"A floweret snatched from earth to bloom in heaven": perceptions of childhood and death on Delaware tombstones, 1840-1899

Abstract

This thesis examines Victorian perceptions of childhood and death using 18 churchyard cemeteries in northern New Castle County as the primary resource. A statistical sample of 911 children's tombstones was supplemented by a survey of other funereal forms of material culture in this period. The research indicated that death was feared, but this fear tended to produce rationalization, not avoidance as happens today. Rationalization provided both comfort and moral uplift. A child's death was especially difficult to accept. As expected, tombstone inscriptions and iconography indicated love and affection for children, for they more frequently had epitaphs and decoration than adults. However, the majority of children had neither verbal nor visual statements revealing attitudes of any kind, which marked a discrepancy between cemetery evidence and the perceptions provided by other period artifacts. This lack of ostentation was probably due to questions of money, possibly religion, and purely personal taste.