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No Ordinary Deaths: A People's History of Mortality
History is dominated by A-list queens beheaded; archdukes assassinated. But what about everyone else? How did ordinary people depart this life and grieve for loved ones - and which of the old ways might help us prepare for the end?
Our ancestors, living closer to death then we do, had a more intimate and integrated relationship with death as a familiar presence in daily life. From the death-watchers of the Middle Ages to the pomp of Victorian funeral wear, by way of plague pits, grave-robberies and wakes, historian and bereavement counsellor Molly Conisbee explores how cycles of dying, death and disposal have shaped - and been shaped by - society. She examines, through the prism of past deaths, their interweaving with our beliefs and politics, our most fervent hopes and deepest fears and, ultimately, what it means to 'die well'.
A groundbreaking new work of social history, No Ordinary Deaths paints a rich picture of the lives of our forebears, skilfully bringing the lost art of death to life today.
Our ancestors, living closer to death then we do, had a more intimate and integrated relationship with death as a familiar presence in daily life. From the death-watchers of the Middle Ages to the pomp of Victorian funeral wear, by way of plague pits, grave-robberies and wakes, historian and bereavement counsellor Molly Conisbee explores how cycles of dying, death and disposal have shaped - and been shaped by - society. She examines, through the prism of past deaths, their interweaving with our beliefs and politics, our most fervent hopes and deepest fears and, ultimately, what it means to 'die well'.
A groundbreaking new work of social history, No Ordinary Deaths paints a rich picture of the lives of our forebears, skilfully bringing the lost art of death to life today.
367 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2025
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January 28, 2026
"Death is, then, our constant, if mutable historical companion, who changes style, form of representation and metho of delivery in accord with the changing times."
In No Ordinary Deaths, Molly Conisbee dives into the history of death and dying. She explores death and dying from many angles, highlighting their social, economical, gendered, cultural, public and private dimensions while shining a light on the real-life histories of ordinary people who once lived and breathed and, crucially to this book's focus, died.
No Ordinary Deaths was a history book that was, for me, at once, both full of brand new information and a refresher on many topics I have read about and studied before. I have, for example, read quite a bit about anatomisation / dissection, the treatment of criminals' bodies and resurrection men, so those chapters were full of familiar stuff for me. But even then, I learned new tidbits of information, such as that sometimes, when women were anatomised, doctors covered the genitalia of the corpse – it's strange, this attempt at modesty and propriety, when you are literally cutting someone open in front of a gawking audience. So even when I already had a strong grasp on a topic, this book still developed my understandings and thinking. The chapters that held the most new information for me were the one about watchers and the concept of watching, the one about Welsh wakes (they could be quite rowdy back in 18th and early 19th centuries, with pranks, drinking, songs and horseplay to confuse spirits threatening the body) and the one about undertakers and the rise of death as a business. I had no idea that death as business offered jobs especially for women (a lot work with fabrics and cloth-making, so obviously women were hired) or that working class people, in order to afford funerals, established burial clubs which gathered funds and helped members in times of illness and death. It says a lot about the precarious world they lived in that, by the end of the 19th century, around 80% of working people were part of clubs like these.
Throughout the book, Conisbee emphasised what death, and everything that surrounded it, can tell us about larger historical events, phenomena, ideologies and the like. Class was one of the recurring themes of the book, and one that I found fascinating. Though death is often referred to as the great equaliser (and though in some ways it is – we do all, after all, die in the end), the way people died and what came after has always been inextricably tied to class and wealth. Criminals and poor people were the ones whose bodies were anatomised for medical purposes (criminals due to the Murder Act of 1752, and the bodies of unclaimed poor who died in poorhouses or asylums due to the Anatomy Act of 1832) – as Conisbee writes: "The practice of anatomy became symbolic of an assault on the body not just of the criminal, but of the poor, marginalised and disadvantaged." Poor people were the ones most often executed for crimes that could range from theft to murder, because they had no wealth to protect them and they were the ones who were desperate enough to steal. I also appreciated this quote from Conisbee about the death penalty and the occasional conversation in England about bringing it back for certain crimes: "As we have seen through Ann's story, however, its effectiveness as a deterrent appears to have been negligible, and its potential for abuse and misuse, incalculable." Wakes, especially Welsh and Irish, were seen as bawdy and tactless because they were mostly working class tradition (eventually wakes became more somber in an attempt, by the people who had them, to adhere to normative ideas of propriety). The rich and the powerful got fancy, big memorials – statues, mausoleums and the like – while those with nothing were thrown in nameless graves. The upper classes could bury their dead in the latest, imperialistic fashions – in the 18th and 19th centuries tombs with Indian and Egyptian influences were very popular. Rich people could afford to go into months- or years-long mourning periods and have fancy mourning clothes made – this was not an option for working class people, who lived from pay check to pay check. It was intriguing to read about how industrialisation impacted mourning and, in some ways, equalised it: when mourning garments could be mass-produced, even poorer people could afford to perform their grief publicly. For communities of normal, everyday people, death was also a very communal thing, with wakes, watchers, people dropping by to help and so on. Class is, as it always is, very present in this history.
