Vintage Photos From The 1800s Offer A Stunning New Perspective Of A Different Time

Here we see the 1898 edition of the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House. Although this event was well over a century ago, it’s far from the first time the White House lawns were opened for Easter egg rolling. That was way back in 1878, when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.

These gold miners are at work hunting for the precious metal in the Auburn Ravine in California. The year is 1852, not long after the Californian gold rush had exploded in 1848. By late 1849, the population of the California Territory had increased a hundredfold to something like 100,000. As you can see, the prospect of riches attracted people from all over. Many Chinese left their homeland, with 20,000 arriving in California in 1852 alone.

This woman looks to be kitted out in the most bizarre gear. But it’s actually part of the everyday ordeal women of the upper classes had to go through just to get dressed. Going casual just wasn’t a thing. The cage-like structure was called a crinoline, and it supported the voluminous petticoat skirts in favor during the Victorian era.

Think electric cars are a recent invention? Think again! The year is 1897, and this electric taxi is being driven through the streets of London. The brainchild of inventor Walter Bersey, there were a dozen of these things plying for trade in the British capital. And don’t forget, this was at a time when nearly all London taxis were horse-drawn. Sadly, the cabs were plagued by technical problems and were retired after just a couple of years.

Here we see a group of women working at sewing machines at the Rosenthal Brothers Waist and Dress Factory around 1890. These machines, powered by the electric motors beside the tables, were really high-tech for their day. Before the sewing machine was invented and perfected in the second half of the 19th century, all sewing was done by hand. This was obviously a highly laborious business.

Here, French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi works on a giant hand that will be attached to a massive statue. It wasn’t just any old monument, though. It was the Statue of Liberty, which welcomed many thousands of hopeful immigrants as they sailed into New York Harbor. Bartholdi designed and built the statue, and he even raised the money to finance his creation.

Many of those working in high finance nowadays sit all day in front of multiple flickering screens. But things were different in 1898, when this photo of the New York Stock Exchange’s trading floor was taken. The Exchange traces its origins back to a rather less impressive setting under a buttonwood tree in 1792.

This is Lillian Sholes, sat in 1872 at one of the world’s earliest practical typewriters. Her father Christopher Sholes was the man behind this machine. Although a rudimentary typewriter was invented as early as 1714, Sholes’ machine was the first one to achieve commercial success. The typewriter you see here is remarkably similar to those once used in offices around the world until word processing shouldered them aside.

Covered wagons are the stuff of Westerns, but in the 19th century they were part of everyday life for many families. These folks are pictured in 1886 in Nebraska’s Loup Valley. Hordes of hopeful migrants arrived in Nebraska in the second half of the 19th century. Between 1867 and 1890, the population exploded from some 120,000 to over one million.

The people who flocked to Canada’s Klondike during the feverish gold rush of the late 1890s were nothing if not versatile. Finding a rich seam of the yellow metal, after all, was not the only way of making a living. This shot from the 1890s shows Mrs. G. L. Lowe at her laundry, and you can be sure there would have been plenty of business from begrimed miners. But she had another string to her bow — fortune telling. We’d love to know which was more lucrative.

This image from a summer’s day in 1896 shows one Henry Ford driving rather sedately along Detroit’s Grand Boulevard in his very first automobile, which was called a Quadricycle. Another seven years of mechanical tinkering ensued before he launched the Ford Motor Company in 1903. Visit the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and you can see the actual Quadricycle.

Here we are in May 1880, and the rather ramshackle contraption you’re looking at is a prototypical electric train. It’s the product of Thomas Edison’s workshop and laboratory at Menlo Park in New Jersey. When it comes to Edison’s record as an inventor, prolific is too weak a word. By the time he died in 1931 he had more than 1,000 patents to his name in everything from telephony to sound reproduction and moving pictures.

It’s a somber occasion indeed, as this train bears Abraham Lincoln’s mortal remains. It travelled from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, where he was buried in 1865. The steam locomotive belonged to the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad and it transported Lincoln’s body through 180 cities. It stopped off at many of them to allow a grieving public a last look at their president.

