Identifying Stages of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Images

166 The Daguerreian Annual 2015

Karin J. Bohleke, Ph.D.

A father and daughter, who share the same hooded eyes and chin, pose together, in all likeli-

hood documenting the loss of the wife and mother. That the young lady is still considered a child, and not a very young wife, is represented in her short-sleeved, low-necked dress and her juvenile, braided hairstyle. The father’s clothing consists of black wool trousers and frock coat, a black silk-satin vest and a contrasting striped silk taffeta cravat. His clothing reflects the standard middle- and professional-class attire for men and does not publicize his bereaved

Figure 1

Unattributed.

Quarter-plate daguerreotype, ca. 1846–1847.

state. Mourning manifests itself in the daughter’s neck-lace, which consists of a black velvet ribbon fastened with a hair brooch. Black velvet ribbons circle both of her wrists, but close examination of her right wrist resting on her father’s shoulder reveals that she wears two bracelets. Gold hollowware findings gleam over a narrow bracelet of a lighter color than the wide ribbon below. Like the brooch, this is most likely a bracelet made from her mother’s hair. Otherwise, due to the girl’s youth, her father deemed it unnecessary to dress her all in black.

The Daguerreian Annual 2015 167

Identifying Stages of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Images

When I was very young, around four or five years old, I remember driving with my grandfather and seeing groups of

women picking dandelions along the highways, all of them swathed in black and bare-headed in the heat of Ontario summers. I asked who those women were and what they were doing. The answer was, “They are Italian widows picking dandelions to make dande-lion wine.” My grandfather explained what widows were and why their status in their culture required them to wear black for the rest of their lives. When we went to Toronto’s Little Italy, I saw even more of them. I had two thoughts that still stand out in my mind: first, grown-ups will drink ANYTHING; sec-ond, I was very glad that my family was Norwegian because then I could never be an Italian widow and have to wear black every day, year in and year out. It was very reductionist thinking, but forgivable at such a young age. But I did not realize that, at that time in the 1970s, I was witnessing centuries-old traditions regarding mourning dress that were fast disappearing. Few men and women today wear black for extended periods of time after bereavement, whether for a relative or a spouse. Given the preva-lence of black as a fashion staple, for many women in particular their existing wardrobe would provide suitable apparel for formal mourning, and no one seeing them on the street would recognize through their dress that a personal loss had occurred. Fur-thermore, my husband and I have attended funerals

at which others chose to “honor” the deceased and the survivors by wearing cut-off jean shorts and t-shirts, or bright tropical prints worthy of a luau, so it is safe to say that the etiquette of sober or subdued and better clothing for funerals is also eroding.

If I had known at the time, I would not have had farther to look than the family album, which features photographs of my great-great-grandmother in full mourning in 1914, immediately after the death of her second husband. She spent the remaining fifty years of her life as a widow, but subsequent portraits show that she abandoned mourning dress. As the multiple snapshots attest, she made certain that she documented her widow’s “weeds” thoroughly, but unlike many, she chose not to go to a professional pho-tographer’s studio to memorialize that unhappy life transition. The end result is fairly low-quality images, unfortunately. This is one aspect of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century life that many unfamiliar with early photography find difficult to grasp in this instant and selfie-driven age: good photographs once necessitated a trip to a studio, and this required ef-fort, planning, and preparation in terms of timing, wardrobe, and even transportation. Thus, a profes-sional photograph was certainly integral to life’s joys for engagements, weddings, and the first baby. But photographs also recorded life’s sorrows: the widow in her mourning clothing, the final family group picture before one or more children migrated westward, the first family photo in mourning after the death of the mother or father (fig. 1), and the grief-stricken faces of parents holding close their dead child and sitting for the only image of that child that they will ever have. As far as the post-mortem images are concerned, many

All images, except as noted, are from the collection of Drs. K. and B. Bohleke.





people today comment that our nineteenth-century ancestors were “obsessed with death” based on the ex-istence of such photos. Rather, these images represent heartbreak, not obsession, and the wish to remember a loved one who may otherwise not be documented visually. In an album full of the living, a photo of the deceased was better than none at all.

Well into the twentieth century, death was a con-stant visitor to all homes of rich and poor alike, and, barring a travel-related or an industrial accident, most people died at home, nursed and eventually laid out by family members. This was a tumultuous century: the Napoleonic, Crimean, and American Civil Wars—to name just a few—decimated entire villages and generations through both combat and disease. Revolutions throughout Europe and wars for independence added to the death toll. Outbreaks of typhoid, cholera, and other fevers, the products most often of poor drainage, sewage, and lack of hygiene, as well as contagious diseases such as tuberculosis and smallpox, added to the numbers. Women risked death with every pregnancy and childbirth. The medicine of the time, bereft of the science and the drugs that have saved so many since the advent of penicillin, was helpless in the face of many illnesses, especially common childhood diseases. Even measles and chicken pox often proved fatal. Procedures that are routine today, such as appendectomies, were not so at the time, a lack of antiseptic conditions being part of the problem.

Rituals and ritual clothing have accompanied life’s transitions since the first humans. It is only in the early modern and modern eras that industrialized grief could turn a private loss shared by close family and friends into a large-scale and expensive spectacle in which an entire household was draped in black, right down to the servants’ clothing and the bedstead curtains. Textiles, in other words, played a starring role in the lives of the bereaved long after the funeral was over and the last guest had left the house. As in the case of my great-great-grandmother and the Ital-ian widows making dandelion wine, these traditions were centuries in development. The industrial revo-lution enabled production of fabrics in the millions of yards, and the panoply of grief took on a life of its own outside of the upper classes.

Initially, during the Middle Ages and the Renais-sance, funeral processions and mourning clothing were limited to royalty and the aristocracy, and sumptuary laws fruitlessly attempted to control the usurpation of royal prerogatives by socially ambitious

rich merchants and lower gentry. Subsequently, all at-tempts at regulating those who could adopt mourning ceased during the seventeenth century.

