The Montana Digital Newspaper Project offers glimpses into once-popular
ideas that today may strike us as odd or even horrifying. This 1890 article from The Anaconda Standard describes a new process for preserving the bodies of the dead.
Instead of
embalming, families were advised to have their loved ones electroplated. "In
from eight to 10 days, at a price varying from 300 to 3,000 francs ($60 to
$600), you can have the life-size statue of your mother-in-law, should she
happen to luckily (sic) die, as an
ornament for your parlor."
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| Anaconda Standard, Dec. 7, 1890, p. 11 |
The process was developed by a
Paris physician, who promised that “modern Cleopatras may
now smile in their last moments, knowing full well that their beauty will be
handed down to future generations."
 |
| Excerpt |
This modern mortuary practice promised to benefit public parks, as well, because "the finely formed bodies of dead women" could serve as statues and fountains. Electroplating bodies appeared occasionally in the news
until the early 1900s. Why the practice did not catch on is unknown.
Eerily, the Anaconda Standard story abuts a large advertisement for Leyson's jewelry store, headlined as follows:
Eerily, the Anaconda Standard story abuts a large advertisement for Leyson's jewelry store, headlined as follows:
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You'll find the same news story, word for word, in
the Cape Girardeau Democrat (May 30, 1891)
and the Roanoke Times (June 28, 1891). All
three papers were reprinting an item that originally appeared in The
New York Journal. Reprinting texts (not always with attribution) was commonplace
in nineteenth-century newspapers.
* The practice was profiled in Scientific American: "Electroplating the Dead," vol. 31, no. 797, April 11, 1891, p. 227.
* The practice was profiled in Scientific American: "Electroplating the Dead," vol. 31, no. 797, April 11, 1891, p. 227.
