Death and the Victorians: A Dark Fascination

By Adrian Mackinder

From spooky stories and real-life ghost hunting, to shows about murder and serial killers, we are fascinated by death - and we owe these modern obsessions to the Victorian age.

Death and the Victorians explores a period in history when the search for the truth about what lies beyond our mortal realm was matched only by the imagination and invention used to find it.

Walk among London’s festering graveyards, where the dead were literally rising from the grave. Visit the Paris Morgue, where thousands flocked to view the spectacle of death every single day.

Lift the veil on how spirits were invited into the home, secret societies taught ways to survive death, and the latest science and technology was applied to provide proof of the afterlife.

Find out why the Victorian era is considered the golden age of the ghost story, exemplified by tales from the likes of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde and Henry James.

Discover how the birth of the popular press nurtured our taste for murder and that Jack the Ripper was actually a work of pure Gothic horror fiction crafted by cynical Victorian newspapermen.

Death and the Victorians exposes the darker side of the nineteenth century, a time when the living were inventing incredible ways to connect with the dead that endure to this day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399082563

Adrian Mackinder

Adrian Mackinder is a writer and performer. He has twenty years’ freelance experience scribbling for just about everyone, from The Guardian, British Government and the BBC to Cartoon Network, LEGO and The Beano.Adrian is also a professional improviser, actor and comedian. Head Writer at Comedy Central UK for five years, he has performed live on stage in the UK, US and mainland Europe. Adrian lives with his family in Copenhagen where he struggles daily with being an Englishman abroad.

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Preface

Tales from the Borderland

The greatest trick death ever pulled is making you think it happens to you. You may believe you will ascend to join the seraphim for eternal harp recitals, or attain moksha to reside in perpetual beauty in Vaikuntha. You may simply believe that you’re a worm feast, rotting in the ground, cold as the clay. Wherever you find yourself, you’re done. Thanks for all your hard work, your services are no longer required. Enjoy your rest, you’ve earned it. But the true fate of death befalls all those left behind.

The countries we collectively refer to as western civilisation nurture a culture that solemnly remembers, reveres, mourns and pities the dead – but what about all of us who remain? The ones who endure the painful process of grief. The ones forced to pick up the pieces and carry on, while wading through the seemingly endless admin. Even if death arrives after a long life well lived, or is actively welcomed due to illness, pain or suffering – sadness and loss always pervades. In contemplating what happens when you die, spare a thought not for those who pass away, but those who still live on.

We have always tried to understand, define and experience the space between life and death. The hinterland of existence between now and the hereafter both compels and fascinates. Is it a place to be feared or embraced? How do we prepare for that great unknowable journey? Death could happen at any time. Any one of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow, so why do so many of us fail to live our everyday lives to the fullest?

My fascination with death has been a constant in my life. As a child, I was drawn to my father’s many books about ghosts, each boldly claiming records and accounts of ‘real-life hauntings’. My favourite cinema and literature usually involves apparitions and spectres, spooky, Gothic tales spanning centuries, united by a common acceptance of the existence of the supernatural. In my teenage years, I became morbidly captivated by true crime, especially detailed books about serial killers, those warped individuals who dispassionately dish out death in the same casual way that you or I would make a sandwich.

At university I took a bachelor’s degree in theology and comparative religion, focusing on humanity’s manifold attempts to make sense of what lies beyond death. Over a decade later, I returned to academia to study Victorian culture. For me, the nineteenth century represents a period of enormously significant cultural transition. It is the bridge between our romantic, superstitious past and our rational, analytical present. Specifically, many seeds of our modern cultural preoccupations, rituals and traditions associated with death were sown under the stern, unamused eyes of Queen Victoria.

Any and every era naturally has its own unique attitudes and practices associated with death, but within the pages of this book, I would like to suggest that so many that we hold dear today – especially our ongoing obsession with ghosts, hauntings, true crime and murder – have been bequeathed to us by the Victorian age.

This book is an exploration into the various ways the Victorians tried to make sense of death. It remains the great unknown, and faith tends to be a constant prism through which it is perceived. For the Victorians, however, belief is only half the story. What sets this period apart from any that came before is their many attempts to frame death using scientific rigour, technological advancements, intellectual thinking and popular democratisation to better understand it. For me, this represents human aspiration and endeavour in its purest form. This book is not exhaustive, but represents a humble attempt to state that case and celebrate these efforts.

Despite my own academic pursuits in the subject, this is not an academic tome. I wouldn’t inflict that upon you. I am not going to hurl endless names and dates at you unless it is essential to the story. Of course, it’s important to know when things happened and who was involved, but I strongly believe history is at its most tedious when it fails to resonate. Mere facts and figures are nothing without active human connection. Put it another way, you cannot appreciate history if it does not resonate with you today.

