Posted on 10/09/2013 6:29:42 AM PDT by C19fan
Lined up for a family photo these Victorian children look miserable as they stare sternly at the camera. But their grim expressions may be understandable after it becomes clear they are posing for a macabre photo with their dead younger sibling who is laid out on a chair. These remarkable pictures show the morbid way that the deceased were remembered in the late 19th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Yeah, this stuff is all over YouTube. It is fascinating - and sad to think of some many young dead. Makes you grateful for penicillin.
There are examples of photos of deceased persons with the eyes painted open (on the negative) for remembrance purposes.
they both look like dead guys walking to me
Gee. Some of them looked like Democrat voters.
In early modern Europe ... the 1500s or so ... family portraits would include deceased children in their shrouds along with the living family members. Babies who had died within the first days would be in the swaddling bands that were wrapped immediately after birth.
Death is just a materialist obfuscation.
Novels written in the 18th and 19th centuries are pervaded by the fear or the experience of tuberculosis. Historical novels written in the anti-biotics era, no matter how well-researched otherwise, rarely mention it.
It’s amazing how the reaction of people to the tragic, irretrievable loss of a child is only something to be critiqued, eh? Reminds me of the obnoxious sign in the local museum, in a room containing a sort-of reproduction of the first museum — “what do these exhibits tell us about the people of that time?”
Thanks C19fan.
That is a great idea for a reality show, and *this* is a sentence I’d never expected to utter or type. :’o
It would be even better to have a show taking the same family to a different time period each week — just hearing (obviously not watching) their reaction to the bathroom (which were only found in the homes of the rich) would be great.
When my late mother-in-law was just a girl, she was a nanny for a family in Italy (she was from Switzerland).
Their 4-year-old child died, and mom had to pose her and sit next to her for the funerary photo.
She said that was the creepiest thing that she ever had to do.
They did it because of the distances involved. There is no way someone from the other side of the state could make it home in time for the wake. This gave sons and daughters a chance to see what gramma looked like on her last days.
Hard to believe, but that’s the reason.
Taking pictures was more expensive - and rare - back then. These might have been the only pictures of the dead child...
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