How the Victorians beat the internet to beheading craze by 100 years: Bizarre pictures show 19th Century 'photoshopping'

It's not quite as subtle as the airbrushing we're used to seeing in certain celebrity magazines.

But these amusing pictures show how the Victorians were the first to manipulate photographs to create some rather bizarre images.

Photographers at the time combined images from more than one negative to create the novelty photographs which caused a sensation when they were first published.

Have they lost their minds? This bizarre, but fun image of a man holding his wife's decapitated head as she stands beside him, shows how the Victorians were the first to master the technique of manipulating photos

Instagram, eat your heart out: Photographers at the time combined images from more than one negative to create novelty photographs like these which caused a sensation when they were first published

In one, what looks like a decapitated man sits in a chair with his head on a plate.

Another image shows a man holding his wife's head as she stands beside him.

A Victorian gentleman stands upright with a cane and his head tucked into his body.

There is also a snap of a woman who appears to have completely lost her head with it nowhere to be seen in the picture.

Literally holding her head in her hands: Photo manipulation became something of a craze in the Victorian era

Doctored: A well-dressed man holds his decapitated head under his arm, while a woman doesn't have one at all



Freaky: Images like this were the precursor to picture manipulation software like Photoshop and Instagram

Similarly a man holds his head under his arm in another eerie shot.

Photo manipulation became something of a craze in the Victorian era. Other common images showed people appearing to float in midair unaided.

They also cleverly worked out how to make people look like giants or dwarfs.