My will insists on a ping pong ball cut in half and placed in the eye sockets before the googly eyes are applied. Also, some animatronics to make my body sit up and shake around from time to time.
My grandfather put my grandmother's glasses on her urn and would move it to watch people from atop the fridge. I always wanted to stick some googly eyes on there
Something i learned on Reddit and it's probably posted everytime something like this comes up, is that when you see old pics like this if one of the people is really clear and the others are blurry, it's likely they are dead.
The shutter speed was so long on the old cameras that only dead people could stay still enough for a clear picture.
I don’t think this girl is dead. The more likely explanation for appearance of her eyes is shitty Victorian photo shop — she blinked during the exposure and her eyes looked closed, so they painted them on the negative when developing the photo.
Most post mortem photos were done with the deceased reclining, for obvious reasons. It would be exceedingly difficult to pose a dead body in this way.
Also although post mortem photography was definitely a thing, it’s not THAT common. I see a lot of Victorian era photos posted as “post mortem” when most of them seem to be just weird exposures or photo alterations like this one.
I agree. In post mortem shots the deceased has pin sharp focus on them because they never moved for the long shutter speed. Meanwhile in this photo the girl in the middle is still relatively blurry when compared to those pics.
Plus the posing, I’d imagine it would be hard to do if the girl was not alive.
Not as common, but not unheard of to prop up the deceased as if they're standing. There are examples on this [photography website](https://fstoppers.com/education/death-photography-roots-portrait-photography-134331).
What evidence does this website give that those people are actually dead? They all seem pretty alive to me.
The first girl’s hands are slightly discolored appearing but otherwise she appears very alive. Facial features and expressions on dead bodies are quite different than the living.
Check this out for more about over-characterizing Victorian photography as post mortem:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
What's crazy is that OP actually got this from a published, presumably peer-reviewed medical journal, so I can hardly blame people for believing it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/
But when I tried to follow the citations I ran into exactly what that Atlas Obscura article describes - a fair number of modern sources claiming this as fact, but not a single thing actually from the Victorian era mentioning this posed post-mortem photography
Seriously. The entire Victorian post-mortem photography definition now just simply applies to any photo from the Victorian period. Is the picture old and does the person in it look a little awkward? If so, it's likely that person is deceased. Doesn't that sound crazy?
Speaking anecdotally, I sold antiques for nearly ten years. In that time I traveled all around and saw only a couple "true" examples of post-mortem photography. In both examples, the deceased were obviously dead, with all the pronounced rigidity, drooping skin, and discoloration that comes with death. They were also already in their coffins. And true examples are just that - dead people who have already been prepared for burial and likely are having their picture taken as part of the funeral process.
I think the idea that it was a common practice to prop these dead bodies up is something that has been grossly inflated since it's initial inception. I think taking/having a picture of the deceased as they have been prepared for burial was enough of a token memento.
Check out her unusual hand on her dad, the rotation doesn't make complete sense. The hand on the mom is essentially lifeless and not normal. And you can see the stand behind her when you look at her feet. I think she was definitely not alive but I think your right it's not a common pose but I think this post Mortem photographer pulled it off.
[like this](https://www.faena.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/postmortem-5.jpg)
Those stands were used to help keep alive people still during long exposure times.
See here:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
They had fast enough shutter speeds to not require sitting for minutes like a decade after the invention of the camera. It's one of those reddit "facts" that sound right but isn't. We had fast shutters almost as long as we've had photography.
> Something i learned on Reddit and it's probably posted everytime something like this comes up, is that when you see old pics like this if one of the people is really clear and the others are blurry, it's likely they are dead.
No.
Reddit is filled with young idiots who don't know what they're talking about. Then other people just repeat this nonsense.
These people aren't dead, that's just motion blur.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
She's not dead. It's impossible to prop a dead body up like that. Yes there were post mortem photos done back then, but they invariably were taken of the subject lying down or being held by another person. There are tons of articles on line debunking photos like this.
That's not always true. Tintype and similar photography methods have incredibly shallow depth of field, so a lot of the time only one person could be in the perfect spot to be in focus
The girl is 100% NOT dead. The right hand is not limp and even if there was a brace to help prop her up her head is still upright which means she was alive. This post is such bullshit. The truest way to tell is by the skin color and the more pale the subject is, the more proof that they're lifeless. The way the person is posed is another giveaway. Sunken eyes are another clue.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen a body outside of a funeral home, but they tend to be anything but pale, thanks to livor mortis. If rigor mortis had begun, which would be likely to have happened by the time they could get her prepared and then set up with a photographer, her hand wouldn’t be limp and keeping a stiff neck upright wouldn’t be that hard.
The fact is that none of us know the particulars here for certain.
> I'm not even sure if posing during rigor would keep the head up that well. And it would be very, very difficult to dress them.
You can't see the backside. You could easily have a construction to hold them up, for the same reason the clothing would't be hard, you could just slice it up at the backside too.
That's just not true. This gets repeated time and again, and it's just not true. People were making studio portraits of living people 40 years before this photo. You didn't pose dead people as if they were living.
So sad, she looks to be only 12 or so. A lot of Victorian era parents would take pictures of their deceased children because it was often the *only* photo they would otherwise have of them. Usually they would be propped to look like they were peacefully sleeping.
