Morbid gallery of Victorians

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Dressed in his Sunday best, a Victorian gentleman with a faraway look in his eyes sits in a chair while his photograph is taken.But if his posture seems rather unnatural, it is for good reason. He is dead.These remarkable pictures show the morbid way that the deceased were remembered in the late 19th century

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The Victorians experimented with different types of photography - and even took snaps of dead relatives

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Known as post-mortem photography, Victorians had pictures taken of the recently deceased - sometimes staged to look as if they were still alive

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Children were often shown in repose on a couch or in a crib

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Sometimes the subject's eyes were propped open or the pupils were painted onto the print to give the effect they were alive.
In early images, a rosy tint was added to the cheeks of corpses.
By the early 20th century, the practice fell out of fashion as photos became more commonplace with the arrival of the snapshot.

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