A Living Woman Photographed in Her Coffin.
A young woman of intelligence and culture, having a great dislike to the heathenish custom of inviting the motley mob at a funeral to view the corpse, expressed the wish that when her funeral took place no one should be allowed to look at her. One of Miss B’s family, in order to turn the dismal subject into a joke, remarked that her friends would be very much grieved if they could not see such a beautiful corpse. “Oh, I may be old and ugly then,” she said and sighed. It seemed so ludicrous that a young girl should wish to die before she was old so as to make a handsome corpse and yet not wish to be seen that her father said: “You had better rent a coffin, have made a becoming shroud and have your photograph taken, when you can decide whether or not you care to be gazed upon.” This idea so tickled this maiden fair, who was aching for something novel, that she proposed at once to carry out the plan. The horror of the photographer but made Miss B. more desirous of seeing herself resting on satin cushions, clad in a snow-white robe, bordered with swan’s down–a lily clasped in her hands. When this startling photograph reached me a tear trembled for one moment in my heart, but did not rise to my eye, ere I thought, as lovely in death as in life, no wonder her afflicted family wish to preserve the likeness of such a corpse. Then, turning the card over to see where a perfect work of art was taken, what is my astonishment to read, in Miss B.’s own handwriting: “Please do not ask to see me after I am dead. This is better than the reality.” Boston Courier.
The Alabama Courier [Athens AL] 2 August 1883: p. 4
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.
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