Colonial Heights museum wraps up display on Victorian funeral customs, including coffins
COLONIAL HEIGHTS — One of the gems of Colonial Heights is, no doubt, Violet Bank Museum where you can see exhibits from the periods between 1815 to 1873 including Civil War artifacts, guns, furniture, and textiles.
Throughout the month of October, Violet Bank Museum had an exhibit on Victorian funeral customs. Museum patrons have seen six 19th-century coffins that range from the highly ornate “toe pincher” that narrowed at the feet to infant sized coffins.
Because embalming was not readily done in those days, one of the coffins displayed was designed to be filled with ice in order to keep the body cold for shipping long distances or to be on display at least three days.
“The purpose of a wake in those days was to have somebody sit by the coffin to watch for signs that the person inside the coffin wasn’t about to be buried alive!” said Curtis Craft of J.T. Morriss & Son Funeral Home in Petersburg. A couple of the children’s coffins have a glass window where the face could be seen through the closed lid, and one must wonder if the purpose was to still see the child inside the coffin just in case they happened to awaken from a comatose state before burial?
Museum visitors will also notice that the mirror in the room is draped; that is because people from the Victorian era were very superstitious and believed that if somebody gazed into the mirror in a room where somebody had died, they would be the next to die.
One of the most interesting displays is a very lifelike cocker spaniel mix named Aggie, who became the victim of one of the first horseless carriage accidents in the city! Aggie was the pet of Charles Morriss, the son of J.T. Morriss who founded the funeral home. According to legend, he accidentally backed his motor car over little Aggie, killing her instantly. He carried her to the funeral home where the staff embalmed her, and to this day, she appears she could start barking at any moment!
The exhibition includes a white burial robe that a family could pay to have their loved one buried in, as well as a collection of macabre mourning portraits of family members posing with deceased loved ones, usually babies and children. These may seem strange to the modern eye, but it was commonplace in Victorian times to dress a deceased relative in their Sunday finest and have pictures made with them. In many cases, this was the only picture ever taken of the person. There are photos of people laid out on their deathbed and some of them being propped up by family members.
Death was a common occurrence in Victorian era Virginia, and so the events that were attached to the burial of a loved one became very important to the families. They wanted to ensure their loved ones were being properly mourned and that no detail of their funeral was overlooked.
Most funerals were held in the home, and a black wreath was placed on the front door to indicate a death had occurred in that family. Doorknobs were draped with black crepe, and all of the curtains and blinds were tightly drawn shut. Any portrait of the deceased family member was usually draped in black crepe as well. In many American homes during the Victorian era, it was customary to stop the clock to the exact time of passing in the room where the wake was being held.
Families notified relatives and friends of the death by sending out printed funeral cards that were white with black borders, and postmortem cards were sent to friends and relatives who were not able to attend the funeral. These cards had a picture of the deceased on one side and a message of mourning on the other side.
The exhibit artifacts are on loan from J.T. Morriss & Son Funeral Home, and have been curated by Wendy Alvis and Michael Poarch. They will remain on display until at least the end of this week.
Tamara J. Eastman and Lindsay Gray are local historians and preservationists. Tamara has written a book, "The Great Fire of Petersburg, Virginia."
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Colonial Heights museum has Victorian funeral customs on exhibit
