tailieunhanh - Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870–1914

The pauper grave and the lavish funeral are notorious symbols of the popular culture of death in the long nineteenth century. As the extracts above demonstrate, the two funerals are easily juxtaposed as binary opposites in a literal and metaphorical sense: burial in a private grave was the ‘cornerstone’ of respectability whilst to have a body buried on the parish was to bear ‘a lifetime’s stigma’. The pauper grave signified abject poverty and carried the taint of the workhouse; the pauper corpse was tossed unlovingly into a pit to rot in anonymity; and, should anyone mourn this creature, they were to be pitied. Conversely, giving the dead a. | CAMBRIDGE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HISTORIES Death Grief and Poverty in Britain 1870-1914 I Julie-Marie strange more information - 9780521838573 Cambridge This page intentionally left blank Death Grief and Poverty in Britain 1870-1914 With high mortality rates it has been assumed that the poor in Victorian and Edwardian Britain did not mourn their dead. Contesting this approach Julie-Marie Strange studies the expression of grief among the working classes demonstrating that poverty increased - rather than deadened - it. She illustrates the mourning practices of the working classes through chapters addressing care of the corpse the funeral the cemetery commemoration and high infant mortality rates. The book draws on a broad range of sources to analyse the feelings and behaviours of the labouring poor using not only personal testimony but also fiction journalism and official reports. It concludes that poor people used not only spoken or written words to express their grief but also complex symbols actions and significantly silence. This book will be an invaluable contribution to an important and neglected area of social and cultural history. JULIE-MARIE STRANGE is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of .