In the fifteenth century, mourning clothing began to look like current styles, but it was an extremely slow and tentative process. Prior to that century, women’s mourning attire had been based on the robes worn by medieval nuns, and as fashion began to influence mourning clothing, tradition still wielded tremen-dous influence. Thus, at the same time, the medieval clothes were becoming fossilized as the only permitted styles. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mourning fashions underwent a period of rapid transition. By the mid-to-late 1700s, there was no significant difference in the styles of mourning and stylish dress; color, usually black and white, and simplicity of design distinguished mourning dresses from their fashionable counterparts. “Widow’s caps” were common, but again color characterized them in contrast to fashionable day caps—a common acces-sory—although at different points in time the widow was required to conceal all of her hair, making for an-other noticeable distinction in the types of headgear. But, with minor variations, as of the mid-eighteenth century, the words “fashionable” and “mourning” coexisted comfortably.1 By the nineteenth century, European mourning attire had evolved into intricate stages of heavy or full mourning, half-mourning, and light mourning. Black clothing, with a tinge of white, characterized most of them.

In the stratified societies of Europe, one did not mourn for family members only; periods of official court mourning in the wake of the death of a royal head of state plunged the aristocracy into black cloth-ing, even for royalty from another country. While it was a matter of convention much of the time, the custom was expensive. When observed for a lengthy period, it was often the cause of utter destitution, if not bankruptcy, for the luxury goods manufacturers who depended upon sumptuous court consumption for their own daily bread. In addition, the king could declare “general mourning,” meaning all the citi-zens of the country, not just the aristocracy, were to participate through adoption of mourning attire. In British history, the death of Princess Charlotte in 1817, Prince Albert in 1861, and Edward VII in 1910—the last resulting in the famous “Black Ascot”—provide well-documented examples of aristocratic and/or generalized mourning.2 The minutiae of court mourning, with its regulated dress and the rituals of the aristocracy, established themselves as the example



after which the European and American middle classes modeled their own practices in their attempts to exemplify the finest genteel and social behavior. The working and poorer classes then developed their funerals and mourning etiquette following the middle-class paradigm.

Historically, widows have been considered a burden and an object of suspicion, often accused of complicity in their husband’s death. In many societ-ies, the widow could expect to be killed and buried with her husband; the Indian practice of suttee, or self-immolation on the husband’s funeral pyre, is but one example. Western tradition took a different tack: European and American widows were social outcasts for the first year and one day of deep mourning. They were forbidden to partake of any social function and allowed out of the home only to attend church ser-vices and visit close relatives. Custom predicated this social isolation on the premise that the widow had been left sufficient funds, or had generalized family resources through relatives, to survive financially during this protracted period. Others, not so well provided for, found themselves seeking work, some-times for the first time in their lives. Many of a solid middle-class background found themselves in utter poverty upon the death of a father, or particularly a spouse. Funerals usually cost a considerable sum, and the purchase of the expected mourning attire added another expense.

As etiquette manuals and magazines proliferated in the mid-nineteenth century, they

provided advice on the finer nuances of mourning etiquette and both promoted and fueled the rigid system which had become quite tyrannical in terms of its control over society, mostly on the women. The fear of a social misstep in wearing the incorrect degree of mourning or for the wrong time span gripped middle-class women, and errors were easy to make, given that the advice varied from one source to another and even contradicted one another. In fact, to make matters more complicated, the length of mourning periods increased in the second half of the nineteenth century, and every relative received his or her due of grief, although sometimes for only three to six weeks. A rapid succession of family tragedies could nonetheless literally add up to a significant and protracted time span. To provide a period example characterized by vagueness, Godey’s Lady’s Book states in October 1867 that “the limit of mourning varies from six months to four or five years,” but then provides no explanation whatsoever of just how long for whom.3

Mourning warehouses, essentially department stores for all degrees of grief, emerged in Europe and the United States, and in this they were not far behind the development of the department store in general. In the United States, there were several possibilities “for a person or family laying aside colors,” as Godey’s explains:

. . . shops, usually known as “mourning stores,” have sprung up in all our larger towns and cities. We have already noticed Jackson’s, in New York, and the ever reliable and excellent house of Besson & Son, Phila-delphia. Besides these and similar places, nearly all large dry-goods houses . . . have a “mourning department,” where materials may be purchased.4

Commercial establishments such as these further fueled what is now termed the “cult of mourning” by publishing their own guides to mourning dress and of course promoting its prolonged use to their financial advantage. Their efficiency and large stock also permitted immediate adoption of mourning in a single day, whereas in the past, a grace period of eight days had been allowed for the custom-fitted or made-to-measure clothing manufacture of the times.

Lou Taylor, in her book Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History, synthesizes the various general guidelines for the recommended time periods for mourning one’s own family members and those of one’s spouse, who received equal due:

for the death of a parent: eighteen months •for an adult; children observed mourn-ing for the death of a parent for twelve months

for the death of a child: twelve months•

grandchild for a grandparent: nine •months

for the death of a sibling: six months•

for the death of a cousin: six weeks to •three months

for the death of a husband: two and a •half years

Widows, Taylor continues, bore the deepest mourning burdens, and in this Queen Victoria wield-ed exceptional influence; her exaggerated mourning practices resulted in imitation throughout British so-ciety. As mentioned previously, the guides and sources



