In the Victorian era, it was popular for people to photograph relatives after they had died, often placing them in lifelike poses

Amazing and weird fact about Victorian Era.

In the Victorian era, it was popular for people to photograph relatives after they had died, often placing them in lifelike poses

Photographs of loved ones taken after they died may seem morbid to modern sensibilities. But in Victorian England, they became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief.

In images that are both unsettling and strangely poignant, families pose with the dead, infants appear asleep, and consumptive young ladies elegantly recline, the disease not only taking their life but increasing their beauty.

Victorian life was suffused with death. Epidemics such as diphtheria, typhus and cholera scarred the country, and from 1861 the bereaved Queen made mourning fashionable.

Trinkets of memento mori - literally meaning "remember you must die" - took several forms, and existed long before Victorian times.