Post mortem pictures

Julia Stilley Lynn standing, and sister Hannah Stilley Willard. Mannsville, Oklahoma. Daughters of Alfred & Nancy Ann Stilley.

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*Shudder*

Taking photographs of dead family members became popular in the 19th century, and appealed to those who wanted a memento of their relative (typically a child). It was not considered macabre, but faded from popularity probably after widespread use of affordable cameras allowed people to have photographs taken during life to serve the same purpose. "As the common practice of post-mortem photography in North America and Western Europe has largely ceased, the portrayal of such images has become…

The invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 made portraiture much more commonplace, as many of those who were unable to afford the commission...

There's a slightly macabre story about the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, a man so dissipated he expired from chronic alcoholism in his late 30s. (His last words purportedly were, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I think that's the record.") Lionized in America, he found the seductions of the White Horse pub a little too much for him and keeled over with a brain hemorrhage. His widow Caitlin recalls that when his body was being shipped back to Wales for burial, some of the deckhands…