contradicted each other, but these examples represent some recommended phases of British mourning from the nineteenth century. Americans looked to England for their etiquette in this domain, ignoring France, whose rules were both shorter and simpler. The first nine months required a dress of a dull silk and wool blend called bombazine; black “crape”—a Anglicized distortion of the original French word crêpe applied uniquely to the specific black silk fabric in Figure 2—almost entirely covered the skirt and bodice, and the long black crape veil was obligatory (figs. 3 and 4). After nine months, still in deep mourning, the widow switched to two flounces of crape (figs. 5–7). During these two phases of deep mourning, the widow wore no white collars and cuffs, which were otherwise a standard, removable hygienic layer at the time. Only with the advent of second mourning after a year and day, which the widow should prolong slightly to show her good taste and utter respectability, did she switch to white collars and cuffs, often with a black edging or trimming, and she could restore her social circle slightly (fig. 8). The crape trimmings were more elaborate but fewer in quantity. Second mourning lasted nine months, but it was possible to reduce the crape after six of those nine months, and silks with a slight sheen became appropriate. The dubious sparkle of black jet jewelry and trims also relieved an otherwise dull wardrobe. All other accessories were black. Indoors, white caps were permitted, but ap-pearances outdoors required black bonnets with crape veils. After twenty-one months, depending upon the source under consultation, the widow entered “ordi-nary” mourning, in which crape no longer trimmed her clothing, and she could either never adopt colors again, or she could adopt half-mourning, namely black and white, mauve, and soft shades of grey and lavender, often with black or white motifs (fig. 9).5

Figure 2 [left]

Close-up of nineteenth-century mourning crape, a heavily treated and distressed silk that characterized mourning attire, particularly that of widows. The fabric did not “breathe” well, and was consequently hot to wear, and many complained about its smell. Courtesy of the Fashion Archives and Museum of Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA.

Figure 3

Antoine Claudet, 107 Regent St., London, “Photographer to her Majesty.”

Carte de Visite, ca. 1858–1859.

Black crape completely covers the widow’s dress; her underskirt with its protective hem braid hangs noticeably below. Pleated bands of crape trim her Zouave jacket, and applied horizontal crape bands adorn her bodice. As she has set aside her bonnet for the photograph, she is not wearing the requisite long veil.



Figure 4

J. H. Abbott, 480 Broadway, Albany, NY.


An unidentified widow sports a towering fash-ionable spoon bonnet filled with crape. The veil covers her shoulders and cascades down her back.

Figure 5

Maull & Polyblank, 55, Gracechurch Street, and 187a, Piccadilly, London.


The two crape flounces on this widow’s skirt pres-ent a noticeable contrast to her dress and illustrate the dulling effects of the fabric. A generously sized brooch with a black enamel border graces her throat. She wears the required black crape collar, but in an attempt to maintain good hygiene, she took the atypical step of adding a narrow inner white band to deal with “ring around the collar.” Her shining gold watch chain, with its hidden watch, represents the only glittering piece of jewelry permitted to widows, many of whom already owned a watch prior to their loss. Even widows needed to tell the time.



Figure 7

Archibald Robertson, 88 Glassford St., Glasgow, Scotland.


The design of this widow’s dress plays with the scale of the two skirt flounces, illustrating the variety and creativity possible within the parameters of mourn-ing regulations. While she wears the requisite black undersleeves, and her bodice is duly covered by crape almost in its entirety, she wears a white collar set off by a large, black brooch. As is the case with the widow of Figure 5, she too appears to set hygiene above the regulations. Black collars were the de rigueur accom-paniment to black undersleeves.

Figure 6

E. Murray, 46 Queen Street, Ramsgate, Kent, England.


A young widow from the seaside town of Ramsgate, represented in the backdrop by a partial view of a sailboat, poses with her black gloves tossed casually on the column beside her. The heap of black fabric is most likely a light black silk mantle. Her double crape flounces show that she is past the first nine months of mourning, but maintains all black otherwise. Her black straw hat reveals her noticeable break with the “rules” and reflects the combination of both her lo-cation and the likely summer season. Her oversized black bead necklace adds a touch of personal flair



Figure 8

Alexander Ayton, Kennedy Place, Londonderry, Ireland.

Carte de Visite.

An ink inscription identifies the sitter as “Margaret Kelly 1870.” Black enamel cuff links clearly fasten her cuffs, which also feature two stripes for half-mourning. Narrow zig-zags of crape adorn her bodice, and a single, deep crape f lounce covers the lower two-thirds of her trained skirt.

Figure 9

F. G. Morgan, West Sussex, England.


A widow in the last stages of mourning gazes fondly on her daughter. All the crape has vanished, and her dress is a glossy black silk trimmed with silk fringe, narrow velvet ribbon, and shiny black glass buttons. Her oversized black necklace, either glass or jet, brooch and earrings are typical of the second half of the 1860s and the 1870s. The daughter appears to be in half-mourning with her white underskirt and black silk tunic overdress that matches her mother’s. The boys’ clothing in no way reflects mourning when compared to others from the same time period and similar age range; this is not unusual.

The CDV’s unusual photographer’s backmark reads: “F. G. Morgan, Chymist [sic] & Photographer Petworth. Under the Patronage of the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council on Education Science and Art Department Kensington.”



As the century progressed, more options for suitable black fabrics proliferated, and pre-sented a spectrum of price points and seasonal options. Women with fewer financial resources adapted the strictures to the reality of their purses, often just purchasing a black collar and sometimes—but not necessarily—a mourning brooch (figs. 10 & 11), or re-sorting to dyeing their existing clothing. To provide one ex-ample, Mary Heagan of Sherfy family peach orchard fame in the battle of Gettysburg, died of natural causes at the age of 77 on January 29, 1864, when the farm and the family finances were still devastated. In a let-ter dated February 3, 1864, her daughter Mary recounts how, to obtain the necessary mourn-ing clothes, her sister Maggie spent her last dollar on partial payment on a “black calico dress” length and began sewing as quickly as she could. Togeth-er, sisters Amanda, Mary, and Maggie also jointly bought,

. . . a package of Hows [sic] and Stevens black family dye color, for 25 cts—the receipts for using is in the package, as money at present is scares [sic] and black goods high, we intend to color some of our close [sic], if they prove to be what they say they must be, a great saving of expence [sic] and labor.6

The letter emphasizes the financial burden—multiple family members had to combine resources to pay the unyielding undertaker $18 for the coffin and transport, thereby impoverishing them—as well as the scrambling for appropriate mourning attire that follows an unexpected death when one is already in the midst of hardship and scarcity.

