Tales Of Darts And Death

I began researching death via two books: “The Victorian Book of the Dead” by Chris Woodyard and “Japanese Death Poems” by Yoel Hoffmann. These two books will be the source of much of the information I’ve gained about the views and practices surrounding death in the Victorian era in the British Isles and Japan spanning hundreds of years.

One of my first notes recounts a story of a man who, upon waking up suddenly from a deep slumber saw a bright light, and in the midst of this light was an omen of death, a skeleton with a scythe and a dart. The skeleton threw the dart right at the man, barely missing his shoulder. The light soon faded and after calming himself down he fell asleep again. Arising the next morning the servant tells him that the girl on the opposite side of the well, with her head against the same wall, was found dead. 

Here is one of the first stories in the book which recounts a newspaper story of the period. So whether you believe in ghosts or not (I don’t), someone did, enough for them to inform a local newspaper of the event. Today we call this superstitious, but this was also during a time when the majority of people were God-fearing, they believed. On the subject of belief; This last weekend I was at Kew Gardens viewing the cherry blossoms – flowering for about a week annually – and I was talking to a friend about the effect of belief or emotion on the body. So often I see and hear of people going through stressful events in their lives and having it manifest in physical ailments. From this, I can begin to understand how deistic belief in a world where death and disease in families are much more present in everyday life would bring real emotional comfort to people, who may realise fewer physical ailments.

In today’s world, I find it hard to believe in ghosts or spirits, but many people in the 19th century did, so we have a plethora of surviving jewellery reflecting this belief, much of it coming in the form of mourning jewellery. It could be said that most mourning jewellery has a purpose: remembrance. But I think this is connected to the belief in the afterlife, so for example, when the wearer of mourning jewellery passes and they’re reunited in heaven, their dearest knows that they've been thinking of them during their separation.