Death and Burial in the Victorian Age: Social Darwinism

Life Expectancy: Golden Age of Funerals

You may realistically ask, "What does life expectancy in the Victorian Era have to do with morality?"

Simple ...
life expectancy = directly related to wealth ... poor die young ... rich lived longer

Remember ... the majority of the rich perceive ...

• it is the fault of the person for being in the working class or poor

• it is wrong for any to be discontent with their condition in life (i.e., working class or poor) because this is where God put them (heaven forbid it would be man! with all his man-made rules and regulations)

• it is a VERY foreign concept for rich Christians to help others around them ... they tend to enjoy the adulation the working class and poor give them and their entourage (i.e., servants, employees, middle class friends, etc.)



Today, many middle class Americans constantly give to others that are starving. As individuals, small groups, and churches, we collect money, have food drives, and more.

This was not really happening to the degree it is today during the Victorian Era. Too many swallowed Herbert Spencer's myth of the survival of the fittest (i.e., sociological darwinism) ...


So what if the wealthy wore a cloak of Christianity while they imported wheat and cotton crops from other nations that put their people out of work (to the tune of only 1/3 of the farmers surviving this in England)?


Common Rationalizations (i.e., excuses) used when applying SOCIAL DARWINISM ...

• it is simply the rules of the economic market ... supply & demand!

• Business is business!

• Since when does Christianity apply to business? You cannot apply the Golden Rule to economics! You apply it to everyone and anything else, but NOT business!

• Of course it is okay to take over other businesses and cause owners to suffer! That's just plain business! (he/she wasn't a good business person anyway, they couldn't do ___________, etc.)

• Who cares how many unemployed may result from the decision to import those things that local farmers used to grow!? It makes more economic sense to go after a buck!

(these are only a few examples, there are TONS of them that were operating during the Victorian Age and, sad to say, these same types of excuses are still used to cloak social darwinism under the thin veneer of "Christianity" and operate today


Statistics

average life expectancy = 40 years

Mid-Victorian Era life expectancy = Liverpool = 15!!!!

3 out of every 20 babies die before their first birthday

1899 upper class Liverpool = 136 newborns out of 1000 would die before the age of 1

Working class = 274 infant deaths per 1000 births

Impoverished slums = 509 infant deaths per 1000 births

Alexander Finlaison reported = 1/2 of all children of farmers, laborers, artisans, & servants died before 5th birthday compared to 1 in 11 children of the land owning gentry

children suffer = influenza outbreaks, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, and typhoid

poor sanitary conditions (no piped water, lack of immunizations, etc.) contribute to death rate

All have bad breath because of poor dentistry
(modern research indicates poor dental hygiene has a direct correlation to earlier death rates)





Women ...


• died younger (childbirth, inferior food consumption, tended to nurse sick which led to own sickness, etc.)

• Societal expectations of rich women = delicate, not “ladylike” to exercise or have an appetite

•custom = best food given to boys / men (females suffered)... amazingly, this contradicted the notion of the rich that women were weaker ... obviously, weaker vessels needed to have the best food and not the men ... but folks are never consistent & may never be logical (now or then)

Lower classes ... debilitated by the age of forty due long hours, poor nutrition (frequently malnutrition), and premature full-time employment = early death cause

1840 London’s Whitechapel District = (average rates)
Upper class =45 years
Tradesmen = 27 years
Laborers & servants = 22 years





[Source: Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1988.
Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1996]




Coffins are a Familiar Sight

Cholera = pandemic in Europe in 1831-33, 1848-49, 1853-54, 65-67
( London, 53 000 died in one year)

Chicago = malaria rampant cuz built on marsh land

some funerals are lavish and extreme ... professional mourners ('mutes') mournfully walk in the funeral procession

... because there are so many deaths, rituals complete with more rules and regulations pop up ...