For me, the past is a beautiful and rewarding way of understanding the present. Karl Marx is said to have once observed that history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, and second time as farce. Mark Twain has (arguably unfoundedly) been attributed a comment that history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. Both are great aphorisms regardless of who said them. Personally, I don’t believe that history repeats itself, but I do think that there are enough patterns and reflections from our past behaviour to show that we as a species continue to make similar choices and fall into the same traps. To paraphrase another succinct observation, we may think we are done with the past, but the past is not done with us.

Having said all that, this book is academically supported. It is the product of nearly two years conducting painstaking research into the work of leading experts within the field of nineteenth century studies – especially those who have dedicated much of their research to death in Victorian culture. The very fact that it is a specific field of research within academia, reflects how fertile ground it is for fascinating insight. It is a topic that continues to provoke rigorous debate and discussion. I have attempted to distill some of the most thought-provoking questions raised by this research. But due to my broadcasting background, I shall aspire to paraphrase the threefold mantra on which the BBC was founded: to inform, entertain and educate. It is my hope that my work will illuminate and inspire as much as it surprises and confounds.

The simplest reason why the Victorian age casts a long shadow across modern history is by virtue of its duration. Queen Victoria’s reign of sixty-three years and seven months was longer than any previous British monarch, superseded only by that of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Now the second Elizabethan age has ended, we will no doubt look upon the impact of this period upon human history as even more significant than the Victorian age. But what is so fascinating to me is that so many modern preoccupations about death we cling to emerged in neither the twentieth nor twenty-first centuries, but the nineteenth. Modern media continues to adapt celebrated Victorian fiction about haunted houses, ghostly apparitions and communicating with the dead. The retelling of Charles Dickens’ 1843 supernatural cautionary novella A Christmas Carol still defines the festive period for millions, just as much as the slowly dying pine tree in the corner of the living room. The books, podcasts and documentaries that relish relaying all the grisly details of modern-day murder and psychopathy are too numerous to list, but even the most notorious multiple murderers of recent times still dwell in the shadow of the Whitechapel slayings of 1888. Known universally as ‘Jack The Ripper’, the unknown perpetrator of these horrific crimes is arguably the world’s first truly sensationalised serial killer. We have always been fascinated by such gruesome matters, but the Victorians gave us a cultural narrative about the weight and significance of murder that still perfectly fits the times we live in.

Before we go any further, it would probably help if I specified what I mean by the Victorian age. In literal terms, the epoch began with Victoria’s ascension to the British throne in 1837, and ended with her death in 1901. But history is fluid. Cultural ideas, beliefs and movements bleed one into the other and continually evolve. Many historians have therefore suggested that the Victorian age also has a symbolic time frame, greater than her actual reign. It has been widely argued that the Victorian era can be seen to begin five years before she took to the throne, in 1832, with the passing of the Great Reform Act – credited as launching modern democracy in the United Kingdom. It ushered in a new age of progressive politics, which reinforced the sovereignty of the people like never before. This enabled the Victorian age to blossom, emboldened the British people with a new confidence that helped reframe society. Subsequent reforms followed swiftly, with education and civil rights, while expanding employment opportunities opened up to certain members of society for the first time. The Victorian era gave rise to the middle class, which had massive further ramifications for society. Given that the 1832 Reform Bill arguably started the ball rolling, it is impossible to consider the Victorian era without its inclusion. I have also selected a few key historical figures and events relevant to this book that took place even earlier in the nineteenth century, each of which directly and greatly influenced how the Victorians framed their relationship with death.

It has also been argued that the Victorian age truly ended over a decade after the Queen passed away, with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. While this interpretation rather unceremoniously subsumes the entire Edwardian era (1901 to 1910), the cultural creep of the Victorian narrative into this brief period is inevitable. Lasting less than ten years, the Edwardian period (and the first few years of King George V’s reign up until the outbreak of war) was a relatively smooth continuation of Victorian sensibility. The British Empire continued to dominate large portions of the globe, albeit not quite as confidently as when she soared to astonishing heights during Victoria’s reign. Of course, the Edwardian era did see cultural change, such as the increasing role of women in politics, the rise of the German Empire and the United States of America. Tensions amongst such dominant players erupted with the First World War, a flashpoint that changed everything. This four-year conflict caused colossal social, cultural, political, diplomatic and economic change on a scale far greater than anything that had been seen throughout Europe for centuries. It was death on an industrial scale that marked the end of the Victorian world view. And as we shall see, The Great War irrevocably changed how the living meditated on its dead, its echoes reverberating to this day.

