Pumpkins and Jack O’ Lanterns. 
Oh!—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
John Greenleaf Whittier, ‘The Pumpkin’ (1850)
 
Many in Britain and worldwide lay wreaths on the graves of loved ones in the grim knowledge that they were snatched from them by the terrible …