Reading a headstone – popular graveyard symbols and their meanings

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cemetery symbols, Christianity, death, Felbrigg, Free masons, Funerary art, graveystone, headstones, iconography, memento mori, monuments, mourning, reading gravestones, skulls, symbols, tombstones, Victorian Death

Popular graveyard images explained

This is the companion piece to my stroll through a graveyard post, which covered a very brief history of British cemeteries and headstones. In this post, I’ll be looking at the meaning of some of the common images and symbols that can be found on historic headstones up and down the UK. It’s important to be aware that because the topic of graveyard iconography is so vast, and can vary widely depending upon locality and beliefs, this article is not intended to be comprehensive. Instead I will focus on some popular eighteenth and nineteenth century memorial styles, many of which I have come across during coronavirus inspired rambles around my local area.

Anchors

Anchors have Christian symbolism as well as a more prosaic meaning denoting sailors or the Royal Navy. In Christian tradition they go back to the catacombs of the early Christians, and were secrete symbols of Christianity, like the fish. Anchors symbolise hope[1]. The example below is from a war grave and denotes a member of the Royal Navy, the other from an earlier grave, possibly of a mariner.

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Angels

Cemeteries are often filled with sculpted angels casting their benign gaze over the graves of the Victorian departed. There are several popular types of angel with different meanings. Grieving angels drape themselves in mourning over the dismantled altar of life, angels clutching flowers rue the fleeting nature of life, praying angels emphasise religious faith. Other angels are more judgemental – the recording angel with their book and the angel Gabriel with his horn, a sentinel waiting to call the Christian dead to rise of the day of the last judgement. and some angel images are unique, such as in the monument to Mary Nichols in Highgate Cemetery, which depicts an angel sleeping on a bed of clouds.

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Arches

Arches symbolise victory of life or victory in death [2] or the gateway to heaven [3]. This would send a reassuring message to the mourners as they passed under the grand arched entrance to All Saints Cemetery in Jesmond.

All Saints Cemetery entrance, Jesmond, Newcastle.

Arrows

Arrows are memento mori, symbolising the dart of death piercing life, and can sometimes be found wielded by skeletons, to drive home the link to mortality. The arrow below is linked with a pick, symbolising mortality, and a knot which was often used to symbolise eternal life.

Books

Books can appear in a variety of forms, open, closed, piled up. They can represent the Bible or word of God, the book of life, learning. A closed book might symbolise a long life, an open or draped book can symbolise a life cut short (4). The example below acts as a Memento Mori, reminding the living that they too will die, and is augmented with a skull and bones rising up through the earth.

Chest tombs

Chest tombs were popular from the seventeenth century, the leger stone on top, with details of the deceased, was raised up on a chest-like structure. The body is not buried in the chest, but beneath the structure. The example below is from St Lawrence’s church, Eyam, Derbyshire, and incorporates the skull and crossbones iconography (the essential remains that Christians believed were required in order to rise on Judgement Day).

Cherubs

Cherubs often symbolise innocence and are popular on the tombs of children. The cherub below left is from Grey Friars Kirkyard, Edinburgh, and rests its elbow on a skull, an obvious symbol of death and mortality. The example on the right, from Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle, the cherub holds arose and flower bud, the rose can symbolise heavenly perfection or mother, while the broken bud could represent the fleeting nature of the young lives commemorated by the monument [5].

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Clouds

Clouds represent the heavens, below, an angel peeks out from behind the clouds, which are pierced by the rays of the sun.

Columns/broken columns

Columns again hark back to a classical tradition. A broken column represents a life cut short, often the head of the family. The example on the left is from Jesmond Old Cemtetery, Newcastle, while the one on the right, with the addition of a wreath for remembrance is from Highgate Cemetery, London.

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Coats of arms

Usually designates a family or individual or location. The example below seems to be from a proud Novocastrian, as it was erected in St Andrew’s church in Newcastle and the crest bears some similarity to the coast of arms of Newcastle (three towers), rather than to the family name of the deceased. It also shows a mason’s compass and set square.

Crown

The kingdom of heaven.

Doves

Doves can be seen flying downwards and upwards, with broken wings and carrying olive branches. Broadly speaking a dove flying up is the soul flying up to heaven, flying down, the holy spirit coming from heaven.

Flying faces

As discussed in my previous post A stroll through a graveyard a flying faces developed out of the Memento Mori image of the flying skull, reminding the living that they too would die. Winged skulls gradually morphed into flying faces during the eighteenth century, representing the soul flying up to heaven. Later the face became cherubic and represented innocence. The Three examples below are, from left to right, from All Saints Churchyard, Newcastle and Holy Trinity, Washington Tyne & Wear.

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Globe

See world, below.

Hands

Hands are popular motifs on headstones and can have a variety of meanings, from the hand of god coming out of the clouds, to the offering of prayers in blessings. Hands can also indicate that the deceased is going to heaven (pointing upwards) or may have died suddenly (pointing downwards). The example below left shows a handshake, which can be between a married couple or fraternal, alternatively, if one hand appears limp, it can indicate God taking the hand of the departed [6]. The example on the right shows a hand with a heart, this can indicate charity and generosity, but it can also indicate the deceased was a member of the Oddfellows fraternity [7].

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Hourglass

Hourglasses are memento mori, reminders of mortality and that life on earth passes quickly. They can appear with wings, to symbolise how ‘time flies’ and on their side, to demonstrate how time has stopped for the deceased. Below left, from an eighteenth century headstone from St Andrews, Newcastle, on the right, a more pointed link between the hour glass and mortality, from Holy Trinity, Washington, Tyne and Wear.

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Ledger stones

Ledger stones are flat against the ground and often cover family plots, the stones filling up as the graves receive more burials.

Memento Mori Scenes

Many early headstones from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries combine a variety of memento mori images into scenes designed to remind the living of their own mortality and the importance of living a good life in order to go to heaven. The examples below are from various graveyards around Newcastle and show that some masons had seemed to have a particular flair for the macabre!

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Obelisks

Obelisks are an ancient Egyptian symbol that represented life and health, and/or a ray of the sun. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, Europe was gripped by a passion for all things Egyptian. Obelisks became popular as funerary monuments, particularly in the Victorian era. On the left, obelisks in an overgrown patch of St Peters, Wallsend, and on the right, from Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle.

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Occupations

Many headstones list the occupation of the deceased, but some go further, below left is an example of an artist’s paint palette and to the right, a classical scene depicting a physician, naturally enough, on the side of the monument to a doctor.

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Portraiture

Funerary portraiture can be found on monuments and tombs from ancient times and isn’t always restricted to those of historical importance or aristocratic lineage. In the Victorian period, photography became more widespread and trends such as post mortem photography were embraced, photographs can even found on some headstones from the period. Preston Cemetery in North Shields has a rare surviving example, I viewed it once many years ago, but I’ve not been able to locate it since.

The example below left, is that of Dr James Milne at St Peter’s churchyard Wallsend (the above classical scene is also from his monument) a man well respected locally, the monument was erected by his friends. The other example shows renowned renaissance humanist scholar, and one-time tutor to Mary Queen of Scots, George Buchanan, and can be found in Grey Friars Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

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Scythes

Memento mori symbols, carried by Death or the grim reaper, symbolising the cutting off of life. The example below, from Grey Friars Kirkyard incorporates the hourglass to emphasise the fleetingness of time.

Sexton’s tools

Sexton’s are the church officials who look after the churchyard and dig graves. Their tools can appear on gravestones as an indication of their occupation, or more generally as a symbol of mortality. This example is from the Covenanters Prison, in Grey Friars Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

Shells

Shells can be used as a decorative motif, but also have a Christian origin, in particular scallop shells are associated with pilgrimages (still popular today on the Camino Trail). After the Jacobite rebellions in the eighteenth century, they could also be a political gesture, indicating allegiance with the king over the water. The example below is from the seventeenth century mausoleum of the infamous Bloody Mackenzie in Grey Friars Kirkyard.

Skulls

Whether winged or floating above cross bones, skulls represent mortality and act as Memento Mori. Trevor Yorke notes that from the medieval period onwards, it was believed that the skull and crossbones were the bare minimum bodily parts required to ensure resurrection on the day of judgement.

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Left, a particularly sinister looking winged skull from an eighteenth century headstone in St Margaret’s, Felbrigg, Norfolk. Right, skull and crossbones from a seventeenth century chest tomb in St Lawrence’s, Eyam, Derbyshire.

Snakes/Ouroborus

Originally an ancient Egyptian symbol for health that entered the western tradition via the Greek Ouroboros, a snake swallowing it’s own tail, symbolises eternal life. This example is from All Saints Cemetery, Jesmond, Newcastle.

Here the Ouroboros symbol for eternal life is coupled with the scythe symbolic of death.

Square and compass (Masonic/Freemasons)

The square and compass is a found on the funerary monuments of members of the Freemasons, often accompanied by a ‘G’ representing God and Geometry. The Square and compass are a reminder to Freemasons to keep their actions within the tenets of Freemasonry [8].

Table tombs

Table tombs have the ledger stone on top, supported by legs and forming a table structure. The burial is beneath. The examples below are from Tynemouth Priory in Tyne and Wear.

Torches

Torches represent human life, death, and eternal life. If they are pointing down and have no flame they represent a life extinguished, whereas if they are pointing down but still alight the represent the eternal life of the soul. The example below symbolises bodily death but the eternal life of the soul.

Urns

Urns hark back to the funerary urns of ancient Greece, in which cremated remains would be interred. They became popular from the eighteenth century and endured into the Victorian period, possibly because they denote the body being cast off in preparation for the souls journey to heaven [9]. They could also appear with flames atop – symbolising the eternal flame of friendship or religious fervour. Other urns appear are covered with drapery, which can symbolised the curtain between life and death or the casting off of worldly garments[10] and often denoted the death of an older person [11] (and when coupled with a weeper, became a popular classical image).

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These examples are from Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle.

Wheatsheaves

Wheatsheaves are most often associated with a long life, although where only few stalks are found, this can indicate that the deceased was young. The example below, from Grey Friars Kirkyard, is combined with a skull and crossbones.

Women in mourning (weepers)

The image of a woman, with loose flowing hair, mourning over a tomb or an urn, was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In this example from Jesmond, the weeper holds a wreath (see below for meaning).

World (globe)

The world or globe image represents worldly pleasure and is often coupled with death in order to emphasis the wages of worldly pleasure (and sin) are death, as shown in these examples from Grey Friars Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

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Wreaths

Wreaths are classical in origin, being awarded to athletes in the ancient Olympic games. In funerary art their circular shape represents eternal memory. Wreaths of bay leaves represent triumph over death, while wreaths of roses, like the example below, from Highgate Cemetery, London, can represent virtue and heavenly bliss (12).

This list represents only a snippet of the cemetery symbols that can be found. I hope this encourages you to go out and explore your local historic cemeteries and graveyards and to be able to read some of the richly symbolic funerary language used by our ancestors. Please remember to be quiet and respectful when you visit your local historic cemeteries, some may still be in use, and many monuments may be fragile.

Happy headstone hunting!

Sources

BBC – London – History – Victorian Memorial Symbols

Snider, Tui, 2017, Understanding Cemetery Symbols

Symbolism Meaning: Animals – Art of Mourning

Symbols – TheCemeteryClub.com

The Symbolism of Victorian Funerary Art – Undercliffe Cemetery

Yorke, Trevor, 2017, Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials

Notes

1. The Cemetery Club, Symbols
2. ibid
3. BBC, Victorian Memorial Symbols
4. Tui Snider, Understanding Cemetery Symbols
5. ibid
6. ibid
7. ibid
8. ibid
9. ibid
10. ibid
11. The Cemetery Club, Symbols

A Stroll through a graveyard: a very brief history of British cemeteries

Tags

burial, burial practice, Cemeteries, charnel house, Christian burial, churchyards, Graveyards, headstones, history, monuments, tombstones, Victorian Cemeteries, victorian graveyards

With the Coronavirus lockdowns of 2020/2021 many of us have had to find our pleasures closer to home than usual.  One of my favourite past-times has been visiting some of my local graveyards and taking a leisurely stroll amongst the tombstones and monuments.

