The Victorian era was a blossom season for death, gore, and bloody tales. This era had an essential key to people exploring different ways of preserving the dead. For example, in the Victorian era, the parents of deceased children would hire people to prop open their children's eyes and paint them as if they were still alive.
Victorian people would put their dead loved ones on prop-up stands and take pictures of them, as if they were alive. The photographers would try to create portraits of the dead, to represent who they were alive, not dead, and so tried to make them appear alive. Some were sat up, sometimes with eyes open.
Mourning clothes were worn to display a family’s inner feelings. The deepest mourning clothes were black, to show spiritual darkness. The length of mourning depended on your relationship to the deceased. Widows were expected to wear full mourning for two years. Children's mourning period of time was one year, grandparents and siblings was six months, for aunts and uncles, two months, for great uncles and aunts, six weeks, and for first cousins, four weeks. Everyone participated in some type of mourning period.
The whole household - including a cat - has gathered round a dead child on the floor, who is posed as if sleeping. The second kid is posed in a chair with a religious message, they would put this to raise hope that they would get to see their kids in another life.
