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  • Article

Beating the bodysnatchers

When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.

  • Article

How we bury our children

Following her baby daughter’s funeral, Wendy Pratt found that visiting the grave gave her a way to carry out physical acts of caring for her child. Here she considers how parents’ nurturing instincts live on after a child’s death.

  • Article

Why we no longer keep our dead at home

Today in the UK we rarely sit with, touch, or perhaps even see our loved ones after they’ve died. Past practices were very different and, Claire Cock-Starkey argues, were more helpful for those grieving.

  • Article

Getting under the skin

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.

All stories (12)

Images

  • Crypt of Bow Church, London - A London Fever Still. (Coffins in Crypt).
  • The crypt of Bow church, containing coffins of London fever victims. Wood engraving by Laing after J. Brown.
  • Antiquities found in stone coffins in Chichester Cathedral, including silver chalices and gold rings. Engraving by Thomas King, 1830.
  • The transfer of the coffins of King Louis XVI of France and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, to the church St. Denis in Paris on 21 January 1815. Etching with engraving, 1815.
  • A gin shop: an elegant young woman is selling gin to a group of paupers who are standing in a mantrap; the walls decorated with coffins; Death enters the room dressed as a nightwatchman. Etching by G. Cruikshank, 1829.
  • A small coffin, presumably the coffin of Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles II. Etching with engraving.
  • The coffin of Princess Amelia. Coloured engraving.
  • Lord Nelson's ornamented coffin. Coloured aquatint, 1806.
  • A large man contemplating a child's coffin. Coloured etching.
  • Coffin burial and grave goods. Cristhorpe Cliff and Tumuli.
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Catalogue

All works (409)