Life at the turn of the century was obviously very different from that today. The Victorian era was a period of great innovation and invention and many advances in technology, such as gas lighting and photography had only recently, or were just beginning to, reach the lives of everyday people. Information on the following lifestyle themes gives a good feeling for how people such as the Bowlers would have lived and what they would have experienced on a day-to-day basis.

1. Heating & Lighting
Victorian homes could be cold and draughty places. Coal cost families around £5.00 a year and householders used it as economically as possible. Fires were lit in the main rooms between October and March. They were only lit in bedrooms if there was illness in the house.
In middle class homes, lighting the fires fell to the 'maid of all work'. This involved a 5.30am start followed by regular trips to the coal cellar throughout the day to keep them burning.
Lighting was provided by gas lamps, oil lamps or candles.

Gas lighting, invented in the 1790s, was initially used in factories and streets. By the 1840s it reached grand houses and by 1900 it was installed in smaller suburban homes. New mass-produced gas mantles and penny-in-the-slot meters (1890) made gas brighter and more affordable to people on middle incomes. At Elliscombe Road gas lights were installed in the downstairs rooms. Some doctors believed that gas lighting gave off 'noxious fumes' and so was inappropriate for bedrooms. In some houses only the servants' rooms were fitted with it.

Gas lighting was a fixed light form. People had to gather under the central roof pendant to make the best of the light or use candles and oil lamps. Fortunately oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in the 1850s. It was developed to form 'paraffin' which fuelled lamps and made paraffin wax candles. These were also cheaper and brighter. Few people had electric lighting by 1900. It was very expensive to install. Only after the development of the cheap filament lamp in 1911 were more people able to afford it and many did not have electricity until the 1950s.

2.Clothing & Laundry
Without modern detergents and synthetics, Victorian clothes were hard to look after. Dresses were made from silks or velvets that were difficult to wash. Some gowns, made from delicate mohair or plaid, had to be completely unpicked each time they needed cleaning and dress protectors were worn under the arms to prevent sweat marks. Household guides offered a number of solutions for removing everyday stains. Gin, soap, egg and honey were used to lift marks from black satin. Wine and ammonia removed mildew.

Beneath the outer garments Victorians wore underwear of cotton, linen and wool. Woollen undies were developed in the 1880s by Dr Jaeger. They were thought to 'breathe' and to be healthy next to the skin.

Linen was sent to the laundry or washed at home. Cleaning and pressing clothes could take two days of the working week. It was a vital part of the household routine. On Saturday night, clothes would be sorted and put to soak in water with lye or soda. On Monday the wash boiler (copper) would be lit and garments would be either boiled or washed in a tub using a dolly or scrubbing board. Without detergents Victorians made soap jelly from shredded and boiled soap.

After rinsing, whites were 'blued' by dipping them in liquid tinted by blue-bag. This was made from the indigo plant and made yellowish fabric blue/white. Before drying, clothes were put through the mangle. The rollers were famous for crushing fingers.

Ironing and finishing clothes often ran into Tuesday morning. Garments were first starched to make them stiff and glossy, then housewives used flat irons to press them. Made from cast metal, the irons were heated on the range. They were heavy and hot to work with. Special irons were developed to finish lace and linen frills but the invention of the electric iron was still a decade away.

3. Health & Hygiene
The Nineteenth Century saw major advances in medical science. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur and his contemporaries had discovered that germs caused disease and in the 1860s Joseph Lister introduced antiseptic into hospital wards and operating theatres. Together with anaesthetics (available from the 1840s), these discoveries made surgery increasingly more successful. Trips to the dentist also became less painful.

In the days before the National Health Service however, illness could be costly for any family. Many people kept costs down by using the chemist or herbalist. Household guides of the time were full of recommendations for the home medicine chest. Some could be dangerous in themselves. Arsenic tablets were advised for curing consumption, cocaine for hayfever and nitro glycerine for angina.

Personal hygiene was also important to health. By 1900, baths were increasingly considered healthy however, the ideal was felt to be a daily cold bath and only a twice weekly hot bath. Keeping hair and teeth clean was hard without the help of modern shampoos and toothpastes. The Sunlight Yearbook of 1897 recommended a mix of eggs and soda water as a six weekly rinse for the hair. Teeth would be brushed with borax or bicarbonate of soda. Periodical scrubbings with brickdust kept tartar at bay.