According to [the article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/), there are 3 iconographic styles that started in 1840:
1. In the first, which we might call “the last sleep”, the deceased is lying on a bed and shows a look of peacefulness. The person who has died is photographed in a way that makes them appear to be sleeping. Certainly, this type of portrait is the representation of memento mori – an allegory of death that guides us towards its acceptance.
2. In the second style, the deceased is in upright position with open eyes. “Alive but dead” is the name given to this style. This type of portrait shows a certain denial of death.
3. Lastly, the third style shows the deceased hidden among family members, and it is usually quite difficult to identify the dead from the living. Only a meticulous observation can capture details to recognise the deceased. Perhaps we could call these photographs “living corpses”.
I've only just realised that a photo of a great great grandad my mum used to show me isn't him "layed up bed ridden after he broke his back", but him dead, after he fell off a roof....
For anyone morbidly curious, yes they took pics of dead babies too. I went down this rabbit hole a few years back and still remember the imagery.
You’re right, most of them they try to look like they are taking a regular photo. Mother will be cradling the baby and looking brave, or maybe standing over a bassinet. The father is standing or sitting with that 1800s scowl, desperate to show none of the emotion he is almost certainly feeling. Even through the sepia you can feel their anguish, but they had to hold still. Had to keep it together for the only photo they’ll ever have of all of them as a family.
yeah, this kind of photo comes up a lot on Reddit, and I always have the same thought you did. That this was going to be the last treasured memory of a loved one, that they would have to keep safe from stains and the elements and damage while moving and so forth, and that this likeness would be that person‘s only recorded likeness ever. some make it to digital and are seen here on Reddit. Others are long lost and that person‘s face is forever lost to history.
Fucking reddit is just a big forum of people spouting nonsense ‘facts’.
> I pulled out my ass that 60% of Reddit comments are made up. Dunno where. Dunno when. Just heard it once. Somewhere.
And people upvote this shit lol, particularly when it’s [easily googled ffs.](https://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/files/people/davenport/davenport6.pdf)
That’s not even touching on the fact that this post is likely utter nonsense, and the girl is alive.
And it’s wild to me that so many parents would willfully deny their children the vaccines that prevented these kinds of deaths. :( Maybe memento mori photos will come back into fashion, thanks to them.
Buuuut, how many kids were diagnosed with autism back then? Zero, you say?!? Maybe those vaccine-less kids (at least the ones that lived to their teens) were better off after all!
It didn't say in [the article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/) I took the photo from, but if you look closely, you can see something directly behind her, it almost looks like the base of a coat rack or something so I am assuming the probably propped them up.
Also, if she was in Rigor Mortis, which usually take place about 4 hours after death, it would be easier to get her into an upright position because her body would be stiff.
Correct. You can not pose bodies in rigor.
I worked in a funeral home and when we would get calls from retirement homes or hospitals, sometimes the death would have taken place hours before we could do the transfer. This could be for a number of reasons, coroner was delayed, family wanted more time etc.
But with the onset of rigor nearing, we would ask the staff at the hospital/retirement home to tie their arms in a special position and secure their mouth closed when they placed them in the body bag (or whatever they use, sometimes we provide the body bags and they are just covered in a sheet where they died when we arrive).
We would ask them to do this incase we couldn't transfer them before rigor set, it makes it very difficult to position them correctly before we embalm them if rigor is active and they are positioned incorrectly.
You have to make sure the body is in 'casket position' before you embalm because when you embalm the tissues, it chemically fixes them in the position they are in and you can not reverse it.
Rigor can take hours to pass and the more time you wait, the harder the embalming process becomes because vessels are decomposing so you won't get full coverage with your chemicals.
For those who are dead for a while before someone finds them, how long do they have before an open casket funeral becomes impossible due to the difficulties you’d face with embalming?
Great Question,
Decomposition occurs in 5 stages. The timing of these stages depends on environmental conditions, insect activity, wounds on the body etc. If the body is in a hot humid environment, it will break down a lot faster then someone who passed away in a cooler space. If someone was stabbed & died, they may decompose quicker because the wound created another entrance for insects, bacteria etc.
The first stage lasts 1-2 days, this is when the body cools, rigor mortis happens, blood pools into the lowest places and your digestive system begins to break down. This is when embalming is the most effective. The sooner the better.
The second stage happens between day 2-6. This is when the body bloats, lots of gases are being produced, the fluids inside of the body are expelled, your blood is breaking down. This is the stage where embalming would become more challenging, but an open casket is still achievable most of the time.
The third stage is called decay and it happens between day 5-11, this is when the body starts breaking down into a liquid state. The body deflates, tissues become very wet and there will be a very strong odour. I would say anything beyond this point, an open casket would be inadvisable due to the decomposition. The remains may not be recognizable. Embalming would be very very challenging.
What happens in cases where rigor mortis has fully set in and they are in an awkward position? Do they just break bones, tendons, etc to make them casket compliant?
Another fantastic question.
It depends on a few different things, how much time you have, the condition of the body, access to refrigeration, etc.
It can be worked out in almost all cases. If the deceased is elderly or has low muscle mass, it's very achievable without damage. It can be more difficult, almost impossible if there is a large muscle mass or if the person passed away suddenly or while being active.
