“Transforming Sorrow into a Thousand Flowers”: Refashioning a Midlands’ Celebration of Death by the Modern Era

A cultural revival in funeral floriography – the secret language of flowers – is a novel feature of modernity still neglected by historiography. A ‘Russian flu’ pandemic which swept across Britain in the 1890s was a commercial catalyst for the floral industry. An excess mortality of 125,000 people, reflected the fact that 60 per cent of the population were infected with influenza between 1889 and 1895. The floristry business flourished, by following the fashion to line graves with flowers and display them at newly built crematoriums. According to standard historical accounts, consumers were supposed to be less willing to buy into this elaborate funeral flora. Seldom have historical studies appreciated the popularity of floral tributes for the dead in provincial England. In a case study of the Midlands, experiences across provincial central England, touching on Northern communities, is an historical prism to explore how florists were at the forefront of reviving floral death customs, some of which had not been in vogue since the eighteenth century.