Victorian Death Photography

I have been thinking of late that I have been pretty lucky to have my mitts on some historical treasures that have been passed down through the ages.  There are some stories, some physical objects and quite a fair number of pictures (or copies of pictures).  I have taken some of these pictures and lined my staircase with the portraits of people I have never met.  I enjoy thinking about the lives of my ancestors and wondering about the day the photographs were taken.

In my list of mysteries to solve there was a name-unknown child - a sibling of my Great Grandfather Coombs. Shortly after GG Coombs was born his mother died of complications and he was sent to be taken care of by his mother's sister.  He was raised by his aunt and uncle, who by all accounts treat him as their own, but as a result he knew very little about the child that came before him.  GG Coombs had three older sisters and three older brothers, one of the brothers died as a child.  The information that was passed down (along with a couple of pictures of the young family) was that the boy drowned in the Charles river - name unknown.

England has very detailed vital records but that catch is the records cost moola to access (indexes tend to be free but don't tell you very much). I did my best to find a Charles river in England...I did not find one.  I thought, maybe his name was Charles...I found no Charles Coombs born or died within the proper time frame. The little boy did not appear on the census records as he fell in between collection times - a lot can happen in a 10 year gap!! Eventually I narrowed down the birth records to two possibilities, Richard or Oliver.  I settled on Oliver since GG Coombs named one of his daughters Olive.  I had always thought Olive was a weird name for a little girl.

The picture.

I have this picture on my wall.  It took me about 400 days of seeing it, multiple times a day, to realize that it wasn't what I thought it was.

It's hard to tell from the grainy scan but...that little boy in the middle...ya, he's not alive. Suddenly one morning as I was leaving for work it all made sense. The father is holding the boy up, his eyes are closed, mouth agape, most of the kids are not amused. I have my very own Victorian death photograph - creepy!! The one oddity about the picture is that it was taken in what appears to be outdoors - if you search Victorian death photography you will see many many examples of indoor, stiff pose portraits.

Well, that's one mystery solved!