Victorian post-mortems: the modern myths and intrigue

After a brief hiatus in which I attempted to get my life back together, I'm back with a new video all about the internet's biggest morbid curiosity: post-mortem photography, or photos of Victorian dead people.

But, like all things on the internet, there are a lot of myths and complete historical inventions floating around about post-mortem photography! How much of it is really true? And were the Victorians really obsessed with taking pictures of dead people?

Footnotes:

1 [01:34] Audrey Linkman, 'Taken from life: Post-mortem portraiture in Britain1860–1910', History of Photography, 30:4 (2006), 314-5.

2 [02:14] Ibid, 316.

This regulation was introduced in Vienna in 1891. In the video, I say Hungary. I have no idea where that came from!

3 [02:54] Ibid, 338-342.

4 [03.19] Nicola Brown, 'Empty Hands and Precious Pictures: Post-mortem Portrait Photographs of Children', Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, 14:2 (2009), 22.

5 [03:34] Ibid, 19.

6 [04:16] The Thanatos Archive: Early Post-mortem and Mourning Photography, https://thanatos.net/preview/

7 [04:41] Linkman, 311.

8 [5:29] u/MadBikeWoman (7 Jan 2014), 'Victorian Post Mortem Photography collection I have made over the years', (Reddit post) https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/1ulvwx/victorian_post_mortem_photography_collection_i/

Sara C Nelson, 'Memento Mori: How Victorian Mourning Photography Immortalised Loved Ones After Death (PICTURES)', Huffington Post UK, 30 Jan 2013 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/30/memento-mori--victorian-mourning-photography-immortalising-loved-ones-death_n_2580559.html

Anna Marks, 'Death and the Daguerreotype: The Strange and Unsettling World of Victorian Photography', VICE, 31 Dec 2016 https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgqj3z/the-daguerreotype-unsettling-world-of-victorian-photography

9 [06:04] u/MadBikeWoman, 'Victorian Post Mortem Photography', (Reddit post) https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/1ulvwx/victorian_post_mortem_photography_collection_i/

Photograph from personal collection posted on Reddit and Imgur, https://imgur.com/a/O96VJ

10 [06:41] Sonya Vatomsky, 'Clearing Up Some Myths About Victorian "Post-Mortem" Photographs, Atlas Obscura, 27 Nov 2017 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs

11 [06:51] Victorian Post-Mortem Photos: The Myth of the Stand Alone Corpse, https://dealer042.wixsite.com/post-mortem-photos

12 [07:16] Patrizia Munforte, 'The Body of Ambivalence: The "Alive, Yet Dead" Portrait in the Nineteenth Century', Colchester: School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex (2015) 76.

13 [07:40] Personal collection, https://imgur.com/a/O96VJ

14 [08:11] Raphael Samuel, 'The Eye of History' in Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1997), 274-291 (287).

15 [09:05] Bethan Bell, 'Taken from life: The unsettling art of death photography', BBC News, 5 Jun 2016 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36389581

16 [09:14] Personal collection, https://imgur.com/a/O96VJ

17 [09:22] Personal collection, https://imgur.com/a/O96VJ

Photograph references can be found on-screen in the video, except for the ones from a Reddit user's personal collection.