Death in the Victorian Family

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but of limited usefulness
Review: Pat Jalland collected information regarding approximately 50 British families and thinks from these she knows everything about a nation's mourning rituals (and its culture). This premise is flawed. Of course, a person can gain insights about the practices and beliefs of a small coterie of a specific class of people, and this has some value. Yet she tries to make of it more than it really is (how an academic tries to "sell" a "bigger" work). For example, she tells readers that more people in the late nineteeth century had sympathy for Francis Seymour Haden and his "earth to earth" burial system (using wicker to enable the purifying agent of earth to resolve human remains) over the advocacy of cremation. This is a highly contentious argument (which she makes again in her chapter in "Death in England" co-edited by Peter Jupp and Clare Gittings, showing a bias against cremation, I think) and her "facts" for such an argument are based significantly on the opinions of Haden's OWN family and the family of another significant anti-cremationist, Sir William Harcourt. If she had included the families related to the Duke of Bedford (including, e.g., Lady Amerberly) or Capt. Thomas Hanham, she would have had a different story. Whether you have an academic interest or not, beware of the author's overreach and use the generalizations this author makes with care.