Overgrown urban cemeteries and churchyards provide a haven for nature, an escape from the bustle of the modern world, and respite from the claustrophobia of a national lockdown. Often protected from traffic and pollution, and hidden from sight behind high walls, they can easily be overlooked by passers by. Yet within those high walls you can find butterflies dancing on delicate wildflowers, squirrels sheltering in the branches of ancient trees and foxes hiding amongst the tangled brambles.  Cemeteries are also steeped in cultural history and rich in public art, with elaborate memorials and tombs, describing a rich and varied iconography of death and remembrance. I have done a separate post on some of the common cemetery symbols found on headstones.

As the subject of burial and funeral monuments is a vast one, this article will be by nature selective, focusing mainly on traditional Christian burial practices found in mainly English cemeteries and churchyards. However, it is important to note that there are also many examples of different regional styles and practices as well as those of other faiths, all of which can also be found in our historic graveyards.

A very brief history of traditional British cemeteries and their monuments

Romans, Saxons and Medieval burial

Many British churchyards sit on much older pre-Christian burial grounds, and may contain remnants of those earlier times, occasionally these remnants can be seen today. It has been suggested that the Romans may have invented (or at least developed the idea of) the headstone as we know it [1]. The Roman tombstone below (L) can be found in Holy Trinity Churchyard, Washington, Tyne and Wear, and does look remarkably similar to later headstones.

Medieval churchyards did not contain many stone grave markers, so were ideal places for community activities such as fairs and village games (until the puritans put a stop to jollity, that is). Often the only stone monument was a large cross, although many of these were destroyed during the Reformation of the sixteenth century [2]. The example below (M) is the Mercian Cross, a Saxon cross from the eighth-tenth centuries, which can be found in St Lawrence’s church, Eyam, Derbyshire. In this period, only those of very high status would merit an individual burial and memorial, many people would expect to end up in a charnel house. Initially ‘wet’ bodies (i.e. fresh, fleshy bodies) were stored in stone coffins until they decomposed and became ‘dry’ (i.e. bones). The bones would then be stacked in the charnel house. The stone coffins below (R) can be seen at Tynemouth Priory, Tyne and Wear. If you were wondering where the corpse liquor went, some stone coffins also contained a hole to let it drain out [3].

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From pomp and purgatory to the resurrection men

Richard Fleming’s tomb and chantry chapel, Lincoln Cathedral.

Our relationship with the dead has changed over time. Purgatory as an actual place was introduced as a concept from the late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries. This lead to a drive to encourage the living to ease the passage of the deceased through purgatory with prayer. Gruesome monuments, such as Cadaver Tombs, (which depicted the deceased as rotting corpses) were often linked to chantry chapels to elicit prayers for the dead. This provided the living a sense of moral and religious satisfaction while assisting the dead towards  salvation [4, 5]. Other, less macabre tomb monuments, called gisants, emphasised the earthly status of the deceased, showed them in fine regalia, as if in prayer or sleeping.

The Gisant style monument for Sir Ralph Grey (d1443) and his wife, Elizabeth. St Peter’s church, Chillingham, Northumberland.

While most people in the medieval period were buried in unmarked graves, tombs or memorials of the great and (often not so) good were sighted inside churches and the higher the status of the deceased, the closer to the altar (and God) they would be placed. In later times this also protected the dead from body snatchers. This resulted in some very dubious practices, such as at Enon Chapel in London, where cut price burials resulted in the dead being piled up to the rafters in a tiny crypt, in order to line the pockets of the rapacious minister.   In the past, these intramural burials in churches were notorious for causing a bit of a stink (and worse in the case of Enon chapel), but such burials can result in problems even today. Recently, the floor of Bath Abbey, which is paved with ledger stones, flat grave markers, was restored to stop the floor sinking into the cavities caused by the decayed bodies beneath. (Somerset Live).

The Reformation of the church in the sixteenth century, which made the concept of purgatory redundant for many, the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 that ousted the party-pooping puritans, combined with a rising class of wealthier farmers and merchants, created a sea-change in funeral monuments. From the end of the seventeenth century churchyards begin to fill up with tombstones, recording personal status, family ties, occupation and epitaphs, as well as some very macabre iconography [6].

As with burials inside the church, burials outside had their pecking order. Burial on the east side of a churchyard was preferred, with the body facing east in order to rise on the day of judgement. Burial on the north side was reserved for the illegitimate, criminals, suicides and strangers, and was therefore a less favourable location [7]. There is a wonderful description of this in MR James’s The Ash Tree, the executed witch, Mrs Mothersole, is said to have been buried on ‘that unhallowed side of the building‘. In some areas these ‘undesirable’ burials would take place outside the church yard itself or the corpse would have to be unceremoniously bundled over the wall of the churchyard, after being refused the usual welcome by the vicar at the lych-gate [8].

While post mortem social status was a pressing issue for some, from the late eighteenth century, body snatchers were a real fear for many. This was the case right up until the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832 (which solved the problem of supply of cadavers for the anatomists table by co-opting the corpses of the poor and destitute). To protect the dearly departed from such ‘resurrection men’ elaborate precautions were put in place and they can still be found in some graveyards today.

Image by https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/0a/b0/95f14983a9a287f3932cd1e71806.jpgGallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0010462.htmlWellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-24): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/b2gb3sp8 CC-BY-4.0, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36452434

Famous examples of post mortem protection can be found in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh which boasts a very fine mortsafe.  While the infamous Burke and Hare may have preferred to obtain their bodies by seeking out ‘future corpses'[9] in the drinking dens of the old Town, many others were stealing corpses from graveyards to supply Edinburgh’s famous medical schools. 

Tombstone trends

As more people were able to afford permanent grave markers, churchyards began to fill up and certain styles of headstone became popular. Headstones began short and stout, gradually becoming taller and less chunky as the centuries progressed – although this could depend on the quality of the local stone. More elaborate ornamentation and inscriptions became popular, however, the execution of the design could depend on the skill of the mason, many of whom may have been illiterate, as is seen below.

The examples above, from St Andrew’s, Newcastle, and Tynemouth Priory, Tynemouth, show eighteenth century grave stones with the text cramped together, of uneven size, and occasionally with words broken over lines. The example on the right also shows some naïve attempts at decoration.

The size difference between the early 18th Century gravestone on the left, and the nineteenth century one on the right. St Peter’s Church, Chillingham.

These headstones were often in three parts – decoration at the top, details about the deceased (names, dates, occupation, family ties) then an epitaph or scriptural quote at the bottom. Some stones also have the mason’s name as well.

These earlier grave stones had their inscriptions facing away from the actual burial plot, and some had a ‘body stone’ covering the burial, or a small ‘footstone’ indicating the length of the grave. In some cases the direction of the headstone was reoriented by the Victorians. The Victorians often marked the limits of a grave or family plot using kerbstones or railings [10].

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As the times changed, so did decorative motifs, one of the most notable metamorphosis being that of the infamous grinning skull and crossbones. This first evolved into a flying head before morphing into a chubby cheeked cherub (a more sentimental, but no less disquieting images, to my mind).

Seventeenth and early eighteenth century skull and crossbones motifs, usually found in the top section of decoration, acted as a memento mori, reminding the living that they too would soon be dust (so they should behave themselves and lead good lives). This tradition evolved into flying faces, which symbolised the soul flying up to heaven, and later still, in the late Georgian and Victorian period, morphed into flying angels/cherubs, symbolising innocence (they were often used on the graves of children [11].

The taste for the macabre in graveyard symbols lingered well into the eighteenth century, but by the closing decades, tombstones could be found with tranquil classical iconography, in keeping with Georgian taste for all things ancient Roman and Greek. 

Late eighteenth century tombstone with classical motifs, St Andrew’s, Newcastle.

By the nineteenth century, it was the rising urban middle classes who drove the developments of tombstone designs.  Huge gothic follies, classical urns and columns sprouted up across the land. Crosses and Angels as grave markers even made a come-back, shunned after the Reformation and centuries of anti-Catholic feeling in England, they underwent a renaissance in the nineteenth century and can be found in abundance in many Victorian cemeteries. 

Victorian Gothic, the funerary monument of the Reed family, at Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle.

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Angels and crosses from Highgate Cemetery, London, Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle and Tynemouth Priory, Tyne and wear.

The Civic minded Victorians also came up with the concept of the Garden Cemetery, situated in the suburbs, laid out like parks and dotted with attractive grave monuments, these cemeteries not only addressed the problems of overfull and unsanitary urban burial grounds, but made a visit to the grave of a loved one into a pleasurable day out [12]. 

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The difference between the overcrowded headstones in Bunhill burial ground, in use in the centre of London since the seventeenth century, and the elegant nineteenth century suburban garden cemetery, in this case Jesmond Old Cemetery in Newcastle, was plain to see.

The Victorians also helped to democratise death, through their more industrialised production techniques, machine cutting inscriptions, standardised patterns, and a budget range of guinea graves, and community burial clubs. As the nineteenth century progressed more and more people could have a permanent marker to meet their budget. The downside of this was that the idiosyncratic and personal memorials of earlier times were often replaced with standard shapes, such as the ubiquitous lancet gravestone,  and more generic  religious or moral sentiments. Of course, this doesn’t meant that the families and friends of the departed grieved any less, only that the outward language of death and the business of burial had become more of an industry [13, 14].

The ubiquitous lancet headstones found in Victorian cemeteries across Britain.

New materials also played their part, with machine cut inscriptions, lead lettering and occasional iron headstones (very appropriate for such an industrial age).

This unusual but appropriate iron headstone was chosen for William Crawford, an Iron Founder, and can be found in Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle. Unfortunately, it has weathered badly.

The twentieth century saw the mass death of the First World War, with Cenotaphs, empty tombs, for recording the deaths of millions, and many soldiers buried on foreign shores.  You can find the occasional pristine war grave, striking in its simple poignancy, amongst the unruly ivy clad headstones of a previous era. However, it was inevitable that death on such an industrial scale, with so many families left grieving without a body to bury, would cause a fundamental change in how the dead were commemorated, World War I was the beginning of the end of the lavish Victorian way of death. 

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Gone but not forgotten. A solitary war grave sits amongst older graves at Church Bank Cemetery in Wallsend; while a war grave from 1917, in Jesmond Old Cemetery, is adorned with a recent poppy tribute.

Today, in Britain, cremation far outstrips burial, nevertheless, you can still find some unique and personal grave monuments on occasion. A particularly poignant example can be found in Westgate Crematorium in Newcastle, where a huge black marble edifice stands for a young man, dead before his time, and which includes a marble motorbike. While this may not be to every ones taste, it is a unique and very personal memorial.

There has been a church on this site since the 12th Century, St Peter’s church was rebuilt in 1809 and remodelled in 1892. Wallsend, North Tyneside.

Who lies beneath

Cemeteries are filled with the famous and not so famous, all with their individual tales that remind us that these mossy and ivy cloaked monuments hid the bones of people just like us, who lived and loved and sometimes suffered.

Dame Mary Page, 1729, Bunhilll, London

Grave monuments could be very personal in the eighteenth century, one could say, too personal, as this famous monument to Dame Mary Page at Bunhill cemetery in London demonstrates. The unfortunate Dame Mary died in 1729, the inscription describes her final years “In 67 months she was tap’d [tapped] 66 times, Had taken away 240 gallons of water without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation.”

The Keenleyside Monument, 1841/2, Jesmond Old Cemetery, Newcastle

This canopied monument featuring a reclining cherub rests beneath mature trees in Jesmond Old Cemetery and hides a terrible family tragedy. The monument was erected by Thomas William and Louisa Keenleyside in memory of their children, Eleanor, 2 years old, Charles, 12 years old, and James who was 10 years old. The children died in quick succession between December 1841 to January 1842, victims of the Cholera epidemic that raged through the city. Epidemics and other diseases such as scarlet fever were common in the Victorian period, and could rip through a family taking siblings one after another. It is hard to comprehend how Thomas and Louisa came to terms with this heart wrenching loss, although this monument may have been part of that process.