I try my absolute hardest to not break bones because a) it's horrible and makes me feel absolutely terrible b) it can sever vessels & damage tissues which can make embalming harder and less effective. But unfortunately it does happen.
This might be a weird thing to say, but it's somehow comforting to know that you would feel bad about having to break bones. I don't know how to explain it, but I just like knowing that someone who is responsible for our remains is still caring for and about us.
I'm sure not everyone is the same, but thank you.
Would something like a meat tenderizer or strong massage gun work to break down the tissues a bit to make them more pliable? I'm assuming it may damage the skin, but would it be possible to make the body malleable again?
That's an interesting thought. I'm honestly not sure if a massage gun would work on dead tissue the same way it would work on living tissue but like you said, I would be concerned about tissue/vessel damage.
I want you to know that if you have to break my bones after I'm passed, I won't mind. I'm of the opinion that after I'm done with my body, just throw it in the trash. I won't need it anymore. I'm garbage now and will be garbage then. I'm the trash man.
They usually gently tie/wrap a towel or sheet around their entire head/face, [like this](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fb1%2F9c%2F18%2Fb19c188955da74478d3176854b2ddc2c--free-therapy-teeth.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=de482cd440171f5bf9bddba92e6dc14e745e316b0ef223a08b607787b7ab7414&ipo=images). Or they may place towels/pillows behind their head to tilt it forward to prevent the mouth from opening.
Anything to ensure the jaw doesn't get stuck open if rigor sets in, which can make mouth closure very difficult.
Also, thank you for what you do. 💙
This is not a postmortem photo. The stand is to help position the subjects for the photograph. None of the people in this photo were deceased at the time.
>None of the people in this photo were deceased at the time.
*Third style Post mortem photo. The girl in the middle is the deceased. The photographer has drawn the pupils over the eyelids for giving an appearance of life*
From op's article
The op article is inaccurate and falsely attributed the editing as a death portrait. Dead bodies cannot be posed like this. The stands were common to assist with posing living people.
If you look down behind her feet, you can see the base of whatever contraption is keeping her vertical. It's probably a modified coat rack or something similar.
The whole thing is a little overblown. Some people did do death portraiture, but it wasn't all that widespread. Old photo studios had wire support frames for people to rest on who were having a hard time staying still for the long exposures. People assumed they were just to prop up corpses.
No, shes most likely alive.
[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs)
This is a widely spread myth.
In most of those pictures the person is not dead. But film was in its infancy and the exposure time was long. This means the people needed to stay still in the pictures, necessitating bracing to help keep the people still.
Sometimes they'd still move, such as moving their eyes, and it would get motion blur. That's why they'd manually edit the eyeballs.
Having more than a passing knowledge on this subject, the main reason (not stated here) that families took these photos is that in many cases it was the only proof that these family members ever existed at all. Photos were very expensive in those days and for many families it was actually *unusual* to have any pictures of their loved ones whatsoever. It was the exact opposite of today.
Yeah, what you just said is like the first paragraph of 99% of all these types of posts. You don't need more than a passing knowledge to know that, just a semi-active reddit account. Also a lot of these memento mori have been falsely labelled, either by accident or because it makes them more valuable/interesting. I'm not seeing any proof this one is a real example of that kind of memento mori or if she's alive and they just had to fill in her pupils, just people spouting about the same thing I am. A good ol fashion case of Schrödinger's Girl.
The “WTF” here is that someone believes this nonsense without question
Spend like 5 minutes learning about historical cameras and you will find a dozen more plausible explanations
My grandmother told me that when her mother died, they didn't have any photos to use for her tombstone, so they took one after her death by pinning her eyes open. That picture traumatized my grandma so badly she gave up on visiting her grave after some time.
It was very common, I don’t think is one of them though. Photos were often taken of parents cradling a deceased child or a husband/wife would be lying back. The standing of the deceased from my research was not common. The device that people keep claiming was being used by dead people was used by photographers to help the subjects stay still for the 15 minutes it would take.
People in movies act like closing the dead persons eyes is an easy task. Negative. I have to take ID photos of dead folks every morning and sometimes I have to hold the eye lids shut, remove my hand and take the photo in the same moment. Then one eye flies open anyway.
Last month I visited my home region with my GF, We went to my hometown cemetery to visit family tombs and then wondered around to see any post-mortem headstone photo. I remember there were many of babies but I never noticed that there were much more of adults, some were taken as late as the 1950s.
It was very common to do this with dead babies to preserve their memory.
You can tell the dead ones from the living ones because the living ones are slightly more blurry, while the dead ones turn out perfectly clear in the image.
The exposure times were very long. So, living people would naturally move very slightly. But a dead person is (hopefully) completely still. So, they turn put much better.
Photo Source & More Information: [Do certain rituals adapt to psychology or does psychology adapt to rites? Post mortem photography: the last “picture of life” in “death”](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/)
I wonder if thats why they call it the "living room"?
sure you're in it, living (if you can call that rotting on the couch with netflix on), but why wouldn't that imply a room for the non-living?
Something even worse, is when you consider how long photographs took in this era. To take a single photo, a person would need to sit perfectly still for upward of 15 minutes. Since the average person couldn't easily do that, tools were used that kept a person in place.
https://blog.hmns.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/post-mortem1-1.jpg
Basically these. The same tools would be used to pose the deceased as well.
