# Did Victorians really cover table legs?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 26, 2003, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145 "2003-07-26T21:12:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![refusal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@refusal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/refusal)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145/1 "2003-07-26T21:12:49Z")

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I’ve heard in a few places the claim that Victorians covered the legs of pianos and tables and chairs out of modesty, because of their resemblance to human legs. But I’ve also heard this is an urban legend (I can’t see anything on Snopes though). Any evidence either way?

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**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145/2 "2003-07-26T21:28:17Z")

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Urban legend.

I don’t have the book on me, but last year I read a wonderful social history of Victorian times, and the author actually found the original cite, which was a parody of overly-prissy people, and that got taken up by later historians and reprinted as fact, not humor.

The Victorians were much, _much_ naughtier than posterity will have us believe.

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**Author:** ![J\_String](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce73a5/32.png) [@J\_String](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J_String)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145/3 "2003-07-26T21:34:46Z")

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Agreeing with Eve on this one.  
I read a book some time ago entitled (IIRC) “Inventing the Victorians.” The author touched on it briefly.

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**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145/4 "2003-07-26T21:43:21Z")

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_Inventing the Victorians_! I’m pretty sure that’s the book I read, too.

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**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-victorians-really-cover-table-legs/191145/5 "2003-07-27T00:25:23Z")

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The original cite claiming this was Frances Trollope’s “Domestic Manners of the Americans” Frances Trollope was the mother of the famous novelist Anthony Trollope, and in her “Domestic Manners…”, she records a trip she made to America, along with observations on American culture and society. However, she didn’t like Americans very much, so the entire work is written extremely tounge in cheek and things are exaggerated to make America look worse than it was.

Of course, the irony is that now we’ve taken a made up fact that was invented by a Victorian writer to suggest that Americans were overly prudish, and turned it around to support our own preconceptions of Victorian prudishness.