Tom Sayers, 1865, Highgate Cemetery, London

You would be forgiven for thinking this monument in London’s Highgate Cemetery was the grave of a large dog, but in fact is commemorates Tom Sayers, Victorian superstar prize-fighting bare-knuckle boxer, who died in 1865. Sayers had a turbulent personal life, so the chief mourner at his funeral was his mastiff, Lion, who rode alone in a pony cart behind the hearse. Sayers kept the hound next to him even in death, and Lion was immortalised by sculptor Morton Edwards and forms the most prominent feature of Sayers monument [15].

Epilogue

For me, the apogee of cemetery design came in the nineteenth century, when over-crowded, unsanitary urban cemeteries, such as Bunhill Fields, were replaced with leafy suburban garden cemeteries.  Highgate cemetery, Abney Park and Kensal Green were intended as pleasure grounds as much as for memorialising the dead.  Recently, I have spent many hours exploring my local cemeteries and churchyards, discovering fascinating facts about my area – the pastoral poet buried in the centre of Newcastle, the Georgian composer, organist and music critic buried in St Andrews, as well as countless ordinary people, whose lives flicker before us briefly in their epitaphs.

Ledger stone for eighteenth century Newcastle composer and organist Charles Avison. Avison died in 1770, but the ledger stone was replaced in the nineteenth century.

The Coronavirus pandemic has claimed so many lives, however, once the pandemic itself has entered into the pages of history, I hope that we will not forget the quite pleasures of walking in these public gardens of the past and experiencing that fleeting connection with those who have gone before us.

All Saints, Newcastle.

Part 2 will look at the meaning behind some of the symbols found on headstones.

Sources

Cohen, Kathleen, 1973, Metamorphosis of a death symbol

King, Pamela, 1987, Contexts of the cadaver tomb in fifteenth century England

Morgan, Alan, 2004, Beyond the Grave, Exploring Newcastle’s Burial Grounds

Ross, Peter, 2020, A Tomb With a View, The Stories and Glories of Graveyards

Rutherford, Sarah, 2008, The Victorian Cemetery

Snider, Tui, 2017, Understanding Cemetery Symbols

Victorian Web, Funerary monument to Thomas Sayers (1826-1865), Western Cemetery, Highgate, London N.6. (victorianweb.org)

Yorke, Trevor, 2017, Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials

Notes

1. Alan Morgan, Beyond the Grave, Exploring Newcastle’s Burial Grounds
2. Trevor Yorke, Understanding Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials
3. ibid
4. Pamela King, Contexts of the cadaver tomb in fifteenth century England
5. Kathleen Cohen, Metamorphosis of a death symbol
6. Trevor Yorke, Understanding Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials
7. Tui Snider, Understanding Cemetery Symbols
8. Peter Ross, A Tomb with a View, The Stories and Glories of Graveyards
9. The Order of the Good Death (death positive movement)
10. Trevor Yorke, Understanding Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials
11. Tui Snider, Understanding Cemetery Symbols
12. Sarah Rutherford, The Victorian Cemetery
13. Tui Snider, Understanding Cemetery Symbols
14. Trevor Yorke, Understanding Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials
15. Victorian Web, Funerary monument to Thomas Sayers

Which Mortality Remindin’ Shirt is for You? | The Order of the Good Death

Medieval Death: The Danse Macabre

Tags

black death, cemetery, charnel house, dance of death, Danse Macabre, death, Death Art, Holbein, Holy Innocents, John Lydgate, Medieval, memento mori, Paris, Religion, Rowlandson, St Paul's

Ms. 109 (2011.40), fol. 156 c 1493-1510. Getty collection.

In the late Middle Ages, life was tough and brief, and King Death presided over all.  Plague, social upheaval, famine, and the Hundred Years War had all taken their toll on the population and this was reflected in the dark art of the fifteenth century.

Ars Moriendi, or Art of Dying, texts set out how a Christian could have a Good Death; Memento Mori images, such as the three living and the three dead, reminded people of the transient nature of earthly pleasures – and the judgement to come;  Cadaver or Transi tombs begged the passer-by to pray for the departed and so to quicken their passage through purgatory.

Grim traditions for a grim time.  However, the late Middle Ages also saw the development of the gleefully morbid Danse Macabre or Dance of Death which could be found in Northern Europe and as far south as Italy. It is worth noting that the subject of the Danse is a vast one which encompasses performance, literature and the visual arts.  This post will focus mainly two of the more well known, but now lost, visual representation of the Danse at Holy Innocents Cemetery in Paris and Old St Paul’s in London.

Origins of the Macabre

Nuremberg_chronicle Dance of Death (CCLXIIIIv) Via Wikimedia

Macabre, a word that evokes not just morbid themes, but also hints at a certain fascination or even relish for the subject.  A word that fits the art of the post plague Medieval world like a decaying body fits a tattered shroud.

There is scholarly debate as to the origin of the word macabre. It has been argued to be Hebrew, Arabic or a derivation of the Biblical name Maccabeus (the slaughter of the Maccabees was a popular subject of Medieval Mystery plays) [1].  Whatever its true origin, it soon became indissolubly linked with a particular form of Medieval Memento Mori art, the Danse Macabre.

The first literary reference that partners it with the Danse Macabre appears in 1376 in Jean Le Fevre’s Le respit de la mort, written, appropriately, when Le Fevre was recovering from plague.  Here ‘Macabre‘ appears to be a character or a personification of death:

I did the dance of Macabre
who leads all men to his dance
and directs them to the grave,
which is their final abode.[2]

This poem exemplifies the Medieval literary penchant for didactic poetry.  Such poetry often took the form of a conversation between the body and the soul, and usually had a Christian, moral theme entreating the reader to eschew the vanities of life in favour of preparing the soul for the afterlife.  This genre sat comfortably alongside other Memento Mori traditions such as the Three Living and the Three Dead.  Its didactic form was also a perfect fit for the Danse Macabre theme – with the personification of Death summoning his unwilling victims to the grave.

The hours of Dionara of Urbino’), Italy, ca. 1480

Dancing in the graveyard

The Danse Macabre usually depicted a line of dancers, from different estates in society, partnered by cavorting skeletons.  Dancers are drawn from all levels of the social hierarchy – from Popes and emperors, princes of the church, kings, labourers and even children. Later depictions added women and newly emergent professional classes such as doctors and merchants – all clearly identifiable by stereotypical dress.

Often text or dialogue accompanies each pair of dancers, death calling each one and the dancer bemoaning their fate. Examples were found on charnel houses, cemetery walls and in churches. As a subgenre of the popular Medieval Estates Satire, the Danse Macabre hammered home, like nails into a coffin that, no matter your position in society, death was the great leveller [3][4].

Guy Marchants Danse Macabre from Holy Innocents Cemetery. c1491 -92.

The first known artistic representation Danse Macabre was to be found, appropriately enough, on the walls of the charnel house of Holy Innocents Cemetery, Paris. Holy Innocents cemetery was the oldest in Paris, dating from the end of the twelfth century and was situated next to the bustling marketplace of Les Halles. The cemetery would have been bustling with people, traders, scribes, sex workers. The Charnel house, a place where the bones of the dead, high and low, were all mixed together regardless of rank, would have been an ideal location for the mural.  The Images at Holy Innocents were also accompanied by Le Fevre’s text, forever linking the two in the popular imagination and creating what some have likened to a Medieval comic strip with images and speech ‘bubbles’ [5][6].

Locating the Danse Macabre in a cemetery fitted with folk belief as well, it has been noted that in popular culture, it was not uncommon for people to report seeing corpses dancing in graveyards [7]. Overall, the average Medieval person was concerned with the unquiet dead, sinners roaming about with unfinished business amongst the living – as many contemporary reports of revenants, attest.

Charnel House at Holy Innocents/Cimetière des Innocents, Paris. Via Wikimedia.

The mural was commissioned between August 1424 and Lent 1425, a period of truce in the One Hundred Years war.  The Treaty of Troyes gave Henry V, right to the throne of France, when he died in 1422, his son Henry VI, became king of France and England.  However, as Henry VI was only a baby, France was placed under the regency of John of Bedford, Henry VI’s uncle and a well-known patron of the arts.

The image is a macabre carnival – death mocks and pulls at his dance partners, the fat abbot is told he will be the first to rot, while death flirts with the handsome chevalier and gropes the physician.  There are 30 couples in all, from the highest to the lowest.  With an ‘authority’ figure to introduce the dance, and another authority figure and a dead king to deliver the moral of the dance [8].  As John Lydgate put it:

Come forth, sir Abbot, with your [broad] hat,
Beeth not abaissed (though thee have right).
Greet is your hede, youre bely large and fatte;
Ye mote come daunce though ye be nothing light.
[..]
Who that is fattest, I have hym behight,
In his grave shal sonnest putrefie. [9]

The subject matter of the mural may have been influenced by the contemporary political situation – the figures mainly depicted the ruling and martial classes, the king, constable and, of course, a corpse king.  It was also this political situation, a lull in the hostilities, that allowed English poet John Lydgate to visit Paris in 1426.

Lydgate was impressed with the image and accompanying text and was influenced to write his English translation of Le Fevre’s text with the addition of extra characters drawn from Mystery plays and masques of the time.  Lydgate also introduced some female characters to the text [10].

Danse Macabre from Talllinn by Bernt Notke c1500.

In 1430 a version of the Danse Macabre was painted at the Pardoner Churchyard, Old St Paul’s, London (commonly known as the ‘dauce of Poulys‘).  Both image and text were influenced by the Mural at Holy Innocents. This version depicted 36 dancers from different stations in life, summoned by death.  The St Paul’s images were augmented with dialogue between death and his victims, this time provided by John Lydgate’s translation ‘Out of the Frensshe’ [11].  Writing in 1603 in his Survey of London, John Stow described the St Paul’s Dance, thus:

“[..] About this Cloyster, was artificially and richly painted the dance of Machabray, or dance of death, commonely called the dance of Pauls: the like whereof was painted about S. Innocents cloyster at Paris in France: the meters or poesie of this dance were translated out of French into English by Iohn Lidgate, Monke of Bury, the picture of death leading all estates, at the dispence of Ienken Carpenter, in the raigne of Henry the sixt.”

Stow’s comments highlight how influential the Danse Macabre at Holy Innocents was on subsequent versions.

Another common feature of both Holy Innocents Danse Macabre and St Paul’s was that they were situated in busy areas bustling with life and frequented by the public, both became popular, and thought provoking, attractions.  Sadly, neither survive – Holy Innocents Cemetery was completely removed at the end of the eighteenth century and the mural at St Paul’s was destroyed in 1549.

Holy Innocents Cemetery by Guy Marchant c1491-92.

Many other examples of the Danse Macabre were created in the following decades, notable ones having existing at Basel (c1440), Lubeck (1463) and Tallinn, Estonia (1500).  Each was tailored to its own locale and reflected the patrons who commissioned it – where Holy Innocents focused on the martial classes, Lubeck featured more from the merchant classes.

Sadly, many examples are lost, surviving only in copies or as fragments of vast originals – such as the fragment at St Nicholas’ Church Tallinn by Bernt Notke (a copy of his earlier lost work at Lubeck).  Clearly, later ages did not share the Medieval fondness for macabre public art.

So, how did the Medieval viewer read such an audio-visual experience?

The Unwanted Dance Partner

Danse Macabre by Bernt Notke via Wikimedia.

The most obvious message that even an illiterate Medieval viewer could take away from the Danse Macabre, is that death is the great leveller.  No matter how high your estate, in the end death is coming for you.

The Danse was also personal, all of the estates of society could be found, so whether you were a king, a merchant or a labourer, or even a child, you could find your own representation in the danse; some of them even set the dance in a recognisably local landscape, for added impact.  The viewer could also, in a sense, participate in the dance, because many of the life size frescoes within churches, such as that at Tallinn, required the viewer to process along the fresco in order to see all of the original 48-50 figures[12].

The danse was also undeniably slapstick.  Viewers would have been familiar with figure of death or devils and their comedic antics in Mystery plays and even court masques so the viewer could laugh at the expense of their betters as they are dragged to the grave by a cavorting skeleton, whilst also being viscerally reminded of their own mortality.

