About

Lauren Donker

This blog represents my ongoing and never ending struggle to write more efficiently, effectively and creatively. It also constitutes a competition (with myself) to include as many cemetery puns as possible.

I am a first year MA student.

My Thesis

Like art, music, movies and clothing, the disposal of the dead is a realm of human practice subject to fads and changing fashion. While some scholars have examined the influence of fashion on mortuary practice, few have been able to do so in a specific manner because controlled datasets are largely unavailable. The unique grave markers produced by the St. Thomas White
Bronze Company in St. Thomas, Ontario—made of pure zinc and given the misnomer “White Bronze”—between 1883-1901 provide an exceptional opportunity to rectify this, in the form of a monument-specific analysis, as time and space are neatly and tightly controlled. The monuments bear the date of death of the individuals commemorated and would have been erected shortly thereafter, the manufacturer’s location is known, and census records are available to understand more about who consumed them. Using age, gender, religion and social class, this paper assesses competitive mortuary display, ostentation and novelty, and the agency of both individuals and broader social categories in effecting changes. In comparing individuals who purchased White Bronze monuments, a unique and novel type, to those who purchased contemporary traditional monuments, I argue that women were more were more conscious of novel fashion trends, and elected White Bronze monuments for the purposes of acquiring prestige. This in turn has the potential to broaden our understanding of the personally motivated choices of specific people which set fashion trends in motion.