15 chilling photographs of people from the Victorian era

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When it comes to the Victorian era, most people think of horse-drawn carriages, ladies' corsets, and Charles Dickens. And hardly anyone thinks about what the people of that era did when they came to the funeral. It may seem shocking today, but at the time when someone was dying in the house, the first person to turn to the family of the unfortunate was the photographer. In our review, posthumous photographs of people who lived in the Victorian era.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Victorians developed a new tradition of taking photographs of dead people. Historians believe that at that time the services of a photographer were very expensive, and not many could afford such a luxury during their lifetime. And only death and the desire to do something meaningful for the last time, connected with a loved one, forced them to fork out for a photograph. It is known that in the 1860s a photograph cost about $ 7, which today is comparable to $ 200.

Another likely reason for this unusual Victorian fashion is the "cult of death" that existed during that era. This cult was initiated by Queen Victoria herself, who, after the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861, did not take off her mourning. At that time in England, after the death of someone close to her, women wore black for 4 years, and for the next 4 years they could only appear in white, gray or purple clothes. Men wore mourning bands on their sleeves for a whole year.

People tried to make their deceased relatives look as natural as possible, and photographers had their own techniques for this. A special tripod was widely used, which was installed behind the back of the deceased and made it possible to fix him in a standing state. It is by the presence of subtle traces of this device in the photo that in some cases it is only possible to determine that there is a dead person in the photo.

In this photo, 18-year-old Anne Davidson with beautifully styled hair, in a white dress, surrounded by white roses, is already dead. It is known that the girl was hit by a train, only the upper part of the body remained unharmed, which the photographer captured. The girl's hands are laid as if she is sorting flowers.

Very often, photographers took pictures of deceased people with objects that were dear to them during their lifetime. Children, for example, were photographed with their toys, and the man in the photo below was photographed in the company of his dogs.

To distinguish posthumous portraits from the general mass, photographers often introduced symbols into the image that clearly indicated that the child was already dead: a flower with a broken stem, an inverted rose in his hands, a clock whose hands indicate the time of death.

Today, posthumous photographs are collectibles. The largest collection of Victorian photographs belongs to Thomas Harris of New York. He comments on his unusual hobby as follows: "These photographs soothe and make you think about the priceless gift of life."

Today…

It would seem that the strange hobby of the Victorians should have sunk into oblivion, but in fact, back in the middle of the last century in the USSR, and in other countries, posthumous photographs were popular. True, the deceased were filmed, as a rule, lying in coffins. And about a year ago, posthumous photographs of Miriam Burbank from New Orleans appeared on the Internet. She died at the age of 53, and her daughters decided to take her to a better world, having thrown a farewell party in this - the way she loved during her lifetime. In the photo Miriam with a menthol cigarette, beer, and a disco ball over her head.

In 1900, the leading chocolate factory Hildebrands, along with sweets, released a series of postcards depicting Victorian people's perceptions of the world 100 years from now … Some predictions are quite funny, while others are really reflected in our time.