A medieval burial, from a Book of Hours made in Besançon (detail), France, c. 1430–1440, Rare Books Collection, State Library Victoria.

But more than that, the Danse subverted the natural order of things.  The dead should be at rest, subject to the funeral mass, and quiet in their graves, not cavorting about.  It’s notable that many of these images were associated with graveyards – often sights of lively activity, commercial and personal, so much so that in Rouen in 1231 and Basel in 1435 edicts were passed prohibiting dancing in graveyards [13].  The Danse images were challenging the norm.  Dancing in Medieval thought was primarily associated with sin, paganism and seduction. Placing images of a sinful activity in a holy setting would seem to point to their purpose being penitential or confessional [14].

But, what of the text that sat alongside the images.  In a world where the majority of people were illiterate, how important was it?  While the images convey death as the great leveller, the dialogue between death and the living, prompts people to remember that earths glories are temporary, pride is the greatest sin of all, and that they should repent and prepare their souls for the afterlife.

However, while only a few would have been educated enough to read the text themselves, the message of atonement it conveyed would not have been lost on the illiterate.  The images would have been viewed in the context of lively sermons on the subject and oral tales reinforcing the message that death could strike at any time, so you should prepare your soul.  After the ravages of the Black Death this would have been particularly poignant [15].

The reformation and Death gets a reboot

The Abbess by Holbein 1523/5. Public domain.

In the sixteenth century, the religious and political landscape of Europe was drastically altered by the Protestant Reformation as well as technical innovations like the printing press. Nevertheless, it was during this period that the Dance of Death had its most famous reboot.  In 1523-25, Hans Holbein produce his famous version of the Dance of Death, however, rather than a public fresco in a church, his work was a series of woodcuts often reproduced in codex/book form.  This broke up the dance into a series of pages and also provided a more private and personal experience for the viewer. And, also, from a modern perspective, reinforces the link between the format of the Dance and modern graphic novel or comic strip art forms. Holbein’s Dance of Death also repurposed the genre as a tool of social satire and religious reform, rather than as a moral or religious lesson [16]. 

Dancing down the ages

The heyday of the Danse Macabre as religious symbolism was the Late Middle Ages, however, the striking visual image of death harrying the living has remained a popular subject for artists throughout the ages, although its message may have changed.

In the nineteenth century, Thomas Rowlandson collaborated with poet William Combe to produce the satirical series The English Dance of Death in 1815.  In the twentieth century, Ingmar Bergman’s Iconic film the Seventh Seal (1957) used Dance imagery, and in the twenty-first century, English Heavy Metal Band Iron Maiden’s 2015 album was named for the Dance of Death.

The English Dance of Death, Thomas Rowlandson 1815. Image from Haunted Palace Collection.And if you thought that the Dance of Death was now just the preserve of historians and heavy metal fans, one school of thought has it that the modern predilection for dressing up in scary costumes at Halloween can be linked back to that most macabre of medieval traditions [17].

Sources and notes

Binski, Paul, Medieval Death, Cornell University Press, 1996 [3] [13] [14] [16]

Cook, Megan, L, and Strakhov, Elizaveta, Ed. John Lydgate’s Dance of Death and Related works, Medieval Institute Publications, 2019 [1] [2] [4] [5] [7] [9] [10] [11]

Dodedans – St Paul’s dance, [8] http://www.dodedans.com/Epaul.htm#:~:text=The%20most%20famous%20dance%20of%20death%20in%20England,%28And%20fro%20Paris%20%2F%20to%20Inglond%20hit%20sent%29.

Ebenstein, Joanna, Ed. Death: A Graveside Companion, Thames & Hudson, 2017. [6]

Gertsman, Elina, The Dance of Death in Reval (Tallinn): The Preacher and His Audience, in Gesta Vol. 42, No. 2 (2003), pp. 143-159 (17 pages) Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the International Center of Medieval Art [12] [15 [17]

Platt, Colin, King Death: The Black Death in England and its aftermath in late-medieval England,  UCL Press.

Death masks and phrenology: the Victorian guide to spotting a psychopath

Tags

criminal research, Death masks, executions, hangings, imago, norwich castle, phrenology, public executions

 

Death mask of Tutankhamun. Image by Roland Unger via Wikimedia.

There is something deeply fascinating about looking into the faces of the long-dead. Whether you find yourself gazing at the desiccated remains of ancient Egyptian Mummies, pondering the fate of the often brutally murdered bog-bodies, or staring into face of a long dead ancestor given immortality of sorts via the medium of portraiture or post-mortem photography.

There is clearly a very visceral difference between staring into the actual face of the dead as opposed to their likeness.  However,  sometimes it is possible to come across a likeness so uncanny that it bridges this gap;  where a three dimensional portrait creates a truly intimate and accurate record of how a person looked at the point of death.

A very brief history of the death mask

Death masks of one description or another have been popular in many cultures for thousands of years.  The gold mask of Tutankhamun is possibly the most famous example, although other cultures have just as many, his mask was part of the mummification process and was intended to guard and strengthen the soul on its journey to the afterlife [1].  In the Roman period, noble families had their galleries of imago – wax casts of their venerable ancestors, brought out for processions.  After the murder of Julius Caesar, his entire body was cast and taken in procession.  By the Middle Ages, European Royalty were using wax or wooden effigies of the deceased in their funeral rituals – that of Henry VII is still in existence at Westminster Abbey. Fast forward to the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the great and the good, such as Walter Scott, Coleridge and Mendelssohn, were taking life and death masks to preserve their features for posterity.

Death mask of King Henry VII, Westminster Abbey.

Before the advent of photography, a life or death mask was the most accurate, and not necessarily flattering, likeness that it was possible to get of an individual.

L’inconnue de la Seine – death mask of a Parisienne suicide.

But there is a darker side to death masks (no irony intended).  They were not only used by the great and the good for the edification of posterity, the use of death masks in particular had a more macabre purpose.

In the nineteenth century the police often utilised death masks to help with the identification of unknown corpses.  In the time before effective refrigeration, a corpse would not stay fresh for long.  Places such as the Paris Morgue often resorted to death masks when bodies had deteriorated and could no longer be put on display (masks were later superseded by post-mortem photography).

During the nineteenth century, the death mask took on a new and insidious purpose.  It was used to illustrate the dubious tenants of a very popular new science, designed to categorise the human character and intelligence based on physical traits.

The rise of Phrenology 

Franz Josef Gall. Public domain via Wikimedia.

In 1796, Franz Joseph Gall would set in motion a ‘scientific’ school of thought whose more negative connotations still reverberate to this day.

At the end of the eighteenth century, opinion was divided as to how the brain worked.  Some thought the brain was a homogenous whole, while others thought that specific areas of the brain controlled specific functions.   Gall was of the belief that the development of the brain, with its over or under-developed areas, would influence the shape of the skull.[2]

Gall felt this view was strengthened when he examined the skulls of a group of pick-pockets and identified that each had a pronounced bulge over their ear, which he took to be the area of the brain associated with lying, theft and deception.  He followed this up with extensive (but unscientific) research in prisons and asylums. While his conjectures went far beyond the empirical evidence, his work was the first tentative steps towards understanding and identifying criminal behaviour.

Phrenology Head. Source unknown.

His ideas were enthusiastically taken up and developed in the first half of nineteenth century, his method promised to identify those with criminal potential before they had the opportunity to commit a crime.  Phrenological Societies boomed – London boasted 28 in the 1820’s and the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh was founded by one of Phrenology’s great luminaries – George Combe and his brother Andrew.  The Edinburgh society is credited with laying the ground for Evolutionary theory. [3].

Not only did this research focus on the living, it focused on the dead as well, particularly those of the criminal classes.  Hence the number of death masks of notorious criminals from that age (although not only death masks were taken: while William Burke’s mask was taken after his execution, the slippery Hare, who turned Kings evidence, had his mask taken in life).  Masks were an ideal way to capture and study criminal physiognomy.

Death mask of Burke and life mask of Hare. Edinburgh University. Image by Kim Traynor.

Social Darwinism: born bad and ‘degenerate’ races

While fashionable people flocked to phrenology saloons in the nineteenth century (seeing it as a form of ‘scientific’ fortune-telling due to its supposed ability to predict behaviours) on another more insidious level it was being used to cement ideas of racism and eugenics.

It is hard to believe now, but there had been an ongoing debate amongst the thinkers of the Enlightenment as to whether people of different races were actually different species.  Even great thinkers such as Voltaire and Linneus supported this idea of polygenism.  This created a drive to categorise and measure different races using racial anthropological physiognomy.  Masks, both life and death, played a part in this as did Phrenology, which identified characteristics based on racial stereotypes and well as social stereotypes.

Excerpt from ‘Crania Americana’ by Samuel Morton. 1839. Used to promote racist ideas of the supposed differences between the skulls of different races. Image from Vassar Collection.

By the nineteenth century, the view was that while all races were the same species, the non-white races had somehow ‘degenerated’ from the original ‘whiteness’ of Adam and Eve, due to various factors such as climate or food(?!) Clearly this was all based on racist conjecture and stereotyping and had very little to do with actual science.  As the Step Back in History Vlog, Scientific Racism, points out,  there was a purpose behind this, it was to was to create a moral justification for white Christian nations to enslave other people based on race, and to colonise their lands. [4]

John Beddoe whose book provided a pseudo-scientific basis for racism. Public domain.

This is just as insidious as it sounds, and was taken up enthusiastically by American Slave owners and British Colonialists alike to justify the oppression of other people based on race, and to promote the idea of paternalistic colonialism.   An example of this kind of racism can be found in John Beddoe’s The Races of Man, published in 1862, which managed to ‘prove’ the Irish were non-white, therefore ‘degenerate’, using racial anthropological physiognomy to justify British Imperialism against the Irish,  contributing to a century and a half of violence and oppression.

You don’t have to be an expert on twentieth century history to see just how evil this line of thinking gets.

Franz Muller death mask. Metropolitain Police Crime Museum.

Racial stereotypes were not the only stereotypes that phrenology helped to promote. Social Darwinism, the idea that theories of natural selection could be applied to sociology and politics, promoted the idea that some people were simply born bad, and that using ‘scientific’ techniques, criminal types could be identified before any criminal act had been committed.  It was here that phrenology and death masks combined in the study of criminal physiognomy.  Many examples of criminal death masks can be found today, notable examples are in Norwich Castle Museum, Edinburgh University and The Metropolitan Police Crime Museum in London.

Norwich Castle Museum

Norwich Castle Museum boasts a collection of death masks belonging to some of the most notorious murderers of the mid-nineteenth century.   They were created by  Giovanni Bianchi, a Tuscan who moved to London in 1836, and later moved to Norwich.  Between 1837 to 1854, he worked at Norwich Castle producing the death masks of executed criminals.

Norwich Castle. Image by Lenora.

When a condemned criminal was hanged, the bust maker had to move quickly.  To get the best casting, he had to take the mould within a few hours of death, or else bloating would distort the features.

Greenacre’s death mask. Norwich Castle Museum. Image by Lenora.

Robert Wilkins in his Fireside Book of Death outlines the process for taking a mask: first, liberally apply oil to the face to avoid any adhesions, then (if the subject is living) insert tubes into the nostrils, lay thread across the face then build up layers of plaster.  This is allowed to harden,  then the mask is removed usually in three pieces, using the threads laid on the face.  Before the advent of quick drying materials, it could take some time for the plaster to dry, and could be quite a claustrophobic experience.  Obviously, if the subject was dead, this was much less inconvenience to them. 

Once removed this produced a very accurate cast with facial pores, eyelashes and whiskers often visible.  This mould would be filled with wax or other materials to make the final bust.  While living subjects might expect to wear a cap to protect their hair during the casting of the back of their heads, criminals had their head shaved before the cast was taken, so that the phrenologists could have a clear canvas to work on.

Corder’s death mask. Norwich Castle Museum. Image by Lenora.

