispensery for the poor who would not be admitted to a traditional Christian hospital because they did not have a recommendation. We then saw the women’s operating theater, which was set up in the attic of a chapel, symbolically demonstrating the seemingly inexorable link between religion and medicine. Additionally, we learned in class that the two main medical schools, Oxford and Cambridge, had close ties with the Church of England.

However, clearly ideas were shifting during this period. One notable aspect of medicine during this time is the doctor as a heroic figure. While doctors could often do little to truly cure their patients, they were able to comfort them and be with them until their death. In the past, if a child were gravely ill, a religious figure would sit at his bedside and allow for safe passage into the next world. But in the Victorian era, the comforting figure at the bedside became the doctor. This represents a shift away from placing faith in religion to placing it in science.

Thomas Huxley’s “lay-sermon” captures the changing sentiment of the era quite well. He talks about the great tragedies of the 1660’s: the plague, and the great fire. Huxley then goes on to boldly claim that tragedies of this scale have been avoided in the modern era due to advances in science. He emphasizes the importance of the study of natural history and warns, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.” There is an interesting interplay between religion and science here. Huxley urges against blind faith in religion, but displays his own faith in natural history with an intense and devout zeal.

The Evolution of Engines

On the first day of class, Professor Harrington proposed an overarching theme of the two courses: that “the Victorian era witnessed, for good or ill, the making of the modern world.” We have already seen many examples of this transition to modern technology, medicine, ideas, and ways of thinking about the world. On Friday, we paid a visit to the Science Museum, which has an entire gallery entitled “Making the Modern World,” and nowhere are the vast advances and modernization of the Victorian era made more apparent. However, I was struck by another gallery in the Science Museum that demonstrates, in a very immediate and visceral way, how one innovation can have an enormous impact on the development of new technologies and, consequently, the modernization of a society.

The gallery entitled “Energy Hall” showcases the evolution of steam engines, with the actual engines sitting around the hall silently like giant dinosaur skeletons. The collection begins with Thomas Newcomen’s atmospheric engine from the early 1700s. The atmospheric engine constantly produced steam in an atmospheric tank, which would then supply the machine with energy. This early steam engine was one of the first to be widely used in commercial ventures and industry, and set off a trend that would alter the face of industry forever. The gallery then leads you through the development and refinement of the steam engine, from James Watt’s and Matthew Boulton’s double-cylinder engine all the way to the much more efficient (and dangerous) high-pressure engines, first developed by Richard Trevithick in the early 19th century.

Steam power was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. It led to the spread of factories in large cities and simultaneously lowered the demand for human labor in agriculture, thus leading to the massive urbanization that took place in the Victorian era. It also led to advancements in transportation, including steam ships and locomotion, which increased communication and globalization, and consequently, enabled a much more free exchange of ideas and knowledge across borders. Thanks to the steam engine, these factors were all in place to create the massive wave of modernization that swept over Victorian London in the 19th century.