Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870-1914

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Cambridge University Press, 2005 M07 25 - 294 pages
With high mortality rates, it has been assumed that the poor in Victorian and Edwardian Britain did not mourn their dead. Contesting this approach, Julie-Marie Strange studies the expression of grief among the working class, demonstrating that poverty increased--rather than deadened--it. She illustrates the mourning practices of the working classes through chapters addressing care of the corpse, the funeral, the cemetery, and commemoration. This book, which draws on a broad range of sources, will be an invaluable contribution to an important area of social and cultural history.

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Contents

Introduction revisiting the Victorian and Edwardian celebration of death
1
Life sickness and death
27
Caring for the corpse
66
The funeral
98
Only a pauper whom nobody owns reassessing the pauper burial
131
Remembering the dead the cemetery as a landscape for grief
163
Loss memory and the management of feeling
194
Grieving for dead children
230
Epilogue death grief and the Great War
263
Bibliography
274
Index
290
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