Bianchi immortalised such notorious individuals as Daniel Good, a murderer hanged at Newgate, whose successful evasion of the law led to the creating of the Detective Branch in London; Samuel Yarham, who murdered Harriet Chandler in Norwich in 1846; and James Bloomfield Rush, who, in 1849, somewhat sensationally went on a bloody rampage one winters night at the home of Isaac Jermy, the Recorder of Norwich.  His shooting spree left Isaac and his son dead, injured his daughter-in-law and seriously wounded a maid. [5]

It is hardly surprising to discover that phrenologists studying criminal physiognomy were not the only ones interested in obtaining images of the criminal dead.  An indication of the popularity of public executions and sensational crimes, as well as the speed at which death masks were produced, is given in The Norwich Mercury. Following the hanging of  James Bloomfield Rush in 1849, the Mercury described the grisly process for the benefit of those unable to attend:

“After hanging the due time, the body was cut down, and in the course of the afternoon the head was shaven and a cast taken of the features and the skull by Bianchi of St George’s Middle Street in this city.  The remains were then buried, according to the sentence, in the precincts of the prison.” [6]

A further indication of the public fascination with sensational crime (and grisly souvenirs) is provided by Sir Robert Bignold of Norwich Union fame, who wrote:

“The clerks of the Norwich Union took the morning off, which was quite in accordance with the precedent on execution days, and no doubt Bianchi the modeller did a good trade. It is even probable that some of the Norwich Union clerks were among his customers, for we have it on good authority of the chief clerk that it was not unusual for the staff to buy the casts of murderers on those days and hide them in their office desks.” [7]

Death masks, it would seem, also fulfilled a less scientific and more profitable niche in Victorian popular culture.

The end of the line

While phrenology continued to be of interest to some even into the twentieth century, it had always had its critics.  By the middle of the nineteenth century its star had waned and it was seen more as a novelty than a real way to identifying criminal types.  By the end of the nineteenth century, death masks of criminals had also become largely obsolete as the spread of cheaper methods of photography ushered in the age of the criminal mug shot.

Behind bars, even after death. Death masks at Norwich Castle Museum. Image by Lenora.

Today, Phrenology is relegated to a pseudo-science for its wild conjectures going  way beyond the empirical evidence, and its use in promoting the invidious so called ‘scientific’ racism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -the repercussions of which can still be felt today.

Nevertheless the concept that specific parts of the brain relate to character, thoughts and emotions, did influence early psychiatry and psychology and eventually sow the seeds of neuro-psychology.

One fortunate by-product of the nineteenth century’s obsession with criminal physiology is we now have a series of lifelike and accurate portraits of the lower and criminal classes. Prior to photography images of these, mainly poor, working class people would not exist, or would be known only through distorted illustrations in the popular press of the day.

And if we think were are beyond judging a book by its cover, we should think again. The myth is still peddled that beautiful people have beautiful lives in this Instagram-ready age.  In addition to this, developments in AI technology may mean that both governments and corporations in the near future will be judging us all on our appearances and targeting us accordingly, so, be warned!

Sources & Notes

Corden, Joanna, 2013, ‘Death Masks‘ on the Royal Society Repository website. [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Phrenological_Society [3]

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/weird-norfolk-norwich-castle-museum-dungeon-death-masks-1-6029246   [5]-[7]

Fitzharris, Lindsey, Dr, Under the Knife: The Phrenology Head, YouTube [2]

http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm

Wilkins, Robert, 1990, ‘The Fireside Book of Death‘, Hale

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-phrenology-2795251

http://theconversation.com/natural-born-killers-brain-shape-behaviour-and-the-history-of-phrenology-27518

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/phrenology/intro.html

https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/the-born-criminal-lombroso-and-the-origins-of-modern-criminology/

Step back in history,  What is scientific racism? YouTube [4]

 

Stratford’s death mask. Norwich Castle Museum image by Lenora.

Medieval Death: The Cadaver Tomb (transi tomb)

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black death, bones, cadaver, chantries, chantry, Christianity, corpse, effigies, funeral, funerary, Gisant, Henry Chichele, Lincoln Cathederal, Medieval death, memento mori, mortality, purgatory, resurrection, Richard Flemming, shroud, skeleton, spirituality, Thomas Haxby, tomb, transi, York Minster

Danse Macabre by Bernt Notke in Tallin, Estonia. (Image via Wikipedia).

A dark secret in Lincoln Cathedral

Richard Fleming’s tomb and chantry, Lincoln Cathedral.

A visitor wandering the aisles of Lincoln’s fine Gothic cathedral, awed by its vast air ribbed vaulting, intrigued by its curious Medieval carvings – such as the famous Lincoln Imp – and immersed in its impressive Medieval and Wren libraries, would be forgiven for overlooking the tomb of Richard Fleming, the bishop of Lincoln from 1420-1431.

Fleming’s monument forms part of a chantry chapel and is tucked away on the North wall of the cathedral. A cursory glance is all most visitors probably afford it – yet another elaborate memorial to a high churchman. But if you look a little closer, Richard Fleming’s tomb hides a remarkable and macabre secret. In the lower part of the monument, beneath the sculpture of the recumbent bishop in his robes of office, lies a very different image, a shrunken cadaver, ribs protruding, eyes hollow, wrapped in a winding-sheet.  The sculpture offers a visceral reminder of the bodily decay, awaiting high and low alike, after death. Fleming’s tomb is one of the earliest English examples of the Transi or Cadaver Tomb in England. But why would a prominent and influential churchman chose to have himself depicted as food for worms?

Richard Fleming’s transi image. Lincoln Cathedral.

What’s in a name

Kathleen Cohen, in her fascinating book Metamorphosis of a death symbol, explains that the word transi derives from the latin verb transire – trans to cross, ire to go and that this links in with the French word transir, in use from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and which means ‘to die’ or ‘to pass away’ or ‘ to go’. Transi tombs can, using this basis, be interpreted as depicting the transitional body, from life, to death, and onwards to resurrection.

Gisant style tomb of Charles III in the Cathedral of Pamplona.

Transi or as they are more commonly know, cadaver tombs are similar but also distinct from the more familiar Medieval tombs, known as gisants, which depicted the medieval deceased recumbent and dressed clothes befitting their rank and station. In stark contrast, the transi figure presents the viewer with the deceased in an advanced state of decomposition, sunken eyes, prominent ribs, even covered in toads, snakes and vermin (although this was always more popular on the continent, particularly Germany, rather than in the British Isles).

The cadaverous transi attributed to Thomas Haxby, York Minster.

Cadaver tombs could be double deckers or single – Richard Fleming’s is a fine example of the double-decker with the gisant style representation atop the cadaverous one, while the sadly battered and worn cadaver tomb in York Minster, in the west aisle of the north trancept, is an example of the single-decker, with deceased represented only as a decayed corpse. The York tomb is attributed to Treasurer Thomas Haxby (1418-1425) but according to research by Dr Pamela King, may in fact belong to Treasurer John Neuton, founder of York Cathedral’s Medieval library.[1]

Possibly the most famous cadaver tomb in England belongs to Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury between 1414 – 1443, and is a fine example of the double-decker transi tomb. Other examples of cadaver tombs were employed by lay people, men and women alike, and even royalty (particularly in France).

Medieval Death: Plague and punishment

For many years art and architecture historians shied away from examining any deeper meaning in these grisly monuments, seeing at most either a simple didactic Memento Mori function – reminding the living that they too will die, or a psychological reaction to the horrors of the Black Death. The plague that had killed between 30-60% of Europe’s population had peaked in the 1340’s and many felt that its impact was expressed in these monuments and other Morbid medievalisms.  However, the plague argument can be challenged by the fact that there had been regular outbreaks of plague before the Black Death. Perhaps most convincingly, Italy, the origin of the Black Death in Europe, and which suffered huge numbers of deaths, did not evolve a strong cadaver tomb tradition at this time.  So, while the Black Death may have had some influence on the medieval taste for the macabre, it was not necessarily the driving force behind the development of the cadaver style tomb. [2]

Burying the plague victims of Tournai. 14th Century. Public domain image.

In fact, more recent research by Kathleen Cohen in her 1973 work Metamorphosis of a death symbol and in 1987 Dr Pamela King’s PhD thesis Contexts of the cadaver tomb in fifteenth century England have added new dimensions of temporal and spiritual complexity to these remarkable and shocking monuments.   They argue that they can be viewed as both a reaction to changing social and political situation of the fifteenth century a time when church and nation-state were becoming ever more intertwined – and as a part of the broader spirituality of the Medieval past.  They may be viewed then, not as a simple Memento Mori didactic with the viewer, but a reaction to contemporary issues faced by the church as well as a crucial part of the souls journey through purgatory – a dramatic means for soliciting the prayers of the living for the benefit of the dead.

The very early transi of Jean de la Grange. Avignon. Via Wikimedia.

A Morbid Taste for Bones,  The state of the soul after death

Danse Macabre from the Nuremburg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, 1493.

As mentioned above, while it is true that lay people, both men and women chose the cadaver tomb for their funerary monument, churchmen seemed particularly drawn to this style of memorial and may have been instrumental in its initial dissemination.  Cohen and others have suggested that this may in part be due to the fact that during the 15th century the church underwent a radical change due to the rise of the nation-state.  As more and more powerful men were rewarded for their loyalty to king and country with ecclesiastical preferments, the church became vastly wealthy and inextricably linked to worldly power.  Henry Chichele (1363/4 – 1443) was a prime example of this type of man: a high-flying ecclesiastical lawyer who was rewarded by Henry V for services rendered to the crown with the archbishopric of Canterbury, in 1414.

Henry Chichele Tomb, Canterbury Cathedral. Image by Flambard via Wikimedia.

Chichele, like many of his contemporary churchmen, chose the cadaver tomb.  And make no mistake, these tombs would have been deliberately chosen by their future occupants, not picked for them by relatives after death.  In a ‘double-decker’ the incorruptible office held by the individual is depicted in the gisant style sculpture above – showing the individual in all the pomp and glory of their office. Beneath, the corrupt human form is depicted decaying and gnawed by worms.  But what was the message they were trying to convey?

The three quick and three dead. Arundel83-1 British Library Collection.

Medieval art and literature often portrayed the body as intrinsically sinful.  Images of a vain and luxurious life were often counterpoised with images of the consequences of sin suffered after death.  The state of the soul after death was of huge importance to Medieval people.  Images such as the Danse Macabre, Mort Roi (king death) and the three quick and the three dead, emphasised that worldly vanity and glory would not help the soul awaiting judgement.  This preoccupation with the state of the soul after death was because Medieval people believed that upon death, the bulk of them would end up in purgatory for an indeterminate period before they reached their final destination, be it heaven or hell.  One of the prime purposes of most medieval tombs was, therefore, to elicit prayers from the living to speed the deceased person’s passage through purgatory to heaven. Cadaver tombs were no different, many, such as that of Richard Fleming, being associated with their own chantry chapel precisely for this purpose.

It was also an element of Medieval Christian belief that the death provided not only a release from the sins of the mortal body, but also from the original sin of Adam.  It was thought that the life of an individual from cradle to grave was a re-run in microcosm of mankind’s fall from Grace.  And with the fall from Grace came the hope for resurrection.  Pamela King decodes the cadaver tomb imagery thus: the physically corrupt body is an allegory for the soul,  the Transi image therefore provides, to paraphrase Dr King, an accessible figure for a metaphysical state. [3]

Part of this concern for the soul expressed itself in a wish to humiliate or abase the mortal (and sinful) body in order to save the soul. Not only wealthy and powerful churchmen could wish to patch up the disjoint between their worldly success and their Christian faith. John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel (1408-1435) chose a cadaver tomb. Arundel was a highly successful and able commander during the latter part of the Hundred Year’s War.  During his short but highly successful military career he accrued many titles and lands for his services.  Although he died of wounds in France, his will stipulated he be buried in the FitzAlan Chapel at Arundel Castle, his tomb is a double-decker cadaver tomb.

Cadavar tomb of the Earl of Arundel. Image by Lampman via Wikimedia.

In an aside provided by Kathleen Cohen, Arundel, despite being praised as the ‘English Achilles’ for his military skill, could also be ruthless and cruel.  En route to fight in France it is said that he rounded up 60 or so women and girls from a convent in Southampton to ‘amuse’ his troops while at sea.  The unfortunate women, having been raped by the soldiers, were then tossed overboard when a storm overtook the troop ships.  It would seem then, at least to modern eyes, that a powerful and wealthy individual choosing a tomb that humbles and humiliates the body as an act of Christian piety in death, could also display a certain degree of hypocrisy.