Yes, if you fancied a quick swim back in the day this was the type of kit you’d be expected to wear. This trio poses in front of the Atlantic City Lifeboat No. 17. And you’d have to think that they might well have need of its services. The sheer weight of fabric could have put even the strongest of swimmers in difficulties.

Surely one of the most legendary of the Wild West characters, Buffalo Bill Cody capitalized on his fame by touring his Wild West Show far and wide. William F. Cody had worked as a Pony Express rider, a U.S. Army scout and a buffalo hunter before he turned to show business. He got his nickname because he killed more than 4,000 bison in just two years.

To say the least, New York’s cityscape has changed a bit in the last century and more, but you can still find the two streets that this market straddled in 1898. They are Suffolk and Hester in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The sellers are offering fish from their handcarts and it looks like they’re doing a roaring trade.

Spare a thought for these two when you jump on your modern bike and pedal off to your destination. A German man named Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun invented the machine on the left in 1817. To propel it, you pushed along the ground with your feet, which is why it was called the hobby horse. The other bike, dating from 1863, was known as a boneshaker and it actually had rudimentary pedals. We imagine its name was a fair description of the riding experience.

These African American sailors are posing on the deck of the USS Vermont in the 1860s. This U.S. Navy ship was a 74-gunner built in Boston Navy Yard and launched in 1848. She served with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron in the Civil War. During the war, many freed slaves joined the Union’s navy.

It’s 1887, and these men are working on the construction of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway. By 1890, the company had built some 2,800 miles of rail track in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana. From the early 1870s there was a huge increase in American railroads – companies had built 170,000 miles of new rail track by 1900.

This is busy New York Harbor in a shot from the early 1860s. Two of the piers advertise passage to and from Philadelphia. The harbor’s origin can be traced back to 1659, when the first quay was built on the eastern side of Manhattan. According to the New York Shipping Association, by 1870 New York Harbor was the Western Hemisphere’s most active.

Looking like a giant wedding cake, this is actually the U.S. Capitol under construction in 1855. As you can see, at this point its iconic dome was yet to appear. In fact, this is the third version of the Capitol. The first had been largely built – although not completed – by 1814, but then the British burnt it down. Rebuilding was completed in 1826, but by 1850 it’d become too small for its purpose and wholesale remodeling commenced.

This is a Red Star Line ship known as the S.S. Pennland photographed in 1893. It sailed regularly from Antwerp in Belgium to New York. The people you see gathered on the deck are traveling steerage class, hoping to embark on a new life in America. Presumably, while the weather allowed, they were taking the chance to breathe some fresh air. No doubt there was little enough of that in their cramped quarters in the bowels of the Pennland.

Here’s a saloon in 1875 or thereabouts, seemingly set within a timber structure draped with a canvas, judging by the quality of the light. The barkeepers stand at a handsomely carved bar while the men in the foreground play a gambling game. Let’s just hope everything stayed nice and friendly. The combination of hard liquor and cards wasn’t always a harmonious one.

Visit the rolling farmlands where wheat is grown in America today, and you’ll see an impressive array of high-tech machinery. The rudimentary reaping machine seen here in the 1890s hardly bears comparison. For a start, it’s pulled by a large team of horses rather than being a powered vehicle. At least it’s a step up from the hand sickle.

This is what Helena, the capital city of Montana, looked like back in 1865. As you can see, it’s the absolute epitome of a 19th century American frontier town. The term “rough and ready” hardly does it justice. Tumbledown shacks line the main street, as covered wagons struggle up the unmade road. Visit Helena today and you’ll find a well-ordered city, utterly unrecognizable as the shanty town in this image from nearly 160 years ago.

As you can see, some women put a lot of effort into looking just right. And extremely tight corsets were an essential part of the process as this image from around 1890 illustrates. But corsets were nothing new in the 19th century. Art from the Minoan era of about 3,000 to 5,000 years ago shows ladies adorned in plates of metal designed to pinch the waist.

