28 Photos That Prove Victorians Weren’t As Serious As You Thought

Mark Twain, a fellow who made his mark with literary humor and entertainment, once said, “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.”

There are a ton of given reasons why Victorians didn’t smile in photos, such as long exposure times, high costs for having portraits taken, poor dental hygiene, and, perhaps most importantly, it was simply seen as bad etiquette. But luckily, there’s still some evidence that Victorians just couldn’t help cracking a smile or breaking the usual stiff pose every now and then.