#postmortem photography

three little angels

“ Little Lucy “ a beautiful piece in the link in my bio.

Or: what is the secret behind Fanny pics?

TW: death

My theory is that Fanny's body was photographed shortly after her death. Post-mortem photography was a thing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and would be quite common in the Victorian up to the Edwardian era. Such photographs were meant to be a comforting reminder of the deceased, a way to keep them close to you.

Now, I admit that this theory is not perfect.

1) I will say that I'm not sure if Fanny's husband, who chose to fling his wife out of the window and pawned a priceless jewel, would have the intention and the means to keep his wife close to him... Perhaps he would have had to do it to preserve the appearances? Playing his part as a grieving husband after a tragic accident?

2) Fanny was pushed out of a window... I'm not entirely sure how she would look like after her fall. Would her face be intact afterwards? (even if they knew how to make up the faces of the dead/"photoshop" the pictures to make them more lively)

That being said... Maybe it was not Fanny's husband who chose to take a photograph of her. Her family might have wanted to keep a token in their grief. Perhaps there was a police inquiry and the police took a photograph of the scene (the police definitely used photography at that time) or even the press (less sure why they would take a Fanny picture though - I'm not 100% sure how pictures were used in papers for such cases at the time).

Postmortem photography would explain why Fanny appears on pictures... and why she is the only ghost who can. That practice was popular in her time, but not for the other ghosts.

...

Another hypothesis is that Fanny might have been photographed shortly before her death? On Mike's ghost chart (I love that he has a chart omg), her appearance is very similar to the one we see on the show:

(at first, I looked at that photo to see if it could have been a postmortem portrait, but it doesn't look like it to me... Then again, Victorian/Edwardian photographers knew how to make bodies look alive - even painting their eyes open on the pictures!)

Fanny wears the same clothes and hairdo as she does in death, so maybe it was taken mere hours before her death?

Some examples of a fun historical practice called postmortem photography or death portraits, in which family members would photograph their loved one after they had passed away. Often they would be posed or propped up in a natural-looking position, and sometimes eyes were painted on top of the deceased’s closed eyelids to make them appear alive.