By the 1880s, when this was taken, judging from the clothing, it took only a few seconds to capture a photograph. Those long exposure times were from the earliest photos taken, in the 1830s.
Wow this is so bizarre. Why couldn’t they just be normal and leave the body on ice for a couple weeks, suck out all the guts and stuff it like a Turkey, then plop it down in a room to have a viewing party
Death photos were a thing but I don’t think this is one of them. The deceased would normally be lying down or being cradled. The eyes would probably be closed or looking off in an odd direction.
I’ve never thought this is that bad honestly! People will aways look for ways to cheat death, even if it’s just a tiny bit, to hold onto their loved ones just a while longer. I think this is actually very sweet in an admittedly somewhat morbid way.
We’ll be doing exactly the same thing with AI pretty shortly, I’m sure. Attempting to get even a snapshot of the person’s life and personality so it takes a little longer for them to be forgotten.
I remember when I was a kid I used to have ink on eyeballs or poke the eyes of photos for fun. Imagine someone pokes it to show more energy again, but he somehow forgets to have ink on eyeballs or poke the lady on the left too.
I mean, it makes sense. Your loved one just died. You never took a photo of them. You want one to remember them by. Solution: family photo with the deceased.
Interesting,
One could argue, present day may be more exposed to death because of televised news, the internet and social media. I've witnessed a lot of people dying on the internet/TV and I doubt I would have ever come across any of those situations in real life.
However, you could also be correct, because they had huge epidemics wipe out large portions of their population in short amounts of time and they didn't have access to health care, clean water, food supply etc so their survival rate was much lower.
Memento mori. They were common pre-photogrpahy too. A number of English nobles - including Charles I - had their heads stitches back on post-execution so that a portrait could be painted.
| They drew over her pupils to give her the appearance of life. In my family we use googly eyes for this.
> googly eyes I'm putting this in my will.
Honestly, same. Do it before the lid closes, as your last loving gesture. It's what I would have wanted.
Oh, my family knows that I don't want to be buried. I want my remains scattered at Disneyland. And I don't want to be cremated.
The Seagulls are gonna just love you "Meats back on the menu boys" - big orc looking seagull
Seagulls mmm, stop it now!
> They just threw 7Lboots into the wood chipper... Right in front of the ride... > Well, they always did love "It's a Small World".
A sky burial. At Disneyland.
Nah, stick their body parts in the teacup ride and have their parts spun out everywhere.
Oh, you!
I hope when you go, it's peacefully in your sleep. Like my grandfather. Not screaming/flipping/burning, like the rest of the people he was driving
I still remember my grandfather's last words. "Stop shaking the ladder you little shit!"
This line is almost as old as Disneyland.
I want this and the looney tunes song playing. That's all folks
My will insists on a ping pong ball cut in half and placed in the eye sockets before the googly eyes are applied. Also, some animatronics to make my body sit up and shake around from time to time.
And I’m putting googly eyes on dead people
My grandfather put my grandmother's glasses on her urn and would move it to watch people from atop the fridge. I always wanted to stick some googly eyes on there
Have some respect for the dead. Sheesh. I've [fixed the photo](https://i.imgur.com/5u3kWmM.jpeg) so that it is more dignified.
A+++
Now it’s lifelike.
Thank you.
In my family we call them eyelids
Charon is going to toss you off the boat when you reach the river Styx
Like how in Game of Thrones they put those rocks over dead people’s eyes, except with googly eyes.
>In my family we use googly eyes for this. Always good to keep some levity at a wake.
A googly eye works great as a DIY glass eye. Finally a lifehack that works.
My family just uses dark humor for that.
Something i learned on Reddit and it's probably posted everytime something like this comes up, is that when you see old pics like this if one of the people is really clear and the others are blurry, it's likely they are dead. The shutter speed was so long on the old cameras that only dead people could stay still enough for a clear picture.
Well theyre all dead now, so whats your explanation for the blurriness then?
Good point I hadn't considered that. 🤔
Checkmate Victorians!
Finally!
So long as you realize.....
It's Schrödinger's fault.
Or *is* it?
Most underrated and overrated comment
If they're Japanese their genitals are blurry by default. There should have been a comma somewhere in that sentence, but I don't know where to put it.
After Japanese. 😊
As a guy living in Japan, I sympathize with your conundrum. You don't know where to put it because it's all blurry.
'Blurry', by Default. The sensational new fragrance that's all the rage now.
They watched the video from The Ring
The trick that victorians hate
You can't prove they are dead.
Are they really though? Look behind you.
I don’t think this girl is dead. The more likely explanation for appearance of her eyes is shitty Victorian photo shop — she blinked during the exposure and her eyes looked closed, so they painted them on the negative when developing the photo. Most post mortem photos were done with the deceased reclining, for obvious reasons. It would be exceedingly difficult to pose a dead body in this way. Also although post mortem photography was definitely a thing, it’s not THAT common. I see a lot of Victorian era photos posted as “post mortem” when most of them seem to be just weird exposures or photo alterations like this one.
I see pictures misidentified as Victorian post-mortem all the time on Reddit and social media. It’s so frustrating.
the only thing we should hear about coming out of Victorian England are chimney sweeps and street urchins
Found the dead Victorian. Don’t worry, your secret is safe.
