This Is What’s Lurking Beneath The Blankets In Victorian Baby Photos

When you think of Victorian photography, what do you picture? Probably grim, unsmiling people in fancy clothes, all shot in austere black and white or sepia. They can be pretty creepy as well, right? But some images from this era are a little spookier than others. And, yes, we’re talking about baby photos. Take a close look at any picture of an infant from this time, and you’ll likely spot an eerie figure lurking in the background of the shot. Can’t see it right away? Here’s a clue: think about who or what is hiding beneath those conspicuous blankets...

In the background...

If you’re just cooing over the photographed children – and we wouldn’t blame you – you probably won’t notice these mysterious interlopers to begin with. But when you finally spot one, a chill may run down your spine. It’s really unnerving! And here’s the thing. After that horrible scare, you’ll no doubt pick up on similar figures in the backgrounds of other Victorian baby pictures.

Hard to notice

What’s going on? Once you’ve spotted the blanket-clad figures, you’ll think these scary snaps wouldn’t look out of place in a horror movie! But back in the day, these photos weren’t anything out of the ordinary. That’s despite the strange shapes, which take on different forms depending on the child in the frame.

Ghostly apparitions

Sometimes, this apparition has a dark piece of fabric draped over it, making it look for all the world like a terrifying specter. In other cases, it’s hiding behind a curtain. Then there are the chairs that clearly aren’t normal pieces of furniture. Like we said, it varies.

Sign of the times

While you try to wrap your mind around this phenomenon, rest assured – there is an explanation. And it has a lot to do with the intricacies of Victorian photography and the equipment folks used during the period. Unsurprisingly, snapping a picture back then wasn’t as straightforward as it is today! Yet it was still a popular pastime.

Brand new technology

It all began in the summer of 1839. That’s when a man named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre unveiled a brand-new photography method to the world in Paris, France. This appropriately became known as the “daguerreotype process,” and it was a true game-changer.

Revolutionary invention

Why was the Frenchman’s idea so revolutionary? Well, it was said to produce photographs with a “truthful likeness” of the person or object in the frame. And this exciting prospect – one that we now very much take for granted – wowed folks at the time. Before long, daguerreotype shops were all the rage, with more than 70 of the outlets to be found in New York City come 1850. That’s a huge number!

Popular with the masses

Yet it’s not really surprising that photography was so instantly popular. After all, who wouldn’t want to carry around an image of their beloved babies wherever they go? We still do this today! But unlike the standard cameras that we’re familiar with now, aspiring snappers didn’t use film to capture their images. Instead, they had to produce their works on copper panels coated with silver.

Streamlined process

These sheets lacked the suppleness of film, of course, and were much weightier. A photographer would then expose their panel to light when they were ready to take a picture, and this burned a likeness of the subject onto the surface. But the full details of the image could only be seen once the silver-coated copper was taken out of the camera and treated with mercury fumes.

Difficult, but worth it

That doesn’t seem the easiest of methods! But it produced surprisingly good results. Well, for the time, anyway. So, the daguerreotype process remained popular despite a couple of big strikes against it – and we mean big strikes. This will begin to explain those shadowy figures in the baby photos, too.

Waiting game

Imagine you’ve just walked into a daguerreotype studio to have your photo taken after Daguerre’s invention hit the mainstream. Then you get yourself into position in front of the camera and decide upon your pose. Finally, once everything’s ready, you hold your stance, and you wait. And wait. And wait a little longer.

No flash photography here

You see, daguerreotypes could take as long as 15 minutes to be exposed. Not seconds. Minutes. So yes, this meant people would have to stay completely still for up to a quarter of an hour. That’s a huge ask, even if you’re a patient individual!

The cost of photographs

Daguerreotypes were pretty costly as well. Back in the 1850s, the price of a single picture reportedly ranged from around 50 cents to $2. Now, that may not sound too bad – roughly in line with the cost of color prints at present. But when you rework the figures into modern money, your jaw will hit the floor.

All that for one image?

That 50-cent daguerreotype cost the equivalent of around $16 today. And that $2 image? About $67. Wow! Needless to say, only the rich were partaking. But at least one problem with the process was eventually fixed. After some adjustments, the exposure time was able to be cut to under 60 seconds.

New methodologies

Still, as the 1860s rolled around, the daguerreotype process began to lose ground to other forms of photography. For example, the so-called “wet-collodion” method – which emerged in 1851 – became increasingly in demand. Why? Well, it chopped exposure times even further. That had to be good news for photographers and subjects alike – particularly those with little ones in tow.

Short exposure time

With this process, a photo appeared within roughly 30 seconds of exposure. That’s a much more palatable prospect than staying motionless for 15 minutes! Then again, it still wasn’t perfect. Holding a pose for more than just a few seconds isn’t that easy if you’re the fidgety type. Like, say, a baby.

Racing the clock

And photographers found themselves fighting against the clock once they had taken their pictures. Now, they had just a 15-minute window to develop a snap after exposing the wet collodion to light. Talk about a change of pace! We can only imagine how stressful that could’ve gotten.

Impact on art

But what impact did this innovative new method have on the world of art? You’d think that people would not need traditional portraits when they could just get a snap in a fraction of the time. And, yes, photography did eventually become the go-to form for a simple image of a loved one.

Shifting over time

Artists adapted with the times, however, by producing more complex paintings – ones that photographers would struggle to replicate just using a camera. And ever since, photography and fine art have worked in tandem. Interesting, right?

What about the shadowy figures?

It doesn’t explain the creepy figures lurking in the background of old baby photos, though. So why are they there? Is the whole phenomenon an attempt to add an artistic flourish to the images – with photographers trying to beat painters at their own game? Or is it all because of something more sinister?