These are Italian immigrants living in miserable slum housing in New York City’s Jersey Street in 1897. You can still find Jersey Street in Lower Manhattan’s SoHo district, today famous for its pricey loft apartments. Looking at the conditions these people were living in, you’d have to wonder if the long sea journey across the Atlantic had been worth it.

Anxious ladies look on as men load their crinolines onto a London omnibus. The carriage advertises its route as from Sloane Street to Fleet Street, both in the centre of the British capital. The former is a very posh address today, while the latter was once the heart of the newspaper industry. Let’s hope the crinolines got to their destination safely.

This jaunty crew – probably a mix of engine drivers and maintenance men – worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad. The date is about 1885, and it looks like the train is sitting on a recently finished bridge. The engine is a product of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Pennsylvania. This company turned out railroad engines from 1825 right up until 1956.

An attentive audience of students looks on as surgeons perform an operation in 1898. This setting gives a very clear indication of why the room where surgery takes place is known as an operating theater. The location is the Bellevue Hospital in New York City, which is still caring for patients today. Founded in 1736 with just six beds, it has the distinction of being the United States’ oldest hospital.

The uniformed man with the fabulous mustache is a U.S. Army recruiter. He’s in the business of trying to persuade these New Yorkers to join up for service in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The U.S. emerged victorious from that conflict while the Spanish lost all of their colonial possessions in the Americas, including Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines.

Here are the docks in New Orleans, Louisiana, in around 1870. The steamship in the middle is loaded to the gunwales with what looks like bales of cotton ready to be shipped down the Mississippi River. In fact, New Orleans owes its existence to its location on the Mississippi. It was an ideal spot for a port and the city grew around the many wharfs that sprung up from the early 18th century.

If your New York City house went up in flames in the late 19th century, this is what would arrive once you’d raised the alarm. Eventually. Or, at least, as fast as the horses could haul the fire truck along the roughly built streets of the city. How quickly they’d be able to extinguish the blaze when they arrived is a point to ponder.

“Bullwhackeress” is a new term to our ears, but apparently it was an occupation back in 1887. At least, it was in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. Here, Mrs. Canuteson of Rapid City, Dakota, is plying her trade. As you can see, it involves driving a team of oxen with a ferocious whip as the beasts haul wagons.

This looks like fun – an outing by artists on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1858. We just hope that the artists clambered off the front of the locomotive and into a carriage before the train got going. Or perhaps they would’ve been fine as long as the engine travelled very, very slowly.

Fruit and vegetables to the left and poultry to the right. This well-organized food store, photographed around 1890, is a long way from the antiseptic hypermarkets of today, where everything is wrapped in plastic. Perhaps we should be going back to the time when this photo was taken in the Roell Brothers’ store. It would certainly cut down on packaging.

These fellows appear to be thoroughly enjoying their drinks in the early 1880s. We’ll hazard a guess that they’re quaffing P.H. Best’s Milwaukee Lager Beer, since that’s the brand advertised on the front of the tavern. And that bar is Petryl’s Saloon, which was at 125 West 19th Street in Chicago, Illinois. Sadly, if you visit that location today there are only clapperboard houses with nary a bar to be seen.

This image shows the very first football game played between Yale and Harvard back in November 1875. The match was at Hamilton Park in New Haven, and some 2,000 people watched, paying 50 cents for their tickets. Apparently the game was played under a revised version of rugby rules. Harvard beat Yale 4-0.

Here’s a squad of New York’s finest, posing in their splendid hats outside the 20th Precinct Station in 1880. Of course, a 20th Precinct building still exists today on West 82nd Street. But sadly it’s now housed in a rather unappealing bunker-like modern building. Still, no doubt the officers are just as doughty as those in this image from nearly 150 years ago.

Here we have that staple of Wild West tales: a posse. And it’s not just any old posse – this group is on the trail of the legendary Wild Bunch. That was the gang led by two of the most notorious outlaws in America’s history, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The marshals obviously hope to steal a march on their prey by speeding ahead aboard a Union Pacific Railroad carriage.

Traffic, overcrowding, pollution, construction, and a booming population certainly made for a rough city living experience. But back in the 1800s that was all exacerbated by poor hygiene practices and workers grinding away in filthy factories before there were any labor laws or standards in place.

