Members: Don’t forget the “Mourning & Memorial” section of our site. Here is the newest addition to that section. Full-size and description is available here (members only): [ Posthumous Painting ] >>>> NOT an Archive member? Review options here: http://www.thanatos.net/membership
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Sixth-plate, 1850s post mortem daguerreotype.
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Handwritten letter, and lock of hair, accompanying the post-mortem photo of the emaciated girl (Archive #3340).
A very key word that I am unable to make out is, second line from the bottom, “the ____. It is so sickly.” It appears to be “Shawl”, but that wouldn’t make much since considering the next few words. It also wouldn’t make much sense that he would capitalize the S, when he hadn’t done so anywhere else in the letter.
Here is my translation.. feel free to add comments here, or if you’re an Archive member, on the website.
Yonkers June 16th
My Dear Aunt,
Grandmother’s box started this morning and will be at Mr. Maynards about Wednesday.
You must write and let us know as soon as you receive it. Enclosed is two dollars for the
(Shawl?), it is so sickly I don’t think I shall go to B___ this summer.
In haste (?) Dwight
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Relatives at an outdoor morgue view the body of a young man who died in the Cherry Mine disaster. He had worked in the mine only two days.
The doors of a funeral hearse are partially visible on the left.
On Saturday, November 13, 1909, like most days, nearly 500 men and boys, and three dozen mules, were working in the mine. Unlike most days, an electrical outage earlier that week had forced the workers to light kerosene lanterns and torches, some portable, some set into the mine walls. 259 men and boys died.
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