This is a lecture about the Victorians and their beliefs on death This lecture explores the reasons for the change in death rates, and looks at its effects on culture and society, attitudes towards death and suffering, disease, debilitation and at the end of the century, degeneracy and the Darwinian struggle for survival.

Lecture from Gresham College. During the Victorian period, religion pervaded social and political life to an extent almost unimaginable today. Yet this was also an age of major scientific progress and discovery. Ranging from Darwin's Origin of Species to Strauss's Life of Jesus, new techniques and approaches undermined faith in the literal truth of the Bible. This lecture looks at the relationship between science and religion and attempts to explain the growth towards the end of the century of 'secularization' and 'dechristianization' in the mass of the urban population.