We started in the present – Helen reminded us that although there is no obligation to engage a funeral director these professionals now organise 98% of UK funerals.

The outlaw Josey Wales observed that “Dyin’ ain’t much of a Living’’ but actually funerals are big business with an annual turnover in the UK of £2 billion. About 30% of funerals are managed by the “Big Three” of The Co-op, Dignity and Funeral Partners, whilst independent funeral directors perform the remaining 70%.

Helen then took us back in time, showing some excellent images. One was an advertisement for the business of an early undertaker, William Boyce, who might be found at the sign of the “Whight Hart and Coffin” c. 1680 “where you might be furnished with all sorts and sizes of coffins and shrouds ready made, and all other conveniences belonging to funerals”.

In another slide, a 1794 print entitled “Undertakers in at the Death” by caricaturist Richard Newton, three unseemly undertakers are depicted bearing the emblems of their trade, and in hot pursuit of the dying man, reminding us that satirists challenged the undertaking trade from its earliest days, as being a business that could target and exploit the vulnerability of the bereaved.

Helen charted the movement from the public funeral to the private event for which invitations were issued, and memorial gifts distributed. Before the Reformation, more mourners meant more prayers for the souls of the deceased. In later times more select attendance became desirable, with emphasis placed on etiquette (such as the “correct” order of carriages in the funeral procession, depending on social status and relationship to the deceased), and the semiotics of mourning in items such as dress, food and funerary paraphernalia. 

Helen asked “Who owns the dead? Who controls access to them?” Both speakers explored answers to these questions, using their expertise to bring us examples from different sources over time.

In the centuries when the dying and the dead remained within their homes until the time of burial, superstitions and beliefs evolved connected with the process of dying, the flight of the soul and the treatment of the corpse. Customs evolved to provide comfort to the living, release for the dying, and intervention to ensure a swift passage to a happy afterlife. These were often originally based on practical considerations such as the “Penny for St. Peter” - the coins placed on the eyes of the deceased to keep them closed - which became the fee for the entry to heaven in the popular imagination. We were reminded of “telling the bees”, of the Passing Bell rung in the parish church to let the community know of a death, and the placing of apotropaic items such candles and salt in proximity to the dead to keep away evil spirits and to light the soul on its journey. Curtains were closed, and mirrors covered, but windows and doors might be opened to assist the departure of the soul.

Helen spoke of the practice of viewing the body. At its basic level the viewing provided an opportunity for the community to confirm the death, but with this simple act of witness was also a demonstration of respect for the dead person and their family, and the “final farewell”. Although the practice offered opportunities for condolence and emotional and practical support, it could also be intrusive upon private grief and financially burdensome. In many areas however it was, and indeed still is, customary for the bereaved host family to offer cakes and other food to the visiting mourners

Helen reminded us of children traumatised by having to touch or kiss a dead relative to “prevent them being haunted”. On a more positive note, the corpse would often be at the centre of a very jolly party or wake which might continue for several days as family and friends travelled to attend the funeral. In places including Wales, a vigil was held through the night over the corpse.

The professional figures who assisted with the preparation of the dead were originally female; the “layer-out” within a community was often the same woman who acted as midwife, dealing with the physical practicalities of life at the beginning and the end of the journey. So common was this dual role that the 1902 Midwives Act felt it necessary to forbid specifically the practice of midwives acting as layers-out. 

We learnt that the professional undertaker’s trade in the UK went back at least to the seventeenth century, and that in the 18th and 19th century undertakers were often castigated and satirised for the way in which they capitalized on the sorrowful business of death. But it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that their business began to distance the corpse from its former community, through the introduction of purpose-built pre-burial resting places. This in turn provided more opportunities for professional involvement in the management of the deceased, and the role of funeral director was developed. This, then, was the subject of Brian’s paper. 

In 1843 social reformer Edwin Chadwick produced an addendum to his Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, the Supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns. It makes fascinating reading. It flagged the problem that in the dwellings of the poorer classes a corpse might remain within the living space of the family for a considerable period of time (sometimes whilst funds to pay for the funeral were being raised) and suggested that this very insanitary practice necessitated the erection of public mortuaries.

But, Brian indicated, the public didn’t like mortuaries; they associated them with the Workhouse, and with prison, and regarded them as a form of state punishment for the crime of being poor. Unidentified bodies might go to mortuaries, or those whose demise demanded a post mortem or an inquest. In short, mortuaries were not a place for the beloved deceased.

The response to this issue was a re-branding exercise of great ingenuity and elegance by the undertakers – and a significant step on their road towards the profession of funeral director. This was the creation of the Chapel of Rest, a private, dedicated and sacred environment, often decorated with the symbols of Christianity, where the dead could remain peacefully whilst awaiting burial. Brian showed us a series of slides depicting Chapels of Rest, many taken from the pages of The Undertakers’ Journal; one picture showed the glazed tiled interior of the Chapel of Rest of the 1854 London Necropolis Railway.

Although the Chapel of Rest slowly replaced the family home as a place of repose for the deceased, this was a gradual process, and old traditions persisted, particularly amongst the working classes. Brian told us of children in the 1930s who, hearing of a death in the community would go round and reverently ask to view the body. One child recalled in later life clocking up a viewing of 37 corpses!

After the creation of the NHS in 1948, far fewer people died at home and this meant that their remains often travelled from the hospital straight to the funeral director’s Chapel of Rest. In 1969 a Croydon funeral director estimated that 95% of his clientele used the Chapel of Rest as part of the funeral process in comparison to only 50% in 1955. New designs in domestic architecture accelerated this trend – open plan housing, high-rise flats, and homes with lifts and narrow staircases did not lend themselves to the accommodation or easy movement of a coffin. 

As a society, we now usually feel more comfortable when care of the dead is managed by professional; they take the body shortly after death and prepare the deceased for their final journey.

Have we in consequence lost something of our former understanding of the normality as well as the tragedy of death, as it becomes increasingly the province of strangers to deal with the remains of those we knew and loved the best?  

For those interested in reading more on this topic:

Helen Frisby, Traditions of Death and Burial (2019)

Brian Parsons, Committed to the Cleansing Flame: The Development of Cremation in Nineteenth-Century England (2005)

Brian Parsons, The Undertaker at Work 1900-1950 (2015)

Brian Parsons and Hugh Meller, London Cemeteries: An Illustrated Guide and Gazetteer (2011)

Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings (eds.), Death in England: An illustrated history (1999)

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the British Association for Local History (BALH). Any content provided by our contributors is of their own opinion and is not intended to malign any individual, group, organisation, or entity.