FUNERAL UNDERTAKERS

Undertakers in medieval and Tudor times were usually woodworkers; they were furniture-makers, carpenters and wheelwrights. These trades continued well into the twentieth century. In rural areas many woodworkers also had a horse and cart, so they provided funeral transport although friends and family frequently carried the coffin from the deceased person’s home to the local churchyard. With the transition to an urbanised society, walking funerals were less practical, making funeral transportation necessary.

In the Georgian era funeral arrangements were kept simple. The deceased’s body was washed and wrapped in a shroud. The parish incumbent would be informed of the death and a local gravedigger (sexton) employed. The male relatives would process from the deceased’s abode to the church with the corpse on a bier covered with a pall. The men would wear a black ribbon round their hats. Female relatives participated but at a distance so that their crying and perhaps fainting would not disrupt the funeral ceremony.

The role of the undertaker originated because the nobility wanted elaborate funerals. From the early 1600s, these funerals were usually arranged by the College of Arms because they were responsible for the heraldic decoration based upon the ranking of the deceased within society. Hatchments (diamond-shaped tablets bearing a coat of arms) developed as a sign of mourning and continued to be popular until the mid-nineteenth century. Many undertakers engaged specialist hatchment painters but outside London heraldic painting was often a secondary occupation undertaken by coach-painters or even portrait artists.

By the mid-seventeenth century and because of the high costs involved, many members of the nobility just could not afford an elaborate funeral, so at the other end of the scale, some burials took place at night with no ceremony and only the necessary dressings provided by funeral furnishers. Families thus avoided heavy costs, the involvement of the College of Arms and they had no hatchment.

The great desire, particularly of the Victorian middle and working classes, to emulate these elaborate funerals provided the undertaker with even more trade. Many funeral customs of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were derived directly from heraldic funerals.

In rural areas up until the 1870s, most ordinary people had to make do with a basic wooden coffin made by the local carpenter or wheelwright. This was very much part of a simple funeral, often paid for by the parish as seen from records in the overseers' accounts and given the nickname of walking funerals. The coffin would be carried from home to churchyard by a few relatives or friends or rested on a farm cart or wagon; some parishes owned a funeral bier for the purpose. There were no undertakers or professional mourners. A simple burial service was held either in church or at the graveside, resulting in a record appearing in parish burials registers some of which later contained the name of the undertaker. From the early 1800s town parishes sometimes maintained undertaker registers.

It took around a hundred years for the funeral trade to really become available to all. By the early eighteenth century, undertakers provided funeral packages for all classes of society at varying costs. Most did not see undertaking as their sole trade. Carpenters, cabinetmakers, upholsterers and similar tradesmen combined funeral services with their main business.

The funeral trade soon developed into three very separate entities – the coffinmaker, the undertaker, and the funeral furnisher. The coffinmaker as the title implies made and supplied the coffins. The undertaker provided the funeral direction and sometimes also made coffins. The funeral furnisher bought in and dressed coffins and offered other services including looking after drapes and candles in the home and providing coffin furniture - the handles, nameplate etc. By the 1880s the three disciplines had combined resulting in the growth of funeral directors.

In Cassell's Etiquette and Household Advice Manual  c1880s, it clearly stated that in addition to the registration of death and the selection of a place for burial, it is advisable as soon as possible to arrange with an undertaker about the character and cost of the funeral. Most funeral directors/undertakers produced a brochure containing particulars of the various funeral packages they offered with prices stated.

Funeral directors typically offered about a dozen different packages, the cheapest of which would provide a patent carriage with one horse, an elm coffin, lined and with a pillow, use of pall, mourners' fittings, a coachman and attendant both with hatbands. The most expensive funeral package would provide a hearse and four horses, two mourning coaches with fours, plumes of ostrich feathers, velvet to cover horses and carriages, strong elm shell with lead coffin, intricate furnishings and inscription plate, silk and velvet pall, two mutes, fourteen pages, feathermen, coachmen and an attendant with silk hatband. Costs would vary from about £3 to over £60, compared with figures of around £500 or more that the nobility paid for their elaborate funerals.

The cost of interment was always extra. Each cemetery had its own scale of costs depending upon what type of grave was required and what type of monumental inscription, if any, was required. Family burial plots cost more than single graves.

In the early 1840s it became apparent that the gases emitted by rotting corpses in overcrowded churchyards was a major problem. Foul-smelling burial grounds resulted in ill health of those living nearby. Prolonged exposure to these graveyard gases frequently caused early deaths.

Legislation was introduced to close church vaults, churchyards and parish burial grounds from the early 1850s. Burials recorded in parish registers from that date usually took place in the cemeteries or later crematoria. There may be another burial entry in a cemetery register.

Edwin Chadwick, a prominent public health reformer of the period, mooted the idea of public mortuaries which developed in three phases. Between 1843 and 1866, the country acknowledged a need but very few were built.  The first mortuary or dead house was built 1854 by St Anne’s Soho. Then between 1866 and 1875 parishes begin to build public mortuaries, but in many locations construction was blocked by public opposition. Finally after 1875, many mortuaries of different sizes and quality were built and they quickly became common additions in institutions such as workhouses, hospitals and asylums.

