15 Strange Funeral Customs From Around the World

Posing for pictures with the dead

In the mid-1800s, photography first became widely available. This timing coincided with deadly epidemics of diseases like cholera in Britain and the US as well as a focus on memorializing the dead, popularized in part by Queen Victoria’s public displays of mourning for her late husband. This confluence of factors meant that one of the primary subjects for early photographers were the recently deceased (along with their grieving families). Historians estimate that during the 1840s, postmortem photographs were three times more common than wedding photographs.