On Saturday I went for a stroll through Mt. Olivet Cemetery on Chicago’s south side. The cemetery itself, established in 1885, isn’t very interesting by Chicago standards – though it does contain the original gravesite of Al Capone (who was moved to Mt. Carmel several years after his death) and the infamous O’Leary’s (though the cow isn’t buried here, sadly). For the most part though, being a Catholic cemetery, it’s pretty boring: the statuary is mostly generic Jesus & Marys and the inscriptions are yawn-inducing Bible quotes. However, there were some great ceramics on the stones. Typically, the majority of them appear to have been stolen, but I did find some gems still left (mostly) intact, including some post-mortems (my favorites, of course). I thought I’d share a few over the next few days.
First of all, here is Maria Rossi who died in 1920 in all her coffin-bound glory:
So did they actually make ceramic models of the dead person, in their coffin, and mount the model on the tombstone?
@Aimee
Oh, I’m sorry, Aimee – I should have explained it better. These are photographs that are printed on oval-shaped ceramic plates and mounted to the gravestones. The one I showed is a photograph of a woman lying dead in her coffin (showing from the shoulders up with her eyes closed).
That’s okay, and thanks for the clarification. How tacky. I mean, we *know* the lady is dead, why didn’t her family put a pic of her when she was alive on the plaque?
If my family did that, I would come up out of the grave and wreak merry havoc on them and their belongings.
@Aimee Well, typically, post-mortem photos are used when there are no other photographs available of the deceased. They take a post-mortem shot to remember them by. It is a little odd to see one for an older woman in 1920 though – one would think they would have had a photo of her alive to use. But I guess not…
Maybe they were too poor to aford photos in life, but back then they probably had money socked away for funerals and funeral expenses, and the plaque came out of that?
She looks rather good. Dead, but good.