Myrtles Mourning Coat

Own photographs of Victorian mourning coat from the archive of  'The Lightbox' Museum in Woking, Surrey

Just 7 months after Josephine’s death, Myrtle’s husband Gilbert died. Feeling numb except for darkness Myrtle projected this to the outside world swathing herself in black mourning attire. Jalland states that the “primary functions of mourning-dress in the Victorian Period were to identify the mourner, show respect for the dead and elicit the sympathy of the community, and match the mourner’s somber mood”. Additionally Amelia Sedley-Osborne notes that “mourning attire was a distinct way to show wealth and status”. Mourning clothing followed fashions and prolonged mourning denoted wealth. Strict dress regulations were applied “most rigorously” to widows. Myrtle wore solid black mourning clothes for first mourning which lasted for one year. She wore plain dull black clothing void of shine and covered in crape combined with a crape bonnet and veil in public. For second mourning which lasted for nine months Myrtle wore garments with small trims of crape and for half mourning lasting three to six months, she discarded crape and wore clothes in lilac and grey hues. Crape was a harsh crimped and stiff dull silk gauze and was extensively used in mourning clothes. It was a woven fabric which was made from tightly twisted silk threads. Myrtle wore it during first mourning. It was heavy pulling Myrtle down creating a stooped figure that radiated sorrow. Myrtle found that crape was uncomfortable and impractical adding to the misery she felt for the loss of her husband and daughter. 

Myrtle appeared just another black figure in the Victorian streets, cocooned in black mourning dress. Elizabeth Wilson suggests “their widow’s crape acted as a kindly camourflage” allowing them to “leave the mating game without dishonor”. Myrtle blended into the sea of black, she was left alone and not expected to marry again. Jalland contemplates that in the Victorian advice manuals on etiquette “Manners and Social Usages in 1884” Mrs Sherwood said “A mourning dress does protect a woman while in deepest grief against the untimely gayety of a passing stranger. It is a wall, a cell of refuge”. Myrtle felt that her mourning clothes spoke for her, explaining and giving reason of her ashen face and cold demeanor. Mourning clothes facilitated the seclusion that Queen Victoria craved. Lou Taylor argues that the “harsh restrictions governing widows’ clothing reflected the view of the wife’s role held in the nineteenth century middle- and upper- class British society”. The “drab, uncomfortable attire symbolized the perception that a wife’s identity and sexuality were subsumed in her husbands and dies with him.” Myrtles favourite mourning coat was made from black silk taffeta and was fashionable in the later 1800s. The stand collar is tight and restrictive around the neck concealing all flesh. This high neck is typical of Victorian fashion. Myrtles jacket had 12 delicate buttons down the centre front. It was made from silk taffeta and featured small black appliqued flowers sewn on to the shoulders. It has a crape trim seen at the hem and Myrtle wore this garment during second mourning, when more detailed garments were permitted. Myrtes jacket was handcrafted by a friend of the family, with meticulous attention to detail. It has a yellow lining with visible smooth curved boning which follows the ideal and fashionable shape of Victorian times of a cinched in narrow a waist and broad shoulders. The coat has puff sleeve gathering which was fashionable in Victorian times. The coat is solid black echoing Myrtles dark feelings. Victorian women like Myrtle didn’t work so could devote all her time to mourning and being a widow. in contrast, when women were a valued workforce in 1914 during World War One, it became impractical for them to interrupt their work in order for seclusion and formal mourning. In contemporary society black still denotes mourning and is worn at funerals.

                                                                                                     

Mourning was a lucrative business in Victorian times. Wilson states “every department store had a mourning section”. Myrtle bought her black silk mourning crepe to be made into mourning attire from Courtauld's. Courtauld’s was a family textile firm and achieved huge profits solely through its manufacture of crape as the demand for it was so great. Jalland notes that the “introduction of fashion magazines for middle-class women, in which mourning costume was updated according to the latest seasons fashions” encouraged spending on crape fabric. Profits grew further due to the public belief that it was unlucky to keep crape clothing in the house after the mourning period had ended which caused women to throw away and buy new garments and fabric. Myrtles coat is symbolic as on the outside of her she must project darkness yet hidden inside her is a small amount of light and colour, that comes from her memories with her husband and daughter and hope that one day in her afterlife she will be reunited with them.

