‘The Last Sleep’ photos were way to commemorate the dead during time of high infant mortality

“Pickett’s Child” is a postmortem photo from the Scott B. Dunlap collection in the Medina Historical Society.

By Catherine Cooper, Orleans County Historian

“Illuminating Orleans” – Volume 4, Number 34

MEDINA – The child in this photograph appears to be sleeping peacefully. However, this is a postmortem photo, the child is dead, and the pose was referred to as the “Last Sleep.”

It may seem morbid to us, but at a time when infant mortality rates were high, and attitudes toward mourning were different, this photograph would have been viewed as a way of commemorating the dead and solace to the family.

This is most likely the only photograph ever taken of the deceased child. The photographer was a young neighbor, Scott B. Dunlap, of Dunlap Road in Shelby, who had a new Kodak camera and an interest in photography.

Born in 1898, he was a fourth-generation member of the family for whom the road is named. Armed with his new camera, Scott, who graduated from Medina High School in 1905, took unposed, relaxed photographs of his family and friends. Without intending to, he chronicled daily life in rural America in the early 1900s, in those years just before automobiles replaced the horse and buggy.

In 2008, Scott B. Dunlap, Jr. donated a collection of over 200 of his father’s glass plate negatives to the Medina Historical Society. The collection includes five postmortem views of the child, each taken from a different angle. The long exposure time required at the time made deceased subjects easier to photograph.

Another version of “Pickett’s Baby” from the Scott B. Dunlap collection.

The photos were labeled as “Pickett’s Child” or “Pickett’s Baby,” the first name was not mentioned. A brief search elicited the infant’s name as Harold H. Pickett, (also referenced as Herman Harold) born Nov. 7, 1905, died Sept. 12, 1906. He was the son of Henry R. (Ray) and Lena Gurrslin Pickett.

In April of the following year, 1907, the family lost another son, Wilford R., one month old. An older son, Lavern E., survived. Lena died in 1909, at the age of 27. She and the two infant children were buried in Millville Cemetery. Following Lena’s death, Henry re-married, moved to Buffalo, worked as a motorman with a railroad company and had four more children.

With regard to the child’s clothing, it was customary at the time to dress boys and girls in short white dresses until they started walking and then in short, loose-fitting dresses until they were two or three years old.

As healthcare improved and mortality rates declined, the practice of photographing the dead declined and came to be viewed as macabre. We still use photographs of the deceased for obituaries, funeral cards and services, but those are living images. At the present time, when smartphones have made it possible for anyone to take photographs of any subject, the lines between what is acceptable and what is not are shifting once more.

A selection of the Dunlap photos may be viewed at www.historicmedina.org.