This brings me to a second note before we dive in. Death may be universal, but this book focuses on British history. This is not a personal preference, but merely due to the fact that the Victorian age is named after a British monarch. More specifically, many of the prominent and enduring themes contained in this work first emerged in the United Kingdom. That said, I will inevitably turn my attention beyond these borders. No account of death and the Victorian age would be complete, for instance, without the flourishing spiritualist movement in the United States. And while this book is also primarily focused on the Judeo-Christian worldview, I will touch on how the Victorian period allowed eastern philosophy to creep into western culture like never before, primarily via the various occult and esoteric groups that emerged during this time. Orientalism provided fresh answers to death and the afterlife, filling in gaps for many people left unsatisfied by conventional western religious traditions – a trend that still exists to this day.

What else can you expect to discover within these pages? Our story begins with the living being forced to confront their dead out of necessity. The early nineteenth century saw the birth of the modern city – and with it, mass overcrowding, crime, poverty and disease. Church graveyards were so full that the dead would be literally rising from the grave. We shall examine how some enterprising young men unscrupulously took advantage of this surplus of corpses to line their pockets, disregarding their own life and limb in the process. So many burial grounds had become dangerous or irredeemably contaminated, bereaved relatives could no longer comfortably pay their respects. The living had lost their connection with the dead. Something had to be done. So it was that cities closed their church graveyards and created vast, beautiful private garden cemeteries – curated, landscaped plots outside the filth of the city where the bereaved could mourn lost loved ones in a calm, aesthetically pleasing environment. The Victorian age saw the living rediscover and reclaim their dead.

From this point forward, this book shall explore the fascinating and sometimes staggeringly bizarre relationship between the living and the dead that emerged throughout the nineteenth century. It examines how the rise of spiritualism brought the afterlife into the home, séances transforming death into family entertainment. It also explores how Victorian science and technology was applied to not only better preserve the memory of those passed on, but also exploited and misdirected to provide purported concrete proof in life after death and the supernatural. The Victorian relationship with death on the printed page will also play a large part. You will discover why the Victorian era is still considered ‘the Golden Age of the Ghost Story’, and how the birth of both tabloid press and investigative journalism stoked the fires of our obsession with violent crime and serial murder.

Often characterised as being dour and buttoned up, little has been said about the extent the Victorians vibrantly celebrated and even fetishised the dead in their efforts to understand life. It is my hope that you will discover that their relentless pursuit of truth concerning what lies beyond the grave is matched only by the ingenuity, imagination and invention they deployed to find it. This was a unique time in history when everyone, it seems, was inventing new ways to build a bridge between this realm and the next. So get cosy, dim the lights, and enjoy.

Prologue

Fire and Brimstone

The parishioners of Llantrisant first sensed something was wrong from the smell. The churches had just emptied, their congregations spilling out into the streets. Some reflected on the comforting reminders of salvation and redemption freshly delivered from the pulpit. Others caught up on whatever gossip was doing the rounds among such a close knit community. Sunday service was the great unifier, bringing together local officials, law enforcers, farmers and labourers – all connected by their cherished belief that adherence to the Word of God and the example of Jesus Christ would ensure safe passage from beyond this earthly realm to Heaven above.

It was a cold evening, barely two weeks into the new year of 1884, and darkness had long descended. The townsfolk ambled back to their homes, steaming breath swirling and dissipating around them. But something else was on the winter breeze. Several identified this pungent stench as burning paraffin. Then they saw it. A single, large bonfire high on East Caerlan, the hill that overlooked the town. Given the time of day, this was unusual. Concerned, several clambered up the steep incline towards the blaze. What they found would chill their already cold bones to the marrow.

A lone figure dominated the hill. An elderly, spindly man with long white hair and an even longer beard. He was draped in flowing white robes and crowned with an outlandish fox fur headdress. In his gnarled hand he brandished a ceremonial crook, mounted with an arcane symbol. Before him, the parishioners finally found the source of the fire – a flaming wooden cask. Above the pop and crackle of the wood, they could hear the eccentric man reciting unfamiliar utterances. It was a powerful image, at once sacred and profane. The noxious stench of burning petroleum filled their nostrils and thick smoke billowed upwards, charcoal plumes carrying ashen cinders into the deep indigo sky.

Initially concerned that they had stumbled upon an act that was damaging private property, several amongst the crowd began hectoring the solitary figure, but to no avail. He remained steadfast in his curious ritual. Suddenly, one agitated individual battled the searing heat and attempted to extinguish the fire by kicking the cask, but this only fanned the flames. The strange, bearded man then also kicked the cask several times, determined to encourage the conflagration.