I've always known death and dying were highly gendered, but this book really made me appreciate just how gendered they were. Women and men (speaking in very binary terms) died differently – while men had to fight wars and do more physical labour which was often very dangerous, women were in constant danger when pregnant and giving birth. Women had different roles in death – it was, for example, women who were the Watchers, people who volunteered or were paid for to keep the dying company, offer them solace and make sure their family was there in the end. End of life care was a feminine field until it became more professional, which is when men took over, for the most part. Women's mourning was the most controlled and structured – women had to mourn their husbands for two years or more, while men only had to wear black for three months after their wife died, which says something unpleasant about how women were seen. There were some nice surprises related to gender in the book: there is evidence of multiple women owning undertaking businesses, for example. It's a common misconception that women were only ever housewives in history, and Conisbee does a good job of correcting this misunderstanding through real-life examples.
As a queer historian, the chapter on queer lives was especially interesting to me. I liked how Conisbee discussed how, despite the fact that men like John Smith and James Pratt (the central figures of this chapter) are only known due to them ending up in court, they shouldn't be seen as oddities. They were ordinary men until that fateful day when they were caught. It was the punitive law of the time that branded them "abnormal". Conisbee also used their trial to highlight how sodomy laws, though they targeted officially all men who engaged in same-sex acts, were especially brutal for working class and poor men. The rich could easily find private spaces to meet and they had their money, titles and names to protect them, and if necessary, they had the funds to flee the country to avoid a trial. Working class men like Smith and Pratt didn't have any to those protections, so it was men like them who were executed. Reading this chapter made me sad and angry, but Conisbee alleviated those feelings a bit by telling her reader that, in accordance with the Alan Turing Law of 2017, Smith and Pratt were absolved of their crimes and that the British LGBTQ+ community hasn't forgotten them: they are among many people of the past who are considered martyrs.
Conisbee highlighted the performative nature of death really well. She wrote about executions as warnings as well as spectacles to the public, about the Victorian culture of mourning as a public showcase of grief through objects and social rules, about murder tours (not a modern day phenomenon), about public anatomisation and how people wanted bits and pieces of criminal bodies, and about memorials as public displays of remembrance. She talks about who gets to be remembered and how memorials can be supportive of the political regime or challenge it. Wakes also have a performative aspect to them, with all their rituals. The word "performative" has a negative vibe, but Conisbee does a good job exploring why these performances were not just for show but could also genuinely help people deal with loss. Throughout her book, Conisbee is very empathetic towards the people of the past and reminds the reader that though a lot of things they did might seem, to us, strange and even improper, they didn't see it that way and, for them, they were helpful.
Religion is also a key aspect of this book and its historical analysis. Religion has, obviously, played a huge role in how death is talked about and approached, and this book helped me see its impact in a more nuanced way. The way Conisbee described reformation in England made me truly appreciate just how existential a threat it must've seemed like to so many and how it threatened every day life – I really liked this quote: "In this sense, when the Reformation came, it was not just a transformation of how the Church and its offices were to be organised, but rather it went to the very heart of community identity and local relationships." Conisbee also wrote about how, even though the Church (and the Law) had strict opinions about certain types of deaths, such as suicides and deaths of unbaptised babies, the reality was more complex and people didn't always live by those rules. Sometimes people snuck mothers into graveyards so they could bury their baby in consecrated ground, and sometimes juries and judges didn't declare an obvious suicide as such to protect the family of the deceased from shame, economical ramifications and scrutiny. It was also interesting to read about how depictions of heaven and hell have adapted and changed, and how Heaven, which was in the Medieval period often Jesus and the Saints in a garden with a golden city became, in the Victorian Era, a celestial family reunion. Both interpretations say so much about the time period that came up with them. As someone who is very interested in ghosts, it was cool reading about the relationship between superstitions and religion, and about how ghosts too have changed with the times – for example, for the Jacobeans, ghosts were demonic beings pretending to be humans, while Regency folks enjoy gothic ghosts and people of the 1930s came up with poltergeists.
Conisbee draws parallels between modern death culture and the past (doulas, for example, are quite reminiscent of the Watchers), and explores what we might learn about grief and loss by looking at the past. She emphasises how events such as wakes have proven benefits for the bereaved, and how, in our modern individualistic world, it is much easier for someone to feel alone in their grief than it was in the past, when death was a more communal event. She writes very movingly about her own experiences with loss and those of people she knows, and about how crucial it is that societies fund medical care as well as good quality hospice and end-of-life care, because, as she says: "A caring death is surely the last gift we owe the dying, but also the bereaved." There are many death rituals in this book that I don't think will ever make a popular comeback, but there are plenty of things I think we can learn from the people of the past and how they coped with death. And above all, I think, there are lessons about what we owe each other, how we shouldn't treat each other and how dangerous it is when governments and people in power get to have a say who deserves a good life or any life at all.
I would recommend this book happily to anyone interested in the topic. It is not as gloomy as it might seem and look – it's actually quite a life-affirming book, a great reminder that even though the people of the past lived such different lives, they were still just people. Conisbee's writing is engaging and easy-to-understand even if you don't have any prior knowledge on the subject, and her historical analysis is sound. As to why not 5/5 stars, well, that's just a really rare rating for me when it comes to nonfiction.
Some interesting facts I learned:
- The term "the Black Death" was coined in the 18th century.
- In census records after 1851, when occupation became required information, many daughters are listed as "assistant mothers" – they helped not just their own mothers, but those in their neighbourhood.
- Wales only got its first medical school in the 1800s. The first nursing college in Britain was established in 1916.
- Contrary to popular belief, requirements for the death penalty were much stricter in the Medieval period than, say, the 18th century. In the 18th century stealing a rabbit could get you executed.
- Graves only became, commonly, six feet deep, in the 17th century.
- The London Foundling Hospital (1739) became a huge hit: by the 1750s they were only able to take in about a third of the babies brought to them. A testament to the desperate conditions of the poor.
- The doctor who anatomised Burke (of Burke and Hare fame) wrote some of his notes in Burke's blood.
- Gibbeting was made illegal in 1832.
- There was a saint to pray to for relief for any kind of ailment. St Servatus of Tongeren helped with (and, I assume, still does) sore toes.
- Wales became a popular destination for the Romantics who wanted to experience untouched nature and the like but couldn't travel to Europe due to Napoleon's military shenanigans. With the Romantics came also a renewed interest in folklore and folk practices.
- Quakers got their nickname from their tendency to be physically intense during their meetings, as in they literally quaked.
- The earliest evidence of burial rites are from neolithic cultures, around 10 000 years ago.
- Fake funerals were quite common as part of protests – for example, in food riots, people could bury a loaf of bread with all the pomp and ceremony of a proper human burial.
- Taphophiles are people who are very interested in graveyards and tombstones.
- The death business was so big in the 19th century that there were death-themed shops and warehouses that sold everything from mourning underwear to mourning teapots.
- Not many graves of "ordinary" people survive from before the 16th century.
- The Bath Institution for the Blind and Deaf was established in 1842. Girls there were trained for domestic service and boys for trades such as tailoring.
- From mid-19th century onwards, spiritualism became really popular in the USA and Europe. Women really responded to spiritualism due to the movement's emphasis on gender equality.
- Public bathrooms became a thing for women in the 19th century, which made it possible for them to stay outside longer – before this, they could remain out as long as their bladder held.
In No Ordinary Deaths, Molly Conisbee dives into the history of death and dying. She explores death and dying from many angles, highlighting their social, economical, gendered, cultural, public and private dimensions while shining a light on the real-life histories of ordinary people who once lived and breathed and, crucially to this book's focus, died.
No Ordinary Deaths was a history book that was, for me, at once, both full of brand new information and a refresher on many topics I have read about and studied before. I have, for example, read quite a bit about anatomisation / dissection, the treatment of criminals' bodies and resurrection men, so those chapters were full of familiar stuff for me. But even then, I learned new tidbits of information, such as that sometimes, when women were anatomised, doctors covered the genitalia of the corpse – it's strange, this attempt at modesty and propriety, when you are literally cutting someone open in front of a gawking audience. So even when I already had a strong grasp on a topic, this book still developed my understandings and thinking. The chapters that held the most new information for me were the one about watchers and the concept of watching, the one about Welsh wakes (they could be quite rowdy back in 18th and early 19th centuries, with pranks, drinking, songs and horseplay to confuse spirits threatening the body) and the one about undertakers and the rise of death as a business. I had no idea that death as business offered jobs especially for women (a lot work with fabrics and cloth-making, so obviously women were hired) or that working class people, in order to afford funerals, established burial clubs which gathered funds and helped members in times of illness and death. It says a lot about the precarious world they lived in that, by the end of the 19th century, around 80% of working people were part of clubs like these.
