Victorian Mourning Dress
Queen Victoria is perhaps best known for her elaborate and seemingly never-ending mourning for her dear husband Prince Albert who passed rather suddenly in 1861. She donned all black for decades and withdrew from public view, creating a solemn and pious image of the Queen. When a monarch and their family do something, especially in regards to fashion, people tend to follow suit and so, due to Victoria’s deep state of mourning, mourning etiquette and mourning fashion became a staple for Victorian society.
At the time, one was expected to show their grief outwardly, to make it incredibly clear to all around that you had lost a loved one, and one of the easiest ways to do this was via your clothing. Regardless of who you were and who you had lost, you were expected to wear black and there were strict etiquette rules about the fabrics you could wear. Mourning is not a time to be flashy and vein, fabrics which were non-reflective and simple were preferred, such as Parramatta silk and crépe. Crépe was perhaps the most popular choice for mourning dress as it cannot be paired with other fabrics, especially embroidery and lace, it simply doesn’t look right. So, wearing crépe allowed you to seem more humble in your grief. After a specific amount of time (which varied depending on your relationship to the deceased) you would enter what was known as half-mourning, a time where you would still visibly display your mourning but rules were more lenient, you could now add white or purple into your clothing and you could wear less plain fabrics. Mourning jewellery could be worn, and to learn more about Victorian mourning jewellery, do read the article I wrote on this earlier this year.
Queen Victoria photographed in 1890 wearing mourning dress
To make sure you never got your mourning wrong, you would turn to popular books of the time for your information, one of the most famous being The Queen and Cassell’s which allowed you to mourn like the Queen herself. Here are two passages from the 1880 edition which outline strict guidelines for mourning:
“DEATH IN THE HOUSEHOLD. - IV.
THE blinds of the windows of the house should be drawn down directly the death occurs, and they should remain down until after the funeral has left the house, when they are at once to be pulled up. As a rule, the females of the family do not pay any visits until after the funeral. Neither would it be considered in good taste for any friends or acquaintances to visit at the house during that time, unless they were relatives of the family, when of course it would be only proper for them to do so.”
“Now, with reference to mourning, it has been customary for mourning apparel not to be put on until the day of the funeral, but at the present time it is more usual to wear it as soon as possible. The width of the hat-bands worn differs according to the degree of relationship. When worn by the husband for the wife they are usually at the present time about seven inches wide. Those worn by fathers for sons, and sons for fathers, are about five inches wide. For other degrees of relationship the width of the hat-band varies from two and a half inches to four inches.
After the funeral deep mourning is worn by the widower or widow for about a year. The same is also the case with mourning for a father or mother, sons or daughter, sister or brother. Occasionally, at the end of that period, half mourning is worn by the widow or widower for about six months longer. During the period while mourning is worn it is customary to employ envelopes and note-paper edged with a deep border of black.”
Seems like a lot doesn’t it? And when you factor in that mortality rates were high, especially among infants and the elderly, people found themselves spending many years of their lives in mourning, if not at times the majority of their years. Not only did mourning have a significant impact on your day to day life, restricting you from many of your usual activities, it also had a vast financial impact. Once you had paid for the funeral and burial spot of the deceased, which could be rather pricey itself, you had to buy new clothes for mourning, every time you went into mourning. It was considered a bad omen to keep a hold of mourning clothing, so as you went into mourning, perhaps for several years, all your normal clothing went into storage. Once you finally re-emerged from your grief and threw away the clothes you had just spent years wearing, all the clothes you had put into storage had gone completely out of fashion.
Of course, because of capitalism, clothing stores dedicated to mourning wear boomed in the Victorian era, with the most popular in London being Jay’s of Regent Street, opening in 1841 as a warehouse for mourners. Whatever your mourning attire needs, Jay’s was there to help you and your family. And seeing as people could drop like flies in a time of not so great medical care, there was no doubt that you would be a repeat customer for life. Mourning was a lucrative business that helped keep the economy running off the only certainty in life, death.
Jay’s mourning advert
Questions can be raised about whether it was morally right to commercialise death to the extent it was in the Victorian era, and whether forcing someone into strict ways of mourning is, in fact, detrimental to the mourner’s mental health. Like many aspects of Victorian life, your image was at the heart of everything you did. But hey, maybe things haven’t much changed in 2020, the death industry is still a multi-billion empire.