The costs of a funeral could be minimised if the undertaker was not involved at the cemetery. The invention of the reverberatory furnace gave rise to cremation, the earliest of which was commissioned in the 1870s. Undertakers generally charged less for a cremation than a burial. After the advent of municipal cemeteries in the 1850s, the registers maintained by those authorities give the name of the undertaker as well as details of the grave location, depth of burial etc. Whilst not being of much help in locating the actual records of the undertakers, it may well lead to the discovery of other records as many undertakers practised another trade. If you find records of the other trade, they should also contain information on the undertaking side of the business.

It was not easy to understand the Victorians preoccupation with death nor the logic applied to the expense of a funeral. By the end of the nineteenth century, a funeral was considered by most to be the greatest festival of all. The financial status of a family made no difference to their eagerness to spend what little money they may have had on as lavish a funeral as funds allowed. To help defray the expenses and avoid a pauper funeral, many people joined burial clubs or paid into emerging insurance schemes; it is clear that some families almost put themselves on the verge of bankruptcy to pay for even a modest funeral. The demand for ornate funerals came to a fairly abrupt end around the time of the First World War. The shame of a pauper's burial was so great that families would go without food and heating in order to put a few pence into a fund to save up and pay for a funeral.

The funeral trade was not regulated until the early twentieth century despite earlier attempts to do so. It was not until 1898 that the British Institute of Undertakers was established to raise the status of the profession. This was short-lived because it ceased in 1901; but in 1905, the British Undertakers' Association was founded.

The Victorians didn’t shy away from the many traditions associated with death; this was spurred on by Queen Victoria’s mourning for Prince Albert by wearing black attire every single day for the next forty years. Her influence on society naturally resulted in an even greater focus on death and dying. Victorians expressed this obsession through a number of rituals and customs.

Mourning was always in black. Deep mourning was for a year and a day after which a black armband or hat was worn for a further year depending upon how close the wearer was to the deceased. Mourning existed from the time of death.

Mourning was borne more by women than men. Mourning clothes were available for all classes either from the departmental stores, mourning warehouse or even from local dyers who would dye clothing black for the funeral. Besides mourning traditions, funerals were associated with other adornments such as jewellery etc, the extent of which depended upon the social standing of the family.

The wake occurred where the body was attended twenty-four hours a day. Candles or heavily scented flowers adorned the room to mask the body odour until embalming. The corpse traditionally remained in the home between death and burial, and at the time of the funeral the coffin was always carried out of the house feet first.

All the curtains in the house were closed, clocks were stopped at the time of death, mirrors were covered to supposedly prevent the deceased’s spirit being trapped in the looking glass and a wreath was often hung on the front door to alert passers-by that a death had occurred.

Postmortem photography was popular. The poor and working classes had photographs taken of the deceased, particularly children, and often posed as a family group with their dead.  The advent of the carte-de-visite photographic process allowed for multiple prints to be made from one negative so photographs could be distributed with a memorial card to family members. Many Victorian photograph albums contain such photographs which are sometimes difficult to detect.

Mourners

As undertakers provided a comprehensive service, it was usually their responsibility to invite the mourners. When inviting attendance, the undertakers requested a reply so that coaches could be sent to the houses of those attending (assuming they were part of the package) or at least so the undertaker knew how many obituary or memorial cards to print. Funeral stationery was usually available from reputable retail stationers and most undertakers acted as agents for suppliers presenting a catalogue as part of their service.

Arrangements at the house of the deceased

Undertakers would take care of the arrangements at the house and advise on customary mourning apparel, not just for the ladies but also for the men. Queen Victoria set a precedence and mourning clothing became part of the fashion scene of the time.

Part of these arrangements involved the body lying in the front parlour or a room set aside so that family and friends could view the body and pay their respects. When death occurred in a family living in one or two rooms in an overcrowded neighbourhood, it was not particularly healthy for a body to be retained in the same room that the family used to eat or sleep in, so alternative arrangements began to be made using public mortuaries although cemeteries sometimes provided facilities and undertakers began to provide their own chapels of rest.

The funeral hearse

As many cemeteries were established on the outskirts of towns, some sort of conveyance was required for the coffin so, during the Victorian period the design of hearses evolved. Originating with a depressing black solid two-wheeled box-cart open to the elements, these developed into elaborate glass-sided four-wheeled conveyances with purple, white or silver fittings, hammercloth and curtains.

Most coachbuilders manufactured hearses. Marston & Co. of Birmingham designed a combined hearse and mourning coach which was more economical and useful and every undertaker owned a hearse. The Burials Act of 1852 also allowed burial authorities to provide hearses. Some were owned and provided cooperatively by cemetery companies; others were hired to undertakers, along with black horses, by the black job master. (In 1899, the term Black Job Master referred to a specific occupation, a person responsible for producing black-edged stationery used primarily for funerals.)  In 1899, the cost of a horse-drawn hearse was in the range of £70 to £180 depending upon its splendour.