Women's health was a real cause for concern. Most advice books warned against the dangers of tightly laced corsets. This was believed to cause red noses and the compression of vital organs. However, many women continued to wear corsets into the 1950s. Cosmetics also carried a warning. Some powders and paints contained damaging chemicals like white lead. Ladies were advised to use only powdered starch or chalk for their noses and rain water and oatmeal as a facial wash. Anything else was considered like the 'coarse daubing of the scene painter'.

4. Food & Cooking
In 1868, the American PG Armour successfully launched tinned meats on to the world market. Then in the 1880s, refrigerated ships brought cheap meats to Britain from Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. Together with improved rail links these developments ensured that the consumer of 1900 had access to a wider, more affordable range of products than ever before. But the seasons continued to decide much of what was on offer in the shops. In 1898 you could only buy larks (small birds) between October and December whilst peaches were on sale from September to October.

The main concern about food was a fear that produce had been 'adulterated' or interfered with. Food scares which purported to prove that tradesmen mixed, for example, animal brains with milk to make cream, resulted in a body of feeling that resulted in the Food Adulteration Act which enabled dishonest tradesmen to be prosecuted. However, many people still found their sausages bulked out with bread or their bread flour weighted with ground chalk.

By 1900 some things had changed. For instance, vegetarianism had become a growing movement. National figures like George Bernard Shaw supported the trend, ridiculed only fifty years earlier in magazines like Punch. Mrs Beeton included vegetarian recipes in her cookbooks of the 1890s and nutritionists agreed that vegetables were as good for you as meat. For the working classes however, meat remained the cheapest staple diet. The biggest problem in the kitchen at this time was keeping food fresh. With no refrigerators, housewives had to make the most of their groceries and cookbooks offered hundreds of ways to turn leftovers into tasty dishes.

Cooking appliances could be a challenge too. Most middle class families had a cooking range. This needed regular fuel cleaning and stocking to ensure that it worked properly. Many were made from thin sheet metal and cooked unevenly. Every appliance had its own idiosyncrasy that the housewife or maid had to master.

A solution for some was to hire or buy one of the newly available gas ranges. Unfortunately these were expensive to run and were responsible for a number of fatal house explosions. Only after technical developments like the thermostat became commonplace, just after the First World War, did domestic gas cookers finally take off.

5. Family & Leisure
By 1900, family life had taken on a fairer and more relaxed character than earlier in the century. Books of the time encouraged new husbands to rule by love rather than fear and legislation like the Married Womans Property Act of 1882-3 brought equality to the home by financially liberating women from the 'ownership' of their husbands. Child mortality was on the decline and standards of lower middle class housing were on the up. Families on middle incomes now had a chance to indulge in hobbies and leisure pursuits.

Before television, reading was perhaps the most popular pastime and Victoria's reign saw the production of some of the worlds greatest novels. In 1900, Charles Dickens was still read with enthusiasm and new popular authors included Anthony Hope (Prisoner of Zenda), Rudyard Kipling (Plain Tales from the Hills) and Rider Haggard (King Solomon's Mines). Periodicals were produced by the million and audiences waited with baited breath for such gems as Conan Doyle's latest Sherlock Holmes adventure in the Strand Magazine.

As well as reading, advice books recommended all types of exercise. Cassells' Book of the Household suggested a daily nine-mile walk and talked of the benefits of golf, tennis, football rugby and cricket. All over Britain men and women had access to municipal swimming baths and cycling became a craze for both sexes. Needlework still provided a genteel pastime for many ladies, however women were increasingly encouraged to learn skills like typing. Such pursuits were an investment for future careers.

The suburbs were full of clubs and societies that offered lectures, dances and meetings. Many centred on the church or church hall but long evenings could also be passed in card games or music. Social evenings were also popular, especially Fagot parties where every guest would prepare a small turn or entertainment for the rest of the group. Cheap rail travel brought seaside holidays and tourism to a wider audience and Kodak's new portable cameras produced lasting photographic souvenirs.

On Sundays however, only sober entertainments were respectable, walks around city cemeteries or parks being ideal family outings. For children, religious quizzes might while away a day that still centred on church or Sunday School. And, for the less pious, the theatres, music halls and public houses had a sparkle all of their own.