Throughout the book, Conisbee emphasised what death, and everything that surrounded it, can tell us about larger historical events, phenomena, ideologies and the like. Class was one of the recurring themes of the book, and one that I found fascinating. Though death is often referred to as the great equaliser (and though in some ways it is – we do all, after all, die in the end), the way people died and what came after has always been inextricably tied to class and wealth. Criminals and poor people were the ones whose bodies were anatomised for medical purposes (criminals due to the Murder Act of 1752, and the bodies of unclaimed poor who died in poorhouses or asylums due to the Anatomy Act of 1832) – as Conisbee writes: "The practice of anatomy became symbolic of an assault on the body not just of the criminal, but of the poor, marginalised and disadvantaged." Poor people were the ones most often executed for crimes that could range from theft to murder, because they had no wealth to protect them and they were the ones who were desperate enough to steal. I also appreciated this quote from Conisbee about the death penalty and the occasional conversation in England about bringing it back for certain crimes: "As we have seen through Ann's story, however, its effectiveness as a deterrent appears to have been negligible, and its potential for abuse and misuse, incalculable." Wakes, especially Welsh and Irish, were seen as bawdy and tactless because they were mostly working class tradition (eventually wakes became more somber in an attempt, by the people who had them, to adhere to normative ideas of propriety). The rich and the powerful got fancy, big memorials – statues, mausoleums and the like – while those with nothing were thrown in nameless graves. The upper classes could bury their dead in the latest, imperialistic fashions – in the 18th and 19th centuries tombs with Indian and Egyptian influences were very popular. Rich people could afford to go into months- or years-long mourning periods and have fancy mourning clothes made – this was not an option for working class people, who lived from pay check to pay check. It was intriguing to read about how industrialisation impacted mourning and, in some ways, equalised it: when mourning garments could be mass-produced, even poorer people could afford to perform their grief publicly. For communities of normal, everyday people, death was also a very communal thing, with wakes, watchers, people dropping by to help and so on. Class is, as it always is, very present in this history.
I've always known death and dying were highly gendered, but this book really made me appreciate just how gendered they were. Women and men (speaking in very binary terms) died differently – while men had to fight wars and do more physical labour which was often very dangerous, women were in constant danger when pregnant and giving birth. Women had different roles in death – it was, for example, women who were the Watchers, people who volunteered or were paid for to keep the dying company, offer them solace and make sure their family was there in the end. End of life care was a feminine field until it became more professional, which is when men took over, for the most part. Women's mourning was the most controlled and structured – women had to mourn their husbands for two years or more, while men only had to wear black for three months after their wife died, which says something unpleasant about how women were seen. There were some nice surprises related to gender in the book: there is evidence of multiple women owning undertaking businesses, for example. It's a common misconception that women were only ever housewives in history, and Conisbee does a good job of correcting this misunderstanding through real-life examples.
As a queer historian, the chapter on queer lives was especially interesting to me. I liked how Conisbee discussed how, despite the fact that men like John Smith and James Pratt (the central figures of this chapter) are only known due to them ending up in court, they shouldn't be seen as oddities. They were ordinary men until that fateful day when they were caught. It was the punitive law of the time that branded them "abnormal". Conisbee also used their trial to highlight how sodomy laws, though they targeted officially all men who engaged in same-sex acts, were especially brutal for working class and poor men. The rich could easily find private spaces to meet and they had their money, titles and names to protect them, and if necessary, they had the funds to flee the country to avoid a trial. Working class men like Smith and Pratt didn't have any to those protections, so it was men like them who were executed. Reading this chapter made me sad and angry, but Conisbee alleviated those feelings a bit by telling her reader that, in accordance with the Alan Turing Law of 2017, Smith and Pratt were absolved of their crimes and that the British LGBTQ+ community hasn't forgotten them: they are among many people of the past who are considered martyrs.
Conisbee highlighted the performative nature of death really well. She wrote about executions as warnings as well as spectacles to the public, about the Victorian culture of mourning as a public showcase of grief through objects and social rules, about murder tours (not a modern day phenomenon), about public anatomisation and how people wanted bits and pieces of criminal bodies, and about memorials as public displays of remembrance. She talks about who gets to be remembered and how memorials can be supportive of the political regime or challenge it. Wakes also have a performative aspect to them, with all their rituals. The word "performative" has a negative vibe, but Conisbee does a good job exploring why these performances were not just for show but could also genuinely help people deal with loss. Throughout her book, Conisbee is very empathetic towards the people of the past and reminds the reader that though a lot of things they did might seem, to us, strange and even improper, they didn't see it that way and, for them, they were helpful.