Overall though, the transi image can be seen not solely as a reminder that the glories of high office may seem to be long-lasting, but sinful mortal bodies will all end up as food for worms, but also that death and decay are an inevitable part of the process that ultimately lead to resurrection of the good Christian soul. [4]

The End of purgatory and the rise of pagan glory

The fashion for cadaver tombs ran from the fifteenth century to the mid sixteenth century (and beyond, John Donne commissioned an extraordinary monument that would seem to have been influenced by this tradition).  However as the religious climate of Europe changed with the protestant reformation in the sixteenth century, transis too, began to change.  As the new protestant ideology promoted by Martin Luther (1483-1546) and others, rejected the idea that good deeds and indulgences from the church would get you into heaven, and promoted the idea that entry to heaven was based on God’s grace alone, the existence of purgatory was questioned. And if there was no purgatory then there was no need for elaborate tombs and chantry chapels designed to elicit prayers from the living for the dead soul.

The Renaissance also brought with it new ideas that contrasted with the Medieval mindset, including the concept of commemorating the deceased and their worldly deeds.  So, while cadaver tombs continued to be built, in particular by royalty, they began to display a kind of pagan sense of glory instead of the Medieval focus on humility and abasement of the body associated with these types of  tombs. One prime  example of this change is the tomb of Henri II and Catherine Medici, at the Basilica St Denis, built between 1560-1573. Catherine, who was alive when the tomb was created, is said to have disliked the first emaciated image created for her and commissioned a second one.  The replacement sculpture is said to have been based on a Venus from the Uffizi in Florence [5] [6] and presents a very different image from the cadaverous worm riddled transis of the previous century.  While the cadaver tomb still undoubtedly pointed to the resurrection of the soul, in this instance at least, royal vanity demanded a pagan aesthetic!

Tomb of Henri II and Catherine de Medici. Mid 16th Century. Image from Basilica St Denis website.

Conclusion

Transi of Rene de Chalons. Image from French Ministry of Culture.

Cadaver tombs developed from a combination of factors – the concern for the state of the sinful soul after death – its need for prayers in order to achieve salvation, the conflict faced (in particular, but not solely) by high churchmen in relation to growing temporal power versus the spiritual asceticism of Christianity. Although it is hard to imagine that a modern viewer of such a tomb would not take away some form of Memento Mori didactic, it would seem that this was not their primary purpose as understood by Medieval people. As Protestantism spread through Europe, and the Renaissance provided a new emphasis on commemorating the dead, the cadaver tomb changed in style and purpose.

Regardless of their ultimate meaning, a modern viewer, coming across one of these macabre monuments is given a thought-provoking and startling insight in to the Medieval mind.

You can find some notable transi tombs in England in York Minster, Lincoln Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral.

Sources and notes

Uncredited images by Lenora.

Brown, Sarah, The Mystery of Neuton’s Tomb
<https://hoaportal.york.ac.uk/hoaportal/yml1414essay.jsp?id=10.> [1]

Cohen, Kathleen, 1973, ‘Metamorphosis of a death symbol’ [4] [6]

King, Pamela, 1987, ‘Contexts of the cadaver tomb in fifteenth century England’ [2][3]

https://uk.tourisme93.com/basilica/tomb-of-henri-and-catherine-de-medici.html [5]

 

 

Memento Mori…Victorian post-mortem photography

Tags

ambrotype, carte de visite, daguerrotype, death, death photos, early photography, fakes, funerals, mourning, post mortem photography, rituals, the good death, the myth of the standing corpse, tintype, Victorian

~A note to the faint-hearted: this post contains photographs of dead people ~

The Victorian celebration of death

It has been noted by many other writers, that today when a loved one passes over, we celebrate their life, often avoiding or glossing over the distressing fact that they have died… almost as if it would be rude to mention it.  Not so our Victorian ancestors, they positively revelled in rituals that celebrated death.  This was unsurprising as it was all around them – poverty, incurable diseases and insanitary housing meant that had you lived in early Victorian England (the 1830 and 40’s) you would have been lucky to make it to your late thirties; while a fifth of children born at that time would not reach the age of five.[1]

Highgate Cemetery

Yet despite these grim statistics, the Victorian fondness for funerals and funeral rituals grew out of more than just a pragmatic realisation that they would undoubtedly be attending an awful a lot of them.  It was far more than that, the spiritual and religious beliefs of Victorians lead them to the view that death was something to prepare for, and that the dead should be remembered, not just in their living but in the manner of their passing.  To have a ‘good death’ was important, to settle ones affairs not only materially, but spiritually as well, in preparation for the transition into the next phase of the souls existence.  One aspect of this tradition which can seem macabre and slightly voyeuristic to the modern eye, is that of post-mortem photography. But creating images of the dead was not invented in the nineteenth century.

How the dead were remembered: from oil paintings to Carte de visite

Lady Venetia Digby on her death-bed, by Van Dyke.

Preserving the memory of the dead has a long history (and pre-history). From the monumental (think pyramids, mausoleums and tombs) to the personal and portable (such as jewelry and images).  While we might find it odd to want an image of a loved one in death, in the past it was not unheard of. In the seventeenth century, when the beautiful Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby, died unexpectedly in her sleep, her distraught husband had her final portrait painted, post-mortem, by non other that Sir Anthony Van Dyke. But such extravagant memento mori (translated as ‘remember that you have to die’) were the preserve of the wealthy upper classes…until, that is, the advent of photography.

Capturing the soul

Post Mortem photography was popular in the UK, USA and Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, its popularity peaking in the 1860’s and 70’s. Its rise began in the 1840’s with the birth of photography.

Louis Daguerre, one of the fathers of photography, developed his eponymous Daguerreotype in 1839.  Daguerreotype images were produced on treated silver-plated copper sheets, protected by glass.  The images are strange to look at and change from positive to negative, depending on the angle.  The process was expensive and time-consuming – it could take up to 15 minutes to develop an exposure, and the images created were fragile (often having to be protected in cases or frames).[2][3] Nevertheless it wasn’t long before they were being used to capture the likenesses of the deceased.

Post Mortem Daguerreotype. 1862. Source Astronomy Pictures.

In 1850 the cheaper Ambrotype method superseded the Daguerreotype.  This process created a positive image on glass.  As with the daguerreotype, the finished product was fragile and each image was unique and could only be reproduced by the camera.[4]

Victorian Post Mortem Ambrotype displayed in a case. Source unknown.

The 1860’s and 1870’s brought the tintype photograph to prominence, which as the name suggested was created on a thin sheet of metal.  This method easy to produce and was popular with itinerant photographers on the move.  So the photographer was able to extend beyond the studio setting to other arenas…such the open battlefield, or the private deathbed.[5]

Tintype post-mortem photograph. Source unknown.

The biggest revolution in democratizing photography was the Carte de Visite method, patented by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854.  His method produced small images made up of albumen prints on card.  The truly revolutionary aspect of this method was that he developed a way of producing up to eight negatives on one plate, thereby driving down costs.[5] This meant that images could more easily be shared amongst family and friends.  With post-mortem images, it allowed family members who were not able to be present at the deathbed or funeral, to have a final image of their loved one.

Carte de visite post-mortem image. Paul Frecker collection.

Post Mortem Photography and The Good Death

In the early and mid-Victorian period, evangelical Christianity had a strong influence on attitudes towards death and dying.  Professor Sir Richard Evans noted in his lecture The Victorians: Life and Death, that the emphasis was on a ‘good death’ – ideally a peaceful and gentle transition in to the afterlife, witnessed by family and friends; where a deathbed struggle with fever or delusion occurred, it could be seen as a metaphor for the Christian struggle for redemption.  Post mortem photography represents part of this tradition, offering a memento mori – an object of reflection to the yet living – as well as, more prosaically, providing symbol of social status because not everyone could afford them.

That is not to say that all Victorians were comfortable with the idea of snapping images the dearly departed – far from it.  As Catharine Arnold notes in Necropolis, photographic images such ‘Fading Away’, created by Henry Peach Robinson in 1858, which used actors to depict the death of a beautiful young girl, were not universally praised.[6] Unlike the tasteful and idealised deathbed scenes depicted in oils, the disturbing intimacy and realism created by the medium of photography seemed to intrude on the very personal and private realm of grief.

‘Fading Away’ by Henry Peach Robinson, 1858. The Royal Photographic Society at the National Media Museum, Bradford.

In the case of ‘Fading Away’, the image was saved from censure when Prince Albert bought a copy, thereby ensuring its popular appeal. It’s a good thing he liked images of deathbeds, because Queen Victoria commissioned both a painting and a photograph of him on his own deathbed, in 1861.  These images are available to view in the Royal Collection (See links at the end of this article).

Styles of post-mortem photography ranged throughout the nineteenth century and varied from the UK and Europe to the USA.  Broadly speaking the earlier images focused on head shots and close ups, with the subject apparently ‘asleep’, later more ‘naturalist’ poses were adopted -where the subject was posed as if in life, and later still the funeral group – with the family gathered round for one last photo with the dearly departed in their coffin – became popular.  However the significant difference between these images and images such as ‘Fading Away’, is that post-mortem photography was intended to be viewed in the private sphere, whereas Peach Robinson’s staged image was clearly for public consumption.

Mirrors with Memories [7]

Deceased man in a naturalist pose c1860. Source Wikipedia.

So, why did the Victorians do it? Why have a stranger come into your home, while you are grieving, and interfere with your loved one, simply in order to take a photo?  Well, it seems that a number of factors collided to produce the right climate for it: evangelical Christianity, with its concept of the good death, technological developments, and the rise of the middle classes, along with a large dash of Victorian morbidity.

In some cases, these images may have been the only images taken of the individual, this is particularly possible with images of babies and young children. And, practically speaking, they were a way of sharing the death of a loved one with relatives unable to attend the actual deathbed.

Deceased child surrounded by flowers. Image Source Wikipedia.

However, as well as a personal remembrance of the individual, they were also used as a way to reflect upon death – demonstrating Victorian preoccupations with both piety and morbidity. The images allowed for a dialogue between the living and the dead – a reconciliation that the viewer too will die.  A Victorian viewing these images would have been able to ‘read’ them in a very different way than we do now -identifying the spiritual narrative, shared social values, the moral lessons in these images.

Jo Smoke, writing in Beyond the Dark Veil,[8]suggested that as well as a moral and spiritual purpose, Memento Mori can also be seen as expressing class goals by equating ‘taste and beauty as metaphors for status and style’ – after all these images were often displayed in beautiful and expensive frames or jeweled cases and not every one could afford them.

He concluded that post mortem photography successfully encompassed both the spiritual and the consumerist nature of Victorian society, stating that they ‘symbolised tangibility by stretching the inevitability of human decay into the future by investing memory into materials of great physicality’.[9]

Identifying Post Mortem Photography

Today, the internet is flooded with images purporting to be Victorian post mortem photographs. Sometimes a sort of ‘check-list’ is deployed to identify them and although one can probably assume that an individual depicted in a coffin, is almost certainly dead, other signs such as closed or painted eyes, blank expressions, visible standing frames, or strange posture aren’t necessarily proof-positive of a post mortem photograph.

The tradition of depicting the deceased as though living, often accompanied by living relatives and children, has created even more difficulty in differentiating between what may simply be an awkward and uncomfortable looking living individual and a posed corpse.

Deceased young girl with her parents. Source BBC.

In the above post mortem image, the dead girl is propped up by her parents, with her head on one side.  She appears notably sharper than her living parents who appear slightly blurred. Even when developments in photography led to reduced exposure times, it was still difficult to remain still during the process (unless of course, you were dead).  This was such a problem that the living were often supported with apparatus, such as a Brady Stand.  The use of these stands has led to what some call the ‘Myth of the standing corpse’ [10] – whereby any images of a slightly suspect individual, where a stand is visible, may be identified as post mortem (a particular problem on commercial selling sites).

This man has decidedly odd eyes and is supported by a Stand – but is he dead? Source: hchronicles blog.

