What was it like in 1888?

Answer 1

Life in 1888 was different depending on what part of the world you lived in, but here are some examples:

1888 was a monumental year for East London. It was the year of "Jack the Ripper" brutalized prostitues, and brought the eyes of the world on an impoverished region and it was the year of "match girls strike" which ushered in New Unionism and changed forever the battle between employer and employed.

America in 1888...

Usually only the parents had their own bedroom, with infants or toddlers sharing the room. Older children shared not only a room, but a bed. Sometimes as many as five youngsters slept together. On other occasions, the bed would be shared with houseguests, or by houseguests. Even travelers barely acquainted with one another slept together at roadside inns. When one had multiple bedrooms and hosted a large gathering of people, the custom was to put the men together in one room and the women together in another, sharing beds or bedrolls. Only the wealthy slept in "amply stuffed feather beds; the poor made do with straw mattresses."

Most frontier homes had dirt floors. Or, if they were lucky, a puncheon (plank flooring). Even in the city and larger towns, a great many citizens didn't have their own homes. They lived in crowded tenements or boarding houses.

Bathtubs, let alone bathrooms, were nearly unknown. Though the first tub was installed in a Boston hotel in the late 1820's, only hotels and wealthy households had them as fixtures by the 1850's. For bathing, a round, wooden or tin tub was hauled out onto the kitchen floor or onto the bedroom and filled with hot water from the fireplace or stove.

Chamber sets consisted of a basin and pitcher for washing, a cup for brushing the teeth and a chamber pot. Hotels provided the sets in the 1830's, with homes using them by the 1840's.

Since there was no electricity or a flick of the switch to provide lights, households used several different methods to illuminate the household after dark. Candles were the most common throughout the country. Whale-oil lamps made of tin, brass or pewter were used through the 1880's. Kerosene lamps were widely used after 1865 and replaced whale-oil lamps for the most part. Kerosene tended to produce a smoky, torchlike light.

1888 in America would be known forever for the Blizzard of 1888 (the most famous snowstorm in American history). The "Great White Hurricane," as it was called, paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine. Telegraph and telephone wires snapped, isolating New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington for days. Two hundred ships were grounded, and at least one hundred seamen died. Fire stations were immobilized, and property loss from fire alone was estimated at $25 million. National Weather service estimated that fifty inches of snow fell in Connecticut and Massachusetts and forty inches covered New York and New Jersey. Winds blew up to 48 miles an hour, creating snowdrifts forty to fifty feet high. Overall, more than 400 deaths were reported. The resulting transportation crisis led to the creation of the New York subway, approved in 1894 and begun in 1900.