The robed harbinger of human demise was once seen much differently, as was death itself. The history of how we personify death is a record of what we face in life.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.