This image has often been described as a post mortem photo, demonstrating the use of the stand – but the jury is out. Image source – unknown.

However there seems to be a strong argument against the possibility that the Brady stand, or any other stand (even combined with wires), could have ever actually support the dead-weight (pardon the pun) of a corpse, in anything approaching a natural manner. [11][12 – see the video at the foot of this post for more on this debate.]

The girl in the middle is said to be dead. Petrolia Archive Collection.

The image above, originally from the Petrolia Archive, appears on many sites online as a post mortem photograph. The young girl in the middle is supposed to be dead – her painted on eyes are cited as evidence for it. However, given the ease at which a photograph could be spoiled by a sudden twitch or blink during the long exposure time, it can be argued that this is not necessarily certain proof that the subject is dead. [13] And in fact, this could explain a lot of the blank, dead-eyed stares that gaze out from us from some of these photographs.

Other images are more obviously photo-shopped, such as this fabulously gruesome image of two sisters, which would stretch even the Victorians capacity for morbidity!

Image often cited as Victorian Post Mortem, but actually an art project from about 2009. [Artist unknown]

The original picture before manipulation [Source Unknown]

 Changing attitudes

It has been said that the advent of the Kodak box brownie, allowing families to document entire lives from birth to death, caused the Post Mortem Photograph to fall out of favour, [14] but there was more to its decline than technical innovation.  By the end of the Victorian period and beginning of the Edwardian, there was a fundamental shift in attitudes to death. For one, evangelical Christianity, with its particular interpretation of the ‘good death’, had waned. By the Edwardian period a ‘good death’ had transformed into one more familiar to us today – a death without suffering or one that took the subject unawares, such as in their sleep.  As such, conversations about death and dying became less acceptable than they had been in the early and mid-Victorian periods.  Catastrophic conflicts such as the First World War, also played their part in changing attitudes.  Such brutal conflicts took death away from the intimate family setting, and while death could be presented as a patriotic sacrifice to the state, it often occurred violently, or to far from home to allow for a photographic memento mori to be either desirable or practically possible.

In this modern world, where we have become desensitized to the graphic images of death reported in the media, we have shut death out, except in its most extreme and impersonal form.  In contrast, these quiet, contemplative and very personal images of the dead offer us the opportunity to open a dialogue with death, and to reflect on that great leveler.  And of course, they also provide an ever so  gentle reminder that we too will die.

Memento Mori.

Post Mortem Images on the net

Anne Longmore-Etheridge Collection:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/albums/72157629160486891/with/23906381332/

Petrolia Heritage

http://www.petroliaheritage.com/people.html

Royal Collection:

https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/2506826/prince-albert-on-his-deathbed-december-1861

The Burns Archive:

http://www.burnsarchive.com/Explore/Historical/Memorial/index.html

The Thanatos Archive:

http://thanatos.net/preview/

Sources and notes

Arnold, Catharine, ‘Necropolis: London and its dead’ 2007, Simon and Schuster [3] [6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36389581

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/overview_victorians_01.shtml [1]

Evans, Professor Sir Richard, https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-victorians-life-and-death

http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/26/victorian-post-mortem-photographs-are-as-creepy-as-they-sound-4963836/ [this article contains some disputed post mortem photographs]

http://mourningportraits.blogspot.co.uk/p/hoaxes-scams-ebay-optimism.html [13]

Mord, Jack, ‘Beyond the Dark Veil’, 2013, Grand Central Press [7][8][9][14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrotype [4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte_de_visite [5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype [2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintype [5]

https://dealer042.wixsite.com/post-mortem-photos The Myth of the stand alone corpse [10][11][12]

 

 

Dead Gorgeous: the life and death of Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby

Tags

Brief Lives, cosmetics, death portraits, died in bed, in praise of venetia, John Aubrey, memento mori, Poison, private memoirs, seventeenth century, Sir Kenelm Digby, stelliana, Van Dyck, Van Dyke, Venetia Digby, Venetia Stanley, Viper Wine

Stelliana

“…if she had been in those times when men committed idolatry, the world would certainly have renounced the sun, the stars and all other devotions and with one consent have adored her for their goddess.”[1]

As an acknowledged beauty of the Stuart Age, with a slightly suspect reputation, it was to be expected that scandal and gossip clung to Venetia Stanley’s name. However it was her mysterious demise – which led to suggestions of suicide and allegations of murder, and the obsessionally morbid devotion displayed by her husband after her death, that would ensure her lasting fame.

Sexual adventuress or secret bride?

Venetia Stanley had had an effect on men from the moment she was born. She was born in 1600, in Tong Castle in Shropshire, into a well-connected family. Her father was Lord Edward Stanley and her mother Lady Lucy Percy, co-heiress to the vast Percy fortune. When Lucy tragically died, Lord Stanley had the young Venetia sent away rather than have her presence a constant reminder of his lost love, Lucy.

Growing up in the countryside, at Enston Abbey in Oxfordshire [2], the young Venetia’s star burned bright.  Gossipy polymath John Aubrey, writing several decades after Venetia’s death, wrote of her early life:

“..it seems her beauty could not lie hid. The young Eagles has espied her, and she was sanguine and tractable, and of much suavity (which to abuse was a great pittie)”[3]

I’m no expert on the idioms of seventeenth century speech but it sounds rather like Aubrey is suggesting that the young Venetia might just have been a bit of a flirt.

Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby. By Henri Toutin, painted in 1637 (after her death). Via Wikimedia

After Oxfordshire, she decamped to London where she continued to make a stir everywhere she went. In the debauched Stuart Court beauty was everything and young Venetia had it all – perfectly meeting the ideal of the Stuart age with her fine dark locks, alabaster complexion, languid ‘come to bed’ eyes, and as Aubrey so nicely puts it, her ‘bona roba’, her curvaceous figure.

The Stuart Court was a place of great sexual license, but barring one or two privileged exceptions (such as the notorious Countess of Somerset) that license tended to be issued to men only: randy cavaliers could bed whom they pleased with little fear of tarnishing their reputation. The sexual politics of the time was not quite so tolerant of female rakes; money and social standing could offer some protection to a young adventuress but gossip and scandal could be cruel bedfellows.  Venetia was not immune to slander, both during her life and even decades after her death.

Aubrey, generally the most quoted source for her life, claimed that Venetia was the mistress of Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, and had children by him.  In his Brief Lives, Aubrey states that Sackville paid her £500 annually – no mean sum. However, Aubrey is not necessarily the most reliable source, writing decades after her death and often reporting gossip and hearsay as fact. Another possibility is that Venetia’s reputation as a courtesan may be in part due to the fact that her marriage to Sir Kenelm Digby in c1625 was kept secret until after their first child was born [4].

The Ornament of England

Sir Kenelm Digby, c1632, after Van Dyck. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Kenelm was the son of Sir Everard Digby who was executed following the Gun Powder Plot.  He was a scholar, philosopher, courtier,alchemist, privateer, and general all round clever-dick given the somewhat pompous epithet “the ornament of England”.

“Sir Kenelme Digby was held to be the most accomplished cavalier of his time. [..] He was such a goodly handsome person, gigantique and great voice, and had so gracefull Elocution and noble address, etc., that had he been drop’t out of the Clowdes in any part of the World, he would have made himself respected.  But the Jesuites spake spitefully, and sayd ’twas true, but then he must not stay there above six weeks.'”[5]

I can’t help but think that Aubrey seems to take sly delight in spiking this unctuous description with a little acid.

Theories as to why the pair might have kept their marriage a secret abound: from Sir Kenelm’s mother disapproving of her prospective daughter-in-law’s libertine life-style or considering her a penniless gold-digger to fears that Venetia would be cut off from her father’s will should she marry against her family’s wishes.

Chastity crushing Cupid, Anthony Van Dyck, National Portrait Gallery.

Whatever the truth behind the rumours, Sir Kenelm appears to have loved Venetia deeply and she him.  He commissioned many portraits of Venetia, both during her life and after her death. One such portrait entitled  ‘Chastity crushing Cupid’ – could be perhaps interpreted as a bit of PR for his wife’s reputation as a sexual adventuress.  Aubrey suggests Sir Kenelm was well aware of the gossip surrounding his wife’s (lack of) virtue and claims he said “..a wiseman, and a lusty could make an honest woman of a brothell-house” [6].  For a man who went on to write incessantly about his love for Stelliana, aka Venetia, in his Private Memoirs, it would seem quite a harsh thing for him to say of her.

Even Aubrey concedes that Venetia transformed from mad-for-it party girl to virtuous wife and mother with ease. However the slight twist in the tale of the stolid church-going matron.  Venetia was an avid, and it would seem, successful gambler, and it is alleged she funded many of her good works through her winnings…so perhaps a little of the wild-child remained after her marriage.

Lead Powder and Viper Wine

Lady Elizabeth Pope, c1615,  sporting pale complexion and rouged lips and cheeks, and a vast amount of bosom. Robert Peake, via wikimedia.

Several years of happy and uneventful marriage ensued, Venetia and Sir Kenelm had four sons and seemed ready to slide into comfortable middle age.  Hermione Eyre, author of Viper Wine, a novel about Venetia, suggests that far from being a time of placid contemplation of impending old age, Venetia may have found the transition from youth to middle age extremely difficult.

As a celebrated beauty seeing her charms fade as the years passed, living in a society that judged women on their looks (sound familiar, anyone?), she could easily have fallen back on cosmetics and potions in a desperate bid to preserve her looks.

Certainly the fashionable women (and men) of the Stuart Court were not shy about slapping on the make-up.  Pale complexions and acres of bare bosoms were enhanced and perfected with ceruse a mixture of finely ground lead powder and vinegar. A tracery of pale blue veins might be drawn on to imitate the translucent skin of youth, a lead comb could darken the eye brows. Spanish wool, or Spanish paper (a cloth impregnated with cochineal) was used to colour the lips and cheeks [7] and all of this could have been held in place with a varnish of egg white.  The look would seem to be porcelain doll… with a whiff of omelette…

Ladies might go further than the surface and could take any number of miracle beauty preserving potions…such as Viper wine…filled with such hearty ingredients as baked viscera of vipers (yummy) such concoctions could claim near miraculous effects:

“This quintessence is of extraordinary good virtue for the purifying of the flesh, blood and skin” and “preserves from grey hairs, renews youth, etc” [8]

As Hermione Eyre points out, ladies regularly using lead as their cosmetic of choice would quickly ruin their complexions and must have been willing to try pretty much anything to improve them.   Venetia was certainly a big fan of Viper wine and had been drinking it, so Aubrey claims, at the behest of her husband for a number of years.

Sleeping Beauty….is dead

On the morning of the 1 May 1633 Lady Digby’s maid entered her bed chamber to wake her mistress for her morning ride.  Sir Kenelm had spent the night tinkering in his laboratory until the early hours, he had slept there rather than disturb his wife.  It was he who was disturbed however, by  “That shrill and baleful sound expressing her heavy plight struck my eares.” when the maid screamed in horror upon finding her mistress dead in her bed.  She was only 33.

Sir Kenelm was distraught, Venetia lay in her bed exactly as she had laid down to sleep the night before, a faint blush on her cheek, looking as though she might wake up at any moment.  What he did next may seem strange…he called an artist.  Within two days of Venetia’s death he had Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599 -1641) come and sketch the corpse of his wife, as it lay, in her bed.  He also had casts taken of her head, hands and feet.

Portrait of Death: Lady Digby on her Deathbed

Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait is either tender and seductive, or slightly creepy and stalker-ish depending on your view-point. Portraits of the newly deceased were not unheard of in the Stuart Age, and later, the Victorians were famous for their morbid family portraits of dead relatives. But from a modern perspective at least, the realisation that the subject is in fact dead, is enough to jar the senses and the sensibility. In the modern age we have become so separated from death and the dead, seeing their images mainly in news footage and usually connected with violent or tragic events. This is different, this is not a celebration of the corpse, or a quick snap-shot for the family album, it is a meditation upon death. Sleeping beauty has entered into that long good night that beckons us all.

Suicide, Murder or Misadventure?

