Daly House taps into dark history

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This article was published 06/10/2022 (1231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the Halloween season in full swing, Brandon’s Daly House Museum is joining the action with an exhibit that explores the more morbid side of history.

Starting Tuesday, members of the public are invited to check out the new display, titled “Daly After Dark,” which highlights the myriad of curious and cruel traditions that defined the Victorian Era.

Daly House staff gave the Sun a sneak preview of the exhibit earlier this week, showcasing how they transformed several rooms in the 140-year-old mansion into macabre installations that provide a window into the past.

Outside of an unnerving bedroom filled with the Daly House’s doll collection, the museum’s parlour has been dressed up to echo the unique funeral customs and spiritual beliefs that were commonplace at that point in time.

“It’s been very interesting learning these things, like the mourning period for Victorian women when their husbands died,” Daly House curator Eileen Trott told the Sun Tuesday.

“They were supposed to mourn for two years and they were supposed to dress entirely in black. And their mourning veils were laced with toxic chemicals like arsenic, which could actually kill them, too.”

Meanwhile, the basement area of Daly House now contains a treasure trove of mementos to the grisly medical history of the past, including a glass cabinet full of Victorian doctor tools and visual references to surgical techniques that came about because of the First World War.

“We’ll be talking a bit about facial reconstruction surgery from World War I, which is an incredibly important part of history and kind of the birth of plastic surgery,” Daly House event and marketing co-ordinator Aly Wowchuk said.

The exhibit will also explore the kinds of Halloween celebrations that took place in Brandon’s early years, which prominently featured vandalism.

“Daly After Dark” is not meant to serve as a haunted house attraction, where entertainment is valued over education, Wowchuk noted.

While the Daly House has hosted Halloween-themed events in the past that leaned into the supernatural, the new exhibit is much more grounded and roots all its horror in historical fact.

“We’re not making a spectacle of death,” Wowchuk said.

“I understand there are people who like it for entertainment value. But as a history museum, it’s up to us to educate and just be frank about the facts and, again, not make a spectacle or entertainment about someone who maybe passed before their time or was mutilated during a very tragic war.”

While “Daly After Dark” will be available for anyone to view during the museum’s regular visiting hours, Trott, Wowchuk and their volunteers will also provide a handful of nighttime candlelight tours that add a little bit of theatricality to the proceedings.

However, Wowchuk said, tickets for these special tours sold out within the space of 12 hours, highlighting just how eager the public is to engage in these kinds of activities after enduring the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years.

“I think it’s just an overall lack of in-person events and people kind of wanting these experiences again, being able to go somewhere,” she said. “And we’ve definitely seen an uptick in visitors over the past summer.”

This year, the Daly House Museum is commemorating its 140th anniversary, with staff and patrons being able to enjoy that celebration in earnest thanks to the recent loosening of COVID-19 restrictions.

After organizing a garden party in July to unveil a new outdoor exhibit, Trott hopes “Daly After Dark” keeps the museum’s momentum going during the fall and provides history lovers with something they haven’t seen before in the region.

“Everybody’s wanting to come back out and do things again and see things like our exhibits,” she said. “So this is the perfect opportunity for us to show something different in the museum.”

Starting Tuesday, “Daly After Dark” will be on display throughout the rest of the month and is open to visitors of all ages.

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