QUOTE OF THE DAY

Photographing The Dead

In the 1850s, families in Victorian England and in some parts of America, began to commission photographers to make portraits of their deceased loved ones. This came to be known as "postmortem photography." 

Even today in the 21st century, you might see someone at a wake gingerly making their way up to the casket with their camera, hoping to snap one last picture of their loved one as they lay peacefully in their coffin. 

Usually dressed in their best laying out clothes - their Sunday Best  

It became common practice to photograph the dead before burial using pins, tools, and clamps to prop up and hold the body in place until the portrait was taken.


A Personal Story: 
I can remember being a young child of about 10 years old, paging through our family photo albums. I found an yellow dog-eared photograph of a newborn baby, laying in a small coffin and dressed in her christening outfit. I didn't recognize the name of the long-dead infant which was hand-printed on the back of the picture, along with the birth date and death date. At the time, I thought that it was morbid to take a picture of a dead baby to keep in photo albums. 


Years later when I was about 29 years old, I accompanied my fiance' to the viewing and funeral of his sister who had died with her newborn baby in a house fire. Both she and her infant lay in the same casket and he took a picture to show his grandmother who was in a nursing home. It was only then that I remembered the picture of the baby in our family photo albums when I was 10.  As an adult, I knew that the parents took some comfort when they looked at the picture from time to time and that it reminded them that their baby girl really did exist long ago when years later there was nothing but the photograph to mark her place in family history.

******

Because Victorians died young and of injuries and infections that modern medicine helped abolish, there were elaborate grieving rituals to give meaning to the lives of their loved ones.

Victorians would haul their dead out of a coffin, prop them up on stands, and take a picture that were worth a thousand words. These prop stands helped corpses look alive, and allowed the living to pose with their dead family members. Or so the story goes.

In recent years, whether categorized in error or intentionally mislabeled to sell for a profit, faked postmortem photos have become widespread on the Internet. 

They fill online galleries of Victorian oddities and are on Pinterest and Instagram. Some quasi-reputable websites have contributed to the myths by vouching that the photos are real.   

Postmortem posing stands are similar to microphone and guitar stands. Not only were they used to prop up the dead, professional photographers used them with their live models and family portraits to help them hold still when it took ten to thirty minutes to get the exposure just right before snapping the picture.  

By 1839, when the daguerreotype was invented, the longest exposures were a minute and a half. By the 1850s, they were three to eight seconds and posing stands became less in use.

Not all postmortem pictures were of dead people. Some of those people were alive and were "posed" because postmortem pictures can bring a pretty penny on both eBay and Etsy. 

People are easily duped because the majority of armchair collectors are not going to consult a patent library to see how authentic the pictures are before clicking the Buy-It-Now button. 


The more misinformation there is online, the more likely it is that someone’s “research” will turn up myths rather than facts.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

The 1915 New York Subway Disaster

It was rush hour in New York City on the morning of January 6, 1915, when the worst disaster, up until that time, occurred in the underground subway system, injuring 210 people and killing one.  

The New York Times recapped the story the 
next day on  January 7, 1915

Insulation that was wrapped around two electrical cables which provided electric power to the midtown subway system suddenly shorted out, causing a fire and a blackout. The cables were not fireproof.  Toxic smoke permeated the underground tunnels that, lacking electricity, were plunged into darkness.   

Over 2500 people were trapped inside very smoky subway cars and on station platforms. Feelings of panic and desperation grew.  Everyone had one objective - to get above ground to fresh air and safety.

The firemen who were working the underground part of the rescue found passengers struggling to get out of trains. However, with no electricity, passengers found it very hard to pry open the train doors.  Other victims lay on the floors of the train cars having been asphyxiated from the smoke were getting trampled on. 

Firemen recovering from smoke inhalation
January 6, 1915

Firemen handed people onto ladders to bring them up to street-level for emergency aid.  Some victims had to be hospitalized for smoke inhalation.  

Firemen who were working at street level attempted to break through the tops of subway cars.  

Breaking through the subway roof from the street 
January 6, 1915

Firemen who were working the underground part of the rescue quickly found themselves overcome with smoke and came up to street-level to get medical aid.  

Firemen resting on street level
January 6, 1915

 
As soon as they recovered, they went back to help passengers find their way out the heavy acrid smoke. 

          

The scene above ground was bedlam as well. Police held back the rubber-neckers - spectators - because they were pushing and shoving others and looking for relatives who rode the subway to get to their workplaces. 

Crowds of spectators looking through sidewalk
grills at the commotion on the subway below

Streetside spectators in automobiles caused traffic jams as they slowed down to watch the scene.  

The street scene above the subway on January 6, 1915

  

On the street, spectators abandoned their cars to watch the firemen bring victims up to the street.


     

The power was restored to the underground by 4:00pm, just in time for the evening rush hour.  


However, subway service was messed up for a few days until trains returned to their normal schedules.

    
Although there was one death, everyone agreed that this could have been a much bigger tragedy.  Some armchair experts believe this disaster could have been avoided by using fireproof insulation.   


But as Frank Hedley, general manager of the Interborough Rapid Transit System said:  "There is nothing known which will prevent the recurrence of short circuits.  New York received a warning, the next occurrence may be a far more serious loss of life due to the same cause - suffocation. No time should be lost remedying the most serious defect - lack of suitable ventilation at all times."

Here are the headlines of some of the newspapers who covered the story.  The New York Times recapped the story the next day, January 7, 1915, then sort of downplayed it after the crisis was over and services were restored.

The New York Times January 7, 1915 with stories laying blame

                    
The Evening World reported that experts were brought in to remove all perils from the tunnel to prevent another subway disaster.

The Evening World headlines January 7, 1915 stirring up
public fears

The Star Independent reported that preparations were being made to dynamite the streets to let air into the subway tunnels.


 

The Star Independent headlines and details of one death

The above video clip is an interesting 2-minute video about the origins of the New York subway.  Take note of the vintage 1915's clothing as people got on and off the subway trains.

            
If you are really interested in history, this is a 46-minute documentary from 1994 on the History Channel about the origins and building of the New York City subway system with Roger Mudd and Jack Perkins.

                


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