Memento Mori & The Victorian Culture of Wearing the Dead
In Victorian England, grieving families did not just remember their dead… they wore them, in the form of jewelry crafted from human hair, lockets containing ashes, and brooches displaying photographs of corpses posed as if asleep. This is Memento Mori. (mə-MEN-toh MOR-ee)
Memento Mori: Meaning, Origin, and Forms
“Remember that you die.” The Latin term Memento Mori translates directly to this and is a salient reminder of the mortality of man. It has its roots in ancient Roman tradition; in the Roman Triumph, where a victorious war general would lead a procession after every victory with a slave whispering behind him.
The slave would whisper: “Respice post te. Hominem te memento“ : “Look behind you. Remember you are a man.“ It was a gentle, humbling reminder of the inevitable death that lay in front of every man.
Memento Mori also has origins in classical Stoicism with the Stoic philosophers such as Roman philosopher Seneca, and Greek (but Roman-bred) Epictetus depicting death not as something to be cowered from, but as a concept and reality to be embraced wholly, as it was unavoidable. Epictetus wrote in his Enchiridion:
“Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.“
Seneca in his Letters to Lucillus added:
“Therefore, let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day.“
In Christian theology, we also see repeated mention of the concept, this time with a moralizing take, with biblical text from Ecclesiastes 7:40 instructing "in all thy works be mindful of thy last end and thou wilt never sin."
Over the years, Memento Mori spread beyond Rome and took on many forms, including ones that go beyond remembering mortality to remembering the dead themselves.
We see it in funeral architecture; in the Capela dos Ossos in Évora, Portugal, a chapel of bones with an inscription at its entrance: “Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos” : “We bones that are here, await yours.” It is a direct conveying of the fragility of mortal life.
We find Memento Mori examples in literature, as in meditational works on death, like the Latin text Ars Moriendi on how to die well. The theme carries into music, in the Ad Mortem Festinamus, with its lyrics on the inevitability of death.
In visual art, the reminder appears in everyday objects such as public clocks decorated with the phrase “perhaps the last hour”, Mary Queen of Scots’ watch engraved in a skull, and in Memento Mori jewelry, which is the core of this article.
Each of these forms served the same purpose, which was to keep death visible in daily life, as an abiding principle: if you know you will die, then, you will live more deliberately. It was this idea that gave rise to the Victorian practice of mourning jewelry, the most intimate expression of Memento Mori yet. Rather than a chapel or clock, it was something worn against the skin, such as a lock of hair sealed in a locket; the physical remains of a person, carried with you while they are gone.
How The Victorian Practice of Memento Mori Jewelry Came About
On the 14th of December, 1861, Prince Albert, husband and consort of the British monarch and European matriarch, Queen Victoria, died of typhoid fever. His death occurred merely nine months after the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Kent had died in March of the same year. The Queen’s grief was overwhelming, and it was recorded that she mourned for the rest of her life, and never recovered from Albert’s death.
As part of her perpetual grief, Queen Victoria kept Albert’s things at the house exactly as they were before his death, retreated from public life, and wore her black mourning clothes, called “widow’s weeds,” until her own death forty years later in 1901. She also mandated that members of her court wore mourning attire during this period and would even have Prince Albert’s likeness represented in royal portraits as busts, as seen in the image above.
The Queen always had a sentiment for jewelry right from a young age when her mother gifted her a locket containing a lock of hair from her deceased feather, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent. Therefore, in mourning of her beloved, she wore symbolic memorial jewelry, most famous of which was her gold locket containing a lock of Prince Albert’s hair; it was a deeply personal relic and she was never parted from it.
Made from solid gold and dark onyx, the oval locket featured a blue enamel border with a German inscription honoring Prince Albert's heritage. The piece snaps open to reveal a dual interior layout protecting a lock of the Prince Consort's hair on one side and a mini portrait of him on the other.
Gold, onyx, and diamond face of Albert's Memento Mori. 
Open locket of Albert's Memento Mori with his hair. 
Closed, back of Albert's Memento Mori locket.
Victoria's locket of Albert, with his hair. (1861). Royal Collections Trust. 'Die reine Seele schwingt sich auf zu Gott', roughly translated as 'The pure soul flies up above to the Lord'.