Black was not only expensive, but the color itself was not stable, therefore frequently rendering the clothes completely unwashable, thereby increasing

Figure 10

Unattributed.

Sixth-plate ambrotype, ca. 1858.

The teen-aged girl’s plaid dress and gold hollowware brooch are entirely unsuitable for mourning, yet the ill-fitting sheer black collar, which seems to be trimmed with narrow flounces of crape, demonstrates that she indeed mourns someone. The ribbons on the back of her head and the headband may be black as well. The photographer positioned the girl’s hands carefully to show the prominent black mourning ring on her left hand. The fact that her dress fastens in the back and not in the front indicates her youth; at this point in time, adult women’s day dresses were all front-fastening, but children’s clothing fastened in the back to symbolize their dependence.



Figure 11 [right]

Tyler of Easton, PA.


The careworn face and poorly fitted striped dress indicate a woman of lim-ited means. Life has certainly not been easy for her, and it shows. Like the plaid dress in Figure 10, the stripes are entire-ly inappropriate for mourning, but she, too, has donned a narrow black crape mourning collar of the shape popular at the beginning of the 1860s. The lack of any kind of mourning brooch to fasten the collar may also indicate poverty. Her daughter’s dress features ribbons on the cuffs; they are probably black velvet to indicate mourning, but her clothing is otherwise unchanged. In all likelihood, the woman is now a widow, and her daughter fatherless.

Left, Detail of Figure 10.



Figure 12

David Clark, No. 4 King Block, Com-merce Square, New Brunswick, NJ.

Carte de Visite, ca. 1864.

The deep points on the collar, closed coat sleeve, larger buttons, and twisted hairstyle all date this widow’s portrait to 1864 prior to the appearance of revenue stamps. Her black glass earrings and brooch add to the somber picture. Her daughter’s dress is simple windowpane check that may or may not be black and white. The large bows on her shoulders, however, reflect her mourning status, as does the little black pendant on her necklace. Given the date of the photograph, there is a strong possibility that the mother is a widow of a Union soldier.

David Clark (1825–1902) enjoyed a lengthy career as a professional photogra-pher, opening his daguerreotype studio in 1852, and relocating to Commerce Square probably in 1863. For a summary of his career, see Gary D. Saretzky, “Nineteenth Century New Jersey Photographers: Revi-sion of Illustrated Article in New Jersey History, Fall/Winter 2004” gary.saretzky.com/photohistory/resources/photo_in_nj_July_2010.pdf (accessed 11/29/2015).



Figure 13

David W. Bowdoin, Downing Block, Salem, MA.

Carte de Visite, ca. 1864. Glue remains from a revenue stamp that was removed.

An ink inscription identifies the sitters as “Mrs. Berry and Winfield [Berry].” Mrs. Berry still styled her hair in the multiple twists popular at the beginning of the 1850s, but the narrow coat sleeves of her dress reveal that she kept up with the fash-ionable silhouette. Like her coun-terpart in Figure 12, the buttons on her bodice are of the larger size that became popular in 1864. Solemn little Winfield, who inherited his mother’s eyes, sports a jaunty wool three-piece suit, probably in a shade of tan, with a checked silk cravat. The simple braided clover designs and edging might have been executed in black, whereas the binding on the vest center fronts, wrist openings, and jacket edges are clearly of a lighter color.



Figure 14

Charles K. Bill, 941 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY.


The low-cut, short-sleeved dress lining renders it cooler to wear in summer heat, while the sheer overdress provides modesty through light coverage. Black satin ribbons add slight gleam to the dress, and her brooch clearly has a black enamel edge.

their expense through necessary replacement. Godey’s Lady’s Book provided the following advice

in January, 1849:

To REMOVE THE BLACK DYE LEFT ON THE SKIN FROM WEARING MOURNING IN WARM WEATHER.— Ladies that wear mourning in summer are much incom-moded by the blackness it leaves on the arms and neck, and which cannot easily be taken off by mere soap and water. To have a remedy always at hand, keep . . . a mixture, in equal portions, of cream of tartar and oxalic acid. . . . Put some of this mixture into a [cup] and moisten it slightly with a little water. . . . To use it—wet the black stains on your skin all over with water, and then with your finger rub on a little of the mixture. Then immedi-ately wash it off with water, and afterwards with soap and water. The black will thus entirely disappear. . . . Keep this powder out of the way of children. If swallowed, it is a poison.7

Oxalic acid occurs naturally in plants, and parsley and spinach have high quantities. It would be an effective cleanser given that it possesses bleaching qualities, which is why it is still used to-day in the product known as “Barkeeper’s Friend.” Figures 14 and 15 show mourners in sheer summer mourning dresses of wool muslin, gauze, or chal-lis of the type likely to stain the skin through the interaction of the dyes and natural sweat. They also provide evidence for practical adaptations made to mourning attire due to the season.

Care in purchasing black fabric was tanta-mount, as the multiple dye baths necessary to achieve the color did not always attain the desired results. Thus fashion magazines advised their readers not only on how to get rid of the stains on the skin but in selecting the fabric in the first place. Godey’s Lady’s Book recommended in March 1859, “In choosing black goods, especial care should be taken to secure a good shade as well as quality; a fabric may be excellent in the last respect, and rusty, or bluish, as to tint.”8

Mourning manifested itself not only in the clothing and accessories such as bonnets and

gloves, but also in the jewelry, which was expected to be minimal or understated in deepest mourning. Great ingenuity transformed a variety of natural

substances into memorials to the nearest and dearest dead. Jet, a minor gemstone consisting of fossilized wood that has metamorphosed into a soft pre-cursor of coal, lent itself readily to intricately carved de-signs in either a soft or dull finish to suit the differ-ent stages of mourning (fig. 16). Bog oak and onyx displayed similar qualities. With Goodyear’s patent of 1851, hard rubber functioned as the plastic of the



Figure 15

Ira G. Owen, Newton, NJ.


