Mourning Folklore: From Giving Rings to Wearing Black

If you think of the phrase “to be in mourning”, you’ll probably imagine a Victorian scene. Perhaps a black-clad widow ushers similarly black-clad children to a desolate graveyard in the depths of autumn. Or maybe you picture a grand house, shuttered up against the world that continues outside, while life is paused for those inside as they grieve their loss.

Clearly, humans have had mourning rituals and customs throughout history. Yet it is the 19th century that captures attention, perhaps through the industrialisation of mourning spearheaded by the Victorians. Such a high degree of buy-in by the public of all classes makes such customs worthy of study by a folklorist. Why did people adopt these beliefs and practices en masse? And, crucially, what happened to them?

Let’s take a look.

Where did the so-called “cult of mourning” come from?

It didn’t come out of a vacuum. Funerals have long been an opportunity for people to show off their wealth and social status. Long before the Victorians, people spent a fortune on mausoleums, feasts, and processions to remind those of lower social rank who were most important. It took 250 years for mourning rituals to pass from royal circles in the late 16th century to the industrial working classes in the 19th century.

Funerals in England became very performative, with mourning becoming a cult in Victorian England following the death of Prince Albert. Given displays of emotion were frowned upon, funerals and mourning became a way to demonstrate your psychological distress.

It was also a way to signal ideas to others. The more ostentatious the funeral, the more it showed how loved the deceased was…and also how much money and power you had (Laqueur 1983: 109). Funerals were very ornate and very public, hence the term, ‘funeral director’. People sometimes hired professional mourners to weep and wail and grieve for the deceased as if they knew them. The more mourners you had, the more ‘respected’ you had been in life. Many professional mourners were women, which was a peculiar quirk since it created a socially acceptable ‘job’ for women at a time when job roles might otherwise be designated as being for men.

Naturally, this made class distinctions even more obvious.

The poor would save money all year to be able to put on as decent a funeral as they could since this would show their respect but also help them boost their own social standing (Laqueur 1983: 109). Some families would even set aside money, which impacted their living children, to be able to pay for funerals if they died. Some of them joined burial clubs, which are a bit like insurance unions. By 1874, 2.25 million people belonged to such clubs, some of which also provided sickness benefits. That’s just the figure using registered clubs (Laqueur 1983: 110).

The rituals of mourning had even created entirely new industries. Birmingham’s metal industry specialised in coffin furniture as far back as 1769, while over 1500 people worked jet for mourning jewellery in Whitby by 1870 (Laqueur 1983: 114). Hairwork jewellery built on the existing notion of saints’ relics through the preservation of part of the body (Lutz 2011).

Mourning Customs

Perhaps the most obvious custom involved with mourning was that of using black for everything. Mourning families covered everything in black crape, including doorknobs, to let visitors know they had experienced a loss. They used white crape for young or unmarried deceased people. Anyone coming into a home that had experienced a loss had to wear a black ribbon. This was believed to stop the person from taking death with them beyond the house when they left.

It’s important to remember black was always a fashionable colour, but that the exact materials and ‘shade’ of black differentiated mourning wear from regular black. Crape was not only an incredibly matte black shade, it was also deeply uncomfortable to wear, reminding the wearer of their loss.

In 1890s New England, some towns tolled a bell to announce a death, most often at the first sunrise after the death. It would toll for a few minutes, before taking a pause, and then tolling out the number of the deceased’s age (Cole 1894: 220).

Another custom that made it from Britain to New England was the use of the word ‘poor’ to denote that an individual had died. It didn’t matter how wealthy or otherwise they had been in life, but if you heard “my poor mother”, you knew the person’s mother was deceased (Cole 1894: 222). It sounds less cold than “late” to describe someone as deceased.

Giving Gifts to Mourners

In 19th century New England, the family also presented mourning rings to the coffin bearers. These might contain a lock of the deceased’s hair, the name of the dead and the date of the funeral, or a skull and crossbones (Cole 1894: 221). This feels less unusual when we remember half of the eight bearers were chosen because of their relationship to the deceased.

There was a brief custom in early and mid-18th century America to give gloves to attendees at funerals. Unfortunately, no one wrote down how or why it was important to hand gloves out. Given the ephemeral nature of clothing, only one pair of gloves from 1765 has been identified as being the result of this ritual (Bullock 2012: 307). There’s a suggestion that while rings were only given to ministers or family members, gloves were given to everyone who attended. This probably explains why it was largely only the New England elites that distributed huge numbers of gloves, often imported from Europe (Bullock 2012: 309). The custom died out in the later 18th century, potentially because the wealthy elites were less connected to their communities.

Phases of Mourning

People strictly followed mourning etiquette since there were different stages of mourning and permitted colours at each stage. Mourning for women could last up to four years, although Queen Victoria continued mourning Prince Albert from his death in 1861 until her own death in 1901. Even within mourning wear, trends changed and women rushed to buy the latest fashions—and of course, there were warehouses to help with this, which we’ll come to later.

Full Mourning lasted a year and a day. Women wore the darkest black possible, with clothes made from crape to represent the weight of their grief. The outfit was plain, without details. Women couldn’t re-enter society for a year.

Then they moved into Second Mourning for another 9 months. At this point, women could now introduce ‘secondary mourning colours’ to their wardrobe. Think grey, mauve, white, or lavender. They were also now allowed to venture back out into society again. Of course, if anyone wasn’t sure, manuals advised on the ‘correct’ period of mourning for different circumstances, like how long you mourned the death of a second cousin.