Religion is also a key aspect of this book and its historical analysis. Religion has, obviously, played a huge role in how death is talked about and approached, and this book helped me see its impact in a more nuanced way. The way Conisbee described reformation in England made me truly appreciate just how existential a threat it must've seemed like to so many and how it threatened every day life – I really liked this quote: "In this sense, when the Reformation came, it was not just a transformation of how the Church and its offices were to be organised, but rather it went to the very heart of community identity and local relationships." Conisbee also wrote about how, even though the Church (and the Law) had strict opinions about certain types of deaths, such as suicides and deaths of unbaptised babies, the reality was more complex and people didn't always live by those rules. Sometimes people snuck mothers into graveyards so they could bury their baby in consecrated ground, and sometimes juries and judges didn't declare an obvious suicide as such to protect the family of the deceased from shame, economical ramifications and scrutiny. It was also interesting to read about how depictions of heaven and hell have adapted and changed, and how Heaven, which was in the Medieval period often Jesus and the Saints in a garden with a golden city became, in the Victorian Era, a celestial family reunion. Both interpretations say so much about the time period that came up with them. As someone who is very interested in ghosts, it was cool reading about the relationship between superstitions and religion, and about how ghosts too have changed with the times – for example, for the Jacobeans, ghosts were demonic beings pretending to be humans, while Regency folks enjoy gothic ghosts and people of the 1930s came up with poltergeists.
Conisbee draws parallels between modern death culture and the past (doulas, for example, are quite reminiscent of the Watchers), and explores what we might learn about grief and loss by looking at the past. She emphasises how events such as wakes have proven benefits for the bereaved, and how, in our modern individualistic world, it is much easier for someone to feel alone in their grief than it was in the past, when death was a more communal event. She writes very movingly about her own experiences with loss and those of people she knows, and about how crucial it is that societies fund medical care as well as good quality hospice and end-of-life care, because, as she says: "A caring death is surely the last gift we owe the dying, but also the bereaved." There are many death rituals in this book that I don't think will ever make a popular comeback, but there are plenty of things I think we can learn from the people of the past and how they coped with death. And above all, I think, there are lessons about what we owe each other, how we shouldn't treat each other and how dangerous it is when governments and people in power get to have a say who deserves a good life or any life at all.
I would recommend this book happily to anyone interested in the topic. It is not as gloomy as it might seem and look – it's actually quite a life-affirming book, a great reminder that even though the people of the past lived such different lives, they were still just people. Conisbee's writing is engaging and easy-to-understand even if you don't have any prior knowledge on the subject, and her historical analysis is sound. As to why not 5/5 stars, well, that's just a really rare rating for me when it comes to nonfiction.
Some interesting facts I learned:
- The term "the Black Death" was coined in the 18th century.
- In census records after 1851, when occupation became required information, many daughters are listed as "assistant mothers" – they helped not just their own mothers, but those in their neighbourhood.
- Wales only got its first medical school in the 1800s. The first nursing college in Britain was established in 1916.
- Contrary to popular belief, requirements for the death penalty were much stricter in the Medieval period than, say, the 18th century. In the 18th century stealing a rabbit could get you executed.
- Graves only became, commonly, six feet deep, in the 17th century.
- The London Foundling Hospital (1739) became a huge hit: by the 1750s they were only able to take in about a third of the babies brought to them. A testament to the desperate conditions of the poor.
- The doctor who anatomised Burke (of Burke and Hare fame) wrote some of his notes in Burke's blood.
- Gibbeting was made illegal in 1832.
- There was a saint to pray to for relief for any kind of ailment. St Servatus of Tongeren helped with (and, I assume, still does) sore toes.
- Wales became a popular destination for the Romantics who wanted to experience untouched nature and the like but couldn't travel to Europe due to Napoleon's military shenanigans. With the Romantics came also a renewed interest in folklore and folk practices.
- Quakers got their nickname from their tendency to be physically intense during their meetings, as in they literally quaked.
- The earliest evidence of burial rites are from neolithic cultures, around 10 000 years ago.
- Fake funerals were quite common as part of protests – for example, in food riots, people could bury a loaf of bread with all the pomp and ceremony of a proper human burial.
- Taphophiles are people who are very interested in graveyards and tombstones.
- The death business was so big in the 19th century that there were death-themed shops and warehouses that sold everything from mourning underwear to mourning teapots.
