Victorian Mourning Customs:

Proper Victorian etiquette required men to wear black suits and black arm bands. Women wore black dresses of crepe the first year or in deep mourning and could change to silk in 1/2 mourning which lasted another 6 months. This was the time period for the loss of a spouse.
Everything would have been in black and in deep mourning women wore no lace or jewelry.
Mourning clothes were the first ready to wear fashions sold in stores.

If you could not afford store bought mourning clothes, you bought black dye and in cast iron dye pots, you dyed your own clothes. When an event happened, like an outbreak of flu or cholera, the towns would smell from the death pots. They would do this in the yard over open fires.

When someone died in the home, the whole house went into mourning. Adults and children wore black while babies wore white with black ribbons.

The curtains were drawn, a black wreath on the door let visitors know that a death had occurred, the clocks were stopped at the time of death, the mirrors were covered so the dearly departed wouldn't become trapped in the reflection and the body was watched at all times until burial.