Next, women moved into Half Mourning, which usually began 21 months after the death. Women could ditch their crape and they might fade out their mourning clothes by switching to lavender. A widow could leave mourning completely after two years and one day. At this point, she’d invite friends and relatives to see her, and she could go about her life again. This period of transition back into society had no real time limit. Moving out of a phase too early was disrespectful and young widows might be accused of promiscuity (Fleming 2013).

Men’s Mourning

Men, on the other hand, had a different set of regulations. Men wore black mourning suits for up to six months unless they needed to wear a uniform at work, in which case they wore a black armband. They could wear a black band on their top hat to signify they were in mourning. A man could remarry after mourning his late wife for six months. Neither men nor women were expected to attend social events during full mourning. Interestingly, no one tried to ‘speed’ a mourner through the grieving process as they do now.

Mourning Etiquette

By the 1850s, even women’s magazines explored the details of mourning etiquette. The overly elaborate nature of mourning meant people worried they’d lose social status by ignoring or forgetting something important. Middle-class women took their lead for dress and behaviour from the upper classes. In 1881, Sylvia’s Home Journal even published a complete list of items a new widow would need in order to dress and ‘mourn’ properly while staying in fashion.

Because capitalism loves an opportunity, dedicated warehouses opened that only sold mourning wear. Some warehouses conducted funerals, and bigger department stores had their own mourning departments. You could buy everything from fabrics to parasols, to stationery etc. Your entire outfit including accessories had to fit the ‘mourning wear’ look.

Jay’s was one of the four major mourning warehouses. They even sent catalogues to those who couldn’t visit the stores in person. The warehouses also helped develop ready-to-wear mass clothing and mail-order shopping to cater to demand. These stores proved much cheaper than local tailors and dressmakers, and the ready-to-wear clothing meant people could outfit themselves quickly in the event of sudden death.

Assistants were on hand to sell stuff you probably didn’t need. They did so under the auspices that you didn’t want to not have something and look like a terrible person. Death essentially made families rack up huge debts, whether it was the middle class trying to emulate the upper class, or the working class trying to avoid a parish funeral (Walvin 1982: 355).

Jay’s published their own guidebook to the history of mourning. While it tries to justify how people have mourned throughout history, it does so to justify you spending a lot of money on it!

Mourning Superstitions

Naturally, mourning accrued a few superstitions along with its customs and etiquette. It was considered important not to fall in love while wearing mourning clothes or you’d never marry (Opie 2005: 267). Considering how often people might find themselves in mourning if they had an extended family, this one could prove to be difficult to avoid.

In Ireland, it was considered unlucky to have black-edged paper in the house, due to its use in sending death notices (Opie 2005: 267). People also thought it was bad luck to keep crape in the house. They needed to buy new crape every time there was a death (Opie 2005: 267). I can’t help thinking that one was probably started by the mourning warehouses to ensure people kept buying. That said, both of these superstitions might have a degree of ‘sympathetic magic’ about them. In other words, you wouldn’t keep something in the house for fear that it would ‘attract’ more of whatever it represented.

The End of Public Mourning

The trend of expensive mourning wear disappeared in 1914. That said, it had been on a slow decline in the years leading up to this point. The death of Victoria led to a change in how strictly people stuck to mourning rituals.

Still, even as late as the 1940s, some people would still wear black armbands, or black diamond patches sewn to their sleeves (Simpson 2007: 249).

Some of this etiquette has remained in contemporary Western practices, such as wearing black at funerals, or sports professionals wearing black armbands. Yet some of the specifics have thankfully died out. Many of the customs have disappeared, only to be replaced by new ones. Look at the tendency for people to leave flowers, helium balloons, and soft toys at sites associated with death. The prohibition on displaying emotions means people no longer need to hide behind black crape to show their distress.

But I wonder if we’ve lost the personal aspect of mourning. We outsource everything, such as handling the dead. Where mourning was accorded a certain degree of reverence, it’s now considered something to be sped through, with grieving individuals cajoled into re-entering society and continuing with their lives as soon as possible. While I don’t agree with the vast sums of money laid out which turned it into an industry, I think we can still understand that grieving is something everyone needs to do at some point. The Victorians understood it took time, which is a lesson we could learn from them.

Which mourning customs have you been drawn to?

References

Bullock, Steven C. and Sheila McIntyre (2012), ‘The Handsome Tokens of a Funeral: Glove-Giving and the Large Funeral in Eighteenth-Century New England’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 69 (2), , pp. 305–46.

Cole, Pamela McArthur (1894), ‘New England Funerals’, The Journal of American Folklore, 7 (26), pp. 217–223.

Fleming, R.S. (2013), ‘Mourning Dress During the Early Victorian Era’, Kate Tattersall, http://www.katetattersall.com/mourning-dress-victorian/. Accessed 20 January 2025.

Laqueur, Thomas (1983), ‘Bodies, Death, and Pauper Funerals’, Representations, no. 1, pp. 109–31.

Lutz, Deborah (2011), ‘The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 39 (1), pp. 127–42.

Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem (2005), Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions, Oxford: Oxford University Press (affiliate link).

Simpson, Jacqueline and Steve Roud (2003), A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford: Oxford University Press (affiliate link).

Walvin, James (1982), ‘Dust to Dust: Celebrations of Death in Victorian England’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 9 (3), pp. 353–71.