Morning stages ... each has own rules... servants and family observe

• Stage 1
deep mourning (full mourning) ... curtains drawn, clocks stopped, mirrors covered, guards hired to protect body from grave robbers

• Stage 2
half-mourning ... usually begins after body buried

Images associated with death appear ...

draped urns, broken columns, weeping willows appear on tombstones, portraits and embroidered samplers

Again, the Victorian Era has a great deal to answer for ...

It is sad and scary to hear that some of you ladies are saying some folks want to return to a Victorian Era-like timeframe ... it sounds like they have made it into some kind of idealized "Christian" society ... it most definitely was not ...

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

The Self-Righeous Victorians

Martin Luther's (1483-1546) statement ...

‘Sin doesn’t harm us as much as our own righteousness.’

The Victorian Era seems to embody self-righteousness ... they made up all these crazy rules & regulations

It was a cookie-cutter type of Christianity that was in many respects becoming irrelevant to the world around them and society at large


I keep hearing Christ's words in my head that he that would be first shall be last


REAL Christianity ... however ... is never irrelevant (at least in my opinion)

~ says Lady Victorian Historian

Christian Women's Temperance Movement

The Victorian Era had an unrealistic and idealized vision of a family which led to and/or exacerbated a great many social ills. Opium use by females was considered “genteel” and “feminine” while public intoxication was deeply frowned upon.

[Note: As I documented earlier, the Victorians were well aware of the many problems associated with opium usage.]

Some went so far as to sterilize those that habitually consumed alcohol. In an 1897 Medico-Legal Society gathering, a Brooklyn doctor recommended women "be desexualized ... whether maid or matron” if they failed to respond to treatment.

[This practice was continued in the eugenics movement which emphasized the sterilization of “the unfit” & was picked up on by the Nazis approx. 33 years later in the 1930s]

The Women's Christian Temperance Movement was a Christian-based group. President Francis Willard, in 1874, began to push for prohibition. Earlier Temperance societies wanted to "temper" those using alcohol to socially accepted levels of alcohol consumption.

Problem: The more Christian women began to get involved in the issue, the more they realized how much women were being physically abused by their alcohol induced spouses leaving scares on their bodies and more.

1888: Dr. Lucy Hall studied 204 women under her care at the Reformatory Prison in Sherborn, Massachusetts. The majority began drinking before the age of 21 & over 1/3 of the married women had scars on their heads as a result of beatings from their drunken husbands.

Francis Willard, a brilliant strategist, pushed for prohibition. It is no coincidence that the 19th Amendment (prohibition) and the 20th Amendment (women's vote) passed within a year of each other. Her group was a major force behind prohibition, banning prostitution, and recreational drugs.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian

Rejection of Christianity in the Victorian Era

From Lady Victorian Historian

Christianity Rejected (in reality)

Christianity was being reduced to a bunch of rules and regulations. More often than not Christianity was stiffness and exclusiveness. The society attempted to maintain a moral facade, but underneath Utilitarianism reigned heartlessly.

Darwin became popular, not because he had new ideas (evolution had been around since ancient Greece if not before), but because folks wanted it. The Industrial Revolution was atheistic at its core. It ran rough shod over individuals, children, families, married couples, etc. Survival of the fittest (see Herbert Spencer) was used for business practices whereas in the early part of the Victorian Era at least a nod was given to the Golden Rule by businesses.

There was more than a hint at infanticide with respect to the poor. Remember many of the Nazi generals were children of the Victorian Era ... they were only putting into practice what had been espoused earlier. (Train up a child in the way ...)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson gives a vivid example of how bereft of morals the Victorian Era had become internally.

Spiritualism, on the other hand, was growing at a breakneck speed.

Is it any wonder that God would be defied? and a love of decadence would be apparent?

Many today have confused the Victorian Era as mainstream Christianity when that could be nothing further form the truth

It would be the Victorian Era that would produce domineering anarchists, socialists, and communists.

In many respects it was an empty era promoting hopelessness and, later, destruction.

~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian