In the Victorian era, a woman was expected to wear mourning clothes for two and a half years after the death of her husband. He, meanwhile, had to wear a black ribbon round his hat for just three months. Mourning became a huge industry in the age of Queen Victoria with vast emporiums opening up around the country to supply appropriate clothes and accessories - vital at a time when you could easily become a social outcast by wearing the wrong thing. Lesley Hilton went to meet Mairead Mahon, an historian at Trinity and All Saints College in Leeds and Rosemary Hawthorne, a social historian who has a private collection of Victorian mourning clothes and fabrics.
