Page 22 | Teacher showing photos to kids of victorian dead children - slightly disturbing

whyiwonderwhy · 2025-04-25T22:51:21+00:00

I am finding this so disturbing I can't sleep! However I might be being oversensitive, who knows. It is the "but - WHY?" bit which is bothering me most. The lesson was about the industrial revolution, and the subject of photography came up, 2 of the earliest photos were shown to the class (13-14yo) and then....I wish I could say the teacher showed photos of some of the extraordinary engineering inventions of the day, or of busy streets, or China, or something wonderful and extraordinary...but no, the teacher showed 10 photos of dead children and talked about how the Victorians would photograph dead children as though they were still alive, with the rest of the family, in a commemorative way. I have seen some in the past (I didn't learn about it at school however) and they are moving and tragic and disturbing. Nothing else, just these photos. Just wondering...why? why would the teacher do this? Any ideas? This teacher has form by the way. A lot of it. But this has for some reason blindsided me.

murasaki · 26/04/2025 00:41

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:38

It really isn't a good idea to try to engage children with gruesome stuff. I know exactly what you are talking about. And perceived wisdom here seems to be "oh yeah, i had to go through this at school, it is great". But it isn't a good idea at all. None of the teens in DC's class "love a bit of shock value" and most really could do without it. You could explore social attitudes with one photo maybe, amongst others. Not only showing those photos.

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It is a good idea to engage them with the the real world and not a sanitised version.

Original poster

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:39

CinnamonJellyBeans · 26/04/2025 00:38

I'll be she was fascinated and it made her think very deeply about how the industrial revolution caused overcrowding, poverty and disease.

You're just being a busybody. Your kid must being doing eye-rolls at you grilling her about her lessons and trying to demonstrate that you're smarter than her teacher.

What?!

Have you been sniffing glue?!

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Original poster

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:38

ItGhoul · 26/04/2025 00:31

These kids are teenagers, not little kids, and the photos are really useful for a) engaging teens, who love a bit of shock value, b) exploring social attitudes at the time of the Industrial Revolution, where attitudes to death are relevant and c) thinking about the growth in scientific advances in photography which are also relevant to the period.

It’s perfectly fine for kids to see things that are creepy and weird. Being mildly disturbed isn’t going to kill them.

FWIW, my own school, a state comprehensive in the 1980s, possessed a human foetus pickled in a jar, and on a trip to a local historic venue when I was in the Brownies, the highlight for us all (aged 7-10 at the time) was the preserved hand of an executed highwayman. So engaging kids through gruesome stuff is not new.

It really isn't a good idea to try to engage children with gruesome stuff. I know exactly what you are talking about. And perceived wisdom here seems to be "oh yeah, i had to go through this at school, it is great". But it isn't a good idea at all. None of the teens in DC's class "love a bit of shock value" and most really could do without it. You could explore social attitudes with one photo maybe, amongst others. Not only showing those photos.

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CinnamonJellyBeans · 26/04/2025 00:38

I'll be she was fascinated and it made her think very deeply about how the industrial revolution caused overcrowding, poverty and disease.

You're just being a busybody. Your kid must being doing eye-rolls at you grilling her about her lessons and trying to demonstrate that you're smarter than her teacher.

BottleBlondeMachiavelli · 26/04/2025 00:38

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:16

My text books didn't include any disturbing photos. They included themes and analyses and facts and things like that. In fact, none of my degree level texts included disturbing photos either. I suspect you are younger than me, the trend for disturbing stuff is relatively recent.

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I think it was in Yr 10 that our GCSE History textbook famous photo of Mussolini and his mistress hanging dead. That was in the very early years of GCSE, having replaced O levels, so new books then. You surely can’t be too much older than me if you have a Yr9 (?)

I’d seen crime scene photos of Jack the Ripper’s dead victims in a school library book a year or two before that. Probably other challenging images too, such as WW1 trench war photography v recreations of the same. That was curriculum - can’t remember which year.

Yellowhammer09 · 26/04/2025 00:37

Ruthietuthie · 26/04/2025 00:34

But in what context was this taught? Did the teacher contextualize death as a vital lens through which we can see so many changes in history? For example, the transportation of corpses was centrally connected to the rise of the railway network. The photographs also speak to wealth and poverty and the emergence of a growing middle-class, as well as the prevalence of disease as people flooded to the cities to work in factories (which can be traced further back to the enclosure movement). To me, death provides a lens through which to teach all these shifts that you are describing. And a compelling one. Maybe it was a way in?

