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 “Sleep well sweet angel, let no fears of ghouls disturb thy rest, for above thy shrouded form lies a torpedo, ready to make minced meat of anyone who attempts to convey you to the pickling vat.”
So reads the advertisement for a 'Grave Torpedo', a device that existed to thwart grave robbers.
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 In the 18th and 19th centuries, schools of anatomy were always after a nice, fresh corpse. With bodies collected after execution, or donations to the schools not coming fast enough, they would purchase them off body snatchers.
How could you keep your dead safe from these nefarious fellows?  In 1976, while shooting an episode of 'The Six Million Dollar Man', a crew member accidentally broke the arm off a 'mannequin'.
It turned out, it was not a mannequin at all, but the mummified remains of a human body, one that had been travelling with carnivals for over half a century.  Post Mortem Photography, also known as Memorial Portraiture, is the practice of photographing the recently deceased, usually in a way that creates the illusion of life through the posing of the body.
The photos would act as keepsakes, especially if the deceased was a child.  Once a year in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, the indigenous Toraja perform a ceremony for their dead called Ma'Nene.
In August the corpses are taken from their resting places to be washed, groomed and dressed, before being walked through the village, back to their coffins.  How far would you go to preserve the memory of the one you love?
Would you steal their body from the grave, hold the bones together with wire and coathangers, cover the rotting skin with silk and plaster, replace the eyes with glass and sleep beside them at night for seven years? Carl Tanzler did...  Rosalia Lombardo died of pneumonia in Palermo, Sicily in December 1920. Her father took her body to renowned embalmer, Alfredo Salafia, so her body would remain preserved.
Salafia's embalming technique worked so completely, that the body survived the ravages of time. It was so well preserved that even in 1995, when this photo was taken, she looked merely asleep. Another fascinating aspect is Rosalia's eyes. Some days and nights they will slowly open and close, as if slowly waking from a long sleep...  At the end of the 16th century, the friars of the Capuchin Monastery had run out of space in their cemetery. The solution was to start excavating Crypts below the cemetery, where they would inter the mummified bodies of those in their order.
Originally intended only for the dead friars, the catacombs soon became home to luminaries, priests and civilians, many preserved and wearing their finest clothes. Today, visitors can view the more than 8000 human remains lining the walls, or placed on shelves. |
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