Victorian Death and Mourning Tour

This year we once again attended the Historic Village's Victorian Death and Mourning tour!

They added more content, items, and staged areas then in previous years.

Generally the upstairs is not part of this particular event but this year it was expanded and included for a death bed scene.

  

 Shown above are cotton and coins used to cover and close the eye lids.

There were photographs of women in mourning, along with postmortem photography.  There were also examples of death announcements.  During the period of mourning this same stationary was used for all correspondence.  The size of the black border on the edge of the stationary was used to alert the receiver that the funeral was coming nigh. The thinner the border the sooner it was impeding.

Another area had several examples of clothing that were worn with descriptions of time frames certain colors, types of fabrics, and amount of skin could be shown and acceptable after the death of a loved one.

A wooden, hand built coffin was added to the parlor...

...with a viewing window.


The tour covers far more than I put here.  See these past posts for the extras such as: a large framed hair woven art piece from deceased loved one's locks, mourning jewelry, and a shrunken head.

Historic Halloween Tour 2013
Haunted House Tour 2012