General Chat

Do you have any?

I have a few, and treasure them, but I don't think I have (and I wouldn't want) any like these...........

http://www.littlethings.com/people-in-the-1800s-did-this-with-dead-bodies/?vpage=1

:-0

Noooo, that's awful, but I suppose the fact that there were no previous photos of the deceased means they want a likeness to cling to. Macabre the way the photos are staged tho

Lizx

I think it's creepy....... to say the least.

:-(

I wonder if the little girl (photographed with her dead sister) had nightmares?

As it was explained to me ' death was to the 19c what sex was to the 20th'.

I know someone who has a photo of their stillborn baby hanging on the wall. Older child was encouraged to talk to it . Weird or what :-0 :-0 :-0

very weird, rather disturbing actually.

:-0

I have a photo of my wife's brother who died in 1951 taken/staged just after his death.
He was only a few weeks old at the very most. (could possibly have been days old, not certain without getting both certificates)
He`s just lying on what looks to be a cot bedspread, with his head resting on a makeshift pillow, Just looks like he`s sleeping.
It may seem macabre to some folk, but it`s all there is to show he was ever here.
My wife`s mother had kept it in her possession until the day she died in 1993.

I agree LadyScozz very disturbing but there are a lot of things that we don't do now that we were still doing in the 60s and 70s granted not has bad as that.

Well we all have to start somewhere. Deads don't move very much.

One of my rellies was a late Victorian photographer who got started with this sort of thing. He also did photography for the police inc executions. Aaaagh.

He married a bit late and didn't have any kids so somehow all his plates and negatives pre-Fleet Street ended up with us. I was aware of the dead children photos and thought it very creepy. We (well my father ) tried finding the rels. of some of them but nobody wanted the pix so he gave up trying.

Rellie went on to work for a Fleet St newspaper and made a very good living which he spent of flying and malt whiskey, a risky combination..

A bit earlier and here is another Victorian photographer whose business was carried on by his daughter. Thanks to the baptist connection they made a pile of money out of funeral/marriage/baptism photos inc deads which the web site is too polite to feature. I hope people recall my link to grand dad Munster.
http://www.cartedevisite.co.uk/photographers-category/biographies/s-to-z/starbuck-john/

Ah ... our ancestors lived on another planet far far away. Sometimes I have to pinch myself that I knew real live Victorians who remembered a world without aeroplanes, radio and supermarkets. They seemed normal though my GF was fond of describing Parsee funerals. No illustrations thank god.

Gives me the creeps

One of my rellies was also a Victorian photographer in the 1890s but me being a bit thick never gave it a thought that he would do that kind of work and hes got a well known name has well, just goes to show we have to be careful how we act in this life because we don't know is coming after us :-D :-D :-D

Oh gawd, I just remembered.......... we have a photograph of DH's gg? grandparents, taken in the late 1800s........ I always said his gg?grandad looked a bit "off".

They were very pious Cornish Methodists........ not sure if they would have photographs like this taken.

I won't be looking too closely.

:-(