Reflective Writing- Victorian Mourning   

Myrtle Ashdown lived in Victorian England in Surrey, a wife who dutifully obeyed and supported her husband Gilbert Ashdown, and a mother, moral adviser and guide to her only daughter Josephine. Her husband Gilbert was a cold, private man who worked all hours and often left Myrtle lonely. For 10 years Myrtle yearned for a child and after copious failed pregnancies when Myrtle had almost lost hope and all feeling she learnt she was pregnant with Josephine. Josephine; her daughter, companion and best friend, was so precious and longed for by Myrtle. Myrtle experienced 14 years of intense happiness and fulfillment with her until Josephine contracted the lung disease Tuberculosis, a disease that killed 1 in 4 Victorians. Myrtle nursed her and prayed that Josephine would survive the cough, night sweats, weight loss and appetite loss. After 6 weeks, Josephine died early one morning in her mother’s arms. In an era where death was highly visible, she became yet another woman cocooned in crape mourning clothes. She adorned her neck with hair jewellery and had a post-mortem photograph taken of her daughter. Just seven months after Josephine’s death, her husband died of old age. Alone and feeling nothing but numbness and darkness she projected this blackness to the world, wearing her black mourning clothes for the rest of her long life.

Queen Victoria had a major influence on mourning rituals during the Victorian era. After her husband Prince Albert’s death from Typhoid in 1861, Queen Victoria went into mourning and remained in mourning for the 40 years left of her life. Society followed their Queen’s example and elaborate mourning rituals became the norm. In “Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion” Rappaport describes how her “unceasing ritualization of mourning” meant “the queen would raise herself as an archetype of sober Victorian widowhood”. She was the widow in which all widows would emulate. She stayed in seclusion, rarely appearing in public, which widows copied. For the first year after her husband’s death during first mourning, Myrtle remained in her home except for visits to church. Mourning consumed and took precedence of Queen Victoria’s time just like Victorian widows in society. Myrtle had heard rumours that Queen Victoria left everything as her husband had left it.  She wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life and whilst in full mourning for three years after his death she clothed her staff entirely in black too. Wealthy households imitated this, dressing servants in black. Like Victoria, Myrtle and fellow Victorian widows clothed themselves in black mourning clothes in the first stage of mourning which lasted a year and one day. Queen Victoria spent the 40 years left of her life commemorating him, for example getting statues made of him. This resulted in a trend for mourning memorabilia such as hair jewellery, which Myrtle along with many grieving women commissioned. Jillian Bost notes that “the public grew tired of their queen’s refusal to be seen in public, and her deep mourning that kept her from them.” Queen Victoria realized she owed it to her people to engage in the royal spectacle they yearned for. This reintroduction into society and normality and the ending of seclusion was also echoed in mourning etiquette as Myrtle undertook half mourning easing back into colour, social events and more elaborate jewellery and fabrics, after completing a year in full mourning. Myrtle idolized Queen Victoria and felt an affinity with her as she had experienced heart wrenching loss like herself.