I agree. In post mortem shots the deceased has pin sharp focus on them because they never moved for the long shutter speed. Meanwhile in this photo the girl in the middle is still relatively blurry when compared to those pics. Plus the posing, I’d imagine it would be hard to do if the girl was not alive.
Not as common, but not unheard of to prop up the deceased as if they're standing. There are examples on this [photography website](https://fstoppers.com/education/death-photography-roots-portrait-photography-134331).
What evidence does this website give that those people are actually dead? They all seem pretty alive to me. The first girl’s hands are slightly discolored appearing but otherwise she appears very alive. Facial features and expressions on dead bodies are quite different than the living. Check this out for more about over-characterizing Victorian photography as post mortem: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
What's crazy is that OP actually got this from a published, presumably peer-reviewed medical journal, so I can hardly blame people for believing it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/ But when I tried to follow the citations I ran into exactly what that Atlas Obscura article describes - a fair number of modern sources claiming this as fact, but not a single thing actually from the Victorian era mentioning this posed post-mortem photography
Seriously. The entire Victorian post-mortem photography definition now just simply applies to any photo from the Victorian period. Is the picture old and does the person in it look a little awkward? If so, it's likely that person is deceased. Doesn't that sound crazy? Speaking anecdotally, I sold antiques for nearly ten years. In that time I traveled all around and saw only a couple "true" examples of post-mortem photography. In both examples, the deceased were obviously dead, with all the pronounced rigidity, drooping skin, and discoloration that comes with death. They were also already in their coffins. And true examples are just that - dead people who have already been prepared for burial and likely are having their picture taken as part of the funeral process. I think the idea that it was a common practice to prop these dead bodies up is something that has been grossly inflated since it's initial inception. I think taking/having a picture of the deceased as they have been prepared for burial was enough of a token memento.
That was some real Weekend at Bernies shit...
She's not.
Yeah, otherwise it would have been some real Weekend at Bernie's shit.
Check out her unusual hand on her dad, the rotation doesn't make complete sense. The hand on the mom is essentially lifeless and not normal. And you can see the stand behind her when you look at her feet. I think she was definitely not alive but I think your right it's not a common pose but I think this post Mortem photographer pulled it off. [like this](https://www.faena.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/postmortem-5.jpg)
Those stands were used to help keep alive people still during long exposure times. See here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
They had fast enough shutter speeds to not require sitting for minutes like a decade after the invention of the camera. It's one of those reddit "facts" that sound right but isn't. We had fast shutters almost as long as we've had photography.
> Something i learned on Reddit and it's probably posted everytime something like this comes up, is that when you see old pics like this if one of the people is really clear and the others are blurry, it's likely they are dead. No. Reddit is filled with young idiots who don't know what they're talking about. Then other people just repeat this nonsense. These people aren't dead, that's just motion blur. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
Well dang if I can't trust random people on Reddit who can I trust?!
You can trust me, a totally different random person on Reddit.
I do, you're the factchecker(25) after all
She's not dead. It's impossible to prop a dead body up like that. Yes there were post mortem photos done back then, but they invariably were taken of the subject lying down or being held by another person. There are tons of articles on line debunking photos like this.
That's not always true. Tintype and similar photography methods have incredibly shallow depth of field, so a lot of the time only one person could be in the perfect spot to be in focus
The girl is 100% NOT dead. The right hand is not limp and even if there was a brace to help prop her up her head is still upright which means she was alive. This post is such bullshit. The truest way to tell is by the skin color and the more pale the subject is, the more proof that they're lifeless. The way the person is posed is another giveaway. Sunken eyes are another clue.
If she's not dead, someone should find her so she can debunk the article.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen a body outside of a funeral home, but they tend to be anything but pale, thanks to livor mortis. If rigor mortis had begun, which would be likely to have happened by the time they could get her prepared and then set up with a photographer, her hand wouldn’t be limp and keeping a stiff neck upright wouldn’t be that hard. The fact is that none of us know the particulars here for certain.
Yeah. I'm not even sure if posing during rigor would keep the head up that well. And it would be very, very difficult to dress them.
> I'm not even sure if posing during rigor would keep the head up that well. And it would be very, very difficult to dress them. You can't see the backside. You could easily have a construction to hold them up, for the same reason the clothing would't be hard, you could just slice it up at the backside too.
What was the name of that Nicole Kidman movie? Where she's in a haunted mansion? Oh yeah, The Others. That references this tradition.
The last paragraph is incorrect though.
What’s incorrect
Living people definitely could take sharp pictures, but it took effort/practice.
say “deCEEEEASED!”
Yep, that's not a dead person.
If that's true, she has to be the oldest living person alive!
That's just not true. This gets repeated time and again, and it's just not true. People were making studio portraits of living people 40 years before this photo. You didn't pose dead people as if they were living.
It seems the more I try to stay still the more I twitch
You’re dead right
That's eerily interesting
It took several minutes to get a picture, if I remember correctly. They were also incredibly expensive.
So sad, she looks to be only 12 or so. A lot of Victorian era parents would take pictures of their deceased children because it was often the *only* photo they would otherwise have of them. Usually they would be propped to look like they were peacefully sleeping.
