So many of these vintage post mortem photographs have no background information that it becomes very frustrating. The only details on this one is the name of the photographer, faintly printed on the side of the image – F.S.Hooker.

I love the shape of the chaise longue that this lady is laid out on.

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At first glance, I thought that someone had made a mistake in declaring this a post mortem photograph – the child appears to be ‘looking’ at the camera.

But given that exposure times were much longer in the early days of photography, I would imagine that he (or she – I find it hard to tell boys from girls when children are dressed in the style of the era) would have had to stay immobile for quite some while in order for the image on this carte de visite to be taken. As children that small rarely stay still for long, I am inclined to think that the poor little mite is indeed dead.

I have no background details for the image, as I found it swimming round the internet on one of those ‘ugh look at these awful photos’ type websites. The photographer’s details are quite clear, at least -

Ludger Cote, 220 Rue Wolfe. Coin de la Rue St. Catherine, Montreal.

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I’ve obviously seen a lot of post mortem photographs of children whilst writing this blog, but oh my word this has to be one of the saddest…

Unfortunately I have no background information for this picture.

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My name is Nicola, I am a 32 year old married mother of three and I am a taphophile.  Yes, you read that right, a taphophile.  In short, I hang around with dead people.  The more Victorian the better, but I am not adverse to the odd Edwardian.

Taphophilia – from the Greek taphos, meaning “tomb” or “sepulchre” and philia, meaning “attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something” - defined as a passion for and enjoyment of cemeteries.  The singular term is a taphophile.   Taphophilia can involve an interest in epitaphs, gravestone rubbings, photography, art, and history of famous or otherwise deaths.

 Contrary to popular belief, being a taphophile does not have to involve dressing in all in black, but black is rather slimming and it’s always nice to look slim as you skip gleefully betwixt the stones.

Joking aside, what do I get out of being a taphophile?  After all graveyards and cemeteries are not that interesting.  Wrong!  Cemeteries are full of interest and intrigue from works of art, historical stories, disasters and mysteries, some better than you will ever find in any novel.

My interest with graves and gravestones started at an early age and progressed from playing in local churchyards to cemetery photography and researching the history of those contained in the very graves beneath my feet.  I feel that by doing so for a brief moment in time the long forgotten are remembered.  For a while at least I weave flesh onto the bones and breathe life into their stories.  Where else can you find the rich and often shocking history of our ancestors carved in stone?

So grab your camera, go out and start ‘digging‘.  You may be surprised by what you turn up.

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When not haunting graveyards, Nicola can be found Herding Cats

All photographs © Nicola Carpenter, taken in All Saints cemetery, Maidenhead. 

According to the website I found it on, the details of this post mortem photograph are as follows -

Post mortem baby photo from the Civil War era (1860′s). Photographer is J.V. Parker from Utica, NY.

The Civil War was a boom time for photography, thanks in no small part to the work of Mathew Brady, the ‘father of photojournalism’. 

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Some cool websites that I have found during the week – I spend a lot of time falling down internet rabbit holes in pursuit of new and interesting methods of procrastination…

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‘Skulls & Bacon’

Links and loveliness referencing anything to do with, yes, skulls and bacon. Seriously – what’s not to love?

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Joshua Harker’s 3D printed skulls

 These are just the most beautiful things I have seen in a very long time. Created using a 3D printer, they’re for sale in different sizes starting at $50.

I’m starting this year’s Christmas list early…

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Nanna D Knits

Thought I wouldn’t be the knitting type? Think again. I bloody love knitting, despite being a total amateur (and also having RSI which prevents me practising it very much). I especially love people who knit with a sense of humour.

Most of all, I love Nanna D for this knitted Nick Cave doll…

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The Reality of Dating a Vampire

A video by the rather wonderful Twistedlilkitty on the perils of the fashion for dating vampires and why mermen are not the easiest pets to dispose of…

Follow twistedlilkitty on Twitter

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Hope you enjoy this week’s suggestions – feel free to email me with any links you think should be included in future posts

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This picture was sent to me by Sharon H, who found it on ebay and was wondering why the girl in the picture had been posed so awkwardly on a pile of books.

I did initially wonder if there was a literary reference (or maybe the girl had just been a keen reader), but according to the seller’s description it appears that the photographer made attempts to disguise the prop in the final picture -

Postmortem cabinet card showing a peaceful looking young woman wearing a white dress posed for a final portrait.  A pile of books was used as a headrest and the photographer attempted to block them out in the negative.