Kids couldn't catch a break! Lax child labor laws saw kids working seven days a week on farms or in factories, especially during the Industrial Revolution, when cash-holding fat cats realized kids were less likely to organize into unions.

People pay about $80 to have a cabby take them around Central Park via horseback for 45 minutes without learning the realities of 19th-century travel: horses pooped everywhere, requiring rich people to wear raised shoes so they didn't "sink in."

Industrial Revolutions saw cities expand at unprecedented rates, which meant engineers didn't get a chance to study what to do and what not to do. Buildings and neighborhoods didn't meet any fire codes, and rudimentary firefighting tech limited meaningful responses to any raging blazes.

Blame it on old-timey medical knowledge, crippling poverty, or a number of other factors, but in the 19th century, about 40 percent of kids — according to Our World in Data — perished before making it to age five.

Surviving a day in the 19th century was a bit like dodging traffic, and cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, bad diets, and lacking medical knowledge were the cars speeding down the highway. Data is skewed (because of the infant mortality rate), but the average life span was about 41 years.

You thought your mother-in-law taking photos at the family picnic was a bit annoying? Well, in the 1800s, people often posed for pictures with the propped-up bodies of their newly deceased relatives. It was, after all, the last chance to get a photo to remember them by.

In the 19th century, the United States fought in over 60 wars. Maybe the nation just wanted to beat its chest after thwarting those dastardly red coats in the Revolution? The Civil War alone saw between 650,000 and 1,000,000 deaths.

Traveling wasn't easy, so 19th-century country folks didn't see too many people outside of their local community. Storms could wreck harvests and ruin livelihoods in a heartbeat, and illnesses and injuries were hard to treat with medical care often far away.

Those deemed mentally ill (and anyone could be diagnosed as mentally ill for almost any reason) were often thrown into prisons or left for families to manage. Rare treatment options included electro-shocking, bloodletting, and purgatives.

At first an innocent game, boys asked girls for their hairpins — a token of a successful flirt. But then the challenge evolved into snagging the pins without the girls knowing. "I know fellows who have followed a girl for squares," one man told the local paper.

In the late century, riding in a car was just a cool thing for rich people to do. An 1899 newspaper article out of the Kansas's Daily Monitor, debated what to call the fad, writing "society is wondering over tea cups as to whether it shall go 'automobiling,' 'autoing,' or 'biling.'"

Notorious serial killer H.H. Holmes built a hotel so he could, well, serially kill people. He soundproofed bedrooms, loaded the place with trap doors, and included two incinerators for body disposal.

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably gotten a good chuckle from a vibrating belt. Taking the weight loss industry by storm, these jigglers were responsible for more giggles than gains.

Britain was mad about losing control of the United States, so the nation returned in 1812 to sort out some details — with violence. But after taking Washington D.C. and burning down the White House, the campaign ended with a treaty. Britain needed to focus war efforts on Napoleon.

Infectious outbreaks were so prevalant that there's a Wikipedia page just for "Diseases and epidemics of the 19th century." Cholera was new to the scene, and people constantly battled smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, and tuberculosis.

All of the flower petals and perfumes in the world couldn't mask a 19th-century musk. The stink of the day really sank in, since tooth brushing wasn't happening frequently yet, soap wasn't a household item, and baths were maybe a weekly thing.

In the 19th-century, lobster was a food for the poor. The crustacean came out of the ocean by the basket full, and early Americans hadn't discovered pouring butter on everything yet. Servants needed clauses in their contracts that prevented lobster dinners more than 3 times per week.

"The idea is this," one New York City newspaper reported of the "ring turning" trend. "If a young lady meets a young man with a ring on his finger, she is to turn the ring two or three times." Some establishments had to put out signs banning the practice.

There's a reason you've never heard a friend long for "the good ol' days of 19th-century medicine." Patients were dosed with alcohol, morphine — which was commercially produced by mid-century, and things like "Fruit Salt." Ailments like asthma were treated with heroin.