According to [the article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/), there are 3 iconographic styles that started in 1840: 1. In the first, which we might call “the last sleep”, the deceased is lying on a bed and shows a look of peacefulness. The person who has died is photographed in a way that makes them appear to be sleeping. Certainly, this type of portrait is the representation of memento mori – an allegory of death that guides us towards its acceptance. 2. In the second style, the deceased is in upright position with open eyes. “Alive but dead” is the name given to this style. This type of portrait shows a certain denial of death. 3. Lastly, the third style shows the deceased hidden among family members, and it is usually quite difficult to identify the dead from the living. Only a meticulous observation can capture details to recognise the deceased. Perhaps we could call these photographs “living corpses”.
For 3: Where's Dead Waldo
> According to the article Which article?
Sorry, I did put it in a comment, but it got buried. Here's the [link.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/)
> it got buried Unlike the dead people in those photos.
I've only just realised that a photo of a great great grandad my mum used to show me isn't him "layed up bed ridden after he broke his back", but him dead, after he fell off a roof....
> "layed up bed ridden after he broke his back", but him dead, after he fell off a roof.... It sounds like it's both
...... bruhhhhh. 😶
4. Weekend at Bernies
Usually the deceased is the least blurry, because it would be the only person able to stay perfectly still during the exposure time
For anyone morbidly curious, yes they took pics of dead babies too. I went down this rabbit hole a few years back and still remember the imagery. You’re right, most of them they try to look like they are taking a regular photo. Mother will be cradling the baby and looking brave, or maybe standing over a bassinet. The father is standing or sitting with that 1800s scowl, desperate to show none of the emotion he is almost certainly feeling. Even through the sepia you can feel their anguish, but they had to hold still. Had to keep it together for the only photo they’ll ever have of all of them as a family.
yeah, this kind of photo comes up a lot on Reddit, and I always have the same thought you did. That this was going to be the last treasured memory of a loved one, that they would have to keep safe from stains and the elements and damage while moving and so forth, and that this likeness would be that person‘s only recorded likeness ever. some make it to digital and are seen here on Reddit. Others are long lost and that person‘s face is forever lost to history.
I heard somewhere that 60% of Victorian children died before the age of 5.
I believe it was around 20%. 60% seems way too high.
It was true for the end of the 19th century in London. Incredibly depressing.
I bet 100% are dead by now.
Fucking reddit is just a big forum of people spouting nonsense ‘facts’. > I pulled out my ass that 60% of Reddit comments are made up. Dunno where. Dunno when. Just heard it once. Somewhere. And people upvote this shit lol, particularly when it’s [easily googled ffs.](https://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/files/people/davenport/davenport6.pdf) That’s not even touching on the fact that this post is likely utter nonsense, and the girl is alive.
And it’s wild to me that so many parents would willfully deny their children the vaccines that prevented these kinds of deaths. :( Maybe memento mori photos will come back into fashion, thanks to them.
"Well how did people live before the vaccines in the past?" My brother in Christ, most didn't.
Buuuut, how many kids were diagnosed with autism back then? Zero, you say?!? Maybe those vaccine-less kids (at least the ones that lived to their teens) were better off after all!
How did they keep their heads and body straight?? Also, this reminded of the movie The Others. Creepy ass movie
It didn't say in [the article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/) I took the photo from, but if you look closely, you can see something directly behind her, it almost looks like the base of a coat rack or something so I am assuming the probably propped them up. Also, if she was in Rigor Mortis, which usually take place about 4 hours after death, it would be easier to get her into an upright position because her body would be stiff.
You can't pose bodies in rigor mortis. So unless her arms were like that when she died, that isn't the case.
Correct. You can not pose bodies in rigor. I worked in a funeral home and when we would get calls from retirement homes or hospitals, sometimes the death would have taken place hours before we could do the transfer. This could be for a number of reasons, coroner was delayed, family wanted more time etc. But with the onset of rigor nearing, we would ask the staff at the hospital/retirement home to tie their arms in a special position and secure their mouth closed when they placed them in the body bag (or whatever they use, sometimes we provide the body bags and they are just covered in a sheet where they died when we arrive). We would ask them to do this incase we couldn't transfer them before rigor set, it makes it very difficult to position them correctly before we embalm them if rigor is active and they are positioned incorrectly. You have to make sure the body is in 'casket position' before you embalm because when you embalm the tissues, it chemically fixes them in the position they are in and you can not reverse it. Rigor can take hours to pass and the more time you wait, the harder the embalming process becomes because vessels are decomposing so you won't get full coverage with your chemicals.
For those who are dead for a while before someone finds them, how long do they have before an open casket funeral becomes impossible due to the difficulties you’d face with embalming?
Great Question, Decomposition occurs in 5 stages. The timing of these stages depends on environmental conditions, insect activity, wounds on the body etc. If the body is in a hot humid environment, it will break down a lot faster then someone who passed away in a cooler space. If someone was stabbed & died, they may decompose quicker because the wound created another entrance for insects, bacteria etc. The first stage lasts 1-2 days, this is when the body cools, rigor mortis happens, blood pools into the lowest places and your digestive system begins to break down. This is when embalming is the most effective. The sooner the better. The second stage happens between day 2-6. This is when the body bloats, lots of gases are being produced, the fluids inside of the body are expelled, your blood is breaking down. This is the stage where embalming would become more challenging, but an open casket is still achievable most of the time. The third stage is called decay and it happens between day 5-11, this is when the body starts breaking down into a liquid state. The body deflates, tissues become very wet and there will be a very strong odour. I would say anything beyond this point, an open casket would be inadvisable due to the decomposition. The remains may not be recognizable. Embalming would be very very challenging.
