Hearthside House to Host Exhibit on Victorian Mourning Customs
Monday, September 30, 2019
The Hearthside House Museum in Lincoln is set to host its annual exhibition “Gone But Not Forgotten Victorian Mourning & Funeral Customs.”
The exhibit will open on Saturday, October 5 and run for two weeks.
The tours on Saturday, Oct. 5 and Oct. 12 are done in low light and held at 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. Tours on Sunday afternoon Oct. 6th and 13th are held every half hour between 1:00-3:00 p.m.
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In the exhibit, each room throughout the museum is transformed to recreate the scene of a typical wake and funeral of the 19th century.
The solemn occasion is a depiction of a household in mourning, in this case, for the death of Hearthside owner Simon E. Thornton, who died there in 1873.
Volunteer docents dressed in black mourning attire will lead visitors on a fascinating tour of exhibits through all three floors of the house as they hear about early funerary customs, created by Queen Victoria during the 1860s, and see an assortment of clothing, accessories, artwork, and numerous artifacts related to death and mourning.
Among the artifacts featured in the exhibit are an antique wicker coffin and child’s coffin.
Antique embalming equipment along with the actual undertaker’s journal and portable table used for preparing Simon Thornton’s body is also on display in the very same bedroom where he took his last breath.
In addition to various funerary memorabilia, other objects include Victorian mourning clothing, jewelry and a wreath made from human hair of the deceased, and post-mortem photographs in which family members pose with dead loved ones propped up in life-like positions.
The exhibit covers topics such as proper mourning etiquette and fashions, grave dolls, cemeteries and memorials, Victorian superstitions about the afterlife, and the undertaker and embalming process.
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