Archive: 2011

Frantisek Rint – baroque and berserk?

26 October 2011
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: cemeteries, Ossuary

Posted by Vale

Back in 1278 an Abbot of Sedlec came back to Kutna Hora with some earth from Golgotha in his travel bags.

He scattered it in the cemetery and created the most famous and popular necropolis in Bohemia and Central Europe.

Grave space was at a premium and, sometime after 1400, a chapel and charnel house was built. The ossuary is now estimated to hold the remains of some 40,000 people.

But it isn’t the numbers that astonish. In the 19th century a wood carver called Frantisek Rint began to make things – baroque, fantastical and unlikely – from the bones. The chandelier is only one of his many creations:

If you want to visit Kutna Hora there is information here.

If you want to see photographs try here.

R.I.P. and go…

26 October 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death

By Nicola Dela-Croix

Look at any comments left on fan sites, on-line news stories and Facebook pages for people who have died, and you will see it there – on comment after comment after comment – those three letters ‘R.I.P.’. Look on flower cards left at death scenes, in books of condolence, there it is again ‘R.I.P.’.

It hit home this weekend after the 24-year-old MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli was killed during a race in Sepang, Malaysia on Sunday morning. As a MotoGP fan I was watching the race live and felt very shocked to see him killed in front of my eyes. And then to see it again in sickening slow-motion during the action re-play. Like many fans, I went on-line to find stories and see what people were saying about the tragic event. And there they were, list after list of reader comments:

“R.I.P. Marco”

“R.I.P no. 58”

“R.I.P Simoncelli”

And it wasn’t just fan comments. Sports commentators and personalities, including F1 drivers Mark Webber and Jenson Button, were all R.I.P’ing Marco.

This abbreviation of Rest In Peace isn’t new. It’s been used for centuries. But I’m starting to feel uncomfortable about it and I’m not sure exactly why. It’s not that I doubt the sincerity behind its use. And I know that some methods of communication, like Twitter, need to be kept short and to the point.

But in an age of ‘LOL’ and ‘GR8’ has R.I.P been adopted by the quick-fire, short-speak generation who don’t know what else to say when offering their condolences? Just a thought…

 

Welcome to Capela dos Ossos

25 October 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Ossuary

Posted by Vale

An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains.

These are photographs of the ossuary in the ancient town of Evora in Portugal. It is estimated to contains the remains of over 5000 people as well as two mummified corpses.

More information about the chapel and photographs here.

Fair comment?

25 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, funeral, funeral cost

Posted by Vale

Here’s a story from last Friday’s This Is Local London website. 

Teddington campaign group launches petition against spiralling funeral costs

 Campaigners have encouraged people in the borough to sign a petition against rocketing funeral prices.

The campaign group Fair Funerals aims to raise awareness about the sharp increase in prices in the past few years and the treatment people have received from some companies.

The Teddington-based group consists of five members who have all had their own negative experiences with funeral firms.

The group has been promoting its campaign in Twickenham, Richmond and Kingston and plans to finish in six weeks.

Founder David Ambaye said: “We want people to be aware that there are two big players in the industry who are controlling almost all of it. It’s a bit like having the industry making the rules for itself. From talking to people on the streets, the main feedback is that they are not aware this is the case.”

Mr Ambaye and his sister Lina Ambaye were inspired to create the group after an experience with a funeral firm following their father’s death.

He said: “When our father died, we ended up dealing with three different companies who we thought were three different firms, but they were all owned by the same one.

“The body ended up being treated badly and we couldn’t sue as the company that had dealt with it was sub-contracted and you cannot sue a sub-contracted company.”

Prices in the industry have increased by 42 per cent in the last five years with a 22 per cent increase in 2009 alone.

The group was aiming to get 1,000 signatures so it can take the petition to Parliament.

For more information, visit fairfunerals.org.

Has TV gone too far this time?

24 October 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, Embalming

Posted by Vale

That’s the headline on a Mail online story about tonight’s Channel 4 documentary about mummification.

In it a Devon taxi driver – Alan Bills – is mummified following, as closely as possible, ancient Egyptian practices. Alan died in January after suffering from lung cancer and wanted to take part in the experiment in part at least because of his grandchildren. He said

“Perhaps this would give them an insight into what their granddad was like, I don’t know.

“They’ll most probably tell somebody at school that my granddad’s a pharaoh. That’s my legacy I suppose.”

There’s a good preview on the BBC website. The show isn’t simply prurient interest or sensationalism either. Scientists are hoping to study the mummification and the effect on the decomposition of the body as part of research into alternatives to formaldehyde.

The Mail’s, always keen to find fresh sticks to beat Channel 4 and the BBC with, states:

“The broadcaster looks set to find itself at the centre of another taste row after agreeing to air the macabre documentary”.

But will it? Is death or the treatment of dead bodies such a taboo subject for broadcasters these days? Or is it only violence that justifies publicity. The Mail – with its article and photographs of Gadhafi’s corpse seems to think so.
The documentary’s on at 9.00 tonight if you are interested.

The chaos of meaning

21 October 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Art and death, ashes, memorialisation

We have just received the following press release: 

In early 2011, Jimmy Edmonds’ son Joshua was killed in a road accident in SE Asia. 

