The Victorian Way of Death

Death, and the fear of death, was an ever-present concern of Victorian writers.  Whilst quoting average life-expectancy figures needs to be treated with caution, (as it is skewed by high rates of infant mortality and the death of women in childbirth), the average life-expectancy of a baby born in a large town early in the century was around 35 years.  By the middle of the century, it had dropped to between 25 – 30 years.   One in five children born during the 1830s – 40s died before their 5^th birthday.  Particularly for the urban poor, poverty and malnutrition, coupled with diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis, in over-crowded, unsanitary conditions, and high levels of violent crime, meant that death was ever-present.  However, if you were lucky enough to survive beyond 40 years, then you might look to live almost as long as people today. 

Funerals were big business in mid-Victorian Britain.  In “Oliver Twist”, Dickens gives us a picture of the fetishising of death that grew up during the period. Oliver obtains a post as a “Mute” – a person who stands silently by the coffin and accompanies it to the churchyard.  He is a part of the elaborate funeral rites that even Victorians of modest means arranged, together with the black-plumed horses and glass coffins.  There was an industry, not just of funeral directors, but of the accompanying “accessories”: black mourning clothes; mourning jewellery, often made of jet from Whitby in Yorkshire; black-edged stationery; garlands and black ribbons for decorating houses and churches.  With the growth in population and move to cities, the old, local churchyards were soon over-flowing. To relieve the pressure for burial space in London, the Victorians opened a ring of cemeteries outside the city – Highgate, Kensal Green, Brompton, Abney Park, West Norwood, Nunhead and Tower Hamlets were all built between 1832 and 1841.  This was the era of the monumental mason – the men who carved the angels, urns, books and cherubs to stand at the head of gravestones, much of which reflected the architecture of the Gothic revival. 

No surprise, then, that Death and the trappings of death infuse the writings of novelists and poets of the period.  This preoccupation stems not just from a melancholy streak in the writers, but from their everyday experience.  Many were directly touched by the deaths of loved ones close to them.  Dickens had a sister who died aged five, his beloved sister-in-law died at the age of seventeen.  Many of Dickens’ characters die young – Little Nell in “The Old Curiosity Shop”, Smyke in “Nicholas Nickleby”, Joe in “Bleak House”.  The poets in the selection were similarly touched by death.  Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam died at the age of 22; the Brontes lost their mother and aunt when they were young and their brother in his 20s, they all died before the age of 40; two of EBB’s brothers died when she was in her twenties and she was in ill-health most of her life; Christina Rossetti also suffered an undiagnosed malady and lived in constant fear of early death, although she survived to 64. The Brontes’ novels are full of dying people: Jane Eyre is an orphan, her friend Helen Burns dies at Lowood House; Francis and Catherine Earnshaw die under the age of 20 as does Linton Heathcliff.  The poetry in the selection has Death as a recurring theme – “In Memoriam – AHH”, Maud’s brother is killed violently, “Died.. ” is about a death notice, “My Last Duchess” has a dead woman at its heart, “The Nurse” is visiting a dead or dying man, “Remember” is written from the point of view of a woman contemplating her own death, in “Echo”, there are images of death, “Drummer Hodge” and “A Wife in London” are about men killed in War.  

For the Victorians, the words of the Burial Service, "In the midst of life we are in death", were very real.