Is it a Find!?

Dear Dan, I purchased a frame at an antiques store many years back. When I removed the printed image from under the glass, I found this photo and card. Sadly, it looks to be a picture of a deceased child. I am just curious about why this was done and if there is any collectable value in such a thing? I can't bring myself to throw such an item in the rubbish and was hoping that there might be some value in it to someone. Thank you, Claire Greetings Claire, In the late 1830s, the daguerreotype was invented, which was the first form of fixed image photography. Daguerreotypes were quite expensive to produce (the largest format would cost the equivalent of a whole year's average salary) and required exposure times of up to thirty minutes. They were taken by professional photographers, generally in a gallery and required heavy camera equipment and an extensive chemical process for developing. In the 1860s the first photographic glass negatives were invented allowing for multiple copies of the same image to be developed on paper, tin and glass. These negatives still required an extensive professional setup to produce. Your photograph is called a postmortem photo. There was a high child mortality rate during the 1800s due to the lack of vaccines and antibiotics. It became a common practice to photograph the deceased adorned with great displays of flowers as a remembrance. Since photographs were pretty expensive, often some families would have a photograph of a child taken only after death. There is quite a demand for postmortem photographs, some selling upwards of several thousands of dollars. Value is determined by the age of the photograph and the composition. In a retail setting your set could realize upwards of $75. The memorial card accompanied with your photo adds to the value because the child is identifiable. Ola H. Prouty (1890-1893), the girl in the photo of yours, is actually buried in the Meeting House Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro, Vt. Postmortem photographs fell out of fashion during the early 20th century when Kodak made portable cameras inexpensive and available to the public. Thus, photographs could be taken relatively fast and with ease, causing less of a real need for a "final" photograph taken as a keepsake. Thank you for taking the time to write with such an interesting question.