Step into the shadows of Victorian England — an era when death was not hidden away but was an unavoidable presence woven into everyday life.This richly illustrated lecture goes beyond the familiar story of Victorian mourning to ask a larger question: Why did death become such a defining feature of Victorian culture? Overcrowded cities, dangerous working conditions, poor sanitation, epidemics of cholera and tuberculosis, high infant mortality, rudimentary medicine and relatively short life expectancy created an environment in which death was rarely distant or abstract.
When Queen Victoria entered decades of mourning following Prince Albert’s death, her very public grief helped formalise rituals already taking hold throughout society. Author Paul Gambino explores how the Victorians responded through elaborate mourning fashions and etiquette, hair jewellery, memento mori, death masks, post-mortem photography, extravagant funerals and magnificent Gothic cemeteries.
The journey then moves beyond the grave. Spiritualism promised that death might not be the end, as séances, mediums, spirit photography and extraordinary new technologies blurred the boundaries between science, faith and the supernatural.
The talk also includes “the missing chapter” from Gambino’s Beyond the Veil with an illustrated walk through A Fate Worse Than Death: Defining Insanity in the Victorian Mind — an exploration of Victorian attitudes toward madness, asylums and the terrifying prospect of being declared insane.Drawing upon Beyond the Veil, this is a journey into not simply how the Victorians mourned death, but why death came to dominate their world.
Paul Gambino is an internationally published author specialising in topics of the macabre, including Morbid Curiosities: Collections of the Uncommon and the Bizarre, Skulls: Portraits of the Dead and the Stories They Tell, Killer Collections: Dark Artifacts from True Crime, The Art of Gothic Living: Dark Decor for the Modern Macabre and BEYOND THE VEIL: The Victorian Obsession with Death and Mourning.
Access Information:
This event is in the Abney Park chapel.
There is ramp access at the Church Street entrance and level access at the Stoke Newington High Street entrance.
The ground floor of the Chapel is fully accessible. There are accessible toilets available in the chapel.