Grave Emotions: Textiles and Clothing from Nineteenth-Century London Cemeteries

Abstract

What is the last thing someone ever wears, who decides, and what emotions do those garments embody? Excavations by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) of two 1840s Non-Conformist and Baptist cemetery sites answer some of these questions for poorer mid-nineteenth century Londoners. The decayed textiles emerging from these graves are a new and emotionally rich source for exploring the distance of the recent past. The unexplained, chance-found scraps of clothing and shrouds read in their own context reveal unique information, breaking archival silence about burial rituals and death-related consumption practices in lower social levels than the middle classes. The choice of interred textiles and garments—such as a satin baby’s bonnet, pinned silk ribbons and a false waistcoat—their qualities and construction all bespeak emotions around pride, dignity, religious feeling, tenderness, and socially codified grief. Clothing fragments become a substitute fleshliness as the bodily tissue they cover wears away, the last traces of the invested, materialized emotions surrounding death. The article also moves between the technical and the interpretive to consider the emotions and affects these intimate, poignant and sometimes gruesome objects evoke in the researcher during analysis. How, or should, these feelings be considered as part of research after stripping my own emotional responses for the supposed objectivity required of an archaeological report?

Keywords:

• grave textiles
• nineteenth century
• archaeology
• burial practices
• mourning
• death

Notes

1. Now in the collection of the Museum of London. George was the son and heir of the Rev. George Davys, Princess Victoria’s tutor from 1827 until her accession in 1837, and whose ecclesiastical career saw him become the Bishop of Peterborough. Young George died aged 18 of an accident sustained while playing cricket.

2. La Belle Assemblée, complained in 1823 about “ugly, shrowd-like pinking” on stylish dress, showing the congruence between clothing for the living and the dead.

3. The Burying in Woollen Acts (1666 & 1678) came into force to support the British wool industry, and dictated woolen shrouds unless a fee was paid for burial in another cloth. It was finally repealed in 1814, long after it had ceased to be effective.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hilary Davidson

Hilary Davidson is a dress historian who was curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London between 2007‒2012. She has an MA in the history of textiles and dress from the University of Southampton, and has lectured, researched, and published extensively across these fields. She is currently an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, a doctoral candidate at La Trobe, Melbourne, and is completing a book on early nineteenth century dress (Yale, 2017).

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