- Not many graves of "ordinary" people survive from before the 16th century.
- The Bath Institution for the Blind and Deaf was established in 1842. Girls there were trained for domestic service and boys for trades such as tailoring.
- From mid-19th century onwards, spiritualism became really popular in the USA and Europe. Women really responded to spiritualism due to the movement's emphasis on gender equality.
- Public bathrooms became a thing for women in the 19th century, which made it possible for them to stay outside longer – before this, they could remain out as long as their bladder held.
July 17, 2025
The Grim Reaper is never far away when studying history. However, it is usually the most influential and infamous deaths at the centre, whether that be monarchs, aristocrats, political leaders, or notorious criminals; we rarely hear of how ‘ordinary’ people met their demise. Molly Conisbee seeks to amend that as she explores the stories of those often omitted from history books. As a result of spending the last decade researching the social history of death and mourning, she has produced a history of mortality.
Due to ubiquitous death, many throughout history have had a much more integrated relationship with grief. Taking a thematic approach, from death watchers in the Middle Ages to the elaborate mourning customs in the Victorian era, Molly covers a wide breadth of fascinating topics. By way of plague-pits, bodysnatchers, criminal dissections, queer persecutions, and wakes, cycles of death and dying are explored and how society and religion have and continue to mould them. Familiar names of Burke and Hare will appear, as well as some unfamiliar, yet closer to home, people such as Lydia Stather’s suspected suicide in 1890s Hull, and a ‘Hand of Glory’ from an executed criminal in Whitby.
Utilising her expertise as a bereavement counsellor, Molly shares her vast knowledge of death and grieving through this well-written and authentic piece of non-fiction, demonstrating how practices have changed while putting those often excluded from history at the forefront. This meticulously researched book, filled with anecdotes and images, significantly contributes to the historiography of death culture and mortality, illustrating the lives of our forebears and bringing the lost art of death to life today.
Due to ubiquitous death, many throughout history have had a much more integrated relationship with grief. Taking a thematic approach, from death watchers in the Middle Ages to the elaborate mourning customs in the Victorian era, Molly covers a wide breadth of fascinating topics. By way of plague-pits, bodysnatchers, criminal dissections, queer persecutions, and wakes, cycles of death and dying are explored and how society and religion have and continue to mould them. Familiar names of Burke and Hare will appear, as well as some unfamiliar, yet closer to home, people such as Lydia Stather’s suspected suicide in 1890s Hull, and a ‘Hand of Glory’ from an executed criminal in Whitby.
Utilising her expertise as a bereavement counsellor, Molly shares her vast knowledge of death and grieving through this well-written and authentic piece of non-fiction, demonstrating how practices have changed while putting those often excluded from history at the forefront. This meticulously researched book, filled with anecdotes and images, significantly contributes to the historiography of death culture and mortality, illustrating the lives of our forebears and bringing the lost art of death to life today.
January 18, 2026
"To ask if someone had a 'good death' these days feels awkward, almost intrusive; we have become so fixed on death being the enemy - something to defer, beat or deter - that it seems culturally counterintuitive to think it could ever be a 'good' outcome."
This book has an extremely interesting premise and touches upon really poignant themes surrounding death, grief and collective memory. I really enjoyed the way the author weaves in different topics such as how Henry the VIII's Reformation completely changed the way people were allowed to mourn and grieve, how some bodies were worthless and therefore acceptable to be used for anatomical studies, how gay people were condemned to death for their sexuality and unable to be properly mourned by their loved ones or how the fact "death" is so institutionalised and hidden behind the curtain of medical care that we have become unable to properly accept and deal with it. I feel like a lot was covered and it was a good approach to cover a lot about the theme.
This said, I found the writing lacking a bit with lots of repetition and bits just dragging on and on - shomehow it reads a bit like a phd thesis which perhaps it was. I also found that what the author sets out to do from the beginning - ie: paint a picture of death through the lives of common people - is not really accomplished as many of the bios are pure conjecture. Also the palpable anglocentrism of some statements really made me go "Wtf?" - the most glaring probably the one stating that the wake is something that happens after the body is buried when this is untrue for most religions and cultures as demonstrated by the author when a couple of paragraphs after she mentions Irish Catholic tradition.
All in all it was a good read that would have benefitted from some more time of editing.
This book has an extremely interesting premise and touches upon really poignant themes surrounding death, grief and collective memory. I really enjoyed the way the author weaves in different topics such as how Henry the VIII's Reformation completely changed the way people were allowed to mourn and grieve, how some bodies were worthless and therefore acceptable to be used for anatomical studies, how gay people were condemned to death for their sexuality and unable to be properly mourned by their loved ones or how the fact "death" is so institutionalised and hidden behind the curtain of medical care that we have become unable to properly accept and deal with it. I feel like a lot was covered and it was a good approach to cover a lot about the theme.
