A distressing scene’? The corpse in the nineteenth-century working-class home
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7203068 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Claire Cock-Starkey (Birkbeck, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 745-759 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-07 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Mortality (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1357-6275 • E-ISSN: 1469-9885 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13576275.2024.2373210 |
| OpenAlex | W4400429944 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
When Edwin Chadwick released his report into burial reform in 1843 he was highly critical of the working-class practice of keeping the dead body in the home for up to a week in the period between death and burial. Chadwick argued that the English working-classes kept the body for so long for economic reasons and that as a result of living in close quarters with a corpse they picked up negative associations with death and suffered moral decline. This paper overturns this assumption by using evidence from nineteenth-century folklore collections and working-class autobiography to argue that the long-standing tradition of keeping the body in the home and rallying round to prepare it for burial held a deep significance for rural working-class people. The gradual preparation of the body for burial engaged the senses and centred on the visual appearance of the corpse enabling rural folk to confirm social bonds through the formation of collective memories, demonstrate the respectability of both the deceased and their family, accept the reality of death, and begin the mourning process
Aesthetics · Art · Class (philosophy · Distressing · Epistemology · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Visual arts · Working class · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Psychology
Imagining the Dead in British Literature and Culture, 1790–1848
The Revival of Death
A Social History of Dying
Death, grief, and mourning
Nineteenth-Century Burial Reform in England
An Imperialist Folklore? Establishing the Folk-Lore Society in London
Women, pain and death
Drawing the pillow, laying out and port wine
But to cover her shame
Down Among the Dead
Begging for a burial’
She cried a very little
The History of Emotions
| Highly cited | No |
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