Mourning rituals of the Victorian era included elaborate graves, expensive funerals, withdrawing from society, wearing black mourning clothes, and adorning oneself with memorabilia of the deceased. Elizabeth Wilson states the mourning ritual was not “conspicuous consumption” instead, it expressed “both the deep seriousness of the Victorian evangelical sensibility and the generalized hysteria of the culture”. In an era where the middle class population was large and increasingly affluent, with life expectancy rising, Wilson notes “the particular emphasis on mourning throughout the nineteenth century may have been because death at any age was no longer taken for granted”. Myrtle and Gilbert could afford their child and death was not expected, instead they had hopes of a full life for their daughter. Myrtle embraced all the mourning rituals expected of her, hoping they would cure and lessen the pain she felt from the loss of her daughter and her husband. Unlike Myrtle, some were more skeptical of mourning rituals. Jalland describes how a Victorian doctor Keith Norman MacDonald wrote a pamphlet in 1875 on “Death and how to Divest it of its Terrors” in which he “rejected the wearing of mourning-dress as a “silly custom” which “adds to the embaressments’ of mourners”. Jalland also notes that Victorian novelists such as Charles Dickens, “tended to ridicule extremes in mourning etiquette, enhancing the impression that widows were motivated more often by social emulation, convention and vanity than genuine sorrow”.

Prior to the undertakers taking Josephine’s body, Myrtle cut a lock of her daughter’s dark hair. The hair that Myrtle routinely washed, plaited, stroked and adored.  This lock she then sent to a hair artist to be made into a locket. In a printed catalogue she chose an understated but beautiful design. At the back of the catalogue a discreet guarantee written in tiny lettering, said locks of hair would not be mixed or substituted in the process. Myrtle balked at the thought of a stranger touching and looking after the lock and carelessly muddling up the precious hair, but her husband Gilbert assured her that her worries were foolish. Myrtle got out her poetry book entitled ‘Last Poems, 1862’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a popular Victorian poet, finding solace in ‘Only A Curl’. Just like Myrtle, the bereaved mother has lost a child and cherishes one curl of his hair as a memento. In the poem Galia Ofek deduces that the “curl” is the only “physical presence of the departed” and a “powerful spiritual connection between the living mother and her dead child”. Barrett Browning conveys that the lock of hair should not be allowed to become a symbol of their eternal and final separation, but rather “an image of almost divine or mystical unity between the dead and the living, a vibrant spiritual cord which ties the two worlds” and two people together. Pamela A.Milller claims “jewellery had been made from hair or had incorporated hair for centuries but it was the Victorians who turned mourning and sentimental jewelry into a true industry”. Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey reasons “Human material that was regarded as dead while the person was living, is thus transformed into a living substance at death in the sense that it is reanimated as a possession capable of sustaining the deceased in close proximity to the bereaved. The physical durability of hair makes this possible as it stands in stark contrast to the instabilities of the fleshy body.” It is the only body part that endures so is therefore precious. Myrtle’s locket was a physical memorial and combined with mourning clothing, made death highly visible in Victorian culture. The locket is made of jet, a form of fossilized wood. Jet was one of the only forms of jewelry permitted to be worn under the strict Victorian code of mourning, particularly during half mourning. Inside the locket there are three small pearls which symbolize tears. The design of the hair is fluid and curvaceous. The curves and form suggest movement and are dynamic denoting life.  Shapes of solid colour created by multiple strands of hair contrast single strands delicately arranged, creating depth within the locket. The jagged edge of the jet locket juxtaposes the smooth form of the hair encased inside. A thin piece of glass separates Myrtle from the hair in the locket, much like her daughter whom she can no longer hold. The oval shape of the locket echoes the pearls and could be interpreted as one large tear. Today, society’s attitudes towards hair has changed. Physical reminders such as hair jewellery are not worn and are often viewed as macabre and distasteful.

In the afternoon Myrtle asked a photographer, George Wakefield to the house to take a post-mortem photograph for ten shillings and six pence of her recently deceased daughter. Gilbert, who was fascinated with photography, talked to George eagerly asking questions about his camera, partly a coping mechanism to distract himself and blank out the painful reality of his daughters death. George explained his Daguerreotype camera consisted of a light-sensitive silver-coated copper plate. It is like a mirror and the image is beamed onto the plate and then fixed with a salt solution. He explained that the Daguerreotype was invented in 1839 and it was a cheaper and quicker alternative to portrait painting. Born out of an invention, it also died out due to an invention, that of snapshot photography, which made photography available to the masses and was cheaper and easier to use. George brought with him a steel rod frame that he sometimes used to position the deceased if the family favoured a standing pose but Gilbert disliked the idea of it.