Queen Victoria’s choice of prolonged public grief therefore inspired a culture of mourning for the entire British Empire, one that would have them make mourning rings and necklaces containing hair, memorial lockets containing ashes, and brooches displaying post-mortem photographs, allowing them to keep a final likeness of the deceased close at all times. Artisans became masters of hair work, transforming strands of the deceased’s hair into intricate braided bands, rings and even mini landscape scenes painted on ivory using pulverized hair as pigment.
Why Victorians Wore the Dead
Beyond the trend spurred by Queen Victoria, and long after her passing, Victorians wore the physical remains of their deceased loved ones for reasons rooted in the realities of their daily lives, one of which was the high mortality rate of that era.
The British Industrial Revolution of 1760-1840, while famous for its brilliant inventions and socio-economic impact, brought a number of negative effects including pollution from gas and coal which was being mined during the time. It also led to a high immigration rate which resulted in overcrowding of families in unsanitary environments. In these tightly packed spaces, deadly incidents of cholera, tuberculosis, and typhus spread unchecked. Infant survival statistics were at a devastating low at the time with one in three children dying before reaching their fifth birthday.
As life was so fleeting, death became something that could not be hidden away. It occurred in homes, before the family could ever reach the hospital or a doctor. Victorians were forced to develop an intimate relationship with the constant presence of death in their households. Early memorial methods such as photography and oil portraits were expensive for the middle class at the time and considered a luxury. Consequently, the people turned to the use of hair as the ultimate means of remembrance.
Hair was perfect: deeply personal, free to harvest, and chemically stable. It would not decay even decades after the person had died. To a grieving Victorian mother, holding jewelry made from her late child’s hair offered a tangible connection to the one she had lost.
Memorial Jewelry Today
After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the culture of Victorian public mourning began to decline. It marked the end of that era, and her successor, King Edward VII favoured a lighter atmosphere. Advancements in medicine and public sanitation had also reduced the mortality rates, making death less constant in households.
The onset of World War I in 1914 was the tipping point for the decline of memorial jewelry. The unexpected multitude of mass casualties made resource-heavy Victorian mourning rituals such as human hair jewelry logistically impossible.
However, the mark the "Memento Mori” era left on history is undeniable. Today, jewelers still draw inspiration from that intimate desire to keep loved ones close, even after their deaths. Rather than weaving hair into jewelry, some modern artisans use the technologically advanced method of creating cremation diamonds, high-quality gemstones from extracting the carbon from a loved one’s ashes.
While the methods of Memento Mori jewelry have been modernized, their core remains unchanged. We still seek tangible ways to transform the agony of loss into a beautiful reminder of everlasting love.
Sophie Adekola is a writer from Nigeria with a passion for topics in beauty and health. She is interested in the intersection of modern culture and the historical application of beauty techniques.
Additional Reading
Dunn, C. (2017). Prince Albert. The Royal Family. 21 Sept. [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
Epictetus (135AD). The Internet Classics Archive | The Enchiridion by Epictetus. [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
First World War. (2019). Imperial War Museums. [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
luisseco (2015). Bones Chapel in Evora, Sao Francisco Church. [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
Lutz, Deborah. “THE DEAD STILL among US: VICTORIAN SECULAR RELICS, HAIR JEWELRY, and DEATH CULTURE.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 39, no. 1 (6 Dec. 2010), pp. 127–142,
Mackay, Alexander. Victorian Mourning Hair Jewellery 1840-1900, Submitted to the Department of Design and Visual Arts in Candidacy for the Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Design for Stage and Screen Costume Design. Faculty of Film Art and Creative Technologies. 2024.
“Memento mori” watch in the form of a skull, known as the “Mary Queen of Scots” watch. (2015). [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 101 - [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
Victoria (r. 1837-1901). (n.d.). [Accessed 1 Aug. 2026].
Tsoumas, Johannis. “Mourning Jewelry in Late Georgian and Victorian Britain: A World of Fantasy and Tears.” Convergences - Journal of Research and Arts Education, vol. 15, no. 30, 30 Nov. 2022, pp. 121–134.
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