Graveyard Guru Rewind

Tombstones for the Innocent:
A Short Essay on Victorian Children’s Gravemarkers
By Stephanie Lincecum

I have a book on my shelf that I find myself returning to time and again when conducting cemetery and specific tombstone research. It is Cemeteries & Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture, edited by R. E. Meyer. It is a collection of works by several different authors. When re-reading the first essay for the umpteenth time, Innocents in a Worldly World: Victorian Children’s Gravemarkers by Ellen M. Snyder, it occurred to me that many of us see these types of tombstones quite often. But do we all know their origin?

The Victorian Era is the period of Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901 in the United Kingdom. It was marked with peace and prosperity for the British people. Since the empire was so prominent, their attitudes, art and culture spread across the world. After the Civil War the United States could be characterized as a “Victorian America.” From roughly 1875 to 1910 the British cultural influence was reflected, especially in the heavily populated regions of New England and the deep South. This period was marked with a second industrial revolution and the growing upper class copying the high society of the UK in dress, morality, and mannerisms.

A great place to still see this cultural influence today is in the cemetery. In the Victorian Era, gone was the fear of death and the grim reaper. Death was almost embraced. Strong beliefs in the teachings of the Bible -- the belief in eternal life -- is seen all over our American cemeteries. Epitaphs such as “not dead, but sleepeth,” large crosses, asa well as depictions of angels and heaven all trace back to the Victorian Era. And this attitude was not lost on the youngest to be laid to rest. Children’s grave markers of this period are poignant and beautiful works of art.

According to Ellen Snyder, “By the late 1830s, the concept of childhood innocence was beginning to be highly valued. Perceived as untamed blossoms, children were seen as pure, unblemished, and lacking in artifice. They were closely associated with the home, which stood in marked contrast to the world outside…As innocent beings, small babes were untouched by outside forces; they were not part of ‘the world.’ And if they died, they were depicted in the cemetery in a way that would have been denied to them had they reached adulthood. Children’s markers -- specifically, three-dimensional, sculptural depictions of children with domestic artifacts -- are one of the most elaborate material manifestations of a standard urban, middle-class, Protestant, Victorian vocabulary.”

This concept of the purity and innocence of children was bolstered by Christian ideals. Reverend John Morison wrote in an 1842 sermon, “Their angel innocence shall remain unsullied by a breath from this sinful world.” And Theodore Cuyler wrote in an 1867 Cedar Christian newspaper column, “Parents! Spare your tears for those whom you have laid down to sleep in their narrow earth-beds, with the now withered rose-bud on their breasts. They are safe; Christ has them in his sinless school, where lessons of celestial wisdom are learned by eyes that never weep.” As Ellen Snyder put it, “Children who died had the surest guarantees of sinless afterlives.”

The most common sculpture of a child found in the cemetery is one of a sleeping babe, a recurring Victorian theme. A vision of a child safely tucked away in bed is a metaphor for a good, innocent, Godly child. A lamb is another familiar symbol of innocence in the Victorian cemetery. Ellen Snyder says the lamb “expresses the particularly nineteenth-century vision of the child as close to nature. Nature…had become associated with peace and virtue in the face of an urbanizing nation.”

Another tombstone sculpture sometimes tied to children connects to the Victorian usage of empty furniture to symbolize a deceased loved one. An example would be a small unfilled bed, crib, or chair. A pair of infant shoes may also be seen as well, clearly representing a child now gone. Other props sculpted may include toys such as rattles, teddy bears, or a rocking horse.

Ultimately, as Ellen Snyder states, “children in the cemetery remain forever young, more notable for their deaths than their short lives.”

Labels: Graveyard Guru