# thevictorianbookofthedead mrsdaffodil mementomorimonday nationalbeerday folklorethursday shakespearesunday twelvedaysofchristmas newyearseve gothicadvent fridayfeeling

A cane made of "Wood of Grant's Funeral Car." This might be the Albany funeral car (top photo) or the New York City funeral car (below)
https://t.co/QLyZk9Z2xs

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2020-08-08

Widow's Bonnet from Eaton's Spring and Summer Catalogue, 1904. $5.00 to $10.00, depending on quality of veil.

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2020-07-08

joke du jour 1883 1/2
Miss Gushington (to young widow whose husband has left her a large fortune): “That is the fourteenth mourning costume I have seen you wear in three days and each lovelier and more becoming than the other!"

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2020-05-27

on a jealous husband, his cold-hearted, faithless, abominable wife, an insurance policy, and the undertaker. Hilarity ensues. https://t.co/ShshR98H15

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2020-05-15

1868 widow snark:
How long does a widow mourn for her husband?
She mourns for a second.

[Robes de deuil et de demi-deuil, Heloise Suzanne Leloir, 1869 https://t.co/LC8sZIaqzd]

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2020-05-13

A Merry Company, [not practising social distancing] Disturbed by Death, Gesina ter Borch, c. 1660
https://t.co/iN9jHRgcPW

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2020-05-11

Heartless joke du jour 1888
Mr. Mould (the undertaker): I heard some bad news today. A man whom I’ve known for years has just died.
Mrs. Mould (smiles): That ought not to be very bad news for us, Uriah.
Mr. Mould: He was blown up by dynamite, my dear.

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2020-04-27

1882 widow snark 2/2.
Probably the principal change [the widow] feels from his loss is one in her income, and men have been known to designedly curtail the finances in such instances in order to insure that they should be missed in some degree.

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2020-04-13

L. Crusius illustration "Ein Stein!" for 1899 Antikamnia patent medicine calendar. https://t.co/vDXX8qQ2I5

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2020-04-07

Although the Resurrection Men sold corpses, legally a body was not property. Bodies were often stripped; it was a felony to steal shrouds or silver coffin fittings. [Image-Thomas Rowlandson, 1775]
https://t.co/xOJ07l7mIp

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2020-03-12


Who pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
Richard III c. 1591, I. 4. 45
[Skeleton ferrying souls of the damned, British Library, 1851]

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2020-02-02

1902 Some of the people in the [Hebrides] Islands have such a horror of the dead that there is sometimes a difficulty in getting a corpse prepared for burial. It is said that those who have once handled a dead body are never afraid again.

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2020-01-28

Albtei im Eichwald / The Abbey in the Oak Wood, Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1808-1810. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

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2019-12-16

Death is such a kidder--always ready to play pranks on the unwary! 1737

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2019-04-09