Much like being born, every culture deals with death differently. These Victorian death rituals definitely sit on the weird side of things. During Victorian Times people believed in zombies. In order to keep their loved ones from coming back a zombies, bodies were buried face down. Families with more money would splurge on metal cages that sat over coffins.
There wasn’t much space for the dead in Victorian England. People were buried in small vaults or burial grounds. It wasn’t uncommon for 20 coffins to stacked on top of one another in one grave. The average 200 square foot graveyard could have held anywhere between 60 – 70,000 bodies.
Funerals were a grand affair during the Victorian Age. People sometimes hired professional mourners whose job it was to attend the ceremony and look sad. People often went to worship with handkerchiefs over their noses. There were many bodies stored in vaults and churches which gave off a foul odor.
Victorian graveyards had a very particular smell due to overcrowding, you could smell the rotting bodies in the graveyards. It was thought to pose a health risk to people nearby.
Grave diggers posed a serious problem during this time would sometimes bowl with the bones of the dead. It wasn’t uncommon to see body parts and bones thrown around graveyards. People dug up bodies in order to make room for new ones. Old coffins were smashed and sold to peasants for firewood. Grave diggers wanted to make a buck anyway they could.
