Postmortems - Photography of the dead
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Photography revolutionized the world when it was introduced to the public in 1839. It also added a new dimension to mourning. Before the photograph, the funeral was the last memory of a deceased loved-one. With the advent of picture taking, a family could have a keepsake, an image that would never change, never die. Child mortality rates were high in the 19th century owing to poor medical understanding and children account for the bulk of postmortem photographs. They can be haunting - an image of a mother gently caressing her dead child is perhaps the most touching. Below are several postmortems from the mid-1800s. More to come
This is a daguerreotype of a small child carefully dressed and laid out for the photographer. It would have been little consolation to the grieving mother.
The clues that point to this being a postmortem are these: the mother's dress, the child's head being supported, and the child's eyes have started to sink back into their sockets. The mother appears to be in a black mourning dress. The most unusual thing about this image is the child's eyes. This is the first postmortem I have seen of a child with open eyes.