Throughout the 19th century ghost stories developed with a Victorian growing interest in death. Perhaps what is most fascinating regarding the social events within this is the fact that the 'trends' of the period still unsettle many of us to this day, most of these fascinations of disturbance are mainly due to the changing attitudes towards death, which in the Victorian period was far more of a common occurrence. Now a days only around 18% of us will die at home, furthermore the remaining 82% of us commonly die within hospitals or care homes. Death has now become a sanitised act whereby the 'horror' of the bodies natural process in death is hidden from plain sight, this concept of sanitised decay is very much a modern phenomenum in comparison to that of 200 hundred years prior.
Within the Victorian period occurrences such as infant mortality, childbirth, fatal diseases and industrial related accidents were the most common causes of death. Many died as children and almost everyone lost a sibling at some point in their early childhood, as a result of poor maternal care women suffered the dangers of childbirth such as the baby getting stuck or haemorrhaging, blood loss and infection. Common causes of death was also disease such as smallpox, which despite being sometimes survivable, was a rarity to escape unharmed. Roughly 25% died from the disease and often those who survived were left blind or with other illnesses such as TB (Tuberculosis), a deterioration of the lungs. Heavy and sudden industrialisation also caused an acceleration in the spread of contagions such as Cholera. This disease was particularly common in overpopulated areas such as towns and tight knit communities such as the slums of cities; in Manchester alone the working classes had a 60% death rate with the average age being under 5 years old. In London the average age of a labourer before death was no older than 22 years and contamination of the waiter supplies with other diseases and risk of fatality at work did nothing to improve this statistic. Death at work was common and often it was those within factory, or the mining industry that faced the highest fatality rate. Children in particular worked the longest hours at work and many died at the hands of the very machines that they were using, this was by either falling into the machines or becoming trapped and fatally wounded. Regardless of a death the work would continue in the factories and many young children were merely dumped into mass graves, any disease in the bodies would then find its way into the water supply thus leading to the deepening of graves and being placed far outside the city walls.
The Art of Death
As a result of being exposed to a continuous level of death the styles of mourning, burial and remembrance became fashion statements within Victorian society, death had become an art form for personal enjoyment. The trend setter for a such acts was like many before, the reigning monarch of the period. After the death of her husband Albert, Victoria set the standard for mourning by carrying out commemorative activities daily for 40 years after his death. This included leaving the glass he used to take his last drink by the side of his bed unwashed, his clothes laid out to be worn and the preparation of his shaving bowl every morning. In addition to this Victoria ensured his image or bust was visible within every portrait of both herself and family so that he remained a figure head of the family to never be forgotten. Finally there was her 'memento moro' of the charm bracelet which held a lock of his hair. As a result of this dedication to her passed husband, Victoria became a celebrity of ideal death, this Victorian fascination with a "good death" lead to a surge in the buying of highly decorative mementos in the form of charm bracelets, hair lockets, death masks and memento mori and spirit photography. By the mid Victorian period death had become an art form in itself, graveyards were the 'fun fair' of the time and often became a key feature in the lives of many families weekend activities. During the period it was popular especially for middle class families to take picnics to the graves of their ancestors as to still include them in the family unit, despite them being 6 feet under. However this is arguably not the strings of Victorian family traditions, the most controversial modern phenomena of the period is that of memento mori and spirit photography which represented an intense sentimentality to the macabre.
At the time of someones death the whole family would fall into a period of mourning, during which a number of respectable activities were carried out to honour a "good death" ideology that had been established by Victoria. Often curtains were hung and drawn over every window, mirrors were covered, clocks stopped and laurel tied to the door handles; in addition the family would stay around the bedside of the dying/dead until they had properly passed. Once dead the houses were filled with mementos of those who had passed. Valuing the last word of the dying became a public affair within the Victorian period, a tradition which today seems to no longer resonate as heavily, however during the 19th century a "good death" also meant the carrying out the final bidding of the dying.
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