Last post, we looked in on Louisa Robbs Dean's diary account of her after-dark dalliances with the alleged spirit of her dead husband. Well, enough of the mundane This post, we thought we'd explore something really strange. That's right. In response to popular demand, we're going to devote this post to one of the more unusual (to we "moderns" anyway) practices of the 19th century: post mortem photography.
Picture it. (Pun intended.) Your beloved family member has just expired from consumption or has, perhaps, been run over by a carriage after a night on the gas lit town. Bereft and grieving, you begin preparations for the wake, which, unless you are a Vanderbilt or the town moneybags, will probably be held in your very own parlor. There's much to be done before the event. You'll have to send Millicent out for black crepe to drape over the mirrors and windows, Edwina will need to whip up one of her mourning wreaths for the front door, and you'll need to order the proper mourning garb for the occasion. Thank God neighbors and friends will be pouring in with casseroles and pies do that you won't have to worry about preparing meals. But there's one thing still undone. In the midst of all the posthumous hubbub, you realize that you don't have a photograph of the dearly departed by which to remember them. Understandable. Photographs are expensive, and you had other things on your mind before their untimely demise. But now you feel the need for one more than ever. There's only one thing to do. Enlist the services of a post mortem photographer.
Now, we moderns might find the idea of a post mortem photograph a bit macabre, but back in the day it was very often the only photograph a family possessed of their dead loved one. Momento mori was an accepted practice in the 19th century, a fact attested to by the scores of such photographs still extant and easily accessible for viewing on a number of sites all across the internet. What's interesting about these photographs is that many of them were taken with the deceased posed as though he or she were still alive, sometimes among a group of living family members. Grieving parents are photographed holding their dead children, grim-faced children sit beside their lifeless siblings, grief-stricken husbands pose next to the corpses of their late wives.
In some of the most ghastly (in my estimation) photographs, the deceased subject's eyes have been painted open by the photographer, to give the impression that he or she is still alive, despite the fact that the limpness of the hands or feet and the slouched body are a clear indicator of the ruse. But to the surviving family members, the photographs were no doubt a blessing nonetheless, affording them a physical reminder of the person whose presence would no longer be part of their daily lives. In one well-known photograph which I have seen on several sites, a young woman stands with her sister, her hands limp and discolored, her body at an odd angle due to the metal stand which the photographer has used to hold her up. One can't help but wonder what the living sister was thinking at the time. It's one thing to have one of these pictures taken of a deceased loved one, but to pose with them must have felt a little strange, if not downright unsettling.
But, then, it was a different era, a different sensibility, and death was a frequent visitor. Grief is grief is any era, of course. But while we moderns tend to distance ourselves from the actual process of preparing the body for burial, the denizens of the 19th century were used to taking care of such matters themselves. Perhaps they weren't as freaked out by the idea of posing next to a dead family member. Perhaps they simply accepted it as a matter of course, and were even grateful for the opportunity to take part in what was, essentially a last act of love.
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