March 6, 2026 • 6 mins
In the 1800s death was a lot more of a regular occurrence in people’s lives. Almost half of all children died by the time they were 5! So . . the Victorians developed some pretty unusual ways of processing that reality.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
When you think about the eighteen hundreds Gilded Age aside
big fan here, there's something a little eerie about the
way they approached life, and honestly, it was weirder than
you think. I'm Patty Steele. Why didn't you pop over
to my house for a death party? That's next on
the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Honestly, we look
(00:25):
at the kind of cool but also kind of creepy
way Victorian architecture, interior design, and fashion looked that intense,
dark Gothic style, and their literature, even love poems. It
seemed really morbid. But stop and think about it. While
the world around them was getting modernized with things like trains, cameras,
(00:46):
telegraph communications, early cars, and of course most especially the
light bulb, medicine was still in its infancy. Because of that,
death was a constant presence in most people's lives, especially
in cities, was rampant. Women frequently died in childbirth. But
here's a stat that at least it blew me away.
(01:08):
I think it'll blow you away too. In the US
and Europe, forty six percent of children died before the
age of five, So it kind of had to look
death in the face and maybe even find a way
to get comfortable with it, believe it or not. Popular
pastimes in the eighteen hundreds were death parties. If somebody died,
(01:29):
folks would get together, drink wine or sherry and plenty
of it, and munch on little cakes wrapped in paper
with poems that celebrated the dead person's life. Viewing parties
with the deceased usually took place, but not in a
funeral home, in your living room, or sometimes with a
dead person propped up in their own bed as if
(01:49):
they were sleeping. They'd be laid out with big blocks
of ice underneath to keep the body as fresh as possible.
But it didn't stop there. They'd often hire a photographer
to come and let those that wanted to get their
pictures taken with the departed. Often when families lost a
baby or a child, they had death portraits taken to
remember the little one. For adults that had passed the morning,
(02:12):
portraits would usually involve making the corpse look as lifelike
as possible. In some the person would appear to be
standing up, or maybe sitting in the parlor with their family,
or even sitting at the dining room table like they're
having a meal together, so it looked lively. As spiritualism
became a fad, some living folks had their picture taken
(02:35):
and then had a sort of transparent photo of the
deceased laid over it, so it looked like a ghost
of their loved one was standing with them. A guy
named William Mummler was a famous photographer in the mid
eighteen hundreds, and he claimed he was actually photographing real ghosts.
Mary Todd Lincoln had one of these made by him
(02:55):
in eighteen seventy two, with Abe Lincoln superimposed behind her
and his hands on her shoulders. She believed it was
really Abe and she loved it. Victorians also frequently had
death masks made, where plaster was slathered on the corpse's
face to make a lifelike copy of it as a momento.
(03:16):
Death was not something they kept quiet about. It was
a very public event, and how you responded to death
was an important social obligation. Widows were expected to wear
all black clothing and everything else for two years or more,
while husbands who lost their wives had to dress in
all black, but only for three months. They had to
(03:37):
find another wife, and their fascination with death, and the
occult crossed over into purely social events as well. One
thing that was all the rage in the mid eighteen
hundreds mummy unwrapping parties. Yeah, it's exactly what you're thinking.
Wealthy people would buy Egyptian mummies, and they bought them
(03:57):
by the hundreds, allegedly for scientific purposes, and then they'd
throw a huge party for all their friends, either at
a hospital, a university, or often in their magnificent homes.
They'd have the unwrapping of the mummy cloth, followed by
a doctor who specialized in anatomy coming in and doing
an autopsy for the crowd of partiers who were looking on.
(04:20):
Maybe even follow that up with a seance. Mummy unwrappings
were done for both entertainment and also scientific purposes. One
really famous doctor of Egyptology turned it into a really
big business. He sold himself as an expert in mummy unwrapping,
and he held dramatic unwrapping events, both for medical scholars
(04:41):
as well as for high society types. And there's more.
One of the weirdest uses for mummies in the Victorian
era was grinding them into a powder for a prescription
medicine called mummia supposedly a great medical cure for all
kinds of things. And if you were rich enough to
have your own mummy unwrapping party, then you could take
(05:03):
pieces of the mummy afterward, have a ground up and
give it to your guests as a party favor. They
in turn would rub it on wounds or even make
a tea out of it. Yeah. As weird as all
this sounds, you have to understand what it must have
been like to live in a time when death was
a constant occurrence, could be daily for some people. You
(05:26):
had to be a little numb to it. Last summer,
I was walking through a little churchyard in Pennsylvania on
the countryside, and I stopped at one family plot. The
parents and several of their children who lived to adulthood
all had large stones, but there were also six tiny headstones,
each maybe a foot tall, round on the top, one
(05:48):
next to the other, all for the couple's six children
never made it past the age of four. I hope
you like the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review.