RELEASED is a photographic essay and a personal response to the tragedy of his son’s death. Intended for publication both as an exhibition and as a book, the project features a mix of Edmonds’ powerful photography and personal poetry.

The title refers to the label on the container holding Joshua’s ashes on which the word “released” appeared.  This becomes the starting point for a personal journey in which Edmonds navigates a way through his own grief to an exploration of photography itself. The “chaos of meaning” he finds lying at the heart of photography mirrors almost exactly his own confusion surrounding the loss of his son.

The result is a work of remarkable depth and drama. 

As indeed it is. Here’s what one of our regular reader, James Showers, thought of it: “I literally gasped at the way you worked with the ashes – treating them with such delicacy, as beauty not as leftovers.”

You can read the entire book fullscreen online here.  You can find the Facebook page here.

Habeas corpse

20 October 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral customs, funerals in other cultures

Funeral arrangements for many Brits must take into account the sometimes violently conflicting wishes, needs and loyalties of the various members of blended families. Compromise can sometimes be hard to reach, the more so when one party sets out to hijack the funeral and do it their way.

It’s worse for Ghanaians. There, it’s the extended family that often hijacks the funeral. Journalist Elizabeth Ohene explains:

A friend of mine has had a traumatic experience and this has brought the subject of death forcibly to the fore for me.

When a Ghanaian dies, the body belongs to the family – that is the legal position.

The definition of family, in this case, does not include a spouse or children.

So, do not go looking in the dictionary, where a family is defined as “a group of people who are related to each other, especially a mother, a father and children”.

In matters of death in Ghana, a family refers to the extended family into which you are born – no matter how long ago and it does not include the family you have created.

So, you could be married for 50 years and the two of you might discuss what arrangements you want for your funerals when the time comes.

You might even write down these wishes but, unfortunately, when your wife dies, you will discover that 50 years of marriage counts for nothing.

Once your wife becomes a corpse, you have no say in where or even when she will be buried. If her family decides, for example, to take her body to the village she had never sat foot in, you will be able to do very little about it.
Wrath of in-laws

And if you think you are a beloved child and your parents have told you how they want their funerals conducted, you will discover that your word counts for nothing – unless, of course, you can find some people to intercede on your behalf and you can “buy” the funeral from the family.

The process of “buying” the rights to the funeral includes giving drinks and the paying of various fines for imaginary wrongdoings over your lifetime.

Custom demands that children bury their parent – in other words, they must pay the bills for the funeral but they have no authority over the body.

If your spouse dies and you happen to be not very popular with your in-laws, then better get resigned to the fact that while you mourn the loss of your partner, you will be accused of having killed him or her.

I have seen it and it is not a pleasant experience.

My friend’s husband died. Their children wanted their father buried after three weeks, but his family wanted his body kept for four months to enable relatives scattered around the four corners of the globe to attend the funeral.

We coaxed, we begged, we paid fines for all the years the children had not been to the village, but all to no avail – the body belongs to the family and they took it away.

This is an everyday occurrence in Ghana and if you think you can avoid it, let me tell you the story of a former chief justice who left strict instructions about what should happen when he dies.

He wanted to be buried within two weeks of his death and he did not want a state funeral.

Three weeks after he died, his family came to formally announce his death to the president and then added most helpfully that they had prayed and set aside the man’s wishes and the president should feel free to accord a state funeral.

The man got a state funeral some six weeks after his death.

If that can happen to a chief justice, it is obvious there is no point in me leaving any instructions, but just in case anybody cares, I want to be cremated within a week.

Not that I plan on going any time soon.

Source.

Mellified man and the wonder of Wikipedia

20 October 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: Death; Good death, Embalming, Humour

Posted by Vale

Wikipedia – that glorious monument to collaboration and, sometimes, hearsay – has some marvellously strange pages.

One of my favourites is the Mellified man. This is claimed to be an ancient process of preserving bodies through use of honey.Li, a Chinese pharmacologist reports that,

“some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end of their lives, would submit themselves to a process of mummification in honey to create a healing confection. This process differed from a simple body donation because of the aspect of self-sacrifice; the mellification process would ideally start before death. The donor would stop eating any food other than honey, going as far as to bathe in the substance. Shortly, his feces (and even his sweat, according to legend) would consist of honey. When this diet finally proved fatal, the donor’s body would be placed in a stone coffin filled with honey. After a century or so, the contents would have turned into a sort of confection reputedly capable of healing broken limbs and other ailments. This confection would then be carefully sold in street markets as a hard to find item with a hefty price.”

Who knows, in this age of innovation in the disposal of dead bodies, (and a cash strapped NHS) it might catch on again.

It’s clear though, from other articles, that we have become a good deal less imaginative about death and dying. There’s another page that simply lists unusual deaths.

It’s worth a look for the sheer variety of deaths listed. There’s more roasting than you might imagine including being roasted alive in brazen bulls. A disturbing image, I would have thought, for stock marketeers in these troubled times. Then there’s the politician Draco who, in 620 BC, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens. There’s got to be a metaphor there for the risks all politicians face if they of accept too many gifts.

My favourite though is the Stoic philosopher, Chryssipus, who died of laughter after giving his donkey wine then seeing it attempt to eat figs.

They really knew how to live – and die – in those days.