The low-cut, short-sleeved dress of this rather jauntily posed young woman with one arm on her hip is lightly covered by a sheer over-blouse. A small mourning brooch is visible at her throat.

The low negative number, #550, places this sitter among Owen’s early customers. His business prospered between 1860, when he opened his doors, and 1872, when he relocated to Pennsyl-vania. For additional information on his career and income, see Saretzky, “Nine-teenth Century New Jerse y Photog ra-phers.”

Figure 16

Mourning brooch, ca. 1855–1860, of carved Whitby jet.



Figure 17 [left]

Mourning brooch, ca. 1880s, of hard rubber.

Figure 19 [above]

Henry Bishop, Chambersburg, PA.

Carte de Visite, ca. 1864. Two-cent George Washington revenue stamp on reverse.

A black enamel border frames the mourning portrait brooch at the young lady’s throat.

The black ribbon with a white edge beneath the brooch enjoyed great popularity as of 1863. The im-age’s frock coat is buttoned all the way to his throat, and thus is most likely that of a Union soldier.

Figure 18 [above]

L. B. Silver, Salem, OH.

Carte de Visite. Two-cent blue George Washington revenue stamp on reverse with the photographer’s initials and date of December 1864 cancelling the stamp.

This mourner’s dress is plain and simple, highlighted only by the satin-covered buttons and pleated satin ribbon on her sleeves. The most prominent item in her ensemble is the portrait brooch at her throat with its black and white enamel borders. While the image is clearly of a man, it is difficult to see and could be either a husband or a son given the date.



nineteenth century, and manufacturers churned out affordable and suitably gloomy jewelry in distinctive designs. Although the hard rubber frequently acquires a greenish or brownish tint with the passage of decades, its matte finish was genuinely black when new (fig. 17). Widows on a budget had even cheaper options: black glass, gutta percha, and even wood painted black were all affordable. Creative mourners could also make their own mourning jewelry very cheaply from fabric scraps, ribbon, and wood button molds; this method of crafting necklaces and brooches enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1870s. Black beads, fabric scraps, and wood button molds also easily generated brooches and earrings in the 1850s and 1860s. With the invention of photography, an im-age of the deceased could be incorporated into a brooch, although women wore portrait brooches of their husband in life as well (figs. 18 & 19).

Christian and other related symbols deter-mined many of the shapes and designs. The cross is an obvious example (fig. 20); the meaning of the three interlocking rings of Figure 17 is not so evident to modern eyes: they represented the Trinity. “Forget-me-not” flowers reminded wearers of the dead through their very name and allowed the dead to send back a message, in a manner of speaking. Pearls symbolized a mourner’s tears. The trio of faith (the cross), hope (an anchor), and charity (a heart) enjoyed particular popularity in a wide variety of designs and substances.

More elaborate brooches, rings, earrings, and bracelets contained human hair. Usually today, the concept of hair jewelry elicits the reaction that “That is really creepy.” Saving hair should not be an alien concept; probably many readers have taped an infant’s curl into a baby book or scrapbook alongside the inked hand and/or foot-print. Godey’s Lady’s Book neatly summarized nineteenth-century attitudes regarding hair and hair jewelry:

Hair is at once the most delicate and last-ing of our materials, and survives us like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and . . . say “I have a piece of thee here, not unworthy of thy being now.”9

Figure 20

George W. Squiers, 14 State Street, Rochester, NY.


The braids on either side of the mourner’s face represent the most popular new hairstyle of 1862; thus a relatively brief fad provides a date for the image. The bold symbol of the cross, seen also on Figure 9, is here fabricated in white and inlaid into a stark black background.



Hair endures as a biological specimen, and talented artisans twisted and braided it into light, airy, and intricate art forms (figs. 21 & 22). However, the fact that a piece of jewelry contains hair does not auto-matically mean that it was cut from a dead person’s head; wives had locks of their hair transformed into chains for their husband’s pocket watch so he would think of her and her love when checking the time. Small hair charms in a variety of shapes for men and women expressed sincere affection in life.

Hair jewelry guaranteed to represent mourning is of course those pieces with black borders, usually of enamel, often inscribed with the Latin phrase In Memoriam. Names, dates, and/or ages often grace the reverse side of such pieces. After the wearer no longer expressed grief and loss by wearing black cloth-ing, continued sorrow in the wake of a significant death demonstrated itself through the retention of mourning jewelry (fig. 23). Its prolonged use, Taylor explains, performed two functions: the jewelry re-minded the wearer of the loved one and the affection they shared, and it also served as a Memento Mori, in English literally a “reminder of death.” The jewelry reinforced in the wearer’s mind that he or she too will also die without knowing when, and thus the jewelry constantly emphasized one’s own mortality in an uncertain world. 10

Young children entered into mourning; Queen Victoria certainly did not innovate when

she put even her youngest children into bombazine and crape. However, although children participated in all related funeral events, a number of nineteenth-century parents felt that the very young did not really understand what was happening, and that dressing them in head-to-toe black could be traumatizing. Thus, many children wore white while in mourning; it was already a familiar and standard wardrobe staple. Applied black trimmings or ribbons rendered it suit-able for the occasion; otherwise no significant change occurred to their clothing as has already been seen in previous images and in Figures 12 & 13. A dress guide published in 1875 commented that,

It is desirable that children should be put into mourning dress as seldom as possible; only in fact for the nearest relatives. The little children do not understand it and it is absurd to invest them with the signs of grief they cannot feel. Absence of a positive colour is quite sufficient mourning for children.11

Figure 21

Francis Forshew, Hudson, NY.


Long, elegant black Chantilly lace lappets cascade downwards from behind this mourner’s frilled cap. Her two-piece coat sleeves, the narrow strips of applied trim, and smooth center front panel at the skirt waistband date the image to the second half of the 1860s. Her hair brooch features three braided loops on either side of a central finding, and two lozenges hang below, provid-ing an excellent illustration of the three-dimensional effects possible with human hair.



