The results of the world's first ever sex survey revealed something surprising

“Lie back and think of England”, with its dry, moral overtone is a phrase often used to describe the passionless bedroom antics of women in the Victorian era.

But research shows that the women of the 19th century may have been much more sexually liberal than history would have you believe.

In Stanford University's archives, historian Carl Degler unwittingly found detailed questionnaires about sex conducted by a Dr Clelia Duel Mosher - a teacher who had worked in the university in the 1920s.

In essence, Degler stumbled across a Victorian sex survey.

Mosher had taken 45 women - some of whom were born as early as 1862, almost thirty years before the women from what was previously thought to be the first sex survey, the Kinsey Reports - and asked them a number of questions about their sex lives:

1. 78 per cent of women said they desired sex

Turns out women wanted sex just as much as men. Who'd have thought?

2. 75 per cent said they had experienced orgasms

Compare that number with some surveys today, which claim that as much as 43 per cent of women can’t orgasm.

3. 53 per cent felt pleasure for both sexes was a reason for sex

Not only were women pleasure givers, but they moved beyond the argument that sex is only for procreation.

4. A massive three quarters of the women surveyed said they had sex at least once a week

And yet in the UK, couples are choosing binge TV over sexy time with their significant other. What is this madness?

5. Some women actually criticised their husbands for bad sex

Mosher thinks it's because:

Men have not been properly trained.

Victorian women were not so different from the women of today, after all.

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