The humidity is incredible. I don’t know how the people who settled the area - much less the Victorians in their hot clothes - stood it.
I lived in Biloxi several times, for a total of about eight or nine years. Same thing.
Slavery and dirt cheap servants (including Irish immigrants before the civil war). Let others do the work, move as little as possible, and hope the yellow fever doesn’t get you. But from 1810 till 1860 if you could do that you could become very rich very quickly.