Victorian Death and Mourning

OCTOBER 3 - November 3, 2024

Last half of the 1800s brought widespread changes to Victorian life.  Rapid industrialization and urbanization resulted in fast-paced, constant change which, in turn, fostered a spectrum of social and economic problems that permeated every aspect of Victorian life.  Among these were deplorable working conditions, poverty, alcoholism, rise of crime, widespread disease.   There was one constant in Victorian life:  Death.

In London during the middle of the 19th century, the average lifespan for the middle to upper class males was only 44 years, for tradesmen 25 years, for laborers a mere 22 years as conditions such as quality of life, quality of health care, difficulty of work diminished proportionally with each step down in economic class.  The grim toll was even higher on children.

Death was so commonplace that it permeated every aspect of Victorian life and lead to a morbid fascination with the macabre and elaborate rituals to commemorate the dead. In many ways, coping with death became an art form.

Hearthstone explores Victorian ideas on death and mourning has part of its month-long Victorian Death and Mourning exhibit with the entire house decorated according to Victorian norms (draped windows and mirrors, stopped clocks, overturned photos, and a casket in the parlor) and exhibits of Victorian memento mori (items made to remind the living of the dead) including jewelry made from the departed loved one’s hair as well funereal items, all on loan from the remarkable Loomis Family collection. Mourning clothing, which was highly regimented, is also on display.

Victorian Death and Mourning is included on all regular daytime tours of Hearthstone and serves as a backdrop for special daytime tours Horrors of the Household and evening theatrical performances of Sequential Killers of the Victorian Age - Season Seven (please refer to the events section for details).

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man

Permanent Exhibit

An inventive genius who worked along side some of the most famous names in American history - Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim, Thomas Edison - before gaining his own fame as an inventor and educator, Lewis Latimer is the subject of a new permanent exhibit at Hearthstone.

The exhibit, initially a part of Hearthstone’s celebration of Black History Month and now on permanent display, covers Latimer’s life and his most important inventions. The exhibit features artifacts and video presentations covering Lewis Latimer but also his parents’ fight for freedom from slavery. Their struggle was a cause celebre, championed by giants of abolitionism including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, that outraged New England society ten years before the Dred Scott decision.

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man is included in every tour of Hearthstone.