Simple explanation

In truth, it’s neither of those things. And the explanation isn’t as complicated as you may think. Those eerie shapes are actually the babies’ moms, obscuring themselves with whatever materials were lying around studios. We can practically sense your relief from here! But why on Earth did the mothers do this?

Talking about timing

Well, remember the exposure times that we discussed earlier? If it’s difficult for a grown adult to stay motionless for 30 seconds, just imagine what it’s like for a baby. You’d never get the picture! So to help make things easier for the photographers, moms would step in to keep their kids positioned.

Blending into the background

Instead of just posing alongside their children, though, the women would attempt to camouflage themselves to blend into the backgrounds of the photos. And while the process threw up some truly bizarre results, it ultimately worked. The kids remained still, and the photographers could complete their snaps. All’s well that ends well, eh?

Widespread practice

This strange custom is also the subject of a fascinating book from 2013. Titled The Hidden Mother, the work shares over 1,000 examples of moms concealing themselves in Victorian baby photos – and that figure alone should tell you how widespread the practice was. The book’s editor, Linda Fregni Nagler, has explained, too, how these women chose to be tucked out of sight.

Sharing tips

Speaking to Fast Company in 2013, Nagler said, “To catalog the hidden mothers for my archives, I have used a number of keywords [that] categorize the many ways in which they hid themselves. Those keywords are highly descriptive: burqa, cut-out mother, phantom limb, cloth, big hand, darkroom trick, ink spot, head from behind, cropped head, furniture, metal matte and so on.”

Different methods

Yes, we know some of those methods are very different from the ones we’ve spoken about so far. As it turns out, not every mom draped a piece of material over her body to cover herself up. Some mothers were even blatantly in shot – although that didn’t mean they wanted to be the center of attention.

Proto-Photoshop

To get rid of the women from the snaps, then, a very primitive form of Photoshop was used. Basically, the moms’ facial features would be blotted out – which sounds pretty darn scary in itself. In other cases, their heads would simply be cut from the pictures, leaving the babies posing with what looks like decapitated bodies. Lovely!

Whose hands are those?

Just as spooky are the pics that show floating hands – and no arms or body in sight – hovering around the baby. And some of the pictures just generally have a spectral vibe, although that can be explained away as a side effect from the wet collodion process.

Unintended effects

While photos created using wet collodion were faster to develop than daguerreotypes, there was still one drawback: the colors of an image were affected. Any white areas of a shot would look as though they were light brown instead – something that the darker parts of a photo only accentuated. Altogether, this ended up making the snaps appear weirdly unnatural. The headless moms didn’t exactly help, either.

Grim mementos

And some Victorian-era pictures of babies are unsettling for an entirely different reason. Sometimes, photographs were taken of little ones after death. These were mementos, most likely, of young lives that had barely even started before they were cruelly snuffed out.

Providing comfort

At first glance, the infants in these tragic images may just appear to be reclining – even sleeping. Take a look at their painted-on eyes, though, and they’ll give the heartbreaking truth away. Yet while such photos can be harrowing to look at, they served an important purpose: providing some comfort for bereaved parents by helping them remember their loved ones.

Hard work for the photographers

But, of course, there were also plenty of pictures taken of healthy babies – whether the moms were in shot or not. Spare a thought, then, for the photographers who had to patiently wait for fussy infants to settle before they could even consider putting images down on daguerreotype or wet collodion. And a few snappers did indeed rise to this challenge, according to New York-based historian Mark Osterman.

Smart business venture

In 2013 Osterman told The Guardian, “There were plenty of photographers who just specialized in taking [pictures of] babies and old people. Old people can be shaky and cranky and difficult to deal with, just like babies. So the photographers had to have plenty of light and patience. They might need 18 to 30 seconds to get a clear negative.”

Women's specialty

Who were these saintly figures? Well, sometimes they were women. That’s right: unlike many other careers, photography was deemed a socially acceptable option for those of the fairer sex. And according to The Guardian, women took to the pursuit in their droves. It’s said, in fact, that in the ten years from 1861, the number of female professional snappers jumped fourfold.

When in doubt...

So, did women photographers bring anything different to the table? Well, when it came to taking pictures of babies, apparently not. As the men did, they’d just try to occupy the youngsters in whatever ways they could – by bringing in certain animals, for instance. Yes, birds and monkeys were sometimes housed in the photography shops. That’s one way to do it!

Let's not go there

But if those methods didn’t get the job done in the end, there was an alternative solution. A publication from the time claimed that opium should “effectively prevent the sitters from being conscious of themselves, or of the camera, or of anything else.” It goes without saying that this wouldn’t fly today.

Introducing Kodak

In any case, the photographic landscape started to change at the turn of the century. This was all thanks to the advent of Kodak’s famed Brownie camera, which could be used by pretty much anyone and didn’t cost a lot to purchase. The film was relatively cheap as well.

Changing the photo scene

The Brownie was essentially a “point-and-shoot” camera, as a user just needed to flip a switch to snap a shot. There was no need to worry about exposure times, either, which must’ve been a relief! And Kodak even removed the final bar stopping the public from taking up photography en masse. Processing pics, the company said, would be its responsibility now.

Continuing practice

So, what did that mean for the hidden mothers’ methods? After all, if you could now create a photo of someone without having to wait around for 30 seconds, were moms really needed in the pictures to help calm their children? Well, maybe not, but the practice continued into the 20th century – despite the advances in camera technology.

A certain place in time

By the Roaring Twenties, however, the moms had all but disappeared – when it came to the baby pics, anyway. And from there, you wouldn’t spot any more creepy figures looming over infants in photographs. But as weird and spooky as some of these images turned out, the method has its place in history – and it certainly won’t be forgotten.