theoddmentemporium:

The Wax Effigy of Sarah Hare

Sarah Hare died in 1744 at the age of 55 of a commonplace accident. It was said that she “used to sew on a Sunday and as a punishment died from pricking her finger. “ Sarah did indeed die after injuring herself while sewing, likely, from septicemia. [She] made no extraordinary contributions to this world except one – a wax effigy of herself, the only such mortuary statue of its kind in England outside of Westminster Abbey [See Also]. 

Today we know very little about Hare’s life except that she never married and was not very pretty. In a will dated August 1743, Sarah made a series of curious requests:

“This I hope my Executor will see firstly performed before Sunset … I desire to have my face and hands made in wax with a piece of crimson satin thrown like a garment in a picture hair upon my head and put in a case of Mahogany with a glass before and fix’d up so near the place were my corps lyes as it can be with my name and time of Death put upon the case in any manner most desirable if I do not execute this in my life I desire it may be done after my Death.”

Her wishes were met … molded impressions were made of her face and hands, which were poured in wax. She was buried in the Hare mausoleum in Holy Trinity church. Surrounding her closed mahogany cabinet, which is situated in a corner of the vault, are memorials to the Hare family, dating from the 17th-20th centuries.

Her cabinet is plain. A bronze plate engraved with the words – “Here lyeth the body of Sarah Hare…” – its only adornment. Her lifesize effigy has waited for over 250 years behind a pair of mahogany doors for the occasional visitor to find it.

theoddmentemporium:

When Jonathan Reed’s wife, Mary, died in 1893, the widower didn’t want to leave her side. In fact, he was so devoted he moved in to her tomb, where he lived (with a parrot) for over 10 years.

From the Evergreen Cemetery’s website:

Reed had his Mary’s casket transferred to the vault, where he installed an empty casket in which he would eventually lie. He then settled into what became his second home. Domestic furniture stood in the vestibule, a wood stove provided heat, and scattered about the vault were a clock, some urns filled with flowers, photographs, paintings on the wall, a deck of playing cards, Mary’s half-finished knitting, and the family’s pet parrot (first alive, later stuffed). As word of Reed’s story spread, company began stopping by. Around 7,000 people stopped by in the first year alone.

Witnesses said he ate all of his meals there and held imaginary conversations with his wife. According to the New York Times article, published in March of 1905, “Mr. Reed could never be made to believe that his wife was really dead, his explanation of her condition being that the warmth had simply left her body and that if he kept the mausoleum warm she would continue to sleep peacefully in the costly metallic casket in which her remains were put.” The article also states, “According to his friends, he really believed that his wife could understand what he was saying to her.”

Reed died in 1905 and was finally interred with Mary — you can read his New York Times obituary here.

wanttobelieve:

By noon on July 7th, 1865, the temperature was in the 90s and the humidity was high. Mary Surratt was being comforted be her daughter, Anna. They were in a prison courtyard, where Mary was being held. Mary was to be hanged for her part in the Lincoln assassination — nowadays, many question she had any part at all.

At 12:30 pm, the prison told all guests to leave. Anna was dragged away from her mother, screaming and proclaiming her mother’s innocence. Anna’s screams could he heard throughout the entire prison.

More than 1,000 people gathered by the gallows in the courtyard to watch four “Lincoln conspirators” to be hanged. From left to right: Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt. At 1:15 pm, the condemned were led to the gallows, and were binded and blinded with white cloth covering their heads and tying their feet and hands together.

Mary complained about the cloth being to tight, to which a soldier told her, “Well, it wont hurt long.” Lewis Powell’s final words were, “Mary Surratt is innocent. She doesn’t deserve to die like the rest of us!” The plea was ignored.

The signal was given, and the four “conspirators” suddenly dropped. Surratt’s death was quick. George Atzerodt struggled, but quickly hung still. Lewis Powell and David Herold struggled for five minutes, before dying.

On this day, in 1865, Mary Surratt was the first women to be executed by the United States government.

theoddmentemporium:

Oliver Cromwell’s head

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who was part of the joint republican, military and parliamentarian effort that overthrew the Stuart monarchy as a result of the English Civil War, and was subsequently invited by his fellow leaders to assume a head of state role in 1653. Following [his] death on 3 September 1658, he was given a public funeral at Westminster Abbey, equal to those of monarchs before him. After the monarchy was reinstated, and Charles II, who had been living in exile, recalled, parliament ordered the disinterment of Cromwell’s body from Westminster Abbey. After hanging “from morning till four in the afternoon”, the [body was] cut down and the head placed on a 20-foot (6.1 m) spike above Westminster Hall. In 1685 a storm broke the pole upon which it stood, throwing the head to the ground, after which it was in the hands of private collectors and museum owners until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge.

The symbolic value of the head changed over time. While it was spiked on a pole above the London skyline, it gave a potent warning to spectators. In the 18th century, the head became a curiosity and a relic. The head has been admired, reviled and dismissed as a fake throughout the centuries. After Thomas Carlyle dismissed the head as “fraudulent moonshine”, and after the emergence of a rival claimant to the true head of Oliver Cromwell, scientific and archaeological analysis was carried out to prove the identity. Inconclusive tests culminated in a detailed scientific study by Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant, which concluded, based on a study of the head and other evidence, that there was a “moral certainty” that the head belonged to Oliver Cromwell.

treselegant:

‘The Grave.’

Bow Bells, 1872. 

gaksdesigns:

Lotus

buzzfeed:

Poignant much?

[Portrait of Amy Winehouse Made Out of Pills]