The 19th-century Paris morgue that turned dead bodies into public entertainment

Time of India

4 days ago

Curiosity often pulls people into true crime documentaries, forensic series, or exhibitions like Body Worlds that display the human form in all its raw reality. But this interest with death and the macabre isn't new, it's been a part of human culture for centuries.
The way we process and publicly display death has changed with time.
This same curiosity was at play nearly 150 years ago, in the heart of Paris. Before Netflix and crime shows, there was the Paris Morgue, not just a place for identifying unknown deceased persons, but one of the city's most visited attractions. It was the 19th-century version of 'true crime TV,' where visitors peered through glass to look at strangers who had met tragic ends.
As strange as it may sound today, the morgue was once seen as part museum, part public service, and part spectacle and it told stories the newspapers alone couldn't.
Paris's dark attraction
Back in the 1860s, Parisians, especially the curious city wanderers known as flâneurs, regularly visited the Paris Morgue. As reported by How Stuff Works, it became known as 'Le Musée de la Mort' or Museum of Death, and was even mentioned in British travel guides.
The morgue had a glass-fronted salle d'exposition or exhibition hall where the unclaimed deceased were laid out in hopes of identification.
These displays weren't just for identification, instead, they became a ghastly form of public entertainment. The bodies, often victims of industrial accidents or drownings, were laid out with their clothes hung above them. According to IFL Science, a French playwright, Léon Gozlan, once said, 'You go there to see the drowned, as elsewhere you go to see the latest fashion.'
Being situated behind Notre-Dame Cathedral, the morgue could attract tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, depending on who was on display. According to the Wellcome Collection, this wasn't just about the scary fascination, and as Taryn Cain pointed out, modern exhibits like Body Worlds have drawn over 40 million visitors, showing that our obsession with death hasn't really changed. 'We might not be as far from La Morgue as we might like to think we are,' she says.
Was it more than exploring the ghastly
According to JSTOR and Professor Vanessa Schwartz of USC, the popularity of the morgue may have reflected empathy as much as fascination. Visitors came not just to gawk, but to feel connected. As Schwartz puts it, the morgue and wax museums were 19th-century Paris's answer to today's true crime boom and a way to explore death, mystery, and humanity all at once.