I would love it if you you'd subscribe or follow
for free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also feel
free to dm me if you have a story you'd
like me to take a deeper look at. On Facebook,
(06:10):
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
(06:32):
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
When you think about the eighteen hundreds Gilded Age aside
big fan here, there's something a little eerie about the
way they approached life, and honestly, it was weirder than
you think. I'm Patty Steele. Why didn't you pop over
to my house for a death party? That's next on
the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Honestly, we look
(00:25):
at the kind of cool but also kind of creepy
way Victorian architecture, interior design, and fashion looked that intense,
dark Gothic style, and their literature, even love poems. It
seemed really morbid. But stop and think about it. While
the world around them was getting modernized with things like trains, cameras,
(00:46):
telegraph communications, early cars, and of course most especially the
light bulb, medicine was still in its infancy. Because of that,
death was a constant presence in most people's lives, especially
in cities, was rampant. Women frequently died in childbirth. But
here's a stat that at least it blew me away.
(01:08):
I think it'll blow you away too. In the US
and Europe, forty six percent of children died before the
age of five, So it kind of had to look
death in the face and maybe even find a way
to get comfortable with it, believe it or not. Popular
pastimes in the eighteen hundreds were death parties. If somebody died,
(01:29):
folks would get together, drink wine or sherry and plenty
of it, and munch on little cakes wrapped in paper
with poems that celebrated the dead person's life. Viewing parties
with the deceased usually took place, but not in a
funeral home, in your living room, or sometimes with a
dead person propped up in their own bed as if
(01:49):
they were sleeping. They'd be laid out with big blocks
of ice underneath to keep the body as fresh as possible.
But it didn't stop there. They'd often hire a photographer
to come and let those that wanted to get their
pictures taken with the departed. Often when families lost a
baby or a child, they had death portraits taken to
remember the little one. For adults that had passed the morning,
(02:12):
portraits would usually involve making the corpse look as lifelike
as possible. In some the person would appear to be
standing up, or maybe sitting in the parlor with their family,
or even sitting at the dining room table like they're
having a meal together, so it looked lively. As spiritualism
became a fad, some living folks had their picture taken
(02:35):
and then had a sort of transparent photo of the
deceased laid over it, so it looked like a ghost
of their loved one was standing with them. A guy
named William Mummler was a famous photographer in the mid
eighteen hundreds, and he claimed he was actually photographing real ghosts.
Mary Todd Lincoln had one of these made by him
(02:55):
in eighteen seventy two, with Abe Lincoln superimposed behind her
and his hands on her shoulders. She believed it was
really Abe and she loved it. Victorians also frequently had
death masks made, where plaster was slathered on the corpse's
face to make a lifelike copy of it as a momento.
(03:16):
Death was not something they kept quiet about. It was
a very public event, and how you responded to death
was an important social obligation. Widows were expected to wear
all black clothing and everything else for two years or more,
while husbands who lost their wives had to dress in
all black, but only for three months. They had to
(03:37):
find another wife, and their fascination with death, and the
occult crossed over into purely social events as well. One
thing that was all the rage in the mid eighteen
hundreds mummy unwrapping parties. Yeah, it's exactly what you're thinking.
Wealthy people would buy Egyptian mummies, and they bought them
(03:57):
by the hundreds, allegedly for scientific purposes, and then they'd
throw a huge party for all their friends, either at
a hospital, a university, or often in their magnificent homes.
They'd have the unwrapping of the mummy cloth, followed by
a doctor who specialized in anatomy coming in and doing
an autopsy for the crowd of partiers who were looking on.
(04:20):
Maybe even follow that up with a seance. Mummy unwrappings
were done for both entertainment and also scientific purposes. One
really famous doctor of Egyptology turned it into a really
big business. He sold himself as an expert in mummy unwrapping,
and he held dramatic unwrapping events, both for medical scholars
(04:41):
as well as for high society types. And there's more.
One of the weirdest uses for mummies in the Victorian
era was grinding them into a powder for a prescription
medicine called mummia supposedly a great medical cure for all
kinds of things. And if you were rich enough to
have your own mummy unwrapping party, then you could take
(05:03):
pieces of the mummy afterward, have a ground up and
give it to your guests as a party favor. They
in turn would rub it on wounds or even make
a tea out of it. Yeah. As weird as all
this sounds, you have to understand what it must have
been like to live in a time when death was
a constant occurrence, could be daily for some people. You
(05:26):
had to be a little numb to it. Last summer,
I was walking through a little churchyard in Pennsylvania on
the countryside, and I stopped at one family plot. The
parents and several of their children who lived to adulthood
all had large stones, but there were also six tiny headstones,
each maybe a foot tall, round on the top, one
(05:48):
next to the other, all for the couple's six children
never made it past the age of four. I hope
you like the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review.
I would love it if you you'd subscribe or follow
for free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also feel
free to dm me if you have a story you'd
like me to take a deeper look at. On Facebook,
(06:10):
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
(06:32):
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
Elvis Duran and the Morning Show ON DEMAND News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!