Sugar’s Impact On The Health Of Victorian Era Citizens

A pencil drawing of a Victorian family.

The time period from the Napoleonic Wars to the beginning of World War I, most commonly known as the Victorian era, was one of vast economic growth and innovation. Inventions like the railway and the telegraph transformed daily life for citizens under Queen Victoria’s rule, allowing them to travel farther and faster than ever before and to communicate across long distances almost instantaneously. The light bulb enabled factories to operate for longer periods of time, increasing productivity as well as wages for workers. Despite all of these inventions changing the world in astronomical ways, the most important development, for better and worse, was the steam engine.

The nineteenth century remained an era in which slavery was heavily exploited for profit, and new technological inventions were increasingly developed to maximize productivity on plantations. In the 1850s, the steam engine was introduced to sugar plantations in the Caribbean, powering boiling vats and mills, which could then crush larger amounts of cane, greatly increasing sugar production. 

This intensified demand for slave labor rather than reducing it. Enslaved Africans were subjected to brutal conditions, including being forced to work in the blistering heat with little to no water and facing injuries from mill rollers, burns from boiling vats, and the ever-present threat of disease and abuse from slavers. England benefitted the most from this system, importing large quantities of sugar at low cost to fuel its refineries and domestic markets.

The steam engine proved to be too good at its job, resulting in the over-production of sugar and causing its value to drop dramatically. The cavity-causing foodstuff, which was once only affordable to the wealthiest individuals, became an everyday commodity. Even the poorest citizens could consume sugar regularly, transforming the diet and life of the United Kingdom's inhabitants.

Though the price of various goods fell during the mid to late 1800s, many U.K. citizens were stuck in a perpetual cycle of poverty. Capitalist factory owners required laborers, adults and children alike, to work roughly, at the very least, ten hours a day and six days a week. The United Kingdom’s growing population led to limited housing availability and thus, the rise of slumlords. These landlords turned large and mid-size houses into cramped, one room apartments and charged abhorrent rent prices. So, even though wages remained stagnant and even rose in some areas, the cost of dwelling negated any monetary gain citizens would have experienced. 

With the little disposable income they had, working class citizens turned to sugary treats like treacle and boiled sweets after grueling days of work. The middle and upper classes had more leeway, consuming large amounts of cakes, pastries, biscuits, and jams. Sugar had become so popular that it was even promoted for newborns to consume. In 1867, Nestlé launched a formula powder for babies who couldn’t be breastfed, and it included dried cow’s milk, wheat flour, and sugar. Soon enough, this widespread reliance on sugar started to draw attention to its harmful effects on health in Victorian society.

A graph showing the death rate due to diabetes in Ireland, per 100,000 people.

During the mid-Victorian era, medical observers began to notice a growing number of people developing diabetes, a disease that had previously been rare. In Ireland, which was under the control of the U.K. during the Victorian era, diabetes deaths rose from 0.22 per 100,000 in 1840 to 13.2 per 100,000 by 1972, with the sharpest increase occurring in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 1863, Irish laborers derived 79% of their energy through carbohydrates, primarily from potatoes and sugar. Over the same period, between 1863 and 1913, there was a 28-fold increase in sugar imports, and while it cannot be stated with absolute certainty that this was the cause of rising diabetes cases, the correlation is strong. Diabetes was not the only consequence of worsening diets, as gout, a form of inflammatory arthritis that is linked to high sugar and fat consumption, also became increasingly common, especially among the wealthy.

Another aspect of health negatively impacted by sugar consumption in the U.K. was oral hygiene. Cavities, which are little holes in the teeth, can develop when sugars interact with bacteria in the mouth (plaque), producing acid that erodes tooth enamel. Before Colgate’s innovation in 1873, Victorians lacked effective toothpaste to remove plaque and food remnants. Instead, they often opted for abrasive pastes that left their teeth sensitive, stripped of enamel, and more susceptible to decay. Tooth decay and the resulting abscesses that formed were even more deadly than diabetes. 

Victorians were not strangers to tooth extraction. In fact, it was a rather easy decision to make for them when faced with the alternative: ever-lasting, agonizing pain from tooth decay. Whereas wealthy individuals could afford trained dentists for this removal, working-class citizens relied on village blacksmiths, who had to use crude, non-sterile instruments. Many people developed bacterial infections in their jaw tissues, which then spread into their bloodstream, causing them to become septic. Since anti-bacterial medications hadn’t been invented yet, infection was the leading cause of death before penicillin, and the Victorians faced this grim reality on a daily basis.

So, was it really the sugar that caused so many deaths during the Victorian era? Well, the answer is a little nuanced, as it wasn’t like they all collapsed due to diabetic shock after eating one too many snack cakes. While it’s true that many Victorians were already eating amounts of sugar that rival what we find in modern meals and treats, the real danger wasn’t the sugar high; it was usually what came after. The statistics point to a sharp increase in diabetes cases and related deaths, but cavities left unchecked, festering and rotting teeth down to the pulp, were the real killers. And unlike for diabetes, a lot of the deaths that were caused by cavities, often exacerbated by sugar, went unrecorded in Victorian books.