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The was a time when the Paris Morgue was an attraction. In 19th century Paris unidentified corpses were brought in from the streets or the river. In an attempt to identify them it was decided to display them in the hope a relative or acquittance would claim them. They were frozen, displayed on angled iron tables, and their clothes displayed. They would be publicly exhibited for three days.
Entry to the viewing area was free, and soon it became a popular destination for the curious. Newspapers would print lurid details of the cadavers, and the more infamous ones (decapitations, mutilation or children) would draw large crowds.
From the article The Paris Morgue: A Gruesome Tourist Attraction in the 19th Century:
The Paris Morgue was open seven days a week from dawn to 6pm and was drawing up to 40,000 visitors a day. Parisians and tourists mingled side by side. It became a family day out at weekends, the respectable mixing with the disreputable, young and old, male and female, small children and workers on their lunch break; all filed past the bodies with unabated curiosity.
The more horrendous or gruesome a death, the longer the queues grew. Decapitated, or limbless bodies, tiny children, only added to the morbid desire to see the bodies up close.
Of course what was undeniably adding to the dubious attraction of seeing dead bodies on display was that it was free to enter.
A glimpse of the Paris Morgue’s interior. The left wall of the entrance hall consisted of a row of windows through which guests could see the “salle d’exposition” where cadavers were laid out on iron tables, their clothes hung from thick iron hooks over their heads.
Indeed if on a rare day, the morgue was empty of bodies, the dissatisfaction of the crowd was made apparent. Their appetite for death up close had become almost insatiable.
Because of the guarantee of daily crowds, street vendors set up outside the morgue selling oranges, coconut ice or whatever else they thought would tempt the queue.
It all sounds rather macabre and gruesome, but then again, we all slow down and rubberneck for traffic accidents, don't we?
