FUNeral Facts!
I'm so excited. The Oshawa museum is putting on an exhibit called: Mourning After: The Victorian Celebration of Death. Going to see it, definitely. It runs from May til the end of November! In celebration I shall post some Victorian Superstitions and Fun Facts! WHich you know I have a brain full of. :D
Superstitions:
Superstitions:
- "Victorians feared being buried alive. The wake was developed as a 12 to 24 hour period during which the family would eat, drink, play music and make a lot of noise to make sure the deceased wasn't going to wake up. Only then would a burial take place.
- All the clocks in the home would be stopped at the exact moment of death and then left until after the funeral. They would then be restarted one or two minutes out, so the exact time of death would never happen again in the house.
- There was a fear that people who had commited suicide would come back and haunt their living relatives, so instead of being buried in a cemetery, those who took their own lives would be buried at a crossroad so their soul would be confused and now know which road to take back. Later they were buried at the outskirts of cemeteries.
- Early embalming was done by mixing arsenic with water and injecting it into the arterial system. The practice was banned in the early 20th century because of health concerns.
- The oldest funeral home in Canada is Morse and Son Funeral Home in Niagara on the Lake; it opened in 1826 and is still there today.