Deathbed – Grave Matters

Why we no longer keep the dead body in the home

In July 2023 Grave Matters co-convener Claire Cock-Starkey published a short article for the Wellcome Collection based on her PhD research, exploring why the English no longer keep the dead body in the home. You can read the article here.

“Death Allowed to Enter”: The Emotional Role of Deathbed Folklore in Nineteenth-century England

The deathbed is the site of one of life’s most dramatic transitions as friends and family gather round to witness the once vital loved one become a lifeless corpse. In the mid to late nineteenth-century the urban middle- and upper-classes increasingly had the moment of death overseen by a medical professional, with the body andContinue reading ““Death Allowed to Enter”: The Emotional Role of Deathbed Folklore in Nineteenth-century England”