Victorians were like kittens: drinking from saucers!
Looking for something else, I happened upon these pictures:
By Boris Kustodiev. Found here.
By Konstantin Makovsky. Found here.
From Ingalls-Wilder’s Farmer Boy we know tea was poured from the cup in the saucer, and then drank from the saucer. This was generally done by older people, while younger people thought it was bad form or old-fashioned to drink from the saucer. Research online seems to show most drinking-from-saucers took place in Scandinavia en Russia, and that the habit was probably taken to America by European immigrants.
I wonder though, how this habit came about? It seems the tea cools faster when drank from a saucer, which is understandable for busy farmers but it seems strange that mostly people from really cold countries (Northern Europe and Russia) would like their tea to cool fast. I cannot really find an origin or reason for the drinking from saucers, except that it…
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The Dictionary of Victorian Insults & Niceties 