This said, I found the writing lacking a bit with lots of repetition and bits just dragging on and on - shomehow it reads a bit like a phd thesis which perhaps it was. I also found that what the author sets out to do from the beginning - ie: paint a picture of death through the lives of common people - is not really accomplished as many of the bios are pure conjecture. Also the palpable anglocentrism of some statements really made me go "Wtf?" - the most glaring probably the one stating that the wake is something that happens after the body is buried when this is untrue for most religions and cultures as demonstrated by the author when a couple of paragraphs after she mentions Irish Catholic tradition.
All in all it was a good read that would have benefitted from some more time of editing.
April 25, 2025
No Ordinary Deaths by Molly Conisbee is about people who whose stories aren’t easily found in the history books. I was amazed by the breadth of topics discussed - from how these people comforted their dead in their final moments and watched over them before burial, or how they faced the death penalty for stealing silverware, or how they buried their dead. The infamous Burke and Hare even made an appearance!
I particularly found it interesting learning that the ways Western society memorialise their dead has changed significantly over the last couple of centuries, as well as reading about what the general population pictures there is after death. I also loved that this book challenged the idea of an ‘ordinary death’.
This book would be great for those interested in social or economical history, or just has a morbid curiosity (or fear!) about death. Although the majority of the time it was interesting hearing the historical facts, sometimes it was too much for me - such as when it went into detail about the history of Surrey (sorry, Surrey!).
I loved reading No Ordinary Deaths. I hope Molly Conisbee brings out more like this! The cover is also fantastic.
I particularly found it interesting learning that the ways Western society memorialise their dead has changed significantly over the last couple of centuries, as well as reading about what the general population pictures there is after death. I also loved that this book challenged the idea of an ‘ordinary death’.
This book would be great for those interested in social or economical history, or just has a morbid curiosity (or fear!) about death. Although the majority of the time it was interesting hearing the historical facts, sometimes it was too much for me - such as when it went into detail about the history of Surrey (sorry, Surrey!).
I loved reading No Ordinary Deaths. I hope Molly Conisbee brings out more like this! The cover is also fantastic.
May 15, 2025
This was such a fascinating look at the usually morbid topic of death. By the end I strangely found this to be more comforting than anything; I really think this would be worth a read for anyone who has a fear of dying or just isn't comfortable about the topic.
Even though this doesn't necessarily have to be read in chronological order, I did & I really enjoyed it. Some chapters spoke to my personal interests more than others but overall, this was so intriguing. With the title and the cover, I'll admit I was expecting this to be a lot darker and macabre than it was (which I wouldn't have minded) but I was pleasantly surprised. That being said, there are still parts that were pretty gruesome, chapter 4 specifically, but I personally found that one of the more interesting chapters 😅. There were so many new things I learnt about death & dying by reading this & it was fascinating to see how many things surrounding death, funerals & even wakes from the medieval & Victorian age still link in some form or other to modern day.
I really liked Conisbee's way of writing, I could feel the passion she has while I was reading & I loved her afterword at the end. It felt like the whole book had been well planned & thought out, I especially enjoyed the format of it all. I'd happily read more nonfics from Molly & this one in particular I feel has given me a newfound or rather rediscovered interest in the Victorian era too.
I highly recommend this to anyone wanting to add to their nonfic tbr, especially those who want something a little darker to read.
Even though this doesn't necessarily have to be read in chronological order, I did & I really enjoyed it. Some chapters spoke to my personal interests more than others but overall, this was so intriguing. With the title and the cover, I'll admit I was expecting this to be a lot darker and macabre than it was (which I wouldn't have minded) but I was pleasantly surprised. That being said, there are still parts that were pretty gruesome, chapter 4 specifically, but I personally found that one of the more interesting chapters 😅. There were so many new things I learnt about death & dying by reading this & it was fascinating to see how many things surrounding death, funerals & even wakes from the medieval & Victorian age still link in some form or other to modern day.
I really liked Conisbee's way of writing, I could feel the passion she has while I was reading & I loved her afterword at the end. It felt like the whole book had been well planned & thought out, I especially enjoyed the format of it all. I'd happily read more nonfics from Molly & this one in particular I feel has given me a newfound or rather rediscovered interest in the Victorian era too.
I highly recommend this to anyone wanting to add to their nonfic tbr, especially those who want something a little darker to read.
