Rites of Passage: Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain

by Judith Flanders

In Rites of Passage, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders deconstructs the intricate, fascinating, and occasionally – to modern eyes – bizarre customs that grew up around death and mourning in Victorian Britain.

Through stories from the sickbed to the deathbed, from the correct way to grieve and to give comfort to those grieving to funerals and burials and the reaction of those left behind, Flanders illuminates how living in nineteenth-century Britain was, in so many ways, dictated by dying.

This is an engrossing, deeply researched and, at times, chilling social history of a period plagued by infant death, poverty, disease, and unprecedented change. In elegant, often witty prose, Flanders brings the Victorian way of death vividly to life.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Victorian, Death

395 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 29, 2024

About the author

Judith Flanders was born in London, England, in 1959. She moved to Montreal, Canada, when she was two, and spent her childhood there, apart from a year in Israel in 1972, where she signally failed to master Hebrew.

After university, Judith returned to London and began working as an editor for various publishing houses. After this 17-year misstep, she began to write and in 2001 her first book, A Circle of Sisters, the biography of four Victorian sisters, was published to great acclaim, and nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. In 2003, The Victorian House (2004 in the USA, as Inside the Victorian Home) received widespread praise, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards History Book of the Year. In 2006 Consuming Passions, was published. Her most recent book, The Invention of Murder, was published in 2011.

Judith also contributes articles, features and reviews for a number of newspapers and magazines.

Reviews

[Fionnuala · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of those delightful Victorian book finds: exactly what I was hoping for. All social history with absolutely ever related topic discussed in detail: the sickbed, accidental/unlawful death, preparations for the body and the funeral, the funeral itself, the wake, mourning, the spiritual/supernatural, burial and cemeteries/graveyards, body-snatching, customs, etiquette... anything you could hope to know. It was all here in deeply compelling and clearly-written chapters, with plentiful illustrations both in colour in the centerfold and scattered throughout to further illuminate the text.

Flanders is a passionate author who really knows her stuff. There's so much information in here and it's all clear, entertaining, and never loses you -- one of those books you could binge-read no problem or dip into at random; a fun leisure read but also a good tool for research. (I am sure I'll be drawing on it for some of the things I'm writing.) I've wanted this book since I saw it in hardback a year or so ago, and I'm very gratified to find that it's lived up to my hopes.

The only reason this is not a five-star review is simply a matter of personal taste: I have recently read a few histories that touch on or involve the subject, primarily the issue of graveyards and cemeteries in London and their development/associated issues both that they were solving and that they caused. This resulted in the information in this book on those topics being quite repetitive for me and therefore not as engaging, but this is obviously no fault of the author's and I would still highly recommend this book for anyone fascinated by the relationship between the Victorians and death, or anyone writing on/researching the period in general.

[Magdalena Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was brilliant. I love Victorian Britain and I've been fascinated by the Victorian approach towards death and mourning for years. Judith Flanders covered sickbed and deathbed, funeral and burial customs, mourning clothes and superstitions and, of course, my absolute favourite life after death and Spiritualism. I loved the final chapter on Peter Pan because I've never seen Peter like Flanders described him - to me he was always a mischievous kid from a Disney film!!! Brilliantly researched, Flanders's writing feels somewhat academic but it's super accessible and reads very well. Although I've read a lot of books about the topic, both out of my personal interest and when researching for and writing my MA dissertation several years ago, I still learnt something new and thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

[Izzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[History Today]

Alfred, Lord Tennyson died a poet’s death. His son Hallam wrote that, after listening to a prayer taken from his own verses, he lay in bed, a ‘figure of breathing marble, flooded and bathed in the light of the full moon streaming through his oriel window’, clasping a volume of Shakespeare as he expired. If this sounds too picturesque to be true, then it probably was. Victorians liked to memorialise their relatives – especially when they were public figures – in ways that emphasised their calm readiness for the life to come and suppressed the delirious indignities that so often attend death. Rites of Passage is a capacious and jaunty survey of the scripts they followed when they mourned, which Judith Flanders identifies as one of their chief preoccupations. In terming theirs ‘the age of death, dying and mourning’, Flanders echoes historians who have identified – and exaggerated – a ‘Victorian cult of the dead’. But what sets her book apart is its persistent attention to people who disputed or quietly dodged its costly obligations.

Death has always been our biological fate. It seems no more helpful to call the Victorian period a distinctive ‘age of death’ than it would be to call it the ‘age of sleep’ or the ‘century of digestion’. It is true that, as Flanders points out, early Victorian cities were unusually unhealthy places, reservoirs of contagion occasionally ravaged by epidemics. Child mortality remained a grim problem – many had cause to echo the Reverend Sydney Smith’s saying that ‘the life of a parent is the life of a gambler’. Yet it would be difficult to claim that death loomed larger for Victorians than their predecessors. From mid-century there were impressive falls in general and particularly in infant mortality, which reflected investments in sanitation infrastructure as well as rising standards of nutrition and housing. As Flanders argues, it was not death that changed, but the Victorians: elaborate mourning was a cultural phenomenon which reflected changes in society.

The most important was rampant commercialisation. Flanders, the author of an excellent book on the business of Victorian leisure, understands that the pressure to establish one’s identity through conspicuous consumption did not spare mourners. Undertakers pressured the middle classes to stage increasingly elaborate funerals which underlined their respectability, as well as the virtues of the deceased. Haberdashers opened mourning warehouses (or, more grandly, ‘maisons de deuil’) where women could stock up on black crape garments for a year of mourning. Advances in technology and manufacturing meant there was always choice in grief. Why settle for black velvet as a coffin cover, when you might now have holly green? Locks of hair might be fashioned into elaborate jewellery or used to decorate photographs, which bestowed a kind of grainy immortality on the dead.

The bucolic cemeteries such as Highgate or Nunhead which soon ringed London and other cities were expressions of a slow burning romanticism. But they were also the creations of joint stock companies and supposed to turn a profit through the sale of plots. Here the interests of godly businessmen mingled with the concerns of reformers, who pushed the state to regulate away what they saw – perhaps with undue alarm – as the gravely unsanitary practice of traditional interments in urban churchyard.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Michael Ledger-Lomas is the author of Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown (Oxford University Press, 2021).

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book as it says on the cover; an exploration of death and mourning in Victorian Britain. I enjoyed the stories of the cult of mourning as it was and the requirements of society which made for interesting reading particularly as the expectations on women were much more than what was required for the bereaved man. The chapters explore various aspects, clothing, ritual and grave robbing which was fascinating all be it as much in the book different rules for different classes. Some of it was very poignant especially infant mortality. The book ends on Peter Pan and Queen Victoria, an unlikely partnering for the final chapter but it fits in well.

[Kathryn McCarrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

In every sense a perfect book! Informative and truly interesting with a breadth of knowledge on an aspect of life many do not want to think about in detail. This is a perfect first stop for those wanting to know more! Permanent place on my shelf has been earnt and will be reading this again.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating in-depth study of how the Victorians dealt with death and mourning, particularly when life expectancy was so low in poorer communities and infant death was common in most families. Many of the rituals described here were bizarre but much else is easily relatable to modern day experiences. What is quite surprising is the extent to which the rituals, particularly the clothing, surrounding death and mourning were so commercialised.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took comfort from reading examples of handling death and grief thought of as strange now were in the past found completely normal but this is a tough read for anyone who has ever lost a child.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its melancholic subject matter, this is definitely the best book she's written. A fascinating subject written in a compelling and engaging manner

[Julie Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engrossing and captivating account of a forgotten era when the living and the dead walked side by side.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very fascinating way of dealing with death.
Victorians were an interesting lot and the traditions that we have in modern mourning can be traced here. Although I will say, I'm very glad to be living in an age with technology and medicine.

[Old Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the author's obvious dislike of our Empire I found this book to be an excellent read. Having worked as a Nurse for over 35 years I would suggest that many of the 'victorian' attitudes and beliefs around death are alive and well (no pun intended) here in 21st century England.

[Hayley Dunning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and engaging, just enough detail.

[Stu Napier · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly captivating exploration of the rituals, beliefs, and fears (both real and imagined) involved in the Victorian experience of death.

[Deb Lancaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and very entertaining. Once again confirms Queen Victoria was a truly horrible old woman.

[J.S. Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read.

[Jean Marriott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Well written and researched

[Polly Perks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply interesting material, some of which was familiar and some of which was completely new information. Flanders has a very accessible style which is pleasing to the reader when you’re taking in lots of new facts.