Figure 22 [left]

William B. Gaston, 23 West State St., Trenton, NJ.


The vertical bands passing from the sitter’s shoulders to her waist characterized the fashions of 1868, as does her hairstyle, swept neatly back and slightly shaped by the ribbon passing across the top of her head. Like the mourner in Figure 21, this young woman wears a hair broach displaying a similar looped tech-nique with the addition of a hair “charity” charm.

William B. Gaston operated his photography studio from 1867 to 1884 (see Saretzky, “Nineteenth Century New Jersey Photogra-phers”).

Figure 23 [right]

Unattributed.

Sixth-plate ambrotype, ca. 1856–1858.

Nothing about this woman’s cheer-ful cotton printed morning robe suggests mourning. The fashion-able basque bodice conceals the waistband of the open skirt that reveals the underpetticoat, a typi-cal feature of morning and casual undress attire. The wide pagoda sleeves are both stylish and cool for summer wear, and her under-sleeves and collars are beautifully embroidered in openwork, called broderie anglaise in French, even though the style was acknowledged as being English in origin. The prominent basket evidently held meaning for her and perhaps il-lustrates her handiwork. Her stark square brooch with its noted black border, however, indicates past mourning.



Older children sported full mourning like an adult when their parents decided they had reached an ap-propriate understanding and maturity.

Mourning attire for men followed the same fashion trajectory as that of women. Men’s clothing also very nearly became fossilized as monk-like robes with hoods, until sixteenth-century dandies succumbed to the temptations of fashion. As was the case with wom-en, men’s apparel for mourning eventually matched current modes. Until approximately the 1830s, men’s clothing had degrees of full and half-mourning. In the former, no shiny buttons or buckles were permit-ted, and all clothing was black except for the shirt, which was considered body linen or “underwear” at the time and thus subject to bleaching and hard laundering and consequently was invariably white. Half-mourning encompassed varying combinations of black and white.

By 1860, men satisfied mourning custom and de-cency by wearing black clothes—the fashion staple of the gentleman’s and businessman’s wardrobe by this time—and a black armband and/or hatband for a few months (fig. 24). Nor were men obliged to wear mourning at all, as demonstrated by surviving images, especially since the women of their families essentially bore the burden and wore it for them (fig. 25). Not only were the clothing requirements for male mourners considerably reduced; the duration of a widower’s mourning was considerably shorter than that of a widow.

European mourning traditions, particularly those based on English custom, had taken root in the American Colonies, and from an early date, colonists could purchase luxury imported European mourning fabrics. Dependence upon European fabric sources, particularly English crape, remained the norm into the twentieth century. Like the Europeans, Americans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often or-ganized grand funerals the bereaved family could ill afford in an effort to observe the customs and demon-strate respectability. English mourning customs, how-ever, also represented British control of the economy and the colonists’ lives, and in the 1760s became the object of boycotts “that there might be less Demand for English Manufactures.”12 Immediately following victory over the British, similar American attacks on imported British mourning goods proliferated, based on the notion that the “purchase of unneces-sary foreign manufactures” drained the country of desperately needed circulating currency. Mourning goods also promoted the financial ruin of families

as they performed grief according to the standards of the day in order to demonstrate their social position and their gentility.13 Such boycotts had little lasting hold over American society, but shows the new nation chafing at the norms, to a certain degree.

Perhaps lingering resentment against the grip British manufacture had upon American mourners ultimately contributed somewhat to the simplification of mourning and its shorter phases, based on six-month increments without the English “sub-stages.” In February, 1854, Godey’s Lady’s Book provided an explanation contrasting mourning customs on each side of the pond, indicating that there were indeed differences:

Close mourning, more commonly called deep mourning, is usually worn only for the nearest relations—a husband, parents, child, brother, or sister. A widow’s mourning, called “weeds” in England, is not so distinct in this country. There the close tarleton or muslin cap, with its crimped border, is its accompaniment for a year at least. . . . Bombazine, trimmed with folds of crape (the dress, mantilla, and bonnet), with a veil of double Italian or heavy English crape, is considered the deepest mourning. Nothing white, as collar, cuffs, or undersleeves, is worn by those who thus follow the dictates of fashion, even in their sorrow, through the first six months or year.

Another style— also considered deep, and usually worn for parents or children—allows of a variety of material . . . trimmed with silk or ribbon, even plain braids and galloons. Undersleeves and collars of Swiss muslin, tarleton, or linen, relieve the sombre shade, and add a neatness to the dress which it can never have where black crape is used for the purpose. This is the most general style.14

The explanation is rather vague; earlier that year the same journal had provided a little more precision:

Mourning is to be worn a year for a parent, husband, brother, sister or child. Six months for grandparents, uncles, or aunts. Three months or six weeks as a token of respect to the memory of a cousin, friend, or remote relative, or any one [sic] who leaves the wearer a legacy.15



Figure 24

William M. Fly, S. E. Corner of Eighth and Spring Garden Sts., Philadelphia, PA.


The young man’s heavy winter greatcoat conceals his clothing, making it difficult to date with precision, but his top hat with its heavy crape band cover-ing most of the surface demonstrates that he pub-licly mourns someone. By dampening the gleam of the top hat’s silk plush surface with the crape, he has followed the rules that require the reduction of all things shiny when in mourning.

Figure 25

Evans & Prince, York, PA.


The woman’s plain black dress and collar indicate that she is in mourning, but nothing in her husband’s attire illustrates any kind of personal loss. The comparatively low negative number, #523, suggests that the couple was photographed fairly early in the photographers’ partnership, which lasted from 1863 to 1865.



This passage takes the remarkable step of al-lotting only a year for a husband, in contrast to the British expectation of two-and-a-half years.

