Gone But Not Forgotten: Victorian Mourning Customs

October brings about a preoccupation with death, and so each year Lincoln’s Hearthside House Museum hosts its annual exhibition, “Gone But Not Forgotten:  Victorian Mourning & Funeral Customs.” This year’s exhibit opens on Saturday, October 5th and runs for two weekends.

In this exhibit, each room throughout the museum is transformed to recreate the scene of a typical wake and funeral of the 19th century.  The solemn occasion is a depiction of a household in mourning, in this case, for the death of Hearthside owner Simon E. Thornton, who died there in 1873.  Volunteer docents dressed in black mourning attire will lead visitors on a fascinating tour of exhibits through all three floors of the house as they hear about early funerary customs,  created by Queen Victoria during the 1860s, and see an assortment of clothing, accessories, art work, and numerous artifacts related to death and mourning.

Besides dressing all in black, homes also were decorated in times of mourning, with black coverings draped on mirrors, windows, and even on the exterior of the house.  A mourning wreath on the front door was a solemn symbol that the household was mourning the loss of a loved one.  Funeral gatherings typically took place in the residence of the deceased, where the casket was displayed flanked with flowers to help disguise the odor and mourners gathered until the trip to the cemetery.  

Among the artifacts featured in the exhibit are an antique wicker coffin and child’s coffin.  Antique embalming equipment along with the actual undertaker’s journal and portable table used for preparing Simon Thornton’s body is also on display in the very same bedroom where he took his last breath.

In addition to various funerary memorabilia, other objects include Victorian mourning clothing, jewelry and a wreath made from human hair of the deceased, and post-mortem photographs in which family members pose with dead loved ones propped up in a life-like positions.  The exhibit covers such topics as proper mourning etiquette and fashions, grave dolls, cemeteries and memorials, Victorian superstitions about the afterlife, and the undertaker and embalming process.   

To show appreciation for coming to pay their respects to the grieving family, visitors are offered a memento of a “funeral cookie,” wrapped and sealed with black sealing wax, a common gesture by the family at a wake. 

The tours on Saturday, Oct. 5 and Oct. 12 are done in low light and held at 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, 6:30 and 7:00 p.m.  Tours on Sunday afternoon Oct. 6th and 13th are held every half hour between 1:00-3:00 p.m.   

Email info@hearthsidehouse.org or call Hearthside at (401) 726-0597 for reservations.    For information, visit www.hearthsidehouse.org.