Does anyone know of sources sbout the Victorian Times ?

Considering a story in the Victorian times the question arises: Is there anything I could use as source material?
So far I got to the understanding that there are two later three classes in society.

Upper Class
The upper class starts and ends with the aristocracy. They have no real need to get dirty hands.

Middle Class
The middle class inserted itself later and consists of independent rich people, like merchants (the monetary aristocracy) with a social and legal standing below the real aristocracy mainly getting along using their brain

Lower Class
The lower class has just enough money to survive and is dependent on the members of the other two classes in everything mainly doing physical work

http://www.victorianlondon.org/index.html is a good place to start your research

I recommend thinking a lot about where, when and who when setting a story in the past. It will help research, but it may be that a plot will emerge as you do so. If you already have a plot and are trying to find a setting this is also important.

Where matters because places differed a lot. Germany was not like England, and in England London, the industrial towns like Manchester or Birmingham, and country areas differed much more than today. It may be easier to choose somewhere you already know a bit about and there should be more stories set in places other than England and the US at this period.

When. Victoria reigned from 1837 until 1901. Britain saw more changes in this time than between 1937 and 2001. Some parts of Europe also were transformed. Countries generally became more prosperous, and many more people started living in towns. Social attitudes changed and when speaking of Victorian times in England people are often thinking of the time around the 1860s. Before then social tensions were greater and the change from an agricultural society to an industrial one was difficult. In 1851 only half the population lived in towns. By the end of the century most men had the vote, women were agitating for it, and society had much more in common with the early 20th century than the 1830s and 1840s.

Who is obviously important because as you say society was stratified. In England the upper classes were small and typically much richer than anyone else. Money mattered more than birth. They would often have a landed estate but spend part of the year in London, but the money to afford this came largely from trade and industry. Especially later in the century titles were awarded for political reasons and in recognition of wealth so you could have somebody born poor who had a title as well as possessions. They would have a large staff of servants, and the house and garden would be the responsibility of the lady (wife or sister of the male owner, but a woman could also own property).

The middle classes consisted of professionals (doctors, clergy, doctors, all male) and their families, and business owners. They varied greatly in wealth. They would have at least one female domestic servant. Again, responsibility for running the house fell to a woman. Single men would have a female housekeeper or rent rooms in a house run by a landlady.

The lower, or working classes were often very poor but again there was a lot of variation. Some skilled tradesmen earned enough to have a servant. Their main interest here may be that domestic servants were drawn from the lower classes, and most were women. For a girl born into a poor family in an overcrowded house, a job as a servant in a good household could be very attractive because although wages were low she was also given accommodation, food and clothing to wear which could be much better than she was used to. Plus the chance to move to somewhere like London.

Men were responsible for discipline in their household. Corporal punishment was common. But for obvious reasons their wives would usually prefer that they did not carry it out on women themselves. Daughters would most often be punished by their mother or a governess. Female servants by either the lady of the house or by the housekeeper or cook (both female) or possibly butler (male). Only a husband, of course, could punish a wife. Many of the transgressions would be sexual. There was a constant fear of pregnancy outside marriage and the appearance of immorality by one person reflected badly on all members of that household.

Victorians were very interested in sex, though it was rarely discussed openly. In England women were expected to choose their own husbands however much their mother might wish to guide their choices. Foreign visitors were often shocked at how sexes were allowed to mix, and interpreted as prostitutes young women who may just have been seeking or meeting a boyfriend. Mothers in the upper and upper middle classes were reluctant to allow young women to go out unaccompanied by a trustworthy friend or older woman for good reason. Women in the lower classes were often pregnant at marriage.

This is very brief outline and in reality there as plenty of variety as there is today. The best sources are novels written at the time, of which there are very many, often written by women. They frequently surprise. The skill of the writer at any age is to weave a tale in which the described events might have happened even if it seems unlikely.

This was a good outline which I found interesting and it should help writers.

Try and get hold of an online version of The Pearl which Wikipedia describes as:

"A collection of erotic tales, rhymes, songs and parodies in magazine form that were published in London between 1879 to 1881, when they were forced to shut down by the authorities for publishing rude and obscene literature."

Lots of spanking and caning included in the "erotic tales."

I'd say that the class system is a bit more complex than just three classes. You could have:

Royalty - Above the class system, really, except in the case of very minor royalty.

Aristocracy - The ruling classes; titled and hereditary owners of land and (usually) wealth.