As I have commented elsewhere,

. . . the American fashion environment was ultimately more fluid and permis-sive than the . . . terminology initially seems to modern eyes, and the same item could serve multiple functions and appear appropriate.16

Few early American photographic por-traits feature the large quantities of crape so evident in British images, yet the significant numbers of surviving portraits of mourn-ing women, particularly during the 1860s as already shown in the various figures, suggest that they are widows. This is particularly important when considering the fact that they are posed in black completely alone—representing their bereft status without their mainstay husband—or with children, yet no father. In fact, crape dominates mourn-ing attire as of the 1870s and 1880s, while American practicality limited it to bonnets, mantle borders, collars and similar acces-sories prior to that time (figs. 26–29). The de rigueur crape veil was also dispensable in the pre-Civil War American context: “We do not recommend the necessity of a veil, unless for a short time, when it is really a protection to one at first going out.”17

The magazines and etiquette manuals repeatedly emphasized the importance of black collars and de-tachable undersleeves during the first phase of deep mourning, although minor variations and exceptions appear over the years. By the end of the nineteenth century, various authoritative sources simplified the different phases of mourning, but even as some of-fered flexibility, others were adamant regarding the rules they espoused, and mourners were left to navi-gate the morass without standardized advice. Part of the problem resided in the very notion of “fashionable mourning.” Not only did mourning attire reflect the latest style, making it dated and unusable at a future time, but there were distinctive fashions in mourn-ing practices themselves. At times, the magazines indicated that current fashion dispensed with crape, even for widows, only for it to return with a vengeance another year. Widows’ veils were shorter one year

Figure 26

Unattributed.

Sixth-plate tintype, ca. 1856–1858.

The young mourner, probably a widow, presents a slightly odd mixture in her attire. The black crape bonnet represents a suitable level of severity, and she has taken the unusual step of fastening its ribbons with a mourning brooch. The two ad-ditional gold hollowware brooches are certainly not appropriate relative to the “rules,” and the printed paisley shawl over her black dress appears initially to be incorrect. However, Godey’s Lady’s Book describes fashionable mourning shawls with “a gray and lavender woven border” which provide “a quiet and pretty relief” (“Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for November,” 49, no. 5 [Nov. 1854]: 477). Thus, what appears to be an inappropriate item from her existing wardrobe prior to her bereavement may, in fact, be entirely proper to her situation.



Left, Detail of Figure 26

Figure 27 [above]

Unattributed.

Sixth-plate ambrotype, ca. 1854.

This young woman is most certainly a widow, and her black un-dersleeves and layered black crape collar indicate deep mourning. But the crape is limited to the collar alone; her dress—assuredly of bombazine—has none of the crape layers associated with the first year, and instead the trimming consists of watered silk ribbon. Like the unidentified woman in Figure 26, this widow, too, wears a gold brooch when ideally she should not. On an interesting side note, the buttons down the center front of her bodice are fully functional, which is atypical at this time.



Figure 28

Bonta & Curtiss, 24 East Genessee St., Syracuse, NY.

Cabinet card, ca. 1876–1878.

Black crape swaths this young widow’s hat and hangs in folds nearly to her knees. Her overskirt, with its bows, consists of crape, which also cov-ers her cuffs, yet a substantial collar and cuff set of white indicates that she has entered second mourning.

and then fell almost to the feet in another. Even the fashionable mourning border on one’s personal stationery had vogues for wider and narrower widths in the 1890s. Thus mourning protocols, because of their connection to the whims of contemporane-ous fashion itself, had become as unstable in many respects as the “fickle goddess,” as fashion was personified.

When grief is sincere, mourning attire represents an effective communication tool, readily understood through its semi-standardization and pervasiveness. But even as the “cult of mourning” intensified over the course of the nineteenth century, protests appeared on several fronts. The first criticized the unnecessary expense; for ex-ample, an anonymous writer in Charleston, SC, attacked the cost in 1829:

None but the opulent . . . can easily afford it. There are very few families in the country, with whom the ex-pense of mourning apparel does not form a burdensome addition to the bills . . . . Besides, this is the most expensive kind of apparel. . . . at a time when . . . it can be least easily borne. It comes in addition to all the expenses of sickness, the paying of attendants, and the charges of the physician. It comes, perhaps at the very moment, when the main sup-port and reliance of a family is taken away. When the husband, the father, the provider, is cut off . . . then . . . the desolate and deprived, under a false notion of showing respect to him, are obliged, by the customs of society, to abridge the already narrow means on which they have to rely. How many are the cases in which a considerable portion, and even the whole of what remains for the widow and the fatherless, is ex-pended . . . in merely arraying them for their desolate condition!18

Other sources throughout the century echoed this sentiment, but as the Gettysburg



Figure 29

Napoleon Sarony, 680 Broadway, NY.

Cabinet Card, ca. 1872.

The coiled braid, swooping around the back of the wid-ow’s head, in combination with the relatively short bodice effectively dates the photograph. Gathered bands of black crape cover her bodice front and her sleeves, whereas it is laid flat in bands over her skirt. Crape even forms her pocket, on which a bow has been lightly sewn. Like her counterpart in Figure 28, the sitter wears a white collar and matching cuffs.



letter cited earlier indicates, families literally spent their last dollar obtaining the proper black clothing, so powerfully did mourning clothing customs grip society. Where grief was real, from a certain point of view, the clothing was pointless, and constituted an example of genuine oppression. The anonymous author from South Carolina supports this interpreta-tion of mourning clothing:

The truth is, these trappings of grief seem to me indifferent and childish where there is real grief; and where there is not, they are a mockery . . . it differs from another garb only in the colour, and gratifies the pride of appearance, the love of dress, scarcely less than any other apparel.19

The question of mockery raises the related issue of hypocrisy. In September 1854, Godey’s Lady’s Book commented,

Too often mourning is adopted as a custom, in compliance with the established rules of society. . . . This code of fashion, which many families follow in our more stylish city circles, would seem to indicate the day and hour when grief terminates, and the dead are forgotten.20