Finally, local constable Sergeant William Hoyle gave the cask such an almighty boot that it shattered apart. A small bundle tumbled out from the blackened wood, wrapped in singed white napkins. Upon immediate inspection, Hoyle was appalled to discover that the bundle was a child, not six months old. It was at this point that pandemonium broke out. Several began screaming. Others retched in horror at this most gruesome sight. A labourer by the name of Albert Davies grabbed the crook and yanked the child’s lifeless form clear from the fire and across the field, some distance away from the scene. Naturally, things turned ugly. The crowd became a mob, and set upon the bearded figure, demanding he be lynched, hanged or burned at the stake. These were simple, god-fearing country folk and what they had witnessed was an abomination. They seized the aged arsonist and roughhoused him towards the local police station, where he was incarcerated while the people of Llandtrisant tried to process what they had just seen, and decide what to do next.

The person responsible for this shocking spectacle was actually well-known throughout Llantrisant. He was eighty-four year old Dr William Price, a formidable Welsh physician of some repute who had made the historic town his home. Originally from Rudry near Caerphilly in Glamorganshire, Price had trained as a doctor in London. After qualifying as a general practitioner, he became interested in Welsh nationalism and Chartism, a political movement that grew to prominence in the first half of the nineteenth century, advocating major reforms towards equality in people’s voting rights. After a failed Chartist uprising in 1839, Price fled to France, where he experienced what he believed to be a spiritual awakening. Returning to Wales, he began living the rest of his life as a Druid. He even set up his own religious group, but famously eschewed conventional religious beliefs and practices.

During this second half of his life, Price gained notoriety amongst Victorian circles for his increasingly eccentric views, which may or may not be the result of mental illness. He was a proclaimed nudist, but perhaps even more shockingly, when he did wear clothes he flat out refused to wear socks, convinced they were unhygienic. He opposed vaccination and refused to treat patients who smoked. He rejected vivisection and advocated vegetarianism, declaring that eating meat ‘brought out the beast in man’. Price saw marriage as the enslavement of women, and lauded free love. To give him his due, Price was undoubtedly one of the most flamboyant figures in Welsh history, ‘a brilliant scholar, an exemplary surgeon … and a pioneer in establishing an embryonic social health care system that may well have influenced Aneurin Bevan’s National Health Service.’¹ He was, in short, quite the character.

Despite his views on marriage, in 1881 he conjoined under druid ritual with a young farmer’s daughter, Gwenllian Llewelyn. He was eighty-one, she was twenty-two. Together with Gwenllian, the couple had a son, christened Iesu Grist (Welsh for Jesus Christ), sired by Price at the grand old age of eighty-three. And it was the body of young Iesu Grist that Dr Price was attempting to cremate on that cold January evening.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident on the hill, the locals thought Price had committed the mortal sin of infanticide, but the local doctor and coroner subsequently confirmed that the boy had died of natural causes some days earlier. It was Dr Price’s radical and unorthodox beliefs that led him to construct this rudimentary funeral pyre, only a few hundred yards from his own home. Once the child’s cause of death had been established, Price was put on trial for cremation in Cardiff, a process that was considered to be barbaric and taboo by a great many people at the time. Price’s defence in court was that while the law did not state that cremation was legal, it also did not state that it was illegal either. The judge overseeing the trial, Mr Justice Stephen, had to agree. Price was freed and returned home to allegedly find a crowd of supporters cheering his victory. Later that year, Price was given special compensation. He was finally permitted to cremate his son using his own personal Druidic prayers.

During the Price trial, the judge set a precedent. He declared cremation to be legal, provided no harm or nuisance was caused to others in the process. It was Stephen’s influential decision that directly led to formal legislation being passed in 1885, officially recognising cremation as an approved method of body disposal in Great Britain. The first modern legal cremation took place that year, that of the late Mrs Jeanette Pickersgill of Regent’s Park, London. A painter and poet, her cremation took place in Woking, Surrey on 26 March at Britain’s first crematorium.² Because the fear of being burned alive was all too real for the Victorians, two doctors were called to confirm that she was definitely dead. Fortunately for everyone – except maybe poor Mrs Pickersgill – she was. Jeanette Pickersgill’s cremation made history, but the act itself did not immediately catch on. The Price case had ignited public attention, but amongst all recorded deaths in the United Kingdom in 1885, only three were cremated.

It seems remarkable that a practice commonly carried out by a myriad of cultures for millennia was only legalised so recently in the ‘civilised world’. After all, as a means to honour the dead, cremation fills our history books. In ancient Greece, the greater the military hero, the greater the conflagration. Ceremonial Viking longships laden with fallen warriors were set ablaze so the smoke would carry them across the water to join the eternal feast in the Great Hall of Valhalla. So why had