Gentry - Not usually titled, or quite as landed or wealthy as the aristocracy. May be 'Something in the City' or occupy some Ministerial or senior Civil Service post.

The Professional Classes - Mostly Lawyers, Doctors and Churchmen, but also including Bank Managers, Company Directors, and the Headmasters of prestigious Public Schools.

The Middle Classes - Tradesmen, business workers, shopkeepers and so on.

Upper Working Class - Occupy minor 'white-collar' office jobs, such as filing clerks or secretaries.

The Servant Classes - Spanning a range of classes from Lower Middle, or even Middle, to Lower Working Class depending on their position in the household, from Butler or Housekeeper down to knife-and-boot boy or scullery-maid, and the status of the family that they serve.

Lower Working Class - Mostly manual labourers, but can include some skilled craftsmen of higher status.

The Unemployed - Regarded with suspicion, and usually considered lazy and possibly radical.

The Criminal Classes - Well, someone has to do it.

There are sub-divisions within each class, and grey areas where one class bleeds into the next.

A distinguished war record, sporting prowess, fame as an entertainer, or, of course, wealth, can boost someone upwards, while scandal or poverty can bring them down.

The military and the clergy have their own hierarchies which can influence class, which complicates the matter still further...!

The customary division of British society into three parts is one that the Victorians themselves tended to use and it is convenient for us when describing them. But it is important to note that they almost invariably spoke of them in the plural - the upper classes, working classes and so on. Placing someone was subtle and fluid. A woman might come from a poor household, get a job in a shop or as a domestic servant, marry a man who started a business which prospered and who might ultimately even be given a title and enter the aristocracy. Her acquaintances might be acutely aware of that and the distinction with someone who was born to a member of the aristocracy, but in the end if one had a big house and threw grand parties and the other did not, money and influence counted most. Most comes down to money, since most of the time the more you had the bigger the house and the more likely you had to have servants. There is a tendency to assume more social rigidity in England than was really the case and that is a constant theme in novels of the period.

For the present purpose, though, I think writers should avoid becoming too bound up in historical detail. My point above about deciding the when, where and who of a story was that the important thing is to think themselves into a context and then make sure they know just enough about it to make it all fit. A story about a peasant girl working as a servant in a Junker household in East Prussia caught stealing food from the pantry and another about the daughter of an English duke caught having a roll in the hay with a stable lad might both be set in the same period but otherwise very different. Writers will not need deep historical knowledge and if starting with some understanding of parts of it the task should not be daunting. Or they can just make clear that they are writing fantasy set in an imagined past.

No spanking, and it is set in a slightly later time, beginning towards the end of Edward VII’s reign, but the TV show Downton Abbey does a fairly good job of illustrating both the servant class and the aristocracy. There’s also a wonderful series of books by George MacDonald Fraser called Flashman, they are set in Victorian times, but as Flashman is a soldier he doesn’t spend a lot of time in England, generally adventuring elsewhere. He’s a born aristocrat, so gives a bit of an insight into how they think. Delving into fanfic may also help.

Another TV show is the short (6 Episode) Belgravia series produced by ITV and Epix. The series starts at the battle of Waterloo, but rather quickly jumps 26 years forward. So the vast bulk of the series is in the early Victoria period. In this series you see the stratification of classes with the servant class feeling "trapped" and willing to sell out their employers (naturally for the right price). You also see clashes between the aristocracy and the emerging middle class.

It's a good story and well worth your time. The visual settings are just amazing and the sound track is outstanding (naturally with Doby 5.1 and a good sound system it really "pops").

If you are interested in this period, you might find my short two part Belgravia series provocative. I say that because in my series I look at the period from the perspective of the corporal punishments employed.

Back a couple of decades ago there was some faux Victorian erotic that you could find at any bookstore. Most of it was written by "Anonymous" to sell it as Victorian.

Few of them did much world building. Most of them were "Okay, it's Victorian times with corporal punishment mixing with sex and maids can caned" and that was that. Often it wasn't the maids or other members of the servant class being spanked but games played among the wealthy.

There are many books that go into detail about the Victorian days... Open sewers, night jugs being emptied on the streets below, the stink of London (and the other big cities) in the summer, the number of ways to die, child labour, racism, etc - but most Victorian fiction skips the unpleasant parts of Victorian society.

In short, don't worry about being fact checked. The average reader knows less than you do about the Victorian Era.