Atheist Relics, Couples’ Cremation, and Victorian 'Infidels'

Emma and Christy look at Alfred Gilbert's sculpture Mors Janua Vitae (c. 1905–1907) at the Royal College of Surgeons, London — a life-sized bronze which houses the remains of the couple Edward and Eliza Macgloghlin. We talk relics and transi tombs; Victorian atheism and the history of unbelief; cremation, miasma, and lead-lined coffins; books bound in human skin; Victorian sex (and free love!); affairs between artists and patrons; Welsh druids; paganism; birth control and the throuple; infidel feminism; and abolishing the family.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGES WE DISCUSS, as well as complete show notes, references, and suggestions for further reading.

MEDIA DISCUSSED
Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae (c. 1905–1907)
Henry Weekes, John Hunter (1864)
Etruscan couple tomb: The Sarcophagus of the Spouses (c. 530–510 BCE)
Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae detail: panel
Alfred Gilbert, Mors Janua Vitae detail: 'baby angel'
Examples of G. F. Watts paintings: She Shall Be Called Woman (c. 1875–92); Orpheus and Euridice (exh. 1890)
Photograph of the lobby of the Royal College of Surgeons, from Artistic Possessions at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1967)
Alfred Gilbert, plaster (and wood) version of Mors Janua Vitae, exhibited 1907
Alfred Gilbert, The Virgin (1884)
Relic example: the bones of St Valentine, Basilica of Santa Maria, Rome
Relic example: the Veil of Veronica (cloth said to have wiped Christ's face on the way to the crucifixion), Vatican version
Nineteenth-century mourning jewellery made with hair of the deceased
Case containing William Morris's hair, by Robert Catterson Smith and Charles James Fox (1896–97)
Transi tomb example from Boussu, Belgium (16th century)
Victorian garden cemeteries example: Norwood cemetery (1849)
Alfred Gilb