We Are Amused! A Night of Victorian Humour

History has not been kind to Victorian jokes. While the great works of 19th-century art and literature have been preserved and celebrated by successive generations, the period’s most popular gags have now been forgotten. Indeed, we usually imagine our Victorian ancestors as terminally humourless; a straitlaced society who, in the words of their Queen, were famously ‘not amused’. And yet, millions of jokes were written during the 19th century. They were printed in books and newspapers, performed in theatres and music halls, and re-told in pubs, offices, taxicabs, and kitchens. While most of these gags have now been lost, thousands were preserved in the archives of the British Library and have been buried there for more than a century.

In 2014, Dr Bob Nicholson (Edge Hill University) teamed up with the British Library Labs on a project to find these long-forgotten jests and bring them back to life. They’ve unearthed thousands of old puns, sketches, one-liners, mother-in-law jokes, saucy songs, and other comic clippings. Eventually, these jokes will be gathered together in a new online archive of historic humour. For now, the team have been sharing choice specimens on social media. It turns out that even the most tortured Victorian puns can still raise a smile... or at least a groan. Find out what a panel of modern-day comedians make of them. Are Victorian jokes ripe for revival, or should they be consigned to the dustbin of history?