Victorian way of death....

..... for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, John Keats

I love Victorian cemeteries. Perhaps it is their "over-the-top" embrace of the attitude of the time. Led by the conflicting forces of improved, and seemingly endless, possibilities in health care and recovery - cheek by jowl with still terrible morbidity figures from consumption, fever, childbirth, and early childhood disease - the Victorians were very accepting of the rituals of death embedded in the routines of life. In our generation the pendulum has swung. No one is supposed to die any more.