Meanwhile, Myrtle was upstairs, doting on her daughter. She brushed her daughters hair, dressed her in her finest day clothes and chose some pearls to adorn her neck. These pearls were also seen in Myrtle’s locket and could again symbolize tears. In the photograph each person is looking in different directions. Gilbert looks directly into the camera a pose less emotional, and focused on the job in hand. Myrtle ignores the camera looking into the distance, too numb to focus on anything except treasuring the final time her family would be together and whole. Due to the slow shutter speed, the photograph is heavily posed as positions had to be held for 10 minutes. Myrtle and Gilbert appeared slightly blurred suggesting slight movement in this period when the photograph was being taken. Josephine in contrast, was entirely in focus, with perfect clarity, as because she was deceased, she had no motion. Myrtle loved this searing image of her daughter, it highlighted exactly what she wanted and she believed herself and her husband were unimportant next to her special daughter. It reflected how she saw the whole world blurred and her daughter bright and brilliant. The photograph has a shallow depth of field, with only a small amount of Josephine in focus, again denoting nothing is important except for her. Myrtle thought her daughter looked beautiful in this photograph and found the image a great comfort. The image was more accurate and perfect than Myrtles muddled and hazy old memory and she could admire her daughter whenever she wanted. Unlike many post-mortem photographs, Josephine has open eyes as if she is awake, and is relaxed in a natural pose void of stiffness. Josephine has a warm peaceful face and seems to have more life in her than her parents. It is a positive and hopeful image of death. Death was not feared by Victorians as they believed in a better after life. However to die unremembered and not mourned was feared. Myrtles face appeared numb, lifeless and haunting, in contrast to her daughter’s. Myrtle was unmistakably in mourning. Myrtle, Josephine and Gilbert all wore black creating a somber mood to the photograph.  The photograph is taken in bed, with a blanket over Josephine as if she is alive and keeping warm. Josephine is dressed in daywear to add to the sense of lifelikeness and normality of the situation. Both Myrtle and Gilbert are touching and holding their daughter. This shows a comfort, easiness and familiarity with death. It also indicates the desire to retain Josephine as a family member and to cement that forever in photograph. If Josephine was portrayed as explicitly dead, lying with closed eyes and alone, the photograph would be a reminder of mortality and of the finality of her life. Myrtle had seen post-mortem photographs in friends of the family’s houses featuring the coffin and didn’t like them. Although life is extinguished it is portrayed as continuing. Her mother and father will keep her alive, through memory and memorabilia. In the background, a covered piece of furniture can be seen. It is an ambiguous object and it is more ghostly than Josephine. It slightly echoes the shape of a cross and could symbolize religion. In the background it encompasses all of the family, denoting how religion will keep their family together. Another interpretation could be that it is a coffin. Covered in a sheet it masks the reality of death just as the post-mortem photograph does. In the Victorian era, people could not travel long distances quickly to attend funerals so Josephine’s post-mortem photograph allowed her relatives to see her before her burial. Today post-mortem photography has stopped. Living in an age where death was focused on and highly visible Myrtle found post-mortem photography beautiful and comforting. However in the present day it is widely seen as sensationalistic and vulgar as there is a social discomfort. It is not a necessity anymore as transport is extremely quick so relatives can attend a funeral and see the deceased. Wilson notes that “contemporary culture has taken flight from the very idea of death”. This could be as less people are religious and therefore do not believe in a better afterlife, so faced with annihilation and no comfort people blank it out. In Victorian times dying would occur in the home and mourning attire worn in public so highly visible, people would be used to it. However today David Wendell Moller notes that “dying is banished from public visibility as it is isolated within the professional, technical confines of the hospital”.

