Death in the Victorian Family

Patricia Jalland

Oxford University Press, 1996 - Family & Relationships - 464 pages

This engrossing book explores family experiences of dying, death, grieving, and mourning in the years between 1830 and 1920. So many Victorian letters, diaries, and death memorials reveal a deep preoccupation with death which is both fascinating and enlightening. Pat Jalland has examined the correspondence, diaries, and death memorials of fifty-five families to show us deathbed scenes of the time, good and bad deaths, the roles of medicine and religion, children's deaths, funerals and cremations, widowhood, and mourning rituals.

Contents

• The Evangelical Ideal of the Good Death: 17
• The Revival and Decline of the Good Christian Death: 39
• Bad Deaths Sudden Deaths and Suicides: 59
• Death and the Victorian Doctors: 77
• Nurses Consultants and Terminal Prognoses: 98
• That Little Company of Angels The Tragedies of Childrens Deaths: 119
• Death in Old Age: 143
• In Search of Good Death Death in the Gladstone and Lyttelton Families 18351915: 161
• GRIEF AND MOURNING: 191
• Introduction to Part II: 193
• Funeral Reform and the Cremation Debate: 194
• The Funeral Week: 210
• Widows Gendered Experiences of Widowhood: 230
• Widowers Gendered Experiences of Widowhood: 251
• Christian Consolations and Heavenly Reunions: 265
• The Consolations of Memory: 284
• Rituals of Sorrow MourningDress and Condolence Letters: 300
• Chronic and Abnormal Grief Queen Victoria Lady Frederick Cavendish and Emma Haden: 318
• A Solitude beyond the Reach of God or Man Victorian Agnostics and Death: 339
• Epilogue After the Victorians Social Memory Spiritualism and the Great War: 358
• Notes: 382
• Location of Manuscript Collections: 443
• Index: 447

About the author

Pat Jalland is Associate Professor of History at Murdoch University, WA. From 27 January 1997 she will be Professor of History at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University. Her books include Women, Marriage, and Politics 1860-1914, which won the non-fiction prize in the 1987 Western Australia Week Literary Awards.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Death in the Victorian Family; Death in the Victorian Family, Patricia Jalland
• Author: Patricia Jalland
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0198208324, 9780198208327
• Length: 464 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / Death, Grief, Bereavement; History / Europe / Great Britain / General; Social Science / Sociology / General