10 Disturbing History Facts They Don't Teach You In School

10. Victorian Pictures Of The Dead

It is hard for us to remember in these days of modern medicine, that death was a particularly common occurrence for families up until the late 1940s.

Grief can manifest in numerous ways, but people often want to remember their deceased friends and families the way that they were when they were alive.

So, what happens when you combine this sentiment with the widespread adoption of consumer photography?

Of course, you get the chilling world of Victorian corpse photography.

In this macabre practice, recently departed family members would often be positioned into lifelike poses and expressions, some time between rigor mortis and decomposition. Various pictures of them would be taken, in numerous different positions, regularly with other members of the family also standing besides the recently deceased.

It is sad to say that many of these would pertain to children, with infant mortality rife upon the Victorian population. In these cases, it was seen as disrespectful to prop their bodies in fanciful positions and pry their eyes open, so infants would often be depicted in sleeping poses, mimicking the restfulness of the grave.

As this practice began to happen around the time photography became more affordable, these were often the first and possibly only time that the families would have had a picture taken of them. These photographs provided the families with a way to permanently preserve the likeness of their dead relatives.

This practice soon fell out of favour as child mortality decreased and people were more able to get photographs of family members before their untimely demise.