October 8, 2025
This non-fiction book caught my eye because of its beautiful design and the appealing theme. Molly Conisbee's research is concerned with the deaths (and lives) of ordinary people in Britain, from late medieval to modern times.
Working with far too meager sources like census documents, Conisbee nevertheless succeeds in laying out a compelling, humane and intimate history.
Fascinating topics like criminal dissections (more punishment than scientific study), bodysnatching, Victorian mourning clothing and many more are introduced with meticulously researched real-life examples.
Molly Conisbee manages to show the hidden, marginalised and partially erased stories of ordinary deaths and dying, for example those of LGBTQ+ identities.
Conisbee, who is not only a social historian but also works as a bereavement counselor, shares her vast knowledge and helps us come to terms with our own perception of a "good death".
Working with far too meager sources like census documents, Conisbee nevertheless succeeds in laying out a compelling, humane and intimate history.
Fascinating topics like criminal dissections (more punishment than scientific study), bodysnatching, Victorian mourning clothing and many more are introduced with meticulously researched real-life examples.
Molly Conisbee manages to show the hidden, marginalised and partially erased stories of ordinary deaths and dying, for example those of LGBTQ+ identities.
Conisbee, who is not only a social historian but also works as a bereavement counselor, shares her vast knowledge and helps us come to terms with our own perception of a "good death".
November 19, 2025
Death is a feminist pursuit- that's what I took away from this book. Women used to be the watchers of the dying and often participated in various parts of the industry later on making shrouds or being undertakers (it's only when men took over the medical industry like in obstetrics did it become less common for women to be involved in that sphere). As this is my year for death research, I found this book extremely helpful, it taught me about mourning practices though out the ages and what different head stones and colors mean. Even the 'afterlife' chapter that I though we would be boring and religious ended up being fascinating with academic versions definitions of ghosts and spirits.
January 29, 2026
3.5/5
un livre super intéressant sur la mort, et surtout le quotidien qui entoure ce moment : les funérailles, le deuil, le commerce de la mort... l'autrice nous embarque à travers l'histoire avec des cas concrets, des exemples de personnes lambdas qui ont fait face à la fin de leur vie.
seul bémol : le focus quasi exclusif sur l'Angleterre entre le XVIe et le XXe siècle. je trouve dommage que l'autrice se soit limitée à cette période, et j'aurais aimé avoir un éventail plus large d'exemples et de comparaison.
un livre super intéressant sur la mort, et surtout le quotidien qui entoure ce moment : les funérailles, le deuil, le commerce de la mort... l'autrice nous embarque à travers l'histoire avec des cas concrets, des exemples de personnes lambdas qui ont fait face à la fin de leur vie.
seul bémol : le focus quasi exclusif sur l'Angleterre entre le XVIe et le XXe siècle. je trouve dommage que l'autrice se soit limitée à cette période, et j'aurais aimé avoir un éventail plus large d'exemples et de comparaison.
August 20, 2025
4.5 stars
A very interesting piece of cultural history on death, burial and grief. I often think of all those people that came before us, who lived valuable lives we know nothing about. Molly Conisbee brings some of them to our attention and by those stories we find out about their lives, customs, rituals and their passing.
I see that this is the last book of my challenge for this year.
A very interesting piece of cultural history on death, burial and grief. I often think of all those people that came before us, who lived valuable lives we know nothing about. Molly Conisbee brings some of them to our attention and by those stories we find out about their lives, customs, rituals and their passing.
I see that this is the last book of my challenge for this year.
July 21, 2025
Covered different subjects from grief to mass burials. All tide together with real life human stories. Worth a read for those interested, not only about death, but also interested in social history, royal history, and about our ancestors
July 20, 2025
A good read about death. so many things to think about death. Very well researched, Conisbee is a good writer
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January 1, 2026I live for niche books I really do
August 31, 2025
Death remains one of the few certainties in life, yet it’s astonishing how rarely we speak of it openly. Molly Conisbee’s No Ordinary Deaths confronts this silence with grace and insight, offering a deeply human exploration of how ordinary people have lived—and died—through the ages.
Far from being morbid, this book is a moving social history that reveals how our relationship with death and bereavement has evolved.
Well-researched and beautifully written, No Ordinary Deaths is a powerful reminder that every death—no matter how “ordinary”—shapes our culture, our communities, and our collective memory. A thought-provoking and life-affirming read.
Far from being morbid, this book is a moving social history that reveals how our relationship with death and bereavement has evolved.
Well-researched and beautifully written, No Ordinary Deaths is a powerful reminder that every death—no matter how “ordinary”—shapes our culture, our communities, and our collective memory. A thought-provoking and life-affirming read.
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