For many women, loveless or disastrous mar-riages turned widowhood into a welcome escape. On March 1, 1861, Mary Chestnut recorded in her diary the words of a woman “. . . who fervently wished her husband would go down to Pensacola and be shot. I was dumb with amazement, of course.” When Mary recounted the anecdote to a mutual acquaintance, she learned to her surprise, “Don’t you know he beats her?”21 For women married to drunkards, abusers, and reckless spendthrifts in a society where divorce was well-nigh impossible to obtain and represented the deepest social scandal, donning mourning attire forced them to perform a public grief they did not feel in private. For those constrained to play act in this manner, one etiquette manual advised, “Mourn-ing garments have their use, that they are a shield to the real mourning, and they are often a curtain of respectability to the person who should be mourning but is not.” In other words, a woman who felt no grief at the passing of her spouse, no matter how justified her feelings, was “a heartless wife.”22

World War I largely brought the “cult of mourning” to an end. The senseless waste

of human lives in trench warfare created too many widows and grieving mothers whose husbands and sons had been killed going “over the top.” While black clothing persisted for funerals themselves, all but the most traditional of women abandoned prolonged mourning attire.

Victorian mourning traditions, in spite of their genuine negative aspects, represent a profound understanding of the nature of grief. The clothing with its progression of incremental changes mirrors emotional stages of genuine mourning, and thus pro-vides an understanding pathway from deep sorrow to resignation. More than anything, nineteenth-century mourners realized that grief requires time, and they generously allotted that time. The specialized and standardized clothing generated instant comprehen-sion that required little or no explanation in order to elicit sympathy. From the modern perspective, there are additional insights to be gained, as Taylor com-ments in her book:

The study of fashionable European mourn-ing dress provides us with an extraordinarily revealing insight into the functions of dress and the social position of women.23

Early photography presents the tremendous benefit of illustrations of mourners in the different stages, yet an understanding of the social traditions and their nuances is necessary to interpret properly the visual cues and small details in these images.

Endnotes

1. For a discussion of eighteenth-century mourning practices, court mourning, and French mourning protocols, see Kim-berly Chrisman-Campbell, “Mourning,” Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 128–147.

2. The death of Benjamin Franklin on April 17, 1790, presented the United States with its first opportunity of declaring national mourning. The House of Representatives was in favor of it, but the Senate (under the direction of Vice Presi-dent John Adams) declined. Thomas Jefferson suggested to George Washington directly that the executive committee don mourning, and the president refused, stating that he “would not know where to draw the line if he once began such a ceremony.” While merchants have produced mourn-ing souvenirs and badges in the wake of important deaths, such as the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley, special memorial services are organized, and flags



are flown at half-mast, the United States does not declare national mourning according to European state traditions. See David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 419–420.

3. “Chitchat upon Fashions for October,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 75, no. 4 (Oct. 1867): 370.

4. “Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for March,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 58, no. 3 (Mar. 1859): 287.

5. Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social His-tory (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), 133–136, 141–144.

6. ACHS 4785.018. Courtesy of the Adams County Historical Society, Gettysburg, PA.

7. “New Receipts,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, 38, no. 1 (Jan. 1849): 72.

8. “Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for March,” 287. A similar recommendation appears in “Mourn-ing,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 48, no. 2 (Feb. 1854): 190, showing that the problem of unstable dyes was pervasive.

9. “Hair Ornaments,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 70, no. 2 (Feb. 1860): 187. The passage also provides the prices for the items, of which rings are the cheapest ($1-$3), followed by bracelets ($3-$15). Sets of sleeve buttons are the most expensive in their starting price ($6.50-$11/set).

10. Taylor, Mourning Dress, 227–228.

11. Cited in Taylor, Mourning Dress, 181. A passage in Godey’s Lady’s Book concurs: “. . . we much question the propriety of children wearing mourning at all, since they cannot understand its meaning, and its somber hue is not a type of childhood” (“Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for September, 288).

12. Cited in Kate Haulman, The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 129.

13. Haulman, The Politics of Fashion, 166–167, 201–202.

14. “Mourning,” 190.

15. “Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for September,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 49, no. 3 (Sept. 1854): 287–288.

16. Karin J. Bohleke, “Americanizing French Fashion Plates: Godey’s and Peterson’s Cultural and Socio-Economic Trans-lation of the Les Modes Parisiennes,” American Periodicals 20, no. 2 (2010): 149.

17. “Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for September,” 288.

18. On the Duties of Consolation, and the Rites and Customs Ap-propriate to Mourning. First Charleston edition (Charleston: Printed and Published by A. E. Miller, 1829), 9–10.

19. On the Duties of Consolation, 7. Godey’s Lady’s Book agrees with the anonymous author: “[Mourning] has . . . become the subject of so much conventional formality and abuse

that many refrain from assuming it, their sorrow being of the heart, and their mourning not meant for the eyes of the world” (“Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for September,” 287).

20. “Chitchat upon New York and Philadelphia Fashions for September,” 287–288.

21. Mary Chestnut, Mary Chestnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 12–13.

22. Georgene Corry Benham, Polite Life and Etiquette or What is Right and the Social Arts (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1902), 285.

23. Taylor, Mourning Dress, 20.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my husband, Dr. B. Bohleke, who most patiently scanned the paper images and proofread the drafts of this article. I deeply appreciate his support of and faith in my work.

About the author

Dr. Karin J. Bohleke is the director of the Fashion Archives & Museum of Shippensburg University, a collection of approximately 25,000 items of historical clothing and accessories dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. She is the author of multiple scholarly articles and presentations on topics relating to historical dress, and the mid-nineteenth century is one of her specializations. Dr. Bohleke received her Ph.D. in French language and literature from Yale University. Together with her husband, she is an avid collector of photographs depicting past fashions in all of the major photographic forms from 1840 to 1920. At this point, their reference collection comprises approximately 10,000 images.

Documents

Identifying Stages of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Images