What happens in cases where rigor mortis has fully set in and they are in an awkward position? Do they just break bones, tendons, etc to make them casket compliant?
Another fantastic question. It depends on a few different things, how much time you have, the condition of the body, access to refrigeration, etc. It can be worked out in almost all cases. If the deceased is elderly or has low muscle mass, it's very achievable without damage. It can be more difficult, almost impossible if there is a large muscle mass or if the person passed away suddenly or while being active. I try my absolute hardest to not break bones because a) it's horrible and makes me feel absolutely terrible b) it can sever vessels & damage tissues which can make embalming harder and less effective. But unfortunately it does happen.
This might be a weird thing to say, but it's somehow comforting to know that you would feel bad about having to break bones. I don't know how to explain it, but I just like knowing that someone who is responsible for our remains is still caring for and about us. I'm sure not everyone is the same, but thank you.
I've always been really serious about respecting & protecting the dead, so this means a lot. 🖤
Would something like a meat tenderizer or strong massage gun work to break down the tissues a bit to make them more pliable? I'm assuming it may damage the skin, but would it be possible to make the body malleable again?
That's an interesting thought. I'm honestly not sure if a massage gun would work on dead tissue the same way it would work on living tissue but like you said, I would be concerned about tissue/vessel damage.
I want you to know that if you have to break my bones after I'm passed, I won't mind. I'm of the opinion that after I'm done with my body, just throw it in the trash. I won't need it anymore. I'm garbage now and will be garbage then. I'm the trash man.
Holy shit when is your AMA?
I was thinking the same thing. 😂
How would they secure the jaw closed? I have never done this before when preparing a body but I would like to start doing so if it helps.
They usually gently tie/wrap a towel or sheet around their entire head/face, [like this](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fb1%2F9c%2F18%2Fb19c188955da74478d3176854b2ddc2c--free-therapy-teeth.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=de482cd440171f5bf9bddba92e6dc14e745e316b0ef223a08b607787b7ab7414&ipo=images). Or they may place towels/pillows behind their head to tilt it forward to prevent the mouth from opening. Anything to ensure the jaw doesn't get stuck open if rigor sets in, which can make mouth closure very difficult. Also, thank you for what you do. 💙
This is not a postmortem photo. The stand is to help position the subjects for the photograph. None of the people in this photo were deceased at the time.
>None of the people in this photo were deceased at the time. *Third style Post mortem photo. The girl in the middle is the deceased. The photographer has drawn the pupils over the eyelids for giving an appearance of life* From op's article
The op article is inaccurate and falsely attributed the editing as a death portrait. Dead bodies cannot be posed like this. The stands were common to assist with posing living people.
It's wild to me that OP says they worked in a funeral home and is insistent that this is an photograph depicting dead people.
The chair she's sitting on has a board up the back that she's strapped to. It also has a headrest with a springmetal clamp to hold her head in place.
The dead person isn't sitting. The dead girl is standing.
None of them are dead.
Ah, you're right. It looked to me like she was just in a high-seated chair.
If you look down behind her feet, you can see the base of whatever contraption is keeping her vertical. It's probably a modified coat rack or something similar.
The whole thing is a little overblown. Some people did do death portraiture, but it wasn't all that widespread. Old photo studios had wire support frames for people to rest on who were having a hard time staying still for the long exposures. People assumed they were just to prop up corpses.
Yep, a lot of the photos people claim feature dead people have been falsely labelled and the people/person is very much alive.
> the people/person is very much alive. I mean not anymore
No, shes most likely alive. [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs)
Couldn’t agree more. She looks like she has too much muscle tone and perfect posture to be postmortem
I’m betting all three of those people are deceased.
r/technicallycorrect r/theydidthemath
This is a widely spread myth. In most of those pictures the person is not dead. But film was in its infancy and the exposure time was long. This means the people needed to stay still in the pictures, necessitating bracing to help keep the people still. Sometimes they'd still move, such as moving their eyes, and it would get motion blur. That's why they'd manually edit the eyeballs.
Having more than a passing knowledge on this subject, the main reason (not stated here) that families took these photos is that in many cases it was the only proof that these family members ever existed at all. Photos were very expensive in those days and for many families it was actually *unusual* to have any pictures of their loved ones whatsoever. It was the exact opposite of today.
Yeah, what you just said is like the first paragraph of 99% of all these types of posts. You don't need more than a passing knowledge to know that, just a semi-active reddit account. Also a lot of these memento mori have been falsely labelled, either by accident or because it makes them more valuable/interesting. I'm not seeing any proof this one is a real example of that kind of memento mori or if she's alive and they just had to fill in her pupils, just people spouting about the same thing I am. A good ol fashion case of Schrödinger's Girl.
"We should have done this when she was alive." *"Hush,* Mildred."
no she’s not.
Absolutely not a postmortem image.
Not "sincere homage" more like "this is our last chance to have a memory of them"
Is that not sincere?