Just 7 months after Josephine’s death, Myrtle’s husband Gilbert died. Feeling numb except for darkness, Myrtle projected this to the outside world swathing herself in black mourning attire. Jalland states that the “primary functions of mourning-dress in the Victorian Period were to identify the mourner, show respect for the dead and elicit the sympathy of the community, and match the mourner’s somber mood”. Additionally Amelia Sedley-Osborne notes that “mourning attire was a distinct way to show wealth and status”. Mourning clothing followed fashions and prolonged mourning denoted wealth. Strict dress regulations were applied “most rigorously” to widows. Myrtle wore solid black mourning clothes for first mourning which lasted for one year. She wore plain dull black clothing void of shine and covered in crape combined with a crape bonnet and veil in public. For second mourning which lasted for nine months Myrtle wore garments with small trims of crape and for half mourning lasting three to six months, she discarded crape and wore clothes in lilac and grey hues. Crape was a harsh crimped and stiff dull silk gauze and was extensively used in mourning clothes. It was a woven fabric which was made from tightly twisted silk threads. Myrtle wore it during first mourning. It was heavy pulling Myrtle down creating a stooped figure that radiated sorrow. Myrtle found that crape was uncomfortable and impractical adding to the misery she felt for the loss of her husband and daughter. 

Myrtle appeared just another black figure in the Victorian streets, cocooned in black mourning dress. Elizabeth Wilson suggests “their widow’s crape acted as a kindly camourflage” allowing them to “leave the mating game without dishonor”. Myrtle blended into the sea of black, she was left alone and not expected to marry again. Jalland contemplates that in the Victorian advice manuals on etiquette “Manners and Social Usages in 1884” Mrs Sherwood said “A mourning dress does protect a woman while in deepest grief against the untimely gayety of a passing stranger. It is a wall, a cell of refuge”. Myrtle felt that her mourning clothes spoke for her, explaining and giving reason of her ashen face and cold demeanor. Mourning clothes facilitated the seclusion that Queen Victoria craved. Lou Taylor argues that the “harsh restrictions governing widows’ clothing reflected the view of the wife’s role held in the nineteenth century middle- and upper- class British society”. The “drab, uncomfortable attire symbolized the perception that a wife’s identity and sexuality were subsumed in her husbands and dies with him.” Myrtles favourite mourning coat was made from black silk taffeta and was fashionable in the later 1800s. The stand collar is tight and restrictive around the neck concealing all flesh. This high neck is typical of Victorian fashion. Myrtles jacket had 12 delicate buttons down the centre front. It was made from silk taffeta and featured small black appliqued flowers sewn on to the shoulders. It has a crape trim seen at the hem and Myrtle wore this garment during second mourning, when more detailed garments were permitted. Myrtles jacket was handcrafted by a friend of the family, with meticulous attention to detail. It has a yellow lining with visible smooth curved boning which follows the ideal and fashionable shape of Victorian times of a cinched in narrow a waist and broad shoulders. The coat has puff sleeve gathering which was fashionable in Victorian times. The coat is solid black echoing Myrtles dark feelings. Victorian women like Myrtle didn’t work so could devote all her time to mourning and being a widow. In contrast, when women were a valued workforce in 1914 during World War One, it became impractical for them to interrupt their work in order for seclusion and formal mourning. In contemporary society black still denotes mourning and is worn at funerals.

                                                                                                     

Mourning was a lucrative business in Victorian times. Wilson states “every department store had a mourning section”. Myrtle bought her black silk mourning crepe to be made into mourning attire from Courtauld's. Courtauld’s was a family textile firm and achieved huge profits solely through its manufacture of crape as the demand for it was so great. Jalland notes that the “introduction of fashion magazines for middle-class women, in which mourning costume was updated according to the latest seasons fashions” encouraged spending on crape fabric. Profits grew further due to the public belief that it was unlucky to keep crape clothing in the house after the mourning period had ended which caused women to throw away and buy new garments and fabric. Myrtles mourning coat is symbolic as on the outside of her she must project darkness yet hidden inside her is a small amount of light and colour, that comes from her memories with her husband and daughter and hope that one day in her afterlife she will be reunited with them.