The Victorian era was unfolding at the exact same time as the American Wild West. While Victorian Britain is often imagined as an age of strict manners, elegant fashion, and industrial progress, the western United States was still filled with cowboys, outlaws, frontier towns, and gunfights. Queen Victoria ruled Britain from 1837 to 1901, while the peak of the American Wild West is generally considered to have lasted from around 1865 to 1895. That meant Victorian Britain, particularly London, was already defined by factories, railways, gas lamps, rigid social etiquette, and some of the largest industrial cities on Earth, while much of the American West still consisted of frontier settlements, cattle drives, saloons, mining camps, and vast regions with limited law enforcement. Billy the Kid was killed in 1881 at a time when London had already become one of the world’s most advanced industrial capitals. Jack the Ripper carried out his murders in 1888 while cowboys, outlaws, and gunfighters were still active across the frontier. The first Sherlock Holmes stories were published during the same era that wars involving Native American tribes were still taking place in the western United States. By the late nineteenth century, parts of Britain already featured underground railways, telegraphs, photography, electric lighting, and early skyscraper-like structures, while many western American towns still depended heavily on horses, dirt roads, wooden buildings, and stagecoaches.(Historic Vids)