Mourning a loved one in 1850

It is easy to forget just how big was the business of catering for bereavement in the 19th century.

There were very clear guide lines about the length of mourning and the clothes one should wear.

And like all matters to do with appearances the new as well as the prevailing fashions in mourning attire were closely followed by some social classes.

I don’t know if any of our people here in Chorlton ventured to use Mr Beddoe’s but there would have been some who could have afforded him and if they did not already know he would have been able to provide “every Article for Deep or Slight Mourning of the Newest and Most Fashionable Styles.”

A far cry from the simple coffin ordered by the Bailey family of Ivy Farm on the Row* in 1854 from Richard Pearson Joiner & Builder which cost £2.  But perhaps more in line with the one ordered thirty years earlier from Mr John Renshaw who charged "£3 13s 10d for a coffin lined with flannel.”

And in these things I do not pretend to be an expert so it was something of a surprise when I came across an explanation for those broken burial pillars in parish graveyards.

We have one, and for years I supposed it had been the target of vandals or suffered from neglect.  But no the broken piece reminded those who passed that here was a life which had ended abruptly and which had not run its full course.


* The Row or Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

Pictures; from Slater's Directory of Manchester and Salford 1850 and the monument to Philip Ree in the parish graveyard from the collection of Andrew Simpson