DEATH IN VICTORIAN TIMES

• 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.It was far cheaper and quicker than 
  Known as post-mortem photography, some of the dearly departed were photographed in their coffin.
  This particular style, often accompanied by funeral attendees, was common in Europe but less so in the United States.
  
  

• commissioning a painted portrait and it enabled the middle classes to have an affordable, cherished keepsake of their dead family members.
  It was an age of high infant mortality rates - and children were often shown in repose on a couch or in a crib, while adults were more commonly posed in chairs.
  Sometimes the subject's eyes were propped open or the pupils were painted onto the print to give the effect they were alive.
  In early images, a rosy tint was added to the cheeks of corpses.
  By the early 20th century, the practice fell out of fashion as photos became more commonplace with the arrival of the snapshot.
  
  

•    However, in others, they were made to look like they were in a deep sleep or even life-like as they 
• were positioned next to family members.

• What’s ultra-creepy about the whole thing is that some of them are posed as if they’re still alive. It gives me a little shiver. But I guess in modern society, we’re much more sheltered from death than we ever have been since humans came down from the trees. 
• Death is a rarer thing to witness now. Take burgers for example, I mean who’s ever watched a cow being killed in real life? 
• I bet the vast majority of burger eaters in the West haven’t. I have, its a nightmare from Dante , I hope you never see it. We hardly ever get to see death these days, so our relationship with it has changed, or in some cases disappeared.Back then, if you hit 40 you were lucky and considered to be in your old age. One in six children died before the age of one; one in three children died before the age of five.People today forget how often people died before the larger leaps in technology. The statistics for child mortality in the past is staggering, its why we have too many people now, some cultures haven't changed, they had more kids because some were not going to make it. I was born in in the mid fifties, it was the turning point in saving children from basic illness that once killed, my grandparents used to tell me how many kids would die from sickness if there was a bad year with something, I am from London and people died simply from the terrible fog that once was . I know my great uncle died when he was sixteen from inhaling fog and nobody ever knew him. 
• 
•  Times were different. Death was everywhere and never hidden, it was part of daily life.
• this was a significant way to memorializing lost family members. In some cases, this was the only photograph that depicted the entire family together.