Even in the seventeenth century, an age when death came regularly to the young and apparently healthy, suspicions were raised about Venetia’s sudden and mysterious demise.  Poison was suspected but was it suicide, murder or over indulgence in viper wine?  Aubrey reports that gossips said:

“Spiteful women would say it was a ‘viper husband’, who was jealous of her, that she would steal a leap.” (have an affair).

There was also the curious suggestion that Digby was given a letter by the maid, just before Venetia’s death, in which Venetia had enclosed paper that might be of interest to him…what that paper may have been has never been discovered [9].

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne(?). Via Wikimedia

An autopsy was ordered by Royal Command, and the famously rotund Dr Theodore de Mayerne was called in.  Digby insisted she had always been healthy, but did take Viper wine for headaches. Upon opening her head the good doctor found “but little brain” and it has been inferred from that, that the cause of death may have been a cerebral haemorrhage.  However due to the time that elapsed before the autopsy was carried out it is likely that the results may have been invalid [10].  Hermione Eyre proposes the theory that the viper wine itself may have killed Venetia.  She showed the recipe to a doctor who said:

“this type of “beauty potion” usually works, if it works, by blocking the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, which can be toxic in the wrong doses. “Hence ‘deadly’ nightshade,” he said. Viper Wine’s herbal elements – not the snakes, which are incidental – could have been used to dilate the pupils, vasodilate the cheeks leading to a healthy blush, and promote euphoria, but if she drank too much, it could have been fatal.” [11].

So was it suicide, murder or misadventure? Personally I don’t think she committed suicide, she was a devout Catholic, attending Mass daily. She would surely have regarded suicide as a sin and a bar to heaven.  I don’t think the evidence supports the theory that that Sir Kenelm poisoned her. His eccentric and obsessive behavior after her death does not necessarily mean a guilty conscience, it could just have been how he coped with the such a devastating and unexpected loss.  On balance, I like the viper wine theory proposed by Hermione Eyre.  If not the Viper wine specifically, one of the other deadly cosmetic ingredients could easily have been the silent killer in this case. However after the passage of time, and the possibility that Venetia simply had some underlying medical condition, it would seem that the true cause of Venetia Stanley’s death will likely never be proven.

Epilogue

The final word should perhaps go to Sir Kenelm, unable to forget the beautiful wife whose sudden death shook his world to the foundation, he retreated to Gresham College and led the life of a scholarly hermit.  He kept the portrait with him for many years, until he lost it during English Civil War.

“This is the onely constant companion I now have…It standeth all day over against my chaire and table …and all night when I goe into my chamber I sett it close to my beds side, and by the faint light of the candle, me thinks I see her dead indeed.” [12]

Sources and notes

Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, available online via Gutenberg Press [1] [3] [5] [6]

Digby, Sir Kelemn, Private Memoirs/Stelliana available on Google Books [2]

Downing, Jane, 2012, Beauty and Cosmetics 1550 – 1950, Shire Library [7]

http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/explore-the-collection/151-200/venetia,-lady-digby,-on-her-deathbed/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/van-dyck-sir-anthony-venetia-stanley-lady-digby-on-her-deathbed-1633-795383.html [11]

http://www.hermioneeyre.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10680346/Venetia-Stanley-did-viper-wine-kill-the-17th-century-beauty.html [8] [10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetia_Stanley [4] [9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenelm_Digby

 

 

Highgate Cemetery, Part Two: A Walk Amongst the Dead

Tags

Highgate Cemetery, Highgate Vampire, London Cemeteries, Victorian Cemeteries, Victorian Death

The Victorian Way of death

Pathway amidst the graves

It was a crisp March day when I found myself making may way down Swains Lane, the lane that cuts through West and East Cemeteries.  I had always wanted to visit Highgate Cemetery, it features in so many of my favorite old horror films such as Tales from the Crypt and From Beyond the Grave (and always appears in my imagination accompanied by an overblown 1970’s horror soundtrack and maybe the odd scream as well…)

You would be unwise to wonder around Highgate Cemetery alone, many of the graves and monuments are fragile and a wrong step off the path could lead the unwary to spending some time up close and personal with a cadaver in a lead-lined vault that could be up to 30 feet deep. The cemetery is vast and has many secluded spots so rescue, should it even come, could be slow indeed….

Don’t be put off by taking a guided tour, touristy it might be, but it is also informative and the cemetery doesn’t lose any of its magic, especially if the group isn’t too large.  The guides are knowledgeable about the famous and not so famous persons buried here, and can help decode the Victorian language of death which written all over their tombstones if you have eyes to see it.  You only have to look at some of the more morbid Victorian paintings (dead shepherds, pining loyal hounds etc) or remember that they often had one last family photo taken with the dearly departed, to know that their attitude to death was very different from our own.

The Circle of Lebanon

One of the first things that struck me about the cemetery was how different it was to modern cemeteries.  Now gravestones are in formal rows, with standardised inscriptions – compared to Victorian exuberance (all weeping angels, obelisks and broken columns) – our way of death seems clinical and regimented.  In a modern cemetery you would never get such a tragic description as that of Emma Wallace Gray who died in 1854 at the age of nineteen “From the effects of her dress having caught fire”.  Her inscription reads thus:

In bloom of youth, when others fondly cling
To life, I prayed, mid agonies for death
The only pang my bleeding heard endur’d
Was, thus so early doomed to leave behind on
Earth those whom I so dearly lov’d.

The architecture too is something you would never find in a modern cemetery, the

Entrance to the Egyptian Avenue

picturesque chaos of the tombstones and mossy angels hidden amongst the trees all overgrown with grasses and wild flowers.  And the monumental grandiose mausoleums; the eerie circle of Lebanon with its use of the natural landscape – the mausoleum is crowned by a Cedar of Lebanon; the austere Terrace of Catacombs cut into the hillside; and of course the fabulous Egyptian Avenue (and the Egyptians knew a thing or two about death).  Walking through the dramatic gateway into the dank alley’s of the Avenue I truly felt like I was walking into another world – a city of the dead.

Highgate and the Macabre

Elizabeth Siddal –
public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

No Victorian cemetery would be complete without some macabre tales, and the one that stuck me most was that of Elizabeth Siddall.  Elizabeth was the beautiful wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the foremost Pre-Raphaelite painters, and herself a talented artist.  Elizabeth died tragically young, only 32, possibly as a result of addiction and depression.  She was buried in 1862 by a grief-stricken Dante Gabriel who tenderly placed a sheaf of manuscript poems by her cheek – how romantic.   But Elizabeth was not to rest in peace for long.  In 1869 Dante Gabriel must have been feeling considerably less grief-stricken and romantic because he ordered her exhumation in order that he could retrieve his manuscript….Hmm.

The Highgate Vampire

The Ham and High Gazette from March 1970

One thing that the tour did not mention was the legend of the Highgate Vampire.  This legend seems to have begun sometime in the late 1960’s, the cemetery was neglected and overgrown and attracted not only vandals but those interested in the occult.  There appears to have been some reports of strange goings on the cemetery and in Swains Lane: reports of dead foxes and of a tall dark figure with burning red eyes (Christopher Lee – I wonder?) scaring dog walkers and generally lurking in a sinister way.

In 1970 an occultist called David Farrant contacted the local newspaper the Ham and High Express and the legend was born…further sightings were recorded (although accounts often varied) and it was proclaimed by Farrant that the figure had Vampiric characteristics and that he and the British Occult Society that he was part of would exorcise it.  Another flamboyant figure, Sean Manchester, appeared at about this time.  The ‘Bishop of Glastonbury’*[please refer to comments section for more information] soon became a rival vampire hunter and a bitter enemy of Farrant (so much so that the best ‘hammer horror’ tradition he is alleged to have challenged his nemesis to a magical duel).

Whatever the truth of the legend, the impact was devastating. On the night of the ‘vampire hunt’ hundreds of ‘vampire hunters’ (many valiantly armed with cans of beer), stormed the police cordon around the cemetery and began basically trashing the place. Needless to say no vampire was found.

During the whole Highgate Vampire frenzy not only were monuments damaged but vaults were broken into, corpses attacked and even beheaded.  One gruesome story is that a local resident found a headless corpse sitting behind the steering wheel of his car.  This might sound funny, but really, it’s not, these desecrated corpses were not vampires or demons, just  ordinary people who had hoped to rest in peace.  Perhaps the real vampires of Highgate were Farrant and Manchester who fed off the media hype they  created.

A modern tragedy

Burials are still carried out in the Cemetery, and one of the modern interments the tour visited was that of Alexander Litvinenko the Russian exile and spy buried in 2006.  Litvinenko was poisoned using Polonium after taking tea with two of his Russian contacts, he died from the effects of the posion. I still remember the news footage showing him fighting for his life in his hospital bed.  He is buried here because the Victorian vaults are lead lined and therefore radiation proof.

His  story reminded me that everyone buried in Highgate, however long ago, was once a living breathing individual with their own personal story.  And that one day, despite our iphones and our apps we will all be dust just like them.

Epilogue

My final thoughts on Highgate Cemetery are best summed up by one if its famous incumbents, Christina Rossetti the poet.

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Sources

http://lizziesiddal.com/portal/

http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/home

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/greater-london/hauntings/the-highgate-vampire-how-it-all-began-by-david-farrant.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Vampire

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19647226

http://brinkofnada.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/highgate-vampire.html

Highgate Cemetery, Part One: City of the Dead

Tags

Highgate Cemetery, London, Victorian Cemeteries, Victorian Death

History

Jacobs Island London Slum c1840

There was something rotten in the heart of London in the first half of the nineteenth century.  As the population in the capital grew at an alarming rate from just 700,000 in 1750 to 1.6 Million by 1831 so too grew the numbers of the dead that the city had to accommodate.  By the 1830’s London’s graveyards were as packed as its slums with corpses disposed of in shallow graves in burial grounds that were crammed in between taverns and shops; bodies were often quick-limed so plots could be reused; the stench of the charnel house must have hung over many districts of the metropolis.

Entrance to Highgate Cemetery

So great was the risk to public health that parliament was forced to act.  Between 1833 and 1841 legislation was passed creating the ‘London Cemetery Company’ (1836) to oversee a ring of park-like cemeteries encircling London – ‘The Magnificent Seven’ – thereby freeing up more space for the living and improving sanitation in the city.

17 Hectares of the Ashurst Estate set on a wooded hillside above Highgate Village formed the basis for Highgate Cemetery and the cemetery was opened for business on 20th May 1839, with its first burial (of Elizabeth Jackson) following only a few days later.

That Highgate Cemetery became such a fashionable place to spend eternity was largely thanks to the work of entrepreneur and architect Stephen Geary and James Johnstone Bunning who created Highgate’s distinctive Victorian Gothic architecture that appealed to the Victorians penchant for death.  The landscaping was completed by David Ramsay and gives the cemetery a naturalistic park-like feel.   It was a fashionable day out in its heyday.

Many famous people chose to invest in Highgate and also to be buried there: Julius  Beer the newspaper magnate built the magnificent mausoleum for his 8-year-old daughter Ada; other dead luminaries include Christina Rossetti the Victorian poet;  Elizabeth Siddal wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti the Pre-Raphaelite artist; Charles Cruft of dog-show fame; Michael Faraday, scientist.

Terrace Catacombs

Many families chose to purchase vaults or a place in the Terrace catacombs (made up of 55 family vaults, the catacombs could hold 825 people). In the 1830’s the going rate for a fair-sized plot was £3.  It costs a little more these days…

The Cemetery holds 170,000 people interred in 53,000 graves.  So popular (and profitable) was the cemetery that it had to be expanded and in 1856 the East Cemetery was opened.  The Karl Marx memorial is possibly the most notable monument in the East Cemetery – certainly the most controversial if the bomb attacks in the 1960’s are anything to go by.

Things didn’t go so well for Highgate Cemetery in the twentieth century – two wars and differing attitudes to death and burial saw the once meticulously maintained cemetery fall into disrepair and fall prey to vandalism and desecration.  In 1975 The Friends of Highgate Cemetery was founded  and to this day they have maintained and carried out extensive restoration of the monuments and graves.  They also conduct excellent tours in the West Cemetery – and this will form the basis of my next post.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London#Population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_cemetery

http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/history