I'd forgotten about the Necropolis Railway! Another Victorian invention and service.

murasaki · 26/04/2025 00:36

We got holocaust photos in the 90s, no parents complained as their parents had often fought in the war, and we needed to see the horror to understand.

Yellowhammer09 · 26/04/2025 00:35

Photography was invented during the Victorian era (albeit 20 odd years before the Industrial Revolution). It's not much of a stretch to link it to the unusual subjects of early photographs.

Cattenberg · 26/04/2025 00:34

I do think it sounds odd in that context. Regarding the Industrial Revolution, we learned about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the spinning jenny, the terrible working conditions in the mines and cotton mills, outbreaks of killer diseases in city slums and immunisations.

Ruthietuthie · 26/04/2025 00:34

But in what context was this taught? Did the teacher contextualize death as a vital lens through which we can see so many changes in history? For example, the transportation of corpses was centrally connected to the rise of the railway network. The photographs also speak to wealth and poverty and the emergence of a growing middle-class, as well as the prevalence of disease as people flooded to the cities to work in factories (which can be traced further back to the enclosure movement). To me, death provides a lens through which to teach all these shifts that you are describing. And a compelling one. Maybe it was a way in?

T1Dmama · 26/04/2025 00:32

It’s not particularly pleasant, however we learnt about the atrocities of Jewish death camps in year 8 when I was a t school - that was upsetting!
we also learnt about religion and that story in the bible where every boy under two was murdered, that Jesus was nailed to a cross by his wrist and ankles and left out in the heat to die…. We learnt about the wars and lots of other harrowing things too.

AcrossthePond55 · 26/04/2025 00:31

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:16

My text books didn't include any disturbing photos. They included themes and analyses and facts and things like that. In fact, none of my degree level texts included disturbing photos either. I suspect you are younger than me, the trend for disturbing stuff is relatively recent.

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the trend for distrubing stuff is relatively recent.

Not necessarily, at least not where I live. I'm in my late '60s and I remember some pretty gruesome photos in my HS history books; Civil War/Slavery, Custer's Last Stand, Concentration Camps. I actually think things were 'cleaned up' at some point because there was nothing like that in my DC's HS history books in the late '90s/early '00s. Not to mention the 'Red Asphalt' films in Driver's Ed. My DC weren't shown those, either.

As far as 'Memento Mori' type things (photos, things made of the deceased's hair, etc) there's a daguerreotype from my Dad's side of a sitting gentleman from the late 1800s and my cousins and I have never been able to figure out if he's alive or dead. We know the picture was taken in Cornwall some time after 1875 but that's about it.

As far as the teacher showing the photos, was your child upset by them? If not, then let it go.

ItGhoul · 26/04/2025 00:31

These kids are teenagers, not little kids, and the photos are really useful for a) engaging teens, who love a bit of shock value, b) exploring social attitudes at the time of the Industrial Revolution, where attitudes to death are relevant and c) thinking about the growth in scientific advances in photography which are also relevant to the period.

It’s perfectly fine for kids to see things that are creepy and weird. Being mildly disturbed isn’t going to kill them.

FWIW, my own school, a state comprehensive in the 1980s, possessed a human foetus pickled in a jar, and on a trip to a local historic venue when I was in the Brownies, the highlight for us all (aged 7-10 at the time) was the preserved hand of an executed highwayman. So engaging kids through gruesome stuff is not new.

Original poster

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:31

steff13 · 26/04/2025 00:28

Why would you have to wait until they leave the school? Just send a polite email and ask what the correlation was between the photos and the lesson. You're entitled to know what your kids are learning about; as long as you're not a dick about it, I don't see why it would be a problem.

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It would be a problem.

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Original poster

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:29

Ruthietuthie · 26/04/2025 00:18

Actually, interestingly, the invention of the camera runs parallel to Victorian death images. The first wide-spread use of the camera was to photograph the dead (who were good subjects as they stayed still!). Often, the death photograph was the only photograph ever taken of a person, and thus the only photograph a family would have. To me, it is an intriguing point in the history of industrialization and technology development.
So much of what we do with the dead now begins in the Victorian era and other historical moments. In the US, for example, it was the civil war which introduced embalming, as people wanted to bring those who died on the battle-field home. And embalming created a new vision of what death looked like and professionalized death in new ways, in ways that ran parallel to the invention of photography.
Do you know the dog listening to the gramophone which is the symbol for HMV? HMV stands for "His master's voice," and the dog, if you see the full image, is listening to a gramophone that is placed on top of a coffin. The first use of gramophones was not to listen to music, but to have a way of preserving the voices of the dead.
Seems pretty interesting to me. And pretty linked to changing British society in this period.