So maybe it’s nothing more than the books making a good adjustable prop, and the photographer was (mistakenly) confident enough in their editing abilities to not bother disguising them?

In an interesting side note, the ebay sale also including a cabinet card with details of a second member of the same family (not the girl in the picture) -

The only thing I can say for certain is that post mortem photographs sell for way more than I could ever justify spending…

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Skulls crack under the sole of a muddy work boot and bones snap like twigs under the pressure from a large shovel or pick…

This is how the remains of your ancestors probably ended up if they found their way into a British or Irish cemetery in years gone by. Ten years ago I first came to the UK and Ireland for a holiday with my Dad. We spent a month in Northern Ireland with his family and I took a week in Scotland to meet Mum’s relatives.

I’d done plenty of family research from Australia in the past. But I was surprised when I visited family churchyards and discovered how many folk were crammed in the one grave.

Drumcree church, Portadown.

One Northern Irish churchyard in particular, Drumcree Church of Ireland near Portadown in County Armagh, beggered belief, with 15 of my ancestors all sharing the same plot.

How was it possible you could get 15 bodies in such a small place?

When I ventured to Scotland for the maternal leg of my tour I made a grim discovery. I met a gravedigger at Dumbarton Public Cemetery. who was happy to skive off work to help me locate my family’s graves. He told me that times gone by would see grave diggers having to crush and break the bones of existing occupants and crunch them up in the corner of the plot to make space for their new grave-mates. 

No doubt this is how my family’s grave at Drumcree was able to fit 15 Saundersons and kindred corpses into such a small space. Maybe that’s why there was a bone lying next to recently unearthed soil near the grave. Arrgh!

While the thought of breaking old bones is bad enough, I’m sure it takes years for a corpse to turn into a skeleton. What would it have been like dealing with the recently deceased? (FYI: Nowadays, there is a limit to how many bodies can share a grave, so you’ll be glad to know that you probably don’t know any of these crushed bodies personally.)

Some of the oldest mass graves are actually plague pits

The gravedigger and I wandered for a while, talking about the old graves. This gave me a wonderful insight into the cemetery and its history.

I pointed to an huge gravestone, broken in two halves: “You know, the Egyptians made their monumnents to the dead last millenia, we can’t make them for 100 years!”

Just as I said it, I looked closer. As coincidence would have it, I was bagging my great-great-grandparent’s grave. Which was a pity because it was a nice shiny grave. From the inscription, there were clearly lots living their afterlives in pieces in that grave too.

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David Saunderson runs The Spooky Isles – a website dedicated to British and Irish horror films, amongst other gloriously creepy stuff. You can also find The Spooky Isles on Facebook

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This is the first of what will hopefully be a series of guest posts on the Skull. If you have a subject that you would like to write about and you think it would be suitable, then please get in touch.

According to the site on which I found this supposedly post mortem photograph, “…the Mother is alive holding her sons death certificate and her deceased son.” (sic).

I’m not sure, though. He looks to me as if he’s holding his own weight, rather than being propped up. And although zooming in on the photo confirms that that is indeed a certificate in her hand, it could refer to just about anything – I can’t see any of the text.

What do you think?

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I have totally stolen this idea from my chums at Timm Cleasby Photography because it’s simple-yet-fabulous. I get loads of links sent to me each week for websites and blogs that people think I’d enjoy and tend to chuck them all into the sunglasses (the ‘save to read later’ function on a Mac – I have absolutely no idea what its official name is!) to go through them on a weekend.

There’s always some awesome stuff in there so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to do a weekly roundup of cool stuff I’ve found / been sent / fallen over whilst procrastinating researching. Hope you like it!

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Kit Lane, needlefelt artist

  Fabulous needlefelted awesomeness, plus skulls. Utterly gorgeous.

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Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato

  I didn’t want to do another ‘mummy’ post so soon after the last one (which talked about Rosalia    Lombardo), but couldn’t bear to not mention this. Well worth reading up on.

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The Dark Victorian

   As I keep having to tell people, I’m not actually a Goth. I do love all the gothic aesthetics though, and this blog is one of the prettiest I’ve seen.

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The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice

  Up until a few weeks ago I’d never even heard of the word ‘chirurgeon’. Pronounced ‘kahy-rur-juhn’, it is the early form of the word ‘surgeon’. The website specialises in the history of pre-anaesthetic surgery and makes compelling (if occasionally gruesome) reading.

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That’s it for this week, I do hope you find time to visit some of the websites I’ve suggested. Don’t forget that you can follow The Skull Illusion on Facebook, for even more randomness that doesn’t make it onto the website itself.