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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Shangas, post: 128650, member: 360&quot;]I think we have to remember the culture of the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Death was ever-present in the 19th century, in a FAR greater and more noticeable way than it is today.</p><p><br /></p><p>These days, someone drops dead and we really don&#039;t think anything of it.</p><p><br /></p><p>But back in the 1800s, people died with alarming regularity. Men died of consumption and yellow fever, syphilis and typhus. Women died of childbirth or any other number of illnesses. Children died every day from everything from starvation to abuse to neglect to polio, smallpox, influenza, measles...the list went on and on and on.</p><p><br /></p><p>With death EVERYWHERE (this is a time when everyone you knew would know at least one person close to them who died), to ignore death would&#039;ve been seen as hideously rude and uncouth.</p><p><br /></p><p>Remember that this is a time when great pandemics were killing thousands of people every day. Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever. So recognising the impermanence of life was a BIG thing for the Victorians. They all knew that any one of them could be next. Memento Mori, as they say.</p><p><br /></p><p>Because of this ever-present fear of death, there was a MASSIVE culture over mourning accessories. Black clothing, black jewelry, black curtains, black furniture, black stationery for your desk...London even created the Necropolis Railway to ferry the dead out of London.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hair keepsakes in the form of plaited or woven hair jewelry or framed locks or even pocketwatch chains or bracelets or necklaces made out of the deceased&#039;s hair, were very very common. Most people couldn&#039;t afford photographs. And paintings were expensive. If you wanted something cheap and long-lasting to remember your dearly deceased husband/wife/son/daughter/grandmother...hair was about the only thing that survived.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some people might find it grisly (I personally do not), but back then it was extremely common. Equally common was post-mortem photography (which is still practiced today, BTW). For those who COULD afford photography, they would pose the corpse, sometimes with living relatives and photograph it for posterity. Mourning portraits or mourning photography was a big thing in the Victorian age.</p><p><br /></p><p>Before we judge something as being &#039;creepy&#039; or &#039;disgusting&#039; or &#039;weird&#039; or whatever, we need to remember just what was going on when these things were being created. Thousands, millions were dying every day during this period, and if you were a young mother who just buried three of five children and your husband - you would want something to remember them by that was a bit more personal than just the clothes hanging in the cupboard, or the toys, or tools or furniture - which you would probably sell, anyway, because you needed the bloody money. Nobody wanted some dead guy&#039;s hair, so it was perfectly acceptable to keep a lock as a memento.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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