Victorian oddities for Halloween!

Of course i too have to do a Halloween blog post. Instead of low-quality costume pictures i present you some interesting oddities from the victorian era. I've collected some pictures to my computer as i find them quite interesting. Especially the life stories of these people. Please notice that this means actual dead people and people with real deformities! So if you can't take that, please skip this post.

First, people working in circuses

Many of these people were dependant on the circusses and thanks to the money they got from shows they performed in they could live quite normal lives. Most of these performers got married, had kids and could retire when they felt like it. Some of them got pretty rich, too. The most famous performers got a sum of money that would be nowadays 5000 dollars a week.

One of the first theme restaurants ever

And what would be more fun than damnation in Hell! Very victorian.

Post Mortem

One of the weirdest victorian habits in today's people's eyes is post-mortem photography. It was popular in the latter half of the century. Photographers took pictures of the deceased so that the families could have a memento of their loved ones. They made the bodies look like they were still living and doing normal everyday stuff like sleeping, reading, playing or just posing to the camera like a living person would. For us this seems very creepy and the pictures give us shivers but in my opinion it was also a very beautiful thing to do.

This is actually a pre mortem photo. The idea is the same, though. Not very nice for the dying child. "You will be gone but at least we will have this picture of you forever!"

Spiritography

As spiritism was a trend in the era some photographers invented a way to get their part of it. They charged quite a lot for these edited images and some of them were sold as the real thing and gullible customers believed it and were happy to pay. Some were just like post mortem, a memento of the deceased and sold as nothing more.

And i think that's it. Happy Halloween!