It is interesting, I agree, but it is not relevant to what the teacher should have been teaching about. There were a lot of more important things which should have come first. And as I said, think about the extraordinary engineering developments of the period - incredible changes - no photographs of the engines, the bridges, the ships. No photographs illustrating the other key changes to society. The changes in buying power, the wealthy whose wealth came from the fact that children women and men were working 12 hour days down mines etc, the rise of the middle classes.

No, none of this. Just ten family photos which included a dead child which they presented as though they were still alive.

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steff13 · 26/04/2025 00:28

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:15

Mmm I could. After my child has left the school.

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Why would you have to wait until they leave the school? Just send a polite email and ask what the correlation was between the photos and the lesson. You're entitled to know what your kids are learning about; as long as you're not a dick about it, I don't see why it would be a problem.

BottleBlondeMachiavelli · 26/04/2025 00:28

13/14? So year 9s? I think this is about the age that they will start being gradually exposed to more adult things.

They’re very old images anyway. Not like HD footage of last week’s fatal RTA.

VivienneDelacroix · 26/04/2025 00:27

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:10

It doesn't upset me at all, and the victorian photos of dead children don't upset me either. But the victorian photos are exactly as you describe - sitting them dressed as though alive - like a row of children with the dead child at the end propped up as though alive. Or two children hugging their dead mother but the mother is sat up with eyes open as though alive. So that is what I meant by slightly disturbing.

But as I said in the OP it was the "but why show these photos in that lesson" ie the wtf element to it which i very disturbing.

It just seems so weird to me to do that. It was the context. The photos were completely out of context

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So, you are being kept awake because a teacher showed a class something that you think is out of context for the topic being taught?

InterIgnis · 26/04/2025 00:25

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:22

I mean recent compared to when i was a child!

But yes, the victorians were pretty good at the bizarre and disturbing.

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I don’t find it bizarre and disturbing at all. IMO it’s a fascinating subject 🤷🏻‍♀️

Cattenberg · 26/04/2025 00:23

I’m 43. Our textbooks didn’t show lots of gory photos, but there were certainly a few, and there were also graphic written accounts and illustrations of executions and people dying of gruesome diseases. One of my best friends admitted that she loved all this stuff.

InterIgnis · 26/04/2025 00:23

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:21

It was the 2nd lesson on the topic. From a historical point of view the inclusion and the amount of time spent on it was bizarre. There were a lot of social changes, huge social impact - these photographs are not at all significant in comparision with other aspects of the period and the fact that no other photos were shown about social aspects, just these, is as I said totally bizarre.

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Not if this is going to be an exam subject. That would require a deeper understanding of the subject.

Calmdownpeople · 26/04/2025 00:22

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:05

Yes i see that but the subject was the industrial revolution - so the only way to engage the class is to show them photos of dead children and nothing else?! Really?!! Not about the actual amazing inventions of the industrial revolution? i mean showing photos of children working down mines would at least be on topic!

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OP come on. Your kids mentioned it because it was the most mention worthy. They didn’t stare at those pics for an hour. If they are learning about Victorian times there would have been a lot more pics and detail.

The only thing disturbing here is you making a mountain out of a molehill.

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whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:22

InterIgnis · 26/04/2025 00:19

’the trend for disturbing stuff is relatively recent’

No, no it isn’t. Just look at the Victorians…

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I mean recent compared to when i was a child!

But yes, the victorians were pretty good at the bizarre and disturbing.

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Original poster

whyiwonderwhy · 26/04/2025 00:21

5foot5 · 26/04/2025 00:16

That's interesting. And yes, I do realise that the Industrial Revolution created a lot of social change.

I think it's important that this sort of thing is taught, but hope that it is alongside other important changes that led to this.

Still not sure why OP was expecting China.

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It was the 2nd lesson on the topic. From a historical point of view the inclusion and the amount of time spent on it was bizarre. There were a lot of social changes, huge social impact - these photographs are not at all significant in comparision with other aspects of the period and the fact that no other photos were shown about social aspects, just these, is as I said totally bizarre.

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meevee · 26/04/2025 00:21

I know! But sometimes there are sensible normal people around!!

Not on teaching on dog threads 😆