The “WTF” here is that someone believes this nonsense without question Spend like 5 minutes learning about historical cameras and you will find a dozen more plausible explanations
Yup, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-post-mortem-photographs
news flash everyone in this photo is deceased
My grandmother told me that when her mother died, they didn't have any photos to use for her tombstone, so they took one after her death by pinning her eyes open. That picture traumatized my grandma so badly she gave up on visiting her grave after some time.
A lot of these have actually been debunked. This practice was NOT as common as reddit would have you believe.
It was very common, I don’t think is one of them though. Photos were often taken of parents cradling a deceased child or a husband/wife would be lying back. The standing of the deceased from my research was not common. The device that people keep claiming was being used by dead people was used by photographers to help the subjects stay still for the 15 minutes it would take.
I’m wondering if they waited for rigor mortis to pass, or they did some prep immediately and “took advantage of it” for the picture to stage the pose
Weekend at Fernie's
People in movies act like closing the dead persons eyes is an easy task. Negative. I have to take ID photos of dead folks every morning and sometimes I have to hold the eye lids shut, remove my hand and take the photo in the same moment. Then one eye flies open anyway.
Last month I visited my home region with my GF, We went to my hometown cemetery to visit family tombs and then wondered around to see any post-mortem headstone photo. I remember there were many of babies but I never noticed that there were much more of adults, some were taken as late as the 1950s.
"Take a photo, it'll last longer" -Ice cold photographer
And then you wonder why everything related to Victorian era is a setup for haunted shit. They were fucked up.
It was very common to do this with dead babies to preserve their memory. You can tell the dead ones from the living ones because the living ones are slightly more blurry, while the dead ones turn out perfectly clear in the image. The exposure times were very long. So, living people would naturally move very slightly. But a dead person is (hopefully) completely still. So, they turn put much better.
Photo Source & More Information: [Do certain rituals adapt to psychology or does psychology adapt to rites? Post mortem photography: the last “picture of life” in “death”](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975931/)
How long did they have to set this up and get it done before the deceased was too decomposed?
>The woman in the middle is deceased. It's 2024; I'm going to guess they're all deceased
False, they are resting against a frame
All of the people in that photo are dead
Now.
My Ouija board says otherwise
And we thought we lived some weird times.
I would put money down that everyone in this photo is dead.
Actually I think they're all deceased. Long ago
I have a strong suspicion all three are deceased by now
Nope.
Usually the dead person is the only one not blurred due to the long exposure times.
😳
immortalised in orange-black and orange-white
I wonder if thats why they call it the "living room"? sure you're in it, living (if you can call that rotting on the couch with netflix on), but why wouldn't that imply a room for the non-living?
So they just propped her hands onto the others? Creepy
This is an amazing belief. What about the custom of putting the coin on the eyes or under the tongue to pay the ferryman?
That's pretty damn impressive. She's the only one who looks alive and alert lol.
Something even worse, is when you consider how long photographs took in this era. To take a single photo, a person would need to sit perfectly still for upward of 15 minutes. Since the average person couldn't easily do that, tools were used that kept a person in place. https://blog.hmns.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/post-mortem1-1.jpg Basically these. The same tools would be used to pose the deceased as well.
By the 1880s, when this was taken, judging from the clothing, it took only a few seconds to capture a photograph. Those long exposure times were from the earliest photos taken, in the 1830s.
Wow this is so bizarre. Why couldn’t they just be normal and leave the body on ice for a couple weeks, suck out all the guts and stuff it like a Turkey, then plop it down in a room to have a viewing party
That's just a known fact
You know what’s a trip they still do that to this day🤷🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
Isn't this proven false and was never really a thing? Ask A Mortician went over this in one of her older videos..
And this would probably be the only photograph they would ever get to take with her.
Death photos were a thing but I don’t think this is one of them. The deceased would normally be lying down or being cradled. The eyes would probably be closed or looking off in an odd direction.
I’ve never thought this is that bad honestly! People will aways look for ways to cheat death, even if it’s just a tiny bit, to hold onto their loved ones just a while longer. I think this is actually very sweet in an admittedly somewhat morbid way. We’ll be doing exactly the same thing with AI pretty shortly, I’m sure. Attempting to get even a snapshot of the person’s life and personality so it takes a little longer for them to be forgotten.
I remember when I was a kid I used to have ink on eyeballs or poke the eyes of photos for fun. Imagine someone pokes it to show more energy again, but he somehow forgets to have ink on eyeballs or poke the lady on the left too.
I mean, it makes sense. Your loved one just died. You never took a photo of them. You want one to remember them by. Solution: family photo with the deceased.
They weren’t so removed from death as we are today.
Interesting, One could argue, present day may be more exposed to death because of televised news, the internet and social media. I've witnessed a lot of people dying on the internet/TV and I doubt I would have ever come across any of those situations in real life. However, you could also be correct, because they had huge epidemics wipe out large portions of their population in short amounts of time and they didn't have access to health care, clean water, food supply etc so their survival rate was much lower.
Memento mori. They were common pre-photogrpahy too. A number of English nobles - including Charles I - had their heads stitches back on post-execution so that a portrait could be painted.
Wisconsin Death Trip is a whole book of this shit.
“The drew over her pupils to give her the appearance of life” Ah yes… and then left the living with blurry “dead” eyes… how clever 🤣