Mourning clothes were a family’s outward display of their inner feelings. The rules for who wore what and for how long were complicated, and were outlined in popular journals or household manuals such as ‘The Queen’ and ‘Cassell’s’ – both very popular among Victorian housewives. They gave copious instructions about appropriate mourning etiquette. For example if your second cousin died and you wanted to know what sort of mourning clothes you should wear and for how long, you’d often consult journals or other manuals.
For deepest mourning clothes were to be black, symbolic of spiritual darkness. Dresses for deepest mourning were usually made of non-reflective Parramatta silk or the cheaper bombazine. Dresses were trimmed with crape, a hard, scratchy silk with a peculiar crimped appearance produced by heat. Crape is particularly associated with mourning because it doesn’t combine well with any other clothing – you can’t wear velvet or satin or lace or embroidery with it. After a specified period the crape could be removed – this was called "slighting the mourning." The colour of cloth lightened as mourning went on, to grey, mauve, and white – called half-mourning. Jewellery was limited to jet, a hard, black coal-like material sometimes combined with woven hair of the deceased.
Men had it easy – they simply wore their usual dark suits along with black gloves, hatbands and cravats. Children were not expected to wear mourning clothes, though girls sometimes wore white dresses.
The length of mourning depended on your relationship to the deceased. The different periods of mourning dictated by society were expected to reflect your natural period of grief. Widows were expected to wear full mourning for two years. Everyone else presumably suffered less – for children mourning parents or vice versa the period of time was one year, for grandparents and siblings six months, for aunts and uncles two months, for great uncles and aunts six weeks, for first cousins four weeks.
Someone had to provide the clothes quickly to mourners. Many shops catered to the trade; the largest and best known of them in London was ‘Jays’ of Regent Street. Opened in 1841 as a kind of warehouse for mourners, Jay’s provided every conceivable item of clothing you and your family could need. And you were bound to be repeat customers: it was considered bad luck to keep mourning clothes – particularly crape – in the house after mourning ended. That meant buying clothes all over again when the next loved one passed. Mourning was a lucrative business.’
Furst, E. (2013) 10 fascinating death facts from the Victorian era. Available at: http://listverse.com/2013/02/07/10-fascinating-death-facts-from-the-victorian-era/ (Accessed: 10 February 2016).
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| The five daughters of Prince Albert wore black dresses and posed for a portrait with his statue following his death in 1861 |
Mourning (2016) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourning#/media/File:Princess_Beatrice_mourning.jpg (Accessed: 10 February 2016).
Funeral Etiquette:
‘For the Victorians, life was all about proper etiquette and nowhere was this more evident than at a funeral. Unlike current times where anyone can attend a funeral service, in the Victorian age, a person must first wait to receive their formal written invitation. (It was not proper however, to send invitations to a funeral of a person who died from a contagious disease. In this case, there would just be a simple notice of death posted in the local paper with the simple phrase “funeral private” and all would be understood.) Funeral guests were then expected to arrive precisely an hour before the service was to begin. Upon entering the funeral parlour or house of the deceased, men were expected to remove their hats and not replace them again while in the house. Loud talking and laughter were also strictly forbidden and interviews with the family at the time should not be expected.
In the home or funeral parlour, the remains of the deceased were to be placed in such a way so that when the discourse is finished, if the corpse is exposed to view, the assembled guests may see the same by passing in single file past the coffin, going from foot to head, up one aisle and down another.
On the way to the burial, there were exactly six pall bearers who walked in threes, on each side of the hearse, or in a carriage immediately before, while the near relatives directly follow the hearse succeeded by those more distantly connected. Ladies however, were firmly denied the privilege of following the remains to the grave by strict social etiquette.
At the end of the service, the master of ceremonies preceded the mourners to the carriages and assisted the ladies to their places. If the physician of the deceased happened to be in attendance, he was placed in the carriage immediately following the near relatives of the deceased.
Churchyards:
At a time when there were little standards for sanitation, the burial of the deceased occurred in churchyards many of which in were in the middle of small towns. Over time the churchyards became so overflowing with dead bodies that the surrounding neighbourhoods became decidedly unhealthy.
The bodies were usually buried in shallow pits beneath the floorboards of chapels and schools. And while churchyards may seem to contain only a small number of gravestones, that was actually however, quite misleading. For example, a churchyard that was only 200 square feet in length would in actuality contain 60,000 bodies.
By the 1830’s however, things changed George Frederick Carden decided to create an exquisite park-like cemetery. And so it was in 1831 when fifty-five acres of land in London’s Kensal Green was purchased and thus was borne London’s first great cemetery.
Victorian funerals & cemeteries (no date) Available at:
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/410672059744482729/ (Accessed: 10 February 2016).
Dressing the dead:
While the fashion code for mourners was quite detailed and extreme, the rules were quite the opposite for dressing the deceased. The remains of a man were usually clad in his habit as he lived. A woman’s remains however, were usually dressed in a white robe and cap while children were dressed in white cashmere robes. As for the casket, it was usually made of hardwood or cast iron especially if the deceased died from a highly contagious disease such as diphtheria or cholera. Typically, the coffin itself would remain plain on the outside save for a swath of black cloth while the inside was usually satin lined.
Another addition to the coffin’s interior was usually a bell of some sort. Due to the contagious nature of diseases like small pox, cholera and diphtheria as well as the misdiagnosis of comas for death, unfortunately many people were actually buried alive in the Victorian age. Therefore, as a means of forestalling a not quite dead person’s burial, the installation of bells in coffins became de rigeuer.
Queen Victoria:
She was a popular and powerful queen but nowhere was Victoria’s influence felt more deeply than when she mourned the death of her beloved husband Prince Albert. After Albert’s sudden passing from typhoid fever in November 1861, Victoria became deeply depressed and soon turned mourning him into her chief concern for the rest of her days.
Shortly after Albert died, Victoria instructed her servants to maintain the Prince’s rooms exactly as he had them when he was alive. They were also instructed to bring hot water to his dressing room for his morning shave just as they always did and to dress in black for the first three years after his death. Victoria however, continued wearing black for the rest of her life.
Victoria continued mourning Albert by having statues made of him, displaying his mementoes around the royal palaces and staying secluded in Windsor Castle for many years after his death.
After several years of this, the public became quite concerned about her sanity yet so powerful was her popularity and influence that soon the British public took on her extreme form of bereavement and thus the Victorian way of mourning was borne.
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| Queen Victoria |
Stroud, C. (2014) Have the British forgotten how to grieve?. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/10639359/Have-the-British-forgotten-how-to-grieve.html (Accessed: 10 February 2016).
Death nightclubs:
In Victorian Paris there were several night clubs that celebrated death. In the neighbourhood of Montmartre, one could ponder their mortality in the aptly named ‘Cabaret du Néant’. At this gothic nightspot, visitors were served by monks and funeral attendees who offered drinks named after diseases which were imbibed on top of coffins and caskets. At ‘Cabaret de l’Enfer’, patrons would be greeted by a chorus of voices shouting “enter and be damned, the Evil One awaits you!”. At this satanically themed nightclub, a half dozen devil musicians, both male and female, would be suspended in a caldron over a fire, playing Gothic music. Throughout the room, other red imps would serve beverages or do somersaults as crevices in the walls would suddenly spew thick smoke and emit odours of volcanoes while flames would suddenly burst from clefts in the rocks.’
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| A death nightclub |
Text reference - Furst, E. (2013) 10 fascinating death facts from the Victorian era. Available at: http://listverse.com/2013/02/07/10-fascinating-death